https://opensiddur.org/?p=27974תפלה | Tefilah — Invocation: A Sheaf of Prayers, composed and arranged by Rabbi Avraham Samuel Soltes (1959)2019-11-06 23:54:12A collection of public and pulpit prayers composed by Rabbi Abraham Samuel Soltes between 1948 and 1959.Textthe Open Siddur ProjectAharon N. Varady (digital imaging and document preparation)Aharon N. Varady (digital imaging and document preparation)Avraham Samuel Solteshttps://opensiddur.org/copyright-policy/Aharon N. Varady (digital imaging and document preparation)https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/Pulpit & Ceremonial Prayer collections20th century C.E.58th century A.M.New Jersey
This work is in the Public Domain due to the lack of a copyright renewal by the copyright holder listed in the copyright notice (a condition required for works published in the United States between January 1st 1924 and January 1st 1964).
This work was scanned by Aharon Varady for the Open Siddur Project from a volume held in the collection of the HUC Klau Library, Cincinnati, Ohio. (Thank you!) This work is cross-posted to the Internet Archive, as a repository for our transcription efforts.
Scanning this work (making digital images of each page) is the first step in a more comprehensive project of transcribing each prayer and associating it with its translation. You are invited to participate in this collaborative transcription effort!
PREFACE
All men pray. But, in this age of sophistication, many strive to repress the natural impulse of the heart because of an apparently contrary belief of the mind. Yet, even the most skeptical among us experiences moments when the dammed up instinct breaks out of its walls, when crisis, or danger, or responsibility shakes loose the hidden impulse. For, limited and imperfect creatures that we are, the divine discontent within us longs to relate our personal experiences, our individual strivings, our inmost yearnings to the spirit of the universe; we seek to give meaning to our deeper instincts, to justify the profound value we sense in them for ourselves by sounding them against the reverberations of the cosmos.
Prayer is the universal and time-honored means through which man has endeavoured to express this fathomless hunger, to establish communication between his most pro- found heartbeats and the beating heart of the universe. Some unbind their emotions, easily, flowingly; others, like Lincoln, are driven to their knees “by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go…”
But, from the incantation of a savage in the forest to the invocation of a Schweitzer in the jungle, prayer, like a river, has risen to the level of those who use it and been shaped to their capacity and need.
The invocations that follow are examples of prayer shaped to the many needs of modern man in an average American community. We hope they may help others to release their inhibitions and raise this deepest of instincts from the level of an occasional selfish cry of need to a disciplined, invaluable tool for more civilized living.
“תפלה | Tefilah — Invocation: A Sheaf of Prayers, composed and arranged by Rabbi Avraham Samuel Soltes (1959)” is shared by the living contributor(s) with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.
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.
Rabbi Avraham Soltes (1917-1983) was a Reform Jewish rabbi, the Jewish chaplain at the United States Military Academy in West Point, an author and a leading figure in Jewish cultural affairs. He was born in New York City. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1937 and received a master's degree from Columbia University in 1938. After being ordained in 1942 by the Jewish Institute of Religion (now HUC-JIR), he served as chaplain at Cornell and McGill Universities and then was assistant rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan from 1946 to 1949. He subsequently served as rabbi at Temple Sharey Tefilo in East Orange and Temple Emanuel in Great Neck. He began his service at West Point as a voluntary chaplain in 1963 and was made a permanent member of the staff in 1981. His interests also took him into commerce, and from 1969 to 1974, he was vice president for community affairs of the Glen Alden Corporation, which in 1972 was merged into the Rapid America Corporation. From 1974 to 1977, he was assistant to the president of Tel Aviv University. He was credited with a key role in the establishment of the New York medical division at the university. In 1981, Rabbi Soltes received the Jabotinsky Award from Prime Minister Menachim Begin for his service to Israel. From 1977 until his death Rabbi Soltes had been the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Chavairuth of Bergen County, in Tenafly, N.J. He participated in many cultural and educational activities that interpreted Jewish art, music and literature. He was chairman of the National Jewish Music Council from 1963 to 1969 and a member of the board of the National Jewish Book Council from 1967 to 1972. Rabbi Soltes, a commentator on Jewish music for American listeners, was the host of a radio program, ''The Music of Israel,'' on WQXR from 1974-1983. Among his writings were Palestine in Poetry and Song of the Jewish Diaspora (Master's thesis HUC-JIR 1942) and Off The Willows: The Rebirth of Modern Jewish Music (1970).
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