Perek of Prayer for Our People: Beginning our Third Cycle with Zechut Avot and Imahot Tomorrow, we will conclude the second round of learning Tehilim in the hopes of peace in Israel, safety on our borders, protection for our soldiers and a return of our hostages. When this project began, it was on day 74 of this crisis, in December of last year. In those days, it was not imaginable that we would be heading to day 300, but here we are. I have been thinking a lot about beginning the next round of learning and different ways to frame it. In this search, I have been heavily influenced by R. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Tehilim and, most recently, Walter Brueggerman’s Spirituality of the Psalms. However, in this coming round, I want to call upon the zchut Avot or more accurately zchut Imahot. This term literally means “the merit of our ancestors”, the idea that the positive actions of those who came before us can have influence on our lives and our destiny. Hashem refers to the