A Prayer for Our Teachers, by Rabbi Albert G. Baum (ca. 1930s)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Albert G. Baum

Shared on:

2 September 2022 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Learning, Study, and School

Tags:

20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, prayers for educators

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)
	O Lord, our God — If our lips were filled with song and our tongues with words of constant praise, we would still be unable to thank Thee for the many blessings which Thou dost daily bestow upon us.^[1] From the prayer, “Nishmat kol ḥai”
	We sing Thy praise for the masters and teachers in Israel, for our educators who help us understand that the universe, which Thou hast given to man as a home, is founded on law and order, harmony and peace.
	May Thy spirit ever inspire our teachers, poets and writers of songs so that they may help us wipe out the ugliness, strife, suffering and cruelty which mar the beauty and goodness of Thy universe.
	Enable Thy servants to speak clearly and knowingly so that all men everywhere may learn to do Thy will with one accord.
	Bless the endeavors of all who strive to bring knowledge and understanding into the world and into the hearts of men everywhere.
	May our songs of praise ever be upon our lips.
	Amen.

“A Prayer for Our Teachers” by Rabbi Albert G. Baum was written sometime before 1962. Unfortunately, no more information was provided by Rabbi David Bial in his anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 64, from where this prayer was transcribed. Possibly, the prayer was written while Baum served as principal of the Park Avenue Synagogue Hebrew School in the late 1920s or as rabbi for Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim in Alexandria, Louisiana during the 1930s. If you know more, please leave a comment or contact us.

Source(s)

Notes[+]

Notes
1	From the prayer, “Nishmat kol ḥai”

. Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication . 1.0 . Universal .

“A Prayer for Our Teachers, by Rabbi Albert G. Baum (ca. 1930s)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal 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.)

Albert G. Baum

Rabbi Albert Gustavus Baum (1903-1996) was a Reform Jewish rabbi and organizer of new congregations for the New York Federation of Reform Synagogues. After graduating from City College in New York in 1923, he continued with graduate work at Columbia. At the Rabbi Stephen S. Wise Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, he was awarded the Philip Waldheim Prize in Social Service in 1927 and was the Free Synagogue Social Service Fellow in 1927-28. While a rabbinical student, he served as principal of the Park Avenue Synagogue Hebrew School and Temple Israel in Amsterdam, New York. After being ordained as a rabbi in 1930. he was appointed to Congregation Gemiluth Chassodim (a/k/a, The Temple) in Alexandria, Louisiana. He was the chosen delegate to the Rotary International Convention at Nice, France in 1937 and represented B'nai B'rith, District №7 as a delegate to their conventions. He also served as the Jewish Welfare Board representative for Central Louisiana, former vice-president of the Louisiana State Conference on Social Welfare, and as a member of the National Council of United Palestine Appeal. In 1942, he became a rabbi chaplain for the US Navy over the course of World War II. After workinf for the New York Federation of Reform Synagogues he joined the faculty of HUC in New York.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

Kean Hall at Kean University. (credit: Zeete, license: CC BY-SA)

[Prayer for a] Teachers’ Commencement, by Rabbi Avraham Samuel Soltes (1951)

Torah Study at Kolot Chayeinu (Park Slope, Brooklyn)

Ḳaddish d’Rabbanan – A Prayer for Teachers and Students by Rabbi Brant Rosen (2022)

Torah study, Hadera, Palestine" Original name: "חדרה בראשיתה - מורה ותלמידים צעירים לומדים תורה מתוך ספר אחד" (between 1901 and 1911, Public Domain)

קדיש דרבנן | Ḳaddish d’Rabanan (of Our Teachers), a translation by Everett Fox after Franz Rosenzweig

Flag of the United States House of Representatives

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Albert A. Goldman on 8 February 1972

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Albert Plotkin on 17 May 1978

"Carol Sternberg (former International Rescue Committee executive director) visits a food distribution center in Berlin in 1945."

Man Is Here for the Sake of Others, by Albert Einstein (1930) as excerpted by Rabbi Morrison David Bial

Galaxy cluster PLCK G004.5-19.5 A window into the cosmic past (ESA/Hubble & NASA, RELICS)

💬 What I Believe | Wie ich die Welt sehe (How I see the World), an essay by Albert Einstein (in English and German, 1930/1934)

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=46498

Associated Image:

Midbar Quest at Eden Village Camp (Aharon Varady 2015) – cropped

(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 Albert G. Baum.
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=46498>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication. (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