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November 2023 This prayer was written on Friday, November 24th 2023, 11th of Kislev 5784, early afternoon (Israel Time), when we were all waiting to witness the first group of hostages come back home from captivity in the hands of Hamas. Having close friends who have relatives kidnapped who do not fit into the criteria of being released now, I was looking for words to pray at this moment. Referring to the words of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai z”l, and his “remarks” on Kohelet’s “For everything there is a season”, I tried to describe how all feelings are mixed in these awful hours, and in the days since. I am thankful to Rabbi Ayelet Cohen for her translation of this prayer into English. –Rabbi Oded Mazor . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): “Upon My Heart” was offered by Rabbi Menachem Creditor and shared via the Open Siddur Project discussion group on 20 November 2023. The added hashtag “#bringthemhomenow” helps to contextualize the prayer-poem, as written to express the yearning for the return of the captives taken hostage during the 7 October massacres by HAMA”S and its allies. . . . Categories: Tags: 2023-2025 Israel–Hamas war, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., captives, English vernacular prayer, North American Jewry, Prayers as poems Contributor(s): This prayer for the welfare of IDF soldiers and the captives of HAMA”S in Gaza was written by Ze’ev Kainan on 16 October 2023 in the days following the terrible events of 7 October 2023. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): “An important message, November 2023” is a shipping notice from God and a meditation on parochial empathy. . . . This is a Hebrew adaptation of the poems traditionally recited by the Beta Israel community for the festival of Sigd, altered and adapted to fit the traditional qedushta form of poetic Amidah additions. The texts of the first few prayers were rewritten substantially and combined with relevant verses so as to fit in the strict form of the magen, mehaye, meshalesh, and El Na. After this, the qiqlar is slightly edited to fit a couplet rhyme scheme, while the silluq (the freest of the genres of qedusha piyyut) is almost entirely preserved — the only change being several verses whose placement is postponed so as to better lead into the qedusha as a silluq should. Regarding translations, the silluq largely uses my original translation with slight alterations (replacing the clunky use of ‘God’ as a pronoun with a gender-neutral THEIR, translating the Agaw passages into Latin rather than English to preserve general comprehensibility while clarifying that this is a different language), while the rest of the poems are different enough for their translation to largely be from scratch. These would be recited with the Ark open for all the piyyutim, as one would on the Yamim Noraim, ideally using melodies from the Sigd liturgy. . . . Rabbi Dr. Reuven Kimelman notes his prayer for Israel in wartime is “refashioned from material online, especially that of Rabbi Ahud Sela.” The English version previously appeared in the article “For this unprecedented time of war and grief, new prayers for those held captive by Hamas” by Aviya Kushner (The Forward, 3 November 2023). The article notes the prayer “[acknowledges] that men, women and children are all among the abducted” and that it “expressly asks [God to] ‘comfort the families of all those murdered.'” . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): “An infinity of amens” was written by Hanna Yerushalmi on 15 October 2023 in the aftermath of the massacres on Shemini Atseret 5784. . . . Categories: Tags: 2023-2025 Israel–Hamas war, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Prayers as poems, קינות Ḳinōt Contributor(s): The “Pledge of Allegiance to the Family of Earth” was offered by the Women’s Foreign Policy Council (co-chaired by Bella Abzug and Mim Kelber). The earliest publication of the pledge that we were able to located is as found in the article, “Earthlings Unite” by Nina Combs in Ms. Magazine, vol. 18:1&2 (July/August 1989), p. 19. . . . Categories: Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, Cold War (1985–1991), earth pledges, eco-conscious, eco-feminism, universalist Contributor(s): This “Global Pledge of Allegiance” by Edna A. Meisner-Reitz was first published in The Quest, vol. 2, issue 4, Winter 1989 (Theosophical Society of America), back cover. . . . Categories: Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, Cold War (1985–1991), earth pledges, eco-conscious, eco-feminism, universalist Contributor(s): Variations of the original three lines culminating with “…walk beside me…” first appear in high school yearbooks beginning in 1970. The earliest recorded mention we could find was in The Northern Light, the 1970 yearbook of North Attleboro High School, Massachusetts. In the Jewish world of the early to mid-1970s, a young Moshe Tanenbaum began transmitting the lines at Jewish summer camps. In 1979, as Uncle Moishy, Tanenbaum published a recording of the song under the title “v’Ohavta” (track A4 on The Adventures of Uncle Moishy and the Mitzvah Men, volume 2). . . . Categories: Travel, Additional Preparatory Prayers, Social Justice, Peace, and Liberty, 🇺🇸 National Brotherhood Week Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., political and religious anarchism, Arabic translation, Aramaic translation, children's education, Hebrew translation, love your fellow as yourself, Pedagogical songs, Universal Peace, universalist, universalist prayers, Yiddish translation, זמירות zemirot Contributor(s): This prayer in admiration of King Umberto Ⅰ of Italy after the passing of a cholera epidemic was preserved on page 246 of the Sobato Morais Scrapbook (a/k/a, the Morais Ledger) in a clipping from the Philadelphia Inquirer on 28 November 1884, “The Church and Its Duty: Rev. S. Morais on the Limits of Politics in the Pulpit.” . . . Categories: Tags: 1881–1896 cholera pandemic, 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Prayers for leaders Contributor(s): This prayer in eulogy for Rabbi George Jacobs is found in conclusion to “In Memoriam. Address Delivered Last Sabbath by Rev. S. Morais” in the Jewish Record, 18 July 1884, a clipping of which was preserved on page 231 of the Sabato Morais Ledger. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This prayer appears in conclusion to “A Summary of the Centenary History of the Mikve Israel Congregation, by Rev. S. Morais” published in the The Jewish Record on 30 March 1883, a clipping of which is found on page 200in the Sobato Morais Scrapbook (a/k/a, the Morais Ledger). . . . Categories: Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Ḳ.Ḳ. Miḳveh Israel (Philadelphia), Synagogues Contributor(s): This prayer in eulogy for Vice President Henry Wilson was preserved on page 78 of the Sobato Morais Scrapbook (a/k/a, the Morais Ledger) in a clipping from the Evening Telegraph on 1 December 1875, “The Late Vice-President: A Eulogy by Rev. S. Morais, of the Seventh Street Synagogue.” . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This prayer is found in conclusion to “A Sermon Delivered on Thanksgiving Day (November 25, 1852) Before the Congregation Mikvé Israel at their Synagogue in Cherry Street by the Rev. S. Morais, Reader of the Congregation,” pp. 10-11. . . . The piyyut El Adon in its nusaḥ Ashkenaz variation set side-to-side with an acrostic alphabetic translation in English. . . . Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s translation of Psalms 89 was first published in Psalms in a Translation for Praying (Alliance for Jewish Renewal, Philadelphia: 2014), pp. 145-148. . . . | ||
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