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a community-grown, libre Open Access archive of Jewish prayer and liturgical resources — for those crafting their own prayerbooks and sharing the content of their practice
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2023 📅 Resources published in 2023 Sorted Chronologically (old to new). Sort most recent first? A Proclamation of Fundamental Animal Rights drafted by the West German Green Party in 1989 upon the 200th anniversary of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” (1789), in German with translations in English, French, and Portuguese. A discussion of the nature of truth and belief in Jewish liturgical prayer, suggesting that fixed liturgy is less a vehicle for conveying theological or philosophical outcomes than a practice for developing an emotionally religious personality. Shabbat musaf is used as an example. “Meaning What We Pray, Praying What We Mean: The Otherness of the Liturgy” by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Gutoff was first published in Conservative Judaism, Vol. 42(2), Winter 1989-90, pp. 12-20. Categories: Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., Conservative Judaism, Essays on Prayer as Praxis, liturgical theory, why prayer Contributor(s): This “Global Pledge of Allegiance” was written by Edna A. Meisner-Reitz in reaction to the 1988 US Presidential Election between George W. Bush (R) and Michael Dukakis (D) and was first published a year afterward in The Quest, vol. 2, issue 4, Winter 1989 (Theosophical Society of America). 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, United States General Election 1988, universalist Contributor(s): An El Malé Raḥamim prayer for Victims of Terror in Erets Yisrael, with an English translation by Rabbi Hillel Ḥayyim Lavery-Yisraeli from Prayers for Israel, for Protection from Terror Attacks, and In Memory of the Victims (15 October 2023), page 6. Categories: Tags: 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, Social Justice, Peace, and Liberty, 🇺🇸 National Brotherhood Week, Additional Preparatory Prayers, 🇺🇸 Education and Sharing Day 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): An original Hebrew translation of the blues-rock portion of the Agnus Dei movement from Leonard Bernstein’s MASS (note: always spelled with ALL CAPS), where the crowd of disaffected and disillusioned young parishioners interrupts the offertory to demand peace now, and hold God to account for not giving it to us. It’s unsurprising that for a composer as proudly and openly Jewish as Bernstein that even his setting of the Tridentine Mass has major “shaking your fist at God” energy. Not gonna lie, I was listening to this on a plane out of Jerusalem as the war was starting, and I started to tear up. I immediately started writing this translation and finished it up in the process of about an hour while stuck somewhere a few thousand feet above Greenland. It’s amazing and moving and tragic and enraging and a little full of itself in exactly the right way to hit me in the heart. “National Brotherhood Week” by Tom Lehrer was first released on his album “That Was The Year That Was” (1965). National Brotherhood Week in February was first established in the 1930s by the National Conference of Christians and Jews as a means of promoting the values of inter-religious tolerance and civic interdependence. The week gained federal support from President Franklin Roosevelt during World War Ⅱ as a means of combatting fascist and nativist objections to a vision of democracy built on the foundation of a multicultural civil society. By the time Tom Lehrer lampooned the civic commemoration in 1965, the McCarthyite oppressions of the Red Scare and Lavender Scare during the Cold War, the manufactured Vietnam War, lingering anti-Semitic prejudice and suspicion, the continued struggle for civil rights with its continued lynchings, the assassination of JFK and increasing political violence had all exposed National Brotherhood Week for many young adults as phony, a historical relic that had lost the import of any cultural imperative it might have once possessed. Categories: Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., civil rights, contrarianism, Sardonic poetry, satire, זמירות zemirot Contributor(s): Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from “Yom Kippur” [“Remarks on Yom Kippur”] Mas’at Rav (A Professional Supplement to Conservative Judaism), August 1965, pp. 13–14 — as found in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (ed. Dr. Susannah Heschel, 1997), pp. 146-147. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This is an adaptation of the “Last Rites of Bokonon” from the 99th chapter of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle (1963) translated by Amatsyah Porat for the 1978 Hebrew language edition of the novel. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This closing ceremony for Flag Day was first published in The Faith of America: Readings, Songs, and Prayers for the Celebration of American Holidays (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation 1951), pp. 133-135. This opening prayer for Flag Day, “The Significance of the Day,” was first published in The Faith of America: Readings, Songs, and Prayers for the Celebration of American Holidays (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation 1951), p. 117 The Union Home Prayer Book (1951) is an anthology of prayers for family and personal use following in the tradition of the Seder Teḥinot and many earlier anthologies of private (non-communal) prayer practice. In the largest section, “Meditations,” the collection re-published 36 of the prayers from CCAR’s ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (1923), omitting 15. To these, three new prayers were added, along with some new sections: “Family Worship,” “Personal Prayers for Special Occassions,” “Prayers for Night and Morning,” and “Prayers in Time of Sickness and Death.” Categories: Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., American Reform Movement, English vernacular prayer, teḥinot in English Contributor(s): Did you know that the great songwriter and activist Woody Guthrie wrote Ḥanukkah music? It’s true. Though Guthrie himself was not Jewish, Marjorie Greenblatt, his second wife and their children were, and he would write Ḥanukkah songs for the kids in his neighborhood in the 1940s. Two of these songs were recorded by Moses Asch, head of Folkways Records, in 1949 — a kid’s song called “Hanuka Dance,” and a twenty-verse ballad retelling the story of Ḥanukkah called “The Many and the Few.” Below is an original Hebrew translation of “The Many and the Few,” preserving the meter of the original. With a simple melody and a lot of historical research, it could certainly be sung at a Ḥanukkah event. Categories: Tags: 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Hebrew translation, ישראל Yisrael, זמירות zemirot Contributor(s): A paraliturgical adaptation of the prayer/curse, “Shfokh Ḥamatekha,” this prayer, likely written during, or just after the Holocaust, recognizes those nations and righteous gentiles who fought and risked their lives to aid and rescue European Jewry. Categories: 🇮🇱 Yom haShoah (27 Nisan), 🌐 Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27th), Kristallnacht (9-10 November, 16 Marḥeshvan), Barekh, 🇺🇸 Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (28-29 April) Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., paraliturgical shfokh hamatekha, post-Holocaust liturgical adaptations, righteous gentiles, שפוך חמתך shfokh ḥamatekha, the Holocaust, World War Ⅱ Contributor(s): This is an undated El Malé Raḥamim prayer for the victims of the Shoah translated into Dutch for a Yom Kippur ne’ilah service, likely sometime soon after the Holocaust had ended. To this I have added an English translation for those not fluent in Dutch or Hebrew. We are grateful to Shufra Judaica (Ellie Fisher and David Selis) for sharing a digital copy of this prayer. Categories: Kristallnacht (9-10 November, 16 Marḥeshvan), 🇮🇱 Yom haShoah (27 Nisan), 🌐 Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27th), 🇺🇸 Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (28-29 April) Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., Dutch Jewry, אל מלא רחמים El Malé Raḥamim, נעילה neilah, Netherlandish Jewry, the Holocaust, השואה the Shoah Contributor(s): This “Special Prayer for Our Soldiers and Sailors” edited by Rabbi Aaron Dym is found just after the preface to the siddur, סדור תפלת ישראל: כולל כל התפלות לכל השנה (Ziegelheim: 1943). Categories: Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, military, United States, World War Ⅱ Contributor(s): A guide and reader for use on the Festival of Ḥanukkah in Portuguese translation, according to Portuguese Jewish custom, prepared by Artur Carlos de Barros Basto under the auspices of the Insituto Teológico Israelita (Yeshiba Rosh-Pinah) in 1943. A birkon containing the Birkat haMazon in Portuguese translation by Artur Carlos de Barros Basto under the auspices of the Insituto Teológico Israelita (Yeshiba Rosh-Pinah) in 1941. This is a vocalized transcription and translation of the World War Ⅱ era song, “Shir haGe’ulah (Song of Redemption)” from the source images shared in A Tribute to Rabbi Mordechai Meir Hakohen Bryski v”g Bryski (Rabbi Mordechai A. Katz, 2017), pp. 19-20. The song is also known by its incipit, “Heḥayyeinu El.” Categories: 🌐 Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27th), Kristallnacht (9-10 November, 16 Marḥeshvan), 🇮🇱 Yom haShoah (27 Nisan), 🇺🇸 Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (28-29 April), Se'udah haShlishit Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., acrostic, חבּ״ד ḤaBaD Lubavitch, משיח Moshiaḥ, the Holocaust, World War Ⅱ, זמירות zemirot Contributor(s): A prayer pamphlet containing a Hallel service in Portuguese translation by Artur Carlos de Barros Basto under the auspices of the Insituto Teológico Israelita (Yeshiba Rosh-Pinah) in 1940. | ||
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