As we said in the Sh'hechianu prayer, thank you  G-d for keeping us and allowing us to be here. And thank you G-d for making me the person I am today.   Thank you for allowing my father and I to have a Bar Mitzvah together.  And  thank you for having my father to  strengthen and encourage me to do this today.   Please bless my mother for all the other things she does for me, and doing my laundry these past twelve years.  But now mom says I’m a man, and have to do my own laundry now.  And please bless the Rabbi for helping me with my studies and his never ending quizzes with the Hebrew flash cards.
Aveenu malkainu, our father our king, Your love sustains the living and you great mercy gives eternal life, Amen.

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Dear G-d this is a Parent’s prayer for my child.
Traditionally a Father asks to make his sons like Ephraim and Mannaseh because even though they were Egyptian royalty, they never forgot that they were Jews.

I also ask that you help make my son Andrew like Ivan Jaciuk, a Ukrainian peasant and a Christian  who protected Jews in the 2nd World War. Not a hero who fought with guns but  with his morality. Please help us guide his steps to become a good Jew and most importantly a good human being who can understand the suffering of all people not just his own people.

May you give him strength to stand up for what’s right but may you also give him peace and pleasure.

G-d, I’d like to thank you for all the people that have helped you guide me in this life,
my parents, who never made me feel second best, even though I gave them lots of reasons to think of me as a failure,

To my wife, who has been my spiritual guide and the best thing to happen to me in my life.

My sons Andrew and Chase for giving me the joys of fatherhood, that I never could have believed to be so wonderful,
Dear G-d Thanks for my religious instructors, Rabbi Garfein, Al Sulkes, and Barry Piteggof,  and my Hebrew School students for “strenthening and encouraging me” and opening the world of our religion  to make me a “born again Jew”
I’d like to thank you for all of our ancestors who have passed on to us our faith, even though the link of faith could so easily be broken.  Our very stubburn  ancestors that protected their families and their faith for so many generations.   In Russia, Potugal,  Jamaica, and America,  who, with your strength,  withstood persecution, expulsions, and the pressure to “be like everyone else”. Even though they are not here physicaly, they are here with us in spirit or in  the ways they havel passed on to us here.

For this, and for the countless other blessings I thank you. And for my loved ones, May you, Adonai,  guard their lives and their journeys  now and for ever. L’olam V’ed -
And may we say : Amen

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