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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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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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2025 —⟶ August 🡄 (Previous month) :: 📅 July 2025 📅 September 2025 :: (Next month) 🡆 📅 Resources published in August 2025 Sorted Chronologically (old to new). Sort most recent first? This is an invitation to begin a new day with a short Jewish meditation for German speakers. I was inspired by Shefa Gold’s Chants, which takes a phrase from each of the daily Psalms and sets it to a melody. My German translation offers a wording that can also be sung alternately with the Hebrew phrase. (For the melodies, find Shefa Gold’s site here.) It works of course also as a way to pause briefly during the day for a Jewish meditative moment. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This blessing for the consumption of meat (or poultry, or fish) is based on a verse from Vayikra / Leviticus, ch. 17: כִּי נֶפֶשׁ הַבָּשָׂר בַּדָּם הִוא וַאֲנִי נְתַתִּיו לָכֶם עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ לְכַפֵּר עַל־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם כִּי־הַדָּם הוּא בַּנֶּפֶשׁ יְכַפֵּר׃ (“For the life of the flesh is in the blood. And as for me, I have given it to you on the alter to ransom your lives, for it is the blood that ransoms in exchange for life.”) This verse helps us remember (and how can we ever forget?!) that any bloodshed, is a loss of life – human or animal. And, it helps us understand that even when we kill for our own sustanance (or even in a ritual offering), we cause a loss of life. The burden is on us. We are commanded to release the blood-life so we can use the meat. (I wrote more in detail about this blessing here.) Categories: Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., animals, ברכות brakhot, eating animals, עולם הזה Olam ha-Zeh, predation, predatory nature Contributor(s): An original Aramaic-language “meturgeman piyyut” for Simḥat Torah and the reading of v-Zot haBerakha. I’m working on creating a seder meturgeman liturgy, akin to those for day 7 of Pesaḥ and for Shavuot, to be recited on Simḥat Torah. Mostly incorporating older Aramaic poems, I’ve also decided to write some originals myself. This is one of them, in praise of Moshe, to be recited after Deut. 34:10. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): I composed this short blessing when passing by a dead coyote once. Crows and Magpies were congregating around the corpse and I felt this was a moment to notice, sanctify and bless. It was my way of connecting with all of them, dead and alive. Categories: Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., animals, ברכות brakhot, corpses, death, עולם הזה Olam ha-Zeh, surprise encounter Contributor(s): This invocation was given at the 78th annual George Washington Letter Reading Event, August 17, 2025 (23 Av, 5785), held by the Touro Synagogue Foundation to celebrate the famous 1790 letter exchange between the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island (represented by warden Moses Seixas) and first president of the United States, George Washington. Washington’s response to Seixas’s letter, in which he quotes some of his most iconic phrasings, is one of the first official statements by the US government on the value of religious freedom. This Letter Reading Event was held in the Old Colony House (where the Jewish community’s letter was probably presented to President Washington), rather than in the Touro Synagogue, due to Congregation Shearith Israel in New York’s barring of the Touro Synagogue Foundation from access to the building. An ofan — a liturgical prayer to be inserted into the Shaḥarit qedusha d-yotzer — for the first of Elul, the new year for animals. Not as of yet part of a cycle but who knows, maybe a few other parts will be written in days to come! A prayer written for the people of Washington DC during the Trump administration’s authoritarian push, August 2025. A liturgy for counting the fifty days of consolation or comfort between Tishah b’Av and Rosh haShanah (non-inclusive), in the style of the liturgy for the omer. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): A Friday night siddur in Hebrew with German translation produced by the first egalitarian German speaking minyan and Rosh Ḥodesh group in Berlin between 1995 and 1998. “Gut Schabbes,” a project for an equal Ḳabbalat Shabbat at home, was supported by a grant from the ZURÜCKGEBEN Foundation[foot]Zurückgeben = „Giving Back“[/foot] in 1995. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): מחזור לראש השנה Majzor para Rosh haShanah (1968) is a bilingual Hebrew-Spanish prayerbook for Rosh haShanah compiled and translated by Rabbi Marcos Edery z”l, and published by the World Council of [Conservative/Masorti] Synagogues under the supervision of Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer (1930-1993). Earlier prayerbooks represented the Ashkenazi liturgical tradition. Together with its companion volume for Yom Kippur, they are the only prayerbooks prepared for Sepharadi congreations in the Conservative movement. The Hebrew sourcetext is based primarily on the S&P siddurim compiled and translated by Rabbi Dr. Savid de Sola Pool. Besides the liturgy (in the Sefaradi nusaḥ), the prayerbook is prefaced by Seliḥot and includes essays concerning prayer by 20th century scholars in Spanish translation. Categories: Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., Conservative Jewry, Nusaḥ Sefaradi, Spanish Translation, Western Sefaradim Contributor(s): מחזור לראש השנה ויום כיפור Majzor para Rosh haShanah y Yom Kipur (1967) is a bilingual Hebrew-Spanish prayerbook for the Yamim Noraïm compiled and translated by Rabbi Marcos Edery z”l, and published by the World Council of [Conservative/Masorti] Synagogues under the supervision of Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer (1930-1993). Rabbi Reubén Nisembom (1938-2023), then a student at the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano, proofread the maḥzor. Besides the liturgy (in the Ashkenazi nusaḥ), the prayerbook is prefaced by Seliḥot and includes essays concerning prayer by 20th century scholars in Spanish translation, such as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): A piyyut of the 18th century by R. David Ḥassin, one of the greatest composers of Morocco. In this piyyut, dedicated to the city of Tiberias and recounting its praises, we tour Tiberias and the graves of the tannaim and amoraim there, and come to the place of Maimonides’ burial according to tradition. From the dead, the composer moves on to tell the prose of the living – R. Ḥayyim Abulˁafia, who renewed Jewish settlement in Tiberias to where he had moved with his students in the year 5500 [1740], doing much to revitalize the Jewish settlement and build the city, for which R. David Ḥassin praises and blesses him at the conclusion of the poem. This poem was very beloved and merited widespread circulation, and is found in poetry books of many different Mizraḥi communities. This poem has also merited a number of imitations and adaptations, testifying to its great popularity. The most well-known imitation is a poem by the Israeli diaspora-emissary R. Eliyahu Ḥazzan, who arrived at Morocco, came across this song, and composed an imitation, also called “As Every Day I Hope” — except R. Eliyahu Ḥazzan’s song is dedicated to Jerusalem and tours around it. Categories: Tags: 18th century C.E., 56th century A.M., acrostic, Acrostic signature, ארץ ישראל Erets Yisrael, הבדלות havdalot, Maghrebi Jewry, Meknes, Morocco, Old Yishuv, פיוטים piyyuṭim, פזמונים pizmonim Contributor(s): This is one of the earliest essays on Jewish prayer to appear in English, “A Brief Account of the Jewish Prayers” (Isaac Abendana, 1695). The essay was published in the 1695 issue of Abendana’s The Jewish Kalendar, an annual periodical in which was typically appended an article on Jewish history and practice of interest to the work’s main audience: Christian Hebraists. Besides a survey of the topic, included in the essay is a translation of the blessing from the Amidah, “Shomeah Tefillah” noting the variations between the Ashkenazi and Sefaradi liturgical customs. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): A scroll recounting the miraculous recovery of David Curiel (1594-1666), one of the founders of the Jewish community of Amsterdam, after undergoing a violent attack. Categories: Tags: 17th century C.E., 54th century A.M., Dutch Jewry, Readings special to Jewish leap years, Spanish-Portuguese, ultraviolence, Western Sefaradim Contributor(s): This is the shir ha-yiḥud l’yom rishon (hymn or song of unity for the first day), as translated by Nina Salaman and published in the maḥzor for Rosh ha-Shanah by Arthur Davis and Herbert Adler (1907). Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This is the shir ha-yiḥud l’yom sheni (hymn or song of unity for the second day), as translated by Nina Salaman and published in the maḥzor for Yom haKippurim by Arthur Davis and Herbert Adler (1904). Categories: Tags: 12th century C.E., 50th century A.M., neo-Aristotelian Judaism, פיוטים piyyuṭim, שיר היחוד Shir haYiḥud, via negativa Contributor(s): This is the shir ha-yiḥud l’yom shlishi (hymn or song of unity for the third day), as translated by Arthur Davis and published in the maḥzor for Rosh ha-Shanah by Arthur Davis and Herbert Adler (1907). Categories: Tags: 12th century C.E., 50th century A.M., neo-Aristotelian Judaism, פיוטים piyyuṭim, שיר היחוד Shir haYiḥud, via negativa Contributor(s): This is the shir ha-yiḥud l’yom revi’i (hymn of unity for the fourth day), as translated by Nina Salaman and published in the maḥzor for Rosh ha-Shanah by Arthur Davis and Herbert Adler (1907). This is the shir ha-yiḥud l’yom ḥamishi (hymn of unity for the fifth day), as translated by Herbert Adler and published in the maḥzor for Rosh ha-Shanah by Arthur Davis & Herbert Adler (1907). Categories: Tags: 12th century C.E., 50th century A.M., neo-Aristotelian Judaism, פיוטים piyyuṭim, שיר היחוד Shir haYiḥud, via negativa Contributor(s): This is the shir ha-yiḥud l’yom shishi (hymn of unity for the sixth day), as translated by Herbert Adler and published in the maḥzor for Rosh ha-Shanah by Arthur Davis & Herbert Adler (1907). Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): | ||
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