Sim Shalom, and the value of peace

[cellio]

The translation of the "Sim Shalom" prayer in Gates of Prayer begins: "Grant us peace, Your most precious gift...". It's a poetic translation, I gather; I don't see anything in the Hebrew that supports "precious". And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I don't like this interpretation.

Peace isn't -- or rather, wouldn't be, if we had it -- God's most precious gift to us. Self-awareness, sentience, soul, free will, and life itself (with health) are ahead of peace. These are the most precious gifts we've received, and the most precious gifts we could receive.

God could give us universal peace easily enough if He were so inclined. All it would cost would be those things that make humans different from the animals. But God didn't create puppets; He created people. And so the best we can pray for in the peace department is that all people will see the value in choosing peace, and thus all work toward it. But that's different from being granted peace outright.

Comments

[cellio]

Everyone else just seems to know it, but I haven't been getting the memo

I felt like that when I started going to our morning minyan. We're pretty good about page numbers and steering people, but not perfect. But I figured it out in time, and it sounds like you will too.