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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 —⟶ October 🡄 (Previous month) :: 📅 September 2025 📅 November 2025 :: (Next month) 🡆 📅 Resources published in October 2025 Sorted Chronologically (old to new). Sort most recent first? “The Chief Rabbi’s Prayer of Thanksgiving & Hope on the Occasion of the Release of the Remaining Living Hostages Held in Gaza” by the Office of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth was first shared via social media on erev Shabbat Bereshit (17 October 2025) by Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. While Gevurot Geshem is recited on Shmini Atseret, Baqashat Geshem as an addition to the birkat ha-shanim is recited later — from the seventh of Marḥeshvan in Israel, from sixty days after the Julian-calendar autumn equinox in the diaspora. This passage is added starting in the evening, but since there is no repetition at night there is no special custom for announcing its insertion. I think that’s a shame, so I wrote a series of ma’aravot (piyyuṭim to be inserted into the ma’ariv service) to be recited on the day where we begin to request rain. This al hanissim for the day of the release of the remaining living hostages taken by HAMA”S to Gaza on 7 October 2023, was offered by Rabbi Cantor Hillary Chorny (Temple Beth Am, Los Angeles) on 13 October 2025, on Hoshana Rabba 5786. The text of the prayer was first published in a Google Doc with a link shared over social media. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): “תפילת הודיה לשוב החטופים (A prayer of thanks on return of the hostages)” was written and translated by Ze’ev Kainan on behalf of the Masorti Movement in Israel and Knesset haRabanim b’Yisrael, and shared by email and social media on 13 October 2025, erev Shemini Atseret, on the day of the return of the remaining living hostages taken captive by HAMA”S two years prior. Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): Other rituals will surely arise — songs, prayers, art, and silence — each guided by the wisdom and imagination of artists, rabbis, and ritual leaders who help us make meaning in the wake of sorrow and hope. Let us honor both the moment and the movement — the courage to create holiness even as we live toward wholeness. Categories: Tags: 2023-2025 Israel–Hamas war, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Gaza war peace plan Contributor(s): A new introductory piyyut-meturgeman serving as a reshut for the targum of the haftarah. This genre used to be very popular, especially among the old French paytanim, but nowadays the only one still recited is Yetsiv Pitgam, said in some communities on the second day of Shavuot — although the targum is no longer. I think that’s a shame, so I wrote a new one. I’m probably one of the first people to write one of these since the expulsion of 1394. So of course, it’s meta as all get-out, being a reshut not just for the targum of the haftarah but for the custom of reading the targum of the haftarah with a reshut at all. Categories: Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., acrostic, Acrostic signature, Aramaic, הפטרות haftarot, פיוטים piyyuṭim, רשויות reshuyot, תרגום targum Contributor(s): A Hoshana for Sukkot 5786 to balance the memory of the horrors of 7 October 2023 and the tense anticpation of October 2025, after the ceasefire agreement was signed but not fully implemented. Categories: Tags: 2023-2025 Israel–Hamas war, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., הושענות hoshanot, religious Zionist prayers Contributor(s): Other rituals will surely arise — songs, prayers, art, and silence — each guided by the wisdom and imagination of artists, rabbis, and ritual leaders who help us make meaning in the wake of sorrow and hope. Let us honor both the moment and the movement — the courage to create holiness even as we live toward wholeness. Categories: Tags: 2023-2025 Israel–Hamas war, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., burial service, English vernacular prayer, Genizah Contributor(s): An original Aramaic-language “meturgeman piyyut” for Simḥat Torah and the reading of Bereshit. 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, a reverse acrostic woven into the recitation of Genesis 1. Categories: Tags: acrostic, Alphabetic Acrostic, Aramaic, hymns of creation, פיוטים piyyuṭim, פרשת בראשית parashat Bereshit, תרגום targum Contributor(s): The Office of the Chief Rabbi’s prayer on the day following the terror attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur 5786 (2025). Categories: Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., British Jewry, English vernacular prayer, Manchester synagogue attack Contributor(s): This is a seliḥah in piyut form. The first line borrows from the famous seliḥah במוצאי מנוחה. The seliḥah is driven by the question: How can we ask for forgiveness as the death and destruction in Gaza continues? Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): A pizmon for calling up a (male) Jew-by-choice for his first aliyah to the Torah after completing his conversion process. (Pizmonim for female and non-binary Jews-by-choice forthcoming!) To be recited before the blessing, led by the gabbai with the community responding with the refrain. Categories: Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., acrostic, Aliyah, Alphabetic Acrostic, conversion, גרות gerut, פיוטים piyyuṭim, פזמונים pizmonim Contributor(s): A text of the Qaddish using feminine language for God and for the rabbis and their students. Inspired by Rabbi Debi Shoua Haim of the Reform congregation Kol HaNeshama in Jerusalem, who, in a conversation about feminine-language versions of liturgical texts, challenged me to write a feminine Qaddish variant. Categories: Tags: Aramaic, Divine Feminine, Divine Presence, gender, חצי קדיש ḥatsi ḳaddish, Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, קדיש ḳaddish, קדיש דרבנן Ḳaddish D'Rabanan, קדיש שלם Ḳaddish shalem, קדיש יתום Mourner's Ḳaddish, Minhag Kehilat Kol Hanshema, Nusḥaot l'Yahadut Reformit Contributor(s): This earth pledge appeared on a poster attributed to one “Yvonne Alden” that was found in a collection of memorabilia from [National] Space Week 1994 at Brooks Air Force Base, in San Antonio, Texas. Space Week 1994 was a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On the poster, the pledge appeared below an image of the planet Earth. The poster is mentioned by Jodi Dean in the introduction to her book, Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace (1998), on page 20. This earth pledge was offered at the first of a series of lectures by Benjamin Ferencz at Kean College, New Jersey on 16 April 1991. Although the video recording of the lecture has not been digitized, the pledge was included in its description by the United States Holocaust Museum. This Earth Pledge is attested in The Earth Pledge Book: A Call for Commitment (1994), an environmentalist work compiled and introduced by John F. Ince. While Ince did not author this Earth pledge himself, on page 143 in his The Teacher’s Guide To The Earth Pledge, he includes the following detail: “On the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, the [following] Earth Pledge was introduced at Stanford University.” This earth pledge by Maryann Shores was included in her published address of the first plenary session of Humanity’s Quest for Unity: a United Nations… colloquium in honour of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “proceedings of a colloquium held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in conjunction with the opening of the 38th meeting of the [UN] General Assembly [26 Sepetember 1983]” (ed. by Leo Zonneveld, 1985), pp. 78-84. The pledge appears on page 78 of “A Positive Approach to Acceptable Peace: the Right Use of Human Energy.” Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): This earth pledge by Carol T. Gaddy and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn is included in a short essay by Gaddy entitled “Our New Pledge of Allegiance.” The essay can be found in What Will It Take to Prevent Nuclear War: Grassroots Responses to Our Most Challenging Question (ed. Pat Farren 1983), p. 149. Carol Gaddy writes that the pledge “was composed spontaneously by me and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn as we marched on the road to Damascus, Arkansas, April 25, 1981, protesting the nuclear missile site where a Titan missile had exploded the previous November, endangering the people it was meant to protect.” This earth pledge can be found within “Earth Day” an essay by the writer and Unitarian Universalist minister Clarke D. Wells (1930-2006, and included in his collection Sunshine and Rain at Once (1981), p. 20. It is the only place we have so far located an earth pledge in the context of a prayer. Although published in 1981, the essay, including the prayer and pledge, was likely written the previous year in the lead up to Earth Day 1980. This earth pledge can be found in the Church of All Worlds’s newsletter, Green Egg, vol. 5, issue 47 (11 May 1972), p. 28. The quote, appearing after a line break of asterisks, concludes an essay by the newsletter’s editor, Tim Zell (a/k/a Oberon Zell-Ravenheart), entitled “personal affirmation of awareness.” | ||
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