Prayer after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by Rabbi Sabato Morais (18 April 1865)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Sabato Morais

Shared on:

18 August 2022 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Lincoln's Birthday (February 12th), War, United States of America

Tags:

English vernacular prayer, assassination, Slaveholders' Rebellion (1861-1865), Ḳ.Ḳ. Miḳveh Israel (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 19th century C.E., Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, 57th century A.M., Abraham Lincoln, Philadelphia

TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):

ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!

COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.

TABLE HELP

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Omnipotent God! not for our sake, not for our sake, but for that of Thy Infinite mercy, be with us in our woeful calamity. We dare not rely upon man’s strength, which continually faileth, for “man withereth like grass, he fleeth like a shadow, and we see him no more.”^[1] Cf. Job 14:2 and Psalms 102:12 But upon Thine arm do we lean, for that which supporteth the whole universe, will also be our stay. Oh! guide us with Thy wisdom, and show us, amid the gloom wherein we are inshrouded, the hour of our national deliverance.
	Grant, oh Lord, that a twofold portion of the lovely spirit with which was endowed the illustrious dead we lament, may rest upon his successor. He supremely needs it. He needs his unflinching rectitude, his generous instinct, his forgiving disposition, his noble forbearance and discretion to an infinite degree, in order that he may complete the blessed work marked out by our sainted President.
	Sovereign Creator! open wide the portals of eternal bliss, and let the righteous Abraham of the Western world enter. Remember his suffering for the sake of principles, and let it be a propitiation for the sins of the people he so dearly loved and so faithfully served. May he I ever sit at Thy right hand, imparadised in the contemplation of Thy divine essence. Grant, from the highest heavens he may soon behold our unalloyed joy, when the pavilion of peace shall again spread its folds over us, and an indissoluble bond of brotherhood unite together all the inhabitants of this country.
	And to the beloved relief of one so good, to the bereaved sons and disconsolate widow, speak, Oh Lord, of the unending delights he now enjoys in the land of life. It will infuse into their hearts fortitude and resignation. The voice of religion and the grateful expressions of a reconstructed nation, will then be a solace to their minds and a soothing balm to their souls.
	We now offer supplications unto Thee for Thy servant, the Secretary of State, stricken by the hand of treason. “May he not die, but live and declare to posterity the works of the Lord.” And may all our powers, our energies and endeavors be devoted to benefit mankind, in accordance with Thy will, and that of the lamented Executive of the American nation. Amen.

This prayer by Rabbi Sabato Morais was offered in conclusion to a sermon delivered at some point days after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on 15 April 1865, and reprinted in The Philadelphia Inquirer on 20 November 1865. The time of the assassination corresponded to motsei shabbat and the beginning of the 6th day of Passover 5625, and so we can imagine this prayer having been delivered at some point over the remaining two festival days of Pesaḥ, on April 17th or 18th. The prayer was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 24, clipping 029), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) Next to the clipping, Rabbi Sabato has written, “Andrew Johnson proved anything but a worthy successor to the sainted Abraham Lincoln.”

Source(s)

prayer after the assassination of President Lincoln [1865-04-20] (Sabato Morais Ledger, p. 24 clipping 029)

Notes[+]

Notes
1	Cf. Job 14:2 and Psalms 102:12

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“Prayer after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by Rabbi Sabato Morais (18 April 1865)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

Sabato Morais

Rabbi Sabato Morais (שבתאי מוראיס; April 13, 1823 – November 11, 1897) was an Italian-American rabbi, leader of Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia, pioneer of Italian Jewish Studies in America, and in 1886, co-founder (with Henry Pereira Mendes) of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America to preserve the knowledge and practice of traditional, historical rabbinic Judaism in the United States.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

United States National 34-star flag. "The United States National 34-Star flag was adopted with the admission of Kansas as the 34th state in January 1861. It was used until 1863 when West Virginia became a state. At no time did the national flag lose stars. Since the United States believed that secession from the Union was illegal, the flag continued to bear the stars of all the states of the Union, even the Southern states. Flag makers had several designs for the 34-star flag; this is a later one."

Prayer for the United States and President Abraham Lincoln, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (15 April 1862)

President Lincoln's funeral train in Philidelphia near the start of its 13 day 1,600 mile journey from Washington to Springfield. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

אָ, קאפּיטאן! מײַן קאפּיטאן!‏ | O Captain! My Captain!, an elegy for President Abraham Lincoln by Walt Whitman (1865), Yiddish translation by Eliezer Meler (1940)

אָ, קאפּיטאן! מײַן קאפּיטאן!‏ | O Captain! My Captain!, an elegy for President Abraham Lincoln by Walt Whitman (1865), Yiddish translation by Avrom Valt-Lyessin (1913)

הוֹ קְבַרְנִיט! קְבַרְנִיטִי!‏ | O Captain! My Captain!, an elegy for President Abraham Lincoln by Walt Whitman (1865), Hebrew translation by Shimon Halkin (1952)

James A. Garfield Republican candidate for president - Chester A. Arthur Republican candidate for vice president / Vic Arnold

Prayer for the United States on Thanksgiving Day after the Assassination of President James A. Garfield, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (24 November 1881)

Prayer [1865-12-08] (Sabato Morais Ledger, p. 24, clipping 030) - a

Prayer for the United States after the Civil War, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (8 December 1865)

Abraham Lincoln in Thinking Pose (credit: Mathew Brady, 1862, Public Domain)

שריך לינקאלען | Memorial Prayer for Abraham Lincoln, by Isaac Goldstein haLevi (1865)

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=46211

Associated Image:

Abraham Lincoln’s Top Hat

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Sabato Morais.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=46211>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of contributors, patrons, or institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture. If you like what you've found here, please help keep our project alive and online with your financial contribution.

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