📖 מחזור לראש השנה (אשכנז)‏ | Maḥzor l’Rosh ha-Shanah: The Form of Prayers for the New Year, a bilingual Hebrew-English prayerbook translated by Isaac Levi (1807/1848)

Contributor(s):

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

Shared on:

28 September 2025 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Tags:

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

מחזור לראש השנה The Form of Prayers for the New Year 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 1848, 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 due to its having been published more than 95 years ago.

This digital edition was derived by Aharon Varady from a scan prepared by Google Books from a volume held in the collection of the University of California.

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

This digital edition was derived by Aharon Varady from a scan of a volume held in the collection of the National Library of Israel.

INTRODUCTION
The Form of Prayers‎ by the children of Israel, comprise such lively and energetic notions of the Supreme Being, that they cannot be exceeded by any other formularies now in use.
Their antiquity, their fervency, and the origin whence they sprang, are additional motives for making them universal. These urged the late David Levi, to make a new translation of them. It has been the study of the Reviser carefully to examine and correct the errors which have crept into former editions; and the whole has been restored to that system of religious animated invocation so elegantly laid down in the original.
To promote the interest of our religion, and to stir up our youth, as well as those of maturer age, to tread in the steps of their ancestors, who were so eminent for the preservation of their religious principles, is certainly an object ardently to be desired. And no way so calculated for this purpose, as a due observance of our constant prayers in our approaches to the supreme Being.
At the bottom of several pages an additional explanatory note is given, elucidating such alterations as have been made by the corrector.
THE REVISER [Isaac Levi]

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=63643

Associated Image:

Maḥzor l’Rosh ha-Shanah (Isaac Levi, H. Abrahams 1848) – title

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

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

Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (digital imaging and document preparation) and Isaac Levi (translation).
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=63643>.
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 volunteer contributors, or its 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-commercial, 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.

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)