📖 מחזור של שבועות (אשכנז)‏ | Maḥzor shel Shavuot: The Form of Prayers for the Festival of Pentecost, a bilingual Hebrew-English prayerbook translated by Isaac Levi (1807/1852)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (digital imaging and document preparation) and Isaac Levi (translation)

Shared on:

6 October 2025 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

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Tags:

19th century C.E., 56th century A.M., British Jewry, Minhag Poland, Nusaḥ Ashkenaz

מחזור של שבועות The Form of the Prayers for the Feast of Pentecost According to the Custom of the German & Polish Jews was translated by Isaac Levi in 1807, ostensibly as a “revision” of a 1795 maḥzor compiled, translated, and published by David Levi (no relation). This later printing of Isaac Levi’s translation, made by the printer H. Abrahams (“Tsvi bar Michael” in Hebrew) in 1852, mistakenly credits “David Levy” instead of Isaac Levi. I’ve provided both editions so that their contents can more easily be compared with one another.

This work is in the Public Domain in the United States due to its having been published more than 95 years ago.

This digital edition was prepared by Aharon Varady from page images derived from a scan made by Google Books of an item held in the collection of the University of California.

This work is in the Public Domain in the United States due to its having been published more than 95 years ago.

This digital edition was prepared by Aharon Varady from page images made by the National Library of Israel from an item held in their collection.

Aharon N. Varady (digital imaging and document preparation)

Aharon Varady, founding director of the Open Siddur Project, is a copyright researcher and amateur book scanner. He prepares digital images and new digital editions of prayer books and related works in the Public Domain in order to make their constituent parts (prayers, translations, annotations, etc.) publicly accessible for collaborative transcription by project volunteers. (In some cases, he finds existing digital editions prepared by others that require correction and reformatting.) If you appreciate his efforts, please send him a kind note or contribute to his patreon account.

Isaac Levi (translation)

Isaac Levi (Heb: ר׳ יצחק ב״ר עקיבא | Rabbi Yitsḥaq ben Rabbi Akiva) (ca. 1770? -1839) was a teacher of Hebrew, pioneering English translator of Jewish liturgy, and an erudite Jewish scholar in England at the turn of the 19th century. Little is known of his life save that he prepared "revised" English translations of the haggadah and maḥzorim compiled by David Levi (no relation). As with David Levi his publications served as the basis for haggadot, siddurim, and maḥzorim published by others. On title pages, he is sometimes listed as a "professor and teacher of the Hebrew language." As he was not appointed to any university, this likely means that he taught or tutored Christian Hebraists and other interested students. Details provided to Avraham Roos by Henry Roche indicate that he left the publishing world in the mid-1830s to work as a Hebraist responsible for the Hebrew manuscripts in the library of Prince Augustus Frederick, H.R.H. Duke of Sussex. Roos notes that Isaac's use of the word ענגלאטירא ('English') attests to French influence. Roche notes that despite his surname Levi, Isaac was not a Levite. With his wife Esther, Isaac had five children. We know that over the course of his life he spent time in London and Portsmouth. Roos speculates that the likely cause of Isaac Levi's name being left off of works by David Levi that the former had amended, was probably due to a commercial dispute in the early 1830s with the printer Hyam Barnett (c. 1763–1845). Isaac Levi's date of birth is not yet known, but we can surmise it to be in the mid- to late 18th century. If you know any more about Isaac Levi's life and career, please contact us. (Many thanks to Avraham Roos and Henry Roche for the details so far discovered.)

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=63823

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Maḥzor shel Shavuot (Isaac Levi 1852) – title

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו׃ (תהלים צ:יז) · "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)