The Baal Shem Tov, or Besht —  the founder of Chasidism — 
met the soul of the Messiah during an ascent to heaven. 
The Besht asked him, "When will the Master come?" 
The Messiah answered, "When your wellsprings break forth to the outside!" 
(from a letter written by the Besht to his brother-in-law about one of his soul ascents) 

Prayers for the Earth in the Year of Blessing the Sun

This liturgy for the Earth can be used in a few ways, for example, as a prayer to follow counting the omer (whether for each day, like Ana Bekhoach, or for the completion of each week), or for the fires of Lag B'Omer and Rainbow Day (the day before), or as a prayer for the earth on Shabbat after Torah reading, following the prayer for the country and the prayer for Israel. The prayers are based on the liturgy for blessing the Sun that we used on April 8th. They have been modified here to be appropriate for this whole year of blessing the sun. Each section can stand on its own, so you might pick one to use on one occasion and different one for another occasion.

Here's the English for the blessings, see notes on the text below: [Download the Hebrew-English pdf here | See the original Birkat Ha-Chamah version here]

I. Avinu shebashamayim, it rests upon us in this year to give blessing for the Sun's creation, and behold, to us it is revealed that the abundant blessing which Earth receives from the Sun. And behold, to us it is revealed that this abundance depends on the health of the Skies, which is in human hands for the first time in any generation in all the years of blessing the Sun, from the beginning of the world.

And we know that You promised ‘A day comes that burns like an oven’ - not just as a parable but as a warning. For You have given our hands power to overturn the orders of creation. But just as you promised,
‘a day comes,’ You also promised, ‘And the Sun of Righteousness will shine for you, and healing will be in her winged rays.’ So may You bless us in Your mercy.

II. Please God, give us wisdom and knowledge and skillful hands to heal the Skies from our sins. 'bring slavation to the Heavens!'. Heal us so we may heal.

Surround us with Shekhinah’s radiance, that the blessing of the sun may flow over us, for life and not for death, for blessing and not for curse, as it says, ‘I will open for you the expanses of the Heavens and I will empty out for you a blessing beyond what is enough and Earth’s fruit will not be destroyed because of you.’

III. God full of compassion, remember Your covenant with all life, the covenant of the waters of Noah. Turn over the bow in our hands so that it may become a shield over the garden of Life. Make Your Shekhinah dwell with us, spread a Sukkah of compassion and peace over us, over all Life’s species.

As an eagle arouses its nest, arouse the flow of Love over Your world to give all creatures life, from the river
of Your delights give them drink. Give the hungry their bread faithfully in every one of their habitats.

IV. May it be Your will, YHVH our God and God of our ancestors that the majesty and power
of the blessings we bless every day 'will become lights in the wellspring of blessings of the Tree of Life,
so that the rainbow may appear,' a crown of beauty to the Sun’s orb, 'and may the whole return now to its original strength, joyful and beautified with its colors,' so that we and our descendants may merit to live many days on Earth, like the days of the Skies over the Land.

Blessed be YHVH forever, amen, amen!
Blessed be the Life of the worlds!

~~~~~ Notes for the curious:~~~~~

"health" -- arukhah, a poetic word appearing often in the prophets, also meaning healing.

"A day comes" -- Malakhi 4:1

"And the Sun of Righteousness" -- shemesh tz'dakah, Malakhi 4:2, usu. translated "...with healing in its wings". Here the sun is feminine "her wings", though in midrash and Kabbalah the sun is generally thought of as masculine.

"skillful hands" -- Psalms 78:72

"Shekhinah's radiance" -- what the righteous enjoy in the coming world, but also in the Sefardi Ushpizin something we pray for in the here and now.

"will flow over us" -- from P'ri Eitz Hadar, the first Tu Bish'vat seder, published in the 17th c. as part of the Kabbalistic work Chemdat Yamim.

"I will open for you" -- Malakhi 3:10-11, "expanses", arubot, is used to describe the release of the flood waters in the Noah story; here it's meaning is reversed from destruction to abundance.

"destroyed because of you" -- usu. interpreted to mean "your produce will not be destroyed", but new times reveal new meanings.

"covenant of the waters of Noah" -- the covenant was not made with humans first, but rather with the land and with all the creatures, Genesis 9:9-12

"bow in our hands" -- I had the image of the rainbow in mind. In God's covenant with Noah and all life, the rainbow symbolizes that God's bow is overturned so that the arrows will no longer shoot at the earth. Now we have turned the bow over again, changing the sun's rays into arrows.

"spread over us" -- a refrain found many places, but especially in the Sefardi liturgy for Ushpizin, where it is echoed several times.

"As an eagle arouses" -- Deuteronomy 32:11

"the flow of Love" -- shefa ratzon, more precisely "the flow of desire", found in the P'ri Eitz Hadar blessing for Tu Bish'vat.

"the river of Your delights" -- Psalms 36:8

"Give the hungry their bread" -- Psalms 146:7

"May it be Your will...that the majesty and power of [our] blessings...become lights in the wellspring of blessings" -- another quote from the P'ri Eitz Hadar blessing. The original ends: "of the Righteous One", though this epithet means for Yesod and Tiferet, which stands for the Tree of Life.

"become lights" -- lim'orot, the word used for the sun and moon in Genesis 1, used in this quote from P'ri Eitz Hadar to imply a restoration of the original light of creation.

"Tree of Life" -- in Kabbalah, the sefirot; in ecology and evolution, the process of unfolding and becoming which makes all living things our relations, a process whose diversity is overwhelming and wondrous.

"the bow will appear" -- nir'atah hkeshet, from Genesis 9:14, quoted by P'ri Eitz Hadar as a sign of the restoration of original blessing. (Note however that for much of Kabbalah, the rainbow has the opposite meaning, that God needed to be reminded, k'v'yakhol, not to destroy the Earth.) The grammatical is past tense with the Biblical vav hahipukh, which makes it future tense.

"a crown of beauty" -- from the blessing over the moon, who is described mysteriously as "a crown of beauty to the womb-laden, who are destined to renew like her". The rainbow created by the sun and encircles the earth like a crown, but its beauty belongs to the sun.

"May the whole now return" -- a quote from P'ri Eitz Hadar, and one of the most deeply ecological sentiments I have ever encountered in any pre-modern text (i.e., before ecology was even a concept).

"joyful and beautified" -- also from P'ri Eitz Hadar, its referent in the original context is ambiguous, syntactically fitting with the rainbow but grammatically (by gender) with "the whole". Either way, it's a good thing.

"like days of the Skies over the Land" -- Deuteronomy 11:21, a more concrete translation of "like the days of the Heavens over the Earth".

"Land" -- two words, adamah and aretz, can both mean "Earth"; both are used within these blessings. While adamah also means "earth" in the sense of soil and ground, aretz can mean "land" in the sense of agriculture or of the nation (i.e., "This land is your land").

Design in progress © Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg 2006