A Prayer for Divine Mercy, by Glikl of Hameln from her memoirs (ca. early 18th c.)

Contributor(s):

Chava Turniansky (transcription), Sara Friedman (translation) and Glikl of Hameln

Shared on:

24 September 2022 under the Fair Use Right (17 U.S. Code §107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use)

Categories:

Rosh haShanah (l’Maaseh Bereshit), Yom Kippur, Hoshana Rabbah

Tags:

55th century A.M., Jewish Women's Prayers, 18th Century C.E., Yiddish vernacular prayer, עלינו Aleinu, תחינות tkhines

The following prayer by Glikl of Hameln (1646-1724) appears at the conclusion of the third book in her memoirs. Chava Turniansky writes,

This passage echoes High Holiday prayers….Glikl highlights her plea as a woman in three places: she states that “we are Your [male and female] servants” while the original text only mentions [male] servants; she describes herself as “a maidservant of mighty God” similarly to Ḥannah in 1 Samuel 1:11, in which the word “maidservant” is reiterated three times; and in the simile “as a servant-girl beseeches her mistress,” which echoes the verse “as the eyes of a slave-girl follow the hand of her mistress, so our eyes are towards the Lord our God” (Psalms 123:2).

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Source (Yiddish)	Translation (English)
דער גרוישי לעבינדיגי גאט, דער װיל זיך דאך אײן מאלט איבר אונש מרחם זײן אונ׳ אונש אויז דען גלות ארליזין כדי מיר המקום ב״ה רעכט קענין דינין װיא עש גיהערט צו זײן אונ׳ דאז אלי פעלקיר ארקענין אונ׳ װישין דאז מיר דײן גליפטיש פאלק זײן^[2] ‘יכירו וידעו כל יושבי תבל’ (‘עלינו לשבח’, תקיעתא, הנאמרת בעמידת המוסף בראש השנה, ראו: גולדשמידט, ראש השנה, עמ׳ 229)	God, eternal and mighty, will surely be compassionate and lead us out of Exile, to serve Him as we should, and all nations will recognize that we are Your beloved people.
אונ׳ דוא, גרושיר גאט, דוא בישט יוא אונזיר פאטיר, זוא ארבארים דיך אך אליש װיא אײן פאטיר זיך ארבארימט איבר אײן קינד. אונ׳ בישט אך אונזיר הער אונ׳ מיר זײן דײני קנעכט אוני מײדין.^[3] ‘אנו עמך ואתה אלהינו, אנו בניך ואתה אבינו, אנו עבדיך ואתה אדונינו׳ (ערבית ליום כיפור ועוד, ראו: גולדשמידט, יום כיפור, עמ׳ 45); ‘אם כבנים רחמנו כרחם אב על בנים ואם כעבדים עינינו לך תלויות עד שתחננו’ (‘היום הרת עולם’ במוסף לראש השנה, ראו: גולדשמידט, ראש השנה, עמ׳ 244). אלזו װאלין מיר ניט אויף הערין צו בעטין אן אונזרין גינעדיגין גאט ביז ער זיך איבר זײני קנעכט מרחם איזט.	And you, mighty God — You are our father. Be compassionate with us, as a father is with his children. You are our Lord; we are Your servants. Hence, we will not cease to pray to our merciful God until He shows mercy to His servants.
אונ׳ איך, דען גרושין גאט דײני דינשט מאט, ביט אליש אײני מײט אן אירי װערטין, דען אונזרי אויגין אונ׳ הערטץ הענגיט אליש אן דיך.	I, a maidservant of mighty God, beseech You, as a servant-girl beseeches her mistress, for our hearts are dependent upon You alone.

This prayer by Glikl of Hameln was made from the text transcribed and published in Chava Turniansky’s critical edition, Glikl: Memoirs (1691-1719) (Shazar 2006), pp. 242-244, and Sara Friedman’s English translation of that edition, edited by Turniansky (Brandeis University Press 2019), p. 144. I have arranged the text, and set the Yiddish opposite its translation, by linear phrase. –Aharon Varady

Source(s)

Glikl of Hameln Memoir 1691-1719 (Chava Turniansky 2006) p. 242

Glikl of Hameln Memoir 1691-1719 (Chava Turniansky 2006) p. 244

Notes[+]

Notes
1	Chava Tunriansky, Glikl: Memoirs (1691-1719) (Brandeis 2019), p. 144, ft. 203 (page 245 footnote 553 in the 2006 Hebrew edition).
2	‘יכירו וידעו כל יושבי תבל’ (‘עלינו לשבח’, תקיעתא, הנאמרת בעמידת המוסף בראש השנה, ראו: גולדשמידט, ראש השנה, עמ׳ 229)
3	‘אנו עמך ואתה אלהינו, אנו בניך ואתה אבינו, אנו עבדיך ואתה אדונינו׳ (ערבית ליום כיפור ועוד, ראו: גולדשמידט, יום כיפור, עמ׳ 45); ‘אם כבנים רחמנו כרחם אב על בנים ואם כעבדים עינינו לך תלויות עד שתחננו’ (‘היום הרת עולם’ במוסף לראש השנה, ראו: גולדשמידט, ראש השנה, עמ׳ 244).

17 U.S. Code 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

“A Prayer for Divine Mercy, by Glikl of Hameln from her memoirs (ca. early 18th c.)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project under their Fair Use Right (17 U.S. Code §107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use), in respect to the copyrighted material included. Any additional work that is not already in the Public Domain is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Chava Turniansky (transcription)

Chava Turniansky is a leading scholar of Old Yiddish. Born in Mexico, Turniansky attended the Yidishe Shul, took private Hebrew lessons, and joined the Socialist Zionist Youth Movement. In 1957 she emigrated to Israel, where she first studied education and went on to study Yiddish with some of the most prominent scholars of the time. Her publications shed light on the manifold aspects of Ashkenazi life, literature, and culture, including its internal bilingualism, the way literacy and knowledge are transmitted, how men and women are educated, book production and reception, and women readers and writers. Turniansky views not just as the vernacular of fourteenth to eighteenth century Jewish society but as a vehicle for understanding the literary, philological, historical and sociological mores of the period. (via her entry in the Jewish Women's Archive)

Sara Friedman (translation)

Sara Friedman is a literary and academic translator of English and Hebrew. Her translation of Glikl: Memoirs 1691 – 1719, annotated and with an introduction by Chava Turniansky, was published by Brandeis University Press in 2019. Friedman holds a PhD in Translation Studies from Tel Aviv University and has taught translation and translation theory at Bar Ilan University.

Glikl of Hameln

Glikl bat Yehudah Leib of Hameln (Yiddish: גליקל בת ר' יהודה לייב האַמיל; also spelled Glückel or Glüeckel of Hamelin; c. 1646 – September 19, 1724) was a German Jewish businesswoman and diarist. Written in her native tongue of Western (Old) Yiddish over the course of thirty years, her memoirs were originally intended to be an ethical will for her children and future descendants. Glikl's diaries are the only known pre-modern Yiddish memoirs written by a woman. Her memoirs provide an intimate portrait of German-Jewish life between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and have become an important source for historians, philologists, sociologists, literary critics, and linguists.

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Card no. 50 from the E-series of the so-called Mantegna Tarocchi (or Mantegna tarot, Tarocchi del Mantegna etc.), entitled Prima causa (first cause), showing a diagram of the universe.

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17