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With kavod (honor) to “all whose hearts were stirred to share” (kol asher nasa libam, cf. Exodus 36:2-3), this is a searchable index of all liturgists, translators, transcribers, etc. whose work on Jewish prayer, on prayer books, and on public readings is being shared through the Open Siddur Project. After ten years, the total number of project contributors is nearly 800. A little over half have shared their work either directly with the project with an Open Content license, or indirectly by contributing their work into the Public Domain as a contributor to a government publication. Nearly fifty are institutional copyright stewards (operating or defunct for-profit and non-profit entities). The remaining contributors have had their works transcribed from material that has passed into the Public Domain after their deaths. Some transcribed works shared through the Open Siddur project remain unattributed due to unknown authorship. If you find an uncredited or improperly attributed work, please contact us.
To join this community of contributors, please share your work. Making prayers and related religious works available for creative reuse and republication through Open Content licenses is crucial for keeping Jewish culture cross-pollinating, vital, and relevant under the current climate of denominationally identified silos and proprietary-by-default copyright strictures. Prospective contributors should read our Mission Statement, Terms of Use, and Copyleft Policy. The Open Siddur is a non-prescriptive, non-denominational project and invites participation without prejudice towards ethnic heritage, skin color, nationality, belief or non-belief, sex, gender, sexuality or any other consideration.
James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751[b] – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.
Edgar Magnin (July 1, 1890 – July 17, 1984) was rabbi and spiritual leader of Wilshire Boulevard Temple (previously Congregation B’nai B’rith), the oldest Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, California. Magnin served at the temple for 69 years and was considered one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in the United States, sometimes called the "Rabbi to the Stars" because of his close connections to the Hollywood film industry.
My name is Ibtisam. I am Palestinian, living in northern Israel. My primary focus is on improving relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and I also work to improve the status of women in both Arab and Jewish society. Even though Arabs and Israelis live very close to one another, most have no social connection whatsoever. Most of my work is in the Palestinian community in Israel, especially amongst women whose position in Arab society is still repressed. I try to help them build up their confidence, and then I introduce them to groups of people of the three major faiths - Islam, Christianity and Judaism. For many years I have been counseling Arab and Jewish women regarding the status of women in society. As a religious Muslim woman, I work with religious Jewish, Druze, and Christian women on promoting peace by learning about each other's religions and cultures. I am on the board of Middleway, an NGO for the promotion of compassion and non-violence, and I helped found the Women's Interfaith Encounter, a program of the Interfaith Encounter Association.
Avraham Maimin (fl. 16th c.) was a student of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero in his Safed School of Qabbalah. He is primarily known for his mystical piyyut, "El Mistater."
Yehuda Leib Maimon ( יהודה לייב מימון, 11 December 1875 – 10 July 1962, also known as Yehuda Leib HaCohen Maimon) was an Israeli rabbi, politician and leader of the Religious Zionist movement. He was Israel's first Minister of Religions.
Edna Anita Maisner-Reitz (5 October 1922 - 16 December 1998) was born in Weehawken, New Jersey to Emil (Ernie) Maisner and Selma Silverstone (Silberstein). After graduating in 1943 from Hunter College, she received her MS the following year from the University of Illinois and continued as a student researcher at Ohio State University from 1945-1947. She contributed to research on child development and education, and after marrying her husband Gerhard Reitz in 1953, made her home and continued her practice in Woodland Hills, California. She was a member of the Society for Projective Techniques and Rorschach Institute.
Akiva Males is rabbi of Young Israel of Memphis, Tennessee. He grew up in Cleveland, OH, and received his Jewish education at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland, the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study (W.I.T.S.), and Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim (Rabbinical Seminary of America) based in Queens, NY -- where he received his semikha. From 2007-2016, Rabbi Males served as rabbi of Kesher Israel Congregation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Charles Habib Malik (also, Malek; 11 February 1906 – 28 December 1987; Arabic: شارل مالك) was a Lebanese academic, diplomat, philosopher, and politician. He served as the Lebanese representative to the United Nations, the President of the Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations General Assembly, a member of the Lebanese Cabinet, a national minister of Education and the Arts, and of Foreign Affairs and Emigration, and theologian. He participated in the drafting of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Rabbi Herbert Mandl, born in Baltimore, Maryland, is an Conservative movement rabbi in the United States. He graduated cum laude from Johns Hopkins University in 1965 with an A.B. in German and Semitics. In 1969, he was given semikhah by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. (He also received semikhah from Rabbi Aryeh Leib Spitz.) He has served as rabbi of congregations and served in academic positions in Edmonton and Montreal, Canada. He served as Senior Rabbi of Kehilath Israel since 1977. In 1981, Rabbi Mandl received a Ph.D. magna cum laude in Medieval Philosophy and Law from the University of Montreal where his dissertation was on the Jewish Matrimonial Law in comparison to the Christian laws of the time. He received his Doctor of Divinity degree in 1994 from JTS. He was honored by the Vatican by allowing him to do research in the Vatican Library in 2013.
Rabbi Toby H. Manewith is an Educational Consultant specializing in Jewish Curriculum Development.
Ehud Manor (אהוד מנור; born Ehud Weiner; July 13, 1941 – April 12, 2005) was an acclaimed Israeli lyricist, translator, poet and radio and TV personality. He is widely considered to have been Israel's most prolific lyricist of all time, having written or translated over 1,000 songs. In 1998, he was awarded the Israel Prize for his exceptional contributions to Israeli music.
Dr. Yaacov Maoz, the son of Iraqi-Jewish immigrants to Israel, works at the Israel Association of Community Centers, where he is Director for Content Development and has published Festivals in the Community, a series of widely distributed booklets, the foremost of which is the Haggadah of Identities, a Passover Haggadah with an Israeli commentary. He is involved in strengthening Jewish pluralism, in promoting dialogue between different sectors in Judaism, in the connection between Israel and the Diaspora, and in developing understanding between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Dr. Maoz has led several conferences with his associates in the Tikun Movement, the most outstanding of which was the Matrouz International Conference, in which Arab colleagues from Morocco and France participated. He has established a public council of intellectuals and a committee of social activists for the revival of the Aramit (ארמית) language. He has opened study groups and created a Facebook group, held a preliminary conference on solidarity with the Assyrian nation, published journalistic articles, spoken on radio broadcasts, and appeared on television. He maintains contact with the Assyrian diaspora leadership the world over on a daily basis and seeks to increase awareness throughout the Israeli public of the Assyrian nation’s suffering, its cultural richness, and the wonderful opportunity strategic cooperation with the Assyrian nation offers.
Richard Marcovitz is the former rabbi of Congregation B'nai Israel, Pittsburg, PA (1976-1996) and of Emanuel Synagogue, Oklahoma City, OK (1996-2002). In 2002, he plead guilty to inappropriately touching two students, a teacher and an after-care worker at an Oklahoma City Jewish school after a judge ruled evidence about the same kind of behavior over the last 40 years could be heard at his jury trial.
Dr. Ivan G. Marcus is the Frederick P. Rose Professor of Jewish History at Yale University.
Rabbi Jay Marcus served as the Rabbi of the Young Israel of Staten Island for more than thirty years. He is the founding Dean of Yeshivat Reishit in Beit Shemesh, Israel.
Ralph Marcus (1900–1956), U.S. scholar of Hellenistic Judaism. Born in San Francisco the son of the talmudic scholar Moses Marcus, Marcus was educated at Columbia, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Law in the Apocrypha (1927), and at Harvard where he studied with Harry A. Wolfson (1925–27). He taught at the Jewish Institute of Religion, at Columbia (1927–43), and at the University of Chicago (1947–56). Marcus is best known for editing, translating, and annotating four volumes of Josephus and two of Philo in the Loeb Classical Library series. His notes show an unusual wealth of lexical and historical knowledge, and his translations are accurate and lucid. His invaluable appendixes on select points in Josephus are careful, critical monographs. His bibliographies in these volumes and in separate works (PAAJR, 16 (1946/47), 97–181; Jewish Studies in Memory of G.A. Kohut (1935), 463–91) show his mastery of the literature and his critical acumen. He successfully undertook the extraordinarily difficult task of translating Philo's Quaestiones et Solutiones from the Armenian and restored the Greek in numerous places.
Mordecai Margaliot (also Margulies; October 13, 1909 - March 24, 1968 ) was a scholar of Talmud, Midrash, and Geonic literature, and a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary .
Rabbi Morris B. Margolies (1921-2012), born in Jerusalem, was a Conservative movement rabbi who served as rabbi for Congregation Beth Shalom (Kansas City, Missouri) and as an adjunct professor of Jewish history at the University of Kansas. He received his semikhah from Yeshiva University. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he marched for civil rights and helped with voter registration drives. He fought for non-discriminatory housing in Kansas City. He called the United States the aggressor in the Vietnam War. On the eve of the 1972 election, he delivered a sermon titled “Throw the Rascal Out,” a scathing reference to Richard Nixon, who was running for a second term. In his Yom Kippur sermon in 1982, he called Israel's invasion of Lebanon “morally unjustified” due to the deaths of so many non-combatants.
Rabbi Marc Margolius is Senior Core Faculty member at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a center for training rabbis, cantors, educators and lay leaders in Jewish mindfulness practice and transforming Jewish life. He hosts IJS’s daily online Jewish meditation, directs programming for alumni of its clergy training program, and teaches online programs integrating mindfulness with middot practice. He has authored two years of mindfulness and middot-based study and practice teaching on the weekly Torah portion. Previously, he served as rabbi at West End Synagogue in NYC and at Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley PA (1989-2002), where he helped develop a model of the synagogue as a Shabbat-centered community constructed around intergenerational learning. Rabbi Margolius was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (1989), and is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Rabbi Dr. Julius Mark (1899-1977), from Cincinnati, Ohio, was a prominent Reform movement rabbi in the United States, leading Temple Emanu‐El in New York City. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he was ordained at HUC. He served two terms as president of the Synagogue Council of America, the national coordinating agency of the rabbinical and congregational bodies of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Judaism. Before arriving at Temple Emanu-El, he served Temple Beth El (South Bend, Indiana, from 1922 to 1926), and the Vine Street Temple (Nashville, Tennessee, from 1926 to 1948). After Pearl Harbor in 1941, he volunteered as a military chaplain and served the US Navy. He became Jewish chaplain to the Pacific Fleet, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander on the staff of Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz. During the war, Rabbi Mark wrote more than 10,000 letters to relatives of military personnel, both Jewish and non‐Jewish, whom he had met, reassuring those at home that their loved ones were fine. From 1949 to 1963, he was visiting professor of homiletics and practical theology at the New York School of the Hebrew Union College‐Jewish Institute of Religion. Five colleges and universities awarded Rabbi Mark honorary doctorates in law, divinity, humanities, sacred theology and humane letters. In addition, he received the Human Relations Award of the Methodist Church in 1963, the Gold Medallion for Courageous Leadership of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1966, the Clergyman of the Year award in 1969 from Religious Heritage of America and was awarded plaques by the Israel Bond organization in recognition of devoted support of Israel” in 1967, 1968 and 1970. Among his many posts through the years were life trustee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, membership on the executive committee of the United States Commission for U.N.E.S.C.O., on the board of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, on the Eastern board of the Anti‐Defamation League, on the governing board of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, honorary vice chairman of the Lighthouse for the Blind, honorary president of the American Jewish Encyclopedia Society and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His books included Behaviorism and Religion, The Rabbi Faces Some Big Dilemmas, The Art of Preaching and Reaching for the Moon.
David Evan Markus (born 1973) is an American attorney, public officer, rabbi and spiritual director. He currently serves as Deputy Chief Counsel in the New York State Judiciary, Judicial Referee in New York Supreme Court, senior builder with Bayit: Your Jewish Home, and co-rabbi of Temple Beth-El of City Island (New York City, New York). Markus formerly served as Special Counsel to the New York State Senate Majority and co-chair of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. A leader of Jewish Renewal, Markus resides in Westchester County, New York.
Rabbi Dalia Marx (PhD) is the Aaron Pankin professor of liturgy and Midrash at the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College-JIR, and teaches in various academic institutions in Israel and Europe. Marx, tenth generation in Jerusalem, earned her doctorate at the Hebrew University and her rabbinic ordination at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem and Cincinnati. She is involved in various research projects and is active in promoting liberal Judaism in Israel. Marx writes for academic and popular journals and publications. She is the author of בזמן: מסעות בלוח השנה היהודי ישראלי (Bazman 2018), When I Sleep and when I Wake: On Prayers between Dusk and Dawn (Yediot Sfarim 2010, in Hebrew), A Feminist Commentary of the Babylonian Talmud (Mohr Siebeck, 2013, in English) and the co-editor of a few books. She was the chief editor of T'fillat HaAdam: Israeli Reform Siddur (2020). Marx lives in Jerusalem with her husband Rabbi Roly Zylbersztein (PhD) and their three children.
The textual source called 'E' is the earliest of all literary sources in the Torah, the kernel from which all other narratives expanded upon. E was composed in the mid- to late eighth century BCE, toward the end of the heyday of the northern Ephraimite Kingdom, one of the two kingdoms that occupied Biblical Israel. The Kingdom of Ephraim was the larger and more urban of the two, and had its capital in Samaria, the city after which the Samaritans are named. To its south lay the smaller, but better-known Kingdom of Judah, whose capital city was Jerusalem. It seems likely that E was composed during this period because it marked the first literary flowering in ancient Israel. We know this based on the books of Amos and Hosea, composed at about that time, and from a wealth of inscriptions that we can confidently date to that period. The book of E, so called because it uses Elohim as its exclusive name for the deity of the Pentateuch, is composed of five story cycles focusing on five early Israelite heroes: Avraham, Yaakov, Yosef, Moshe, and Bilaam. The stories of Avraham and Bilaam are placed at the beginning and end of the Elohistic document, respectively, so that the two men can serve as models for how one should fear the remote and awesome God of the Elohistic source. The Yaakov, Yosef, and Moshe cycles, which comprise the bulk of the E narrative, chronicle Israel’s metamorphisis from a family into a people.
The last major addition to the biblical text was a post-exilic (pre-3rd century BCE) source which Dr. Tzemaḥ Yoreh refers to as the "Bridger" or simply, 'B.' B supplements earlier layers of text with genealogies and popular myths, providing narrative bridges between distant story cycles. B's narrative additions often share a fantastic element rarely found in Biblical narrative, and are most likely later additions to their respective Pentateuchal frameworks.
The book of Deuteronomy (sefer Devarim) is considered the composite of two layers of redaction, ‘D1’ and ‘D2.’ Together, these layers (commonly referred to as the ‘Deuteronomist’) are thought to have formed by a complex process that reached probably from the 7th century BCE to the early 5th. D1 is primarily responsible for incorporating the law code of Deuteronomy into the Pentateuch and adding a layer of redaction concerned with theodicy in the books of Joshua-Kings.
The book of Deuteronomy (sefer Devarim) is considered the composite of two layers of redaction, 'D1' and 'D2.' Together, these layers (commonly referred to as the 'Deuteronomist') are thought to have formed by a complex process that reached probably from the 7th century BCE to the early 5th. In general, D2 shares a particularly non-Judean perspective following the split between the north (Ephraim/Israel) and the south (Judah) after the reign of Solomon, a perspective that was ignored by D1 (and successive authors). D2 thus adds a parallel summary of the Northern Israelean monarchs, and brings in the prophetic narratives of Elijah and Elisha which take place in Northern Israel during the time of the Northern Israelean monarchy. In Deuteronomy, D2 adds hortatory (sermons) to D1’s narrative introduction at the beginning of Deuteronomy (the focus of which is the observation of the commandments and divine justice), and otherwise supplements D1’s work. D2 also adds some verses to the book of Exodus (sefer Shemot) in Parashat Bo.
Biblical scholar Dr. Alexander Rofé posits a Deuteronomic strata which "reflects the strength and demands of the Jerusalem priesthood" following upon the reforms of King Yoshiyahu in the mid- to late 7th century BCE. The third Deuteronomist (and the latest) is the most easily identified, since they are the Deuteronomist most interested in Priestly themes such as purity, proper sacrifice, and the priests. This third Deuteronomist seems to have confined his additions to the book of Deuteronomy (almost exclusively confining himself to hortatory and laws).
Composed in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE in the southern Kingdom of Judah, 'J' is one of the primary sources of the Masoretic text of the the Hebrew Bible, The J source was responsible for the first major metamorphosis of the oldest recognized kernel of the Biblical narrative (known as the E source). By combining the book of E, the Book of the Covenant (a law code found in Exodus 21–24), and the northern book of Judges (predecessor to the canonical book of Judges), and supplementing them with J's own text, J composed a cohesive historical work which chronicles the events from the creation of the world to the crowning of King David in nine story cycles, focusing on the Israelite line. J’s editorial style is highly invasive. In adding their own voice to that of their predecessor E, J often overwhelms the reader with their point of view to the extent that E’s original narrative threads are no longer apparent.
'P,' also known as the "Priestly" source, is one of the primary sources of the Masoretic text of the Torah in the Hebrew Bible. According to the Supplementary hypothesis presented by Dr. Tzemaḥ Yoreh, 'P' supplements the earlier 'J' narrative with dates, names, and numbers, "thus 'ordering' and authenticating 'J's account." This strata dates from the exilic and early post-exilic period, 571–486 BCE. 'P' is the Pentateuchal (and, to a lesser extent, the Prophetical) source most concerned with the priests, the temple, the regulation of sacrifices (e.g. what to bring on which day), and organization in general, including censuses, the division of labor among the various clans of Levites, and the hierarchy among the tribes. 'P' is responsible for the first of the two creation stories in Genesis (a/k/a Genesis 1), for the genealogies of Adam and Shem, the covenants with Noaḥ and Avraham, and a few other stories concerning Avraham, Yitsḥak and Yaakov. Aside from these, the bulk of 'P's texts are found at the end of Exodus (specifically Exodus 25–40), throughout Leviticus, in Numbers 1–10, and in Joshua 13–21. An important feature of 'P' is their copious addition of lists to the text. Many of these lists are genealogies (e.g. Gen. 5, 11, 36), but they can also be lists of stations on Israel’s journey throughout the wilderness (e.g. Num. 33), cities (e.g. Josh. 14–21), and censuses (e.g. Num. 1–3). By inundating the reader with lists, 'P' attempts to enhance the authority of the Bible, ensuring that their version of events is accepted over possible alternatives. 'P' was a hands-off redactor, preferring to make their additions at the beginnings and ends of narratives. Note that their creation list and genealogical lists appear entirely before and after the earlier account of creation and expulsion from Eden, respectively. Both additions alter our understanding of the surrounded material in important ways without being invasive. Only when the matter at hand is of grave importance to 'P,' as in the case of the pillaging of the innocent inhabitants of Shechem, does 'P' delve fully into the text.
HaTenu'ah haMasortit (התנועה המסורתית, the Masorti Movement in Israel) creates opportunities for all Jews to live Jewish lives in Israel unhindered, and on their own terms. It is a religious movement based on values of inclusion combined with traditional practice and Halakha (Jewish Law). Masorti represents a “third” way. Not secular Judaism. Not ultra-Orthodoxy. But a Jewish life that integrates secular beliefs. Halakhah with inclusion and egalitarianism. Tradition that recognizes the realities of today’s world. The Masorti Movement is committed to a pluralistic, egalitarian, and democratic vision of Zionism. Masorti engages tens of thousands of Israelis each year, young and old, native born as well as olim from around the globe.
Rabbi Israel Isidore Mattuck (1884–1954) was a leader of the Liberal (Reform movement) in the United Kingfom. Born in Lithuania, he came as a child to the United States with his family and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard University, he was ordained at the Hebrew Union College in 1910 having only spent two years in residence. He held a pulpit in Far Rockaway, New York, for a year and then went to England to serve a young congregation, the Liberal Synagogue in London. He served as senior minister for 36 years and then after 1947 was minister emeritus. Under his leadership the synagogue grew into one of the largest synagogues in London. The building that he helped build was bombed in World War II, but Mattuck lived to see it restored and rededicated. He was succeeded by his disciple and son-in-law Rabbi Leslie Edgar. He was a leading figure, perhaps the leading figure in English Liberal Jewry, its philosopher and its public face. He was known as one of the "Three Ms": Montagu, Montefiore, and Mattuck. He helped form the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues and helped establish the World Union for Progressive Judaism in 1926 and served as its first chairman from 1926 until his death. He was chairman of the Society of Jews and Christians. He compiled and edited the Liberal prayer book, first in three volumes in 1923–26 and in a revised edition in 1937. He is the author of several books: What Are the Jews (1939); The Essentials of Liberal Judaism (1947); Jewish Ethics (1953); and The Thought of the Prophets (1953). He also edited Aspects of Progressive Jewish Thought (1955), which was dedicated in honor of Leo Baeck's 80th birthday. It was published posthumously.
Rabbi Jacob Aaron Max (1924-2011), born in Vienna, Austria, was a Modern Orthodox movement rabbi in the United States. His family emigrated to American in 1927. He attended the Talmudical Academy in East Baltimore, and in 1947 earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University. In 1949, he received his semikhah at Ner Israel Rabbinical College. In the early 1950s, Rabbi Max collaborated with Jewish residents in the Howard Park community of Baltimore to create Liberty Jewish Center, now Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah (MMAE) Hebrew Congregation. In 1973 he received a master’s degree in liberal arts from Johns Hopkins. He served Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation (Liberty Jewish Center) in Pikesville, Maryland and became the Talmudical Academy's vice principal. In December 2008, Rabbi Max was accused of a sexual offense at a funeral home where he was officiating and was later convicted of the fourth degree and second-degree assault.
Rabbi Harry Hubert Mayer (1874-1965), from Allegheny, Pennsylvania, was a Reform rabbi in the United States. He studied at the University of Strasbourg before he was ordained in 1896 at Hebrew Union College. He served as rabbi of Little Rock, Arkansas's Temple B’nai Israel from 1897 to 1899, after which he came to Congregation B’nai Jehudah in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1913, he authored The truth about the Russian government and the ritual murder trial. In 1926, he was commended by the American Eugenics Society's Committee on Cooperation with Clergymen for a special Mother’s Day service in which he declared in a sermon: “May we do nothing to permit our blood to be adulterated by infusion of blood of inferior grade” (Daniel J. Kevles, page 61 in In the Name of Eugenics, 1985).
From a family of musicians, Isaac Gantwerk Mayer believes that creative art is one of the most powerful ways to get in touch with the divine. He composes music and poetry in Hebrew and English. (He also authors his own original works and transcribes Hebrew and Aramaic text, adding niqqud and t'amim as needed.) Isaac runs a Jewish music transcription service, which will transcribe and set any Jewish music in any language, recorded or written. Contact his service on Facebook or via his music blog.
From a family of musicians, Isaac Gantwerk Mayer believes that creative art is one of the most powerful ways to get in touch with the divine. He composes music and poetry in Hebrew and English. (He also translates and authors his own original works.) Isaac runs a Jewish music transcription service, which will transcribe and set any Jewish music in any language, recorded or written. Contact his service on Facebook or via his music blog.
From a family of musicians, Isaac Gantwerk Mayer believes that creative art is one of the most powerful ways to get in touch with the divine. He composes music and poetry in Hebrew and English. (He also translates and transcribes Hebrew and Aramaic texts, adding niqqud and t'amim as needed.) Isaac runs a Jewish music transcription service, which will transcribe and set any Jewish music in any language, recorded or written. Contact his service on Facebook or via his music blog.
Rabbi Moritz Mayer (originally Moses Maier, later Maurice Mayer; 1821-1867) born in Dürckheim-on-the-Haardt, Germany, fled to the United States and to New York as a political refugee of the 1848 revolution. In 1859, after seven years as the rabbi of Ḳ.Ḳ. Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, he returned in poor health to New York where he contributed frequently to the Jewish press, and translated various German works into English: Rabbi Samuel Adler's catechism, Abraham Geiger's lectures on Jewish history, and Ludwig Philipson's pamphlet, Haben die Juden Jesum Gekreuzigt? (the Crucifixion from the Jewish Point of View), et al. In 1866, a number of his English translations of Fanny Neuda's teḥinot in German (from her Stunden Der Andacht, 1855/1858) were published in a volume he titled Hours of Devotion. The work also included a number of his own prayers as well as those of Marcus Heinrich Bresslau. The following year, Moritz Mayer passed away. He was 45 years old.(We are indebted to Anton Hieke for his research on Mayer, "Rabbi Maurice Mayer: German Revolutionary, Charleston Reformer, and Anti-Abolitionist" published in Southern Jewish Life, 17 (2014), pp. 45-89.)For Mayer's translations of prayers by other authors, please visit here.
Zev Wolf ben Ḥayyim Mayer (or Maier, 1778-1850) was a Jewish educator, maskil, poet and author. The following was adapted from his obituary; "The talents that were already evident in his boyhood were the reason why Wolf Mayer was destined for a scientific career. At the age of thirteen he was one of the most distinguished in Talmud study. In his youth he came to Prague, where Rabbi Ezekiel Landau was the last chief rabbi in Bohemia and enjoyed his instruction. Under Landau's guidance, Mayer made excellent progress, but since he belonged to the Progress Party and made no secret of his liberal way of thinking, he was repeatedly attacked by the Zealot Party. Subsequently, in order to obtain a marriage license, he applied for the position of an extraordinary teacher of the Hebrew language at the Prague secondary school, which he received. For forty years he held this teaching post at the secondary school at which Pereẓ (Peter) Beer and Simon Gunz were his colleagues. Mayer was also active as a writer and as a Hebrew poet he had an important reputation. He also published numerous poems and various articles in Hebrew journals. Mayer was a well-known and popular personality in Jewish circles in Prague at the time. Several years before his death he suffered a stroke, was deprived of the use of all his senses, and became completely paralyzed. However, he retained his mental vigor to the last moment. A new, serious misfortune befell him when, three years before his death, his only daughter, the nurse and guardian of his ailing body, died, and he was left in dreadful misery."
Rabbi Moritz Mayer (originally Moses Maier, later Maurice Mayer; 1821-1867) born in Dürckheim-on-the-Haardt, Germany, fled to the United States and to New York as a political refugee of the 1848 revolution. In 1859, after seven years as the rabbi of Ḳ.Ḳ. Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, he returned in poor health to New York where he contributed frequently to the Jewish press, and translated various German works into English: Rabbi Samuel Adler's catechism, Abraham Geiger's lectures on Jewish history, and Ludwig Philipson's pamphlet, Haben die Juden Jesum Gekreuzigt? (the Crucifixion from the Jewish Point of View), et al. In 1866, a number of his English translations of Fanny Neuda's teḥinot in German (from her Stunden Der Andacht, 1855/1858) were published in a volume he titled Hours of Devotion. The work also included a number of his own prayers as well as those of Marcus Heinrich Bresslau. The following year, Moritz Mayer passed away. He was 45 years old.(We are indebted to Anton Hieke for his research on Mayer, "Rabbi Maurice Mayer: German Revolutionary, Charleston Reformer, and Anti-Abolitionist" published in Southern Jewish Life, 17 (2014), pp. 45-89.)For Mayer's original prayers, please visit here.
Rabbi Noa Mazor (HUC Jer '16)
Educator, inter-religious and peace activist.
Rabbi Oded Mazor, born and raised in Israel, received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Jewish Philosophy in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and rabbinic ordination from the Israeli program of HUC-JIR. Oded co-edited the Israeli Reform Three Regalim (Pilgrim Holy Days) prayer book, HaSimcha Sh'Balev, and is part of the editorial committee of Tfilat HaAdam. After nearly a decade as rabbi and educator in the Leo Baeck Education Center, Haifa, and living in the renewed Kibbutz Ḥannaton, Oded and the family are back in Jerusalem, where he serves as the rabbi of Ḳehilat Ḳol HaNeshama.
Abraham Mears (fl. 18th century), born to a prominent London-based Jewish family, was the author in 1738 of the first translation of a siddur in English (under the pseudonym Gamaliel ben Pedazhur). The historian, Cecil Roth, in his 1935 article, "Gamaliel ben Pedazhur and His Prayerbook" notes that the Mears family (also, Moers) was one of the oldest established Jewish families in England and that Abraham was either born in London or else was brought there at an early age. By 1738, he had converted to Christianity and was living outside the city. Very little more is known of him aside from that he had a Jewish education, a Cockney accent (attested in his transliterations), was not a rabbi, and that he was still alive in 1758 when a printing of the first part of his siddur (describing Jewish customs) was reprinted. If you know more, please contact us.
Dafna Meir, z"l, mother of 6, was a nurse who treated patients at the Neurosurgery department at Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, Israel.
Orna Meir-Stacey lives in Cambridge, England.
Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson is the Director of Rabbinic Training for T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. Lev was ordained in 2013 from Hebrew College, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. In 2017, Lev was honored by the Covenant Foundation with a Pomegranate Prize, which recognizes early-career Jewish educators. Before attending rabbinical school, Lev taught fifth grade at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan for three years and worked for many summers at URJ Eisner Camp. He holds an AB in Geology from Brown University and spent a post-baccalaureate semester at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, where conservation and sustainable development are approached in the context of Arab-Israeli peace efforts.
Andrew Meit has studied and researched in various areas: the imagination, Martin Buber, Judaism, prophets and prophecy, and Ephraim Moses Lilien. In 1984, Meit earned a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies with minors in Mathematics and Philosophy from Stetson University. As a lifelong creative, he is a type and graphics designer focusing on Jewish art and digitally repairing damaged art.Meit is legally deaf-blind, and has several learning problems stemming from contracting congenital Rubella. He is active in the Independent Living Movement; been on several CIL boards. Throughout his life Meit has striven to turn his disabilities into well-made art that inspires and celebrates beauty and truth.Off and on for 40 years, Meit has been involved in interfaith services and study groups. He has informally lectured on Buber. He enjoys writing prayers and creating worship presentations.Although mainly self-taught in calligraphy, drawing and design, Meit formally studied at the Cleveland Art Institute. With the font editor Fontographer, he recreated the well known font GoodCity Modern (a faithful recreation of the Gutenberg’s bible typeface). Over the decades, he produced a digital recreation of the first page of Genesis from the Gutenberg Bible. He artistically colored many of E.M. Lilien’s line art illustrations, created a font based on Buber's handwriting, and recently, he created a new logo for the Florida Orange City Unitarian Universalist Congregation and improved a logo for Applied Jewish Spirituality group.Meit likes to help repair the world through his art; enjoys deep thoughts, playing with puzzles, and learning about Religion. He currently lives in Plantation, Florida.
Hillel Meitin (1876-1947) was the first Yiddish translator of Naphtali Imber's Hatiḳvah into Yiddish. We know very little more about him. If you know, please contact us.
Eliezer Meler (1889-1967), Yiddish translator, poet and novelist, wrote under the pseudonum L. Miler. In 1940, he published what is to this day the
fullest and most satisfactory translation of Whitman's verse and prose into
Yiddish.
Aaron Melman is head rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, IL. Originally from Toronto, he graduated York University with BA in Judaic Studies. He attended the Jewish Theological Seminary where he received his ordination in May 2002.While at JTS, Rabbi Melman taught Hebrew School at Or Zarua, a Conservative synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and served as a student chaplain with the New York City Fire Department (FDNY).
Rabbi Melman is involved in the community through the Northbrook Clergy Association, serves on the Board of Directors of The Norton and Elaine Sarnoff for Jewish Genetics, and is the immediate Past-President of the Chicago Region of Rabbinical Assembly. Rabbi Melman also serves as the only Chaplain to the Northbrook Fire Department.
Shimon Menachem, a/k/a "Shimonides" is a writer and educator living in St. Louis, Missouri.
Dr. Aurora Mendelsohn is a biostatistician who lives in Toronto. Her work can be read in the Forward and at her blog, "Rainbow Tallit Baby".
Dr. Dan Mendelsohn Aviv has been engaged in Jewish learning as an educator, lecturer, professor, published scholar and author for almost twenty years. His book End of the Jews: Radical Breaks, Remakes and What Comes Next came out in 2012. Having spent three years creating an alternative model for informal education, he recently returned to his greatest passion-classroom instruction at Bialik Hebrew Day School in Toronto, Canada. He is also an itinerant blogger (at The Next Jew), inchoate podcaster and MacBook zealot. Most of all, he is proud of his darling Noa and three children.
Abraham Pereira Mendes (February 9, 1825 in Kingston, Jamaica – April 18, 1893 in New York City) was an English rabbi and educator. He was the first master of the Beth Limud School of Kingston, but resigned in order to prepare in London, England for the vocation of preacher and rabbi. He studied under Dr. David Meldola, son of Haham Raphael Meldola, as well as under his future father-in-law, the Rev. D. A. de Sola, known as "the learned Hazzan" of the Sephardic community, and received his diplomas. He returned to Jamaica and became for a short time assistant to the Rev. Isaac Lopez, minister of the Kingston Sephardic congregation, but was soon called from that position to be the minister of the Montego Bay community. In 1883, he was called to the ministry at the historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, by the guardian Congregation Shearith Israel of New York and continued as its minister until his death ten years later. He was the first among the Sephardim to publish a volume of sermons in English (1855). He translated the Daily Prayer-Book of the German Jews (Valentine's edition), and finished the translation of the Festival and Holy Day Books left incomplete by the death of Rev. D. A. de Sola. He published, besides, The Law of Moses, Post-Biblical History of the Jews (to fall of Jerusalem), Interlineary Translation of the Prayer-Book (German), and the Haggadah.
Rabbi Dr. Henry (Ḥaim) Pereira Mendes (Hebrew: חיים פריירה מנדס), (13 April 1852 – 21 October 1937), born in Birmingham, England, was an author and prominent communal leader in the Western Sepharadi world. He was educated at Northwick College (rabbinics), at University College (London). In 1874, he became Minister of the newly formed Sephardic congregation in Manchester, England. In 1877, he was called to the Congregation Shearith Israel of New York where he served until 1920, retaining the title of Rabbi Emeritus. In addition, he studied and graduated from the medical school of New York University, taking the degree of M.D. (1884). The degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1904). In addition, to synagogue duties, Rev. Mendes served as professor of homiletics at Yeshiva Isaac Elchanan from 1917 to 1920. After retiring in 1920, he traveled for four years through Europe and South America. During that time, he reconnected with his first congregation in Manchester and spent some time in St. Thomas, reviving the S&P community there and leading services. He participated in the founding of a number of significant organizations. In 1881, he was one of the founders of the New York Board of Ministers and acted as its secretary from its foundation up to 1901 when he became president. In 1886, Rev. Mendes joined Sabato Morais in helping to establish the Jewish Theological Seminary, of which he became secretary of the advisory board and professor of history. On the death of Dr. Morais, he became acting president of the faculty until the appointment of Solomon Schechter in 1902. In 1884, the centennial of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore, Rev. Mendes moved his congregation to convene the leading Jews of New York to mark the event by some practical work. The outcome was the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, established in the same year—and which later became Montefiore Medical Center. In 1896, he was made vice-president of the Guild for Crippled Children, and in 1901 established the Jewish branch of that guild. He promoted the formation of the Union of Orthodox Congregations of the United States and Canada (1897) and was subsequently elected its president. He was also one of the founders of the Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York (1902).
Ḥen Melekh Merkhaviyah (1910-2003) was an educator, philosopher , essayist, translator, literary editor, scholar of Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages and historian of the Revisionist movement and the Betar youth movement. He was awarded the David Yellin Jerusalem Prize.
Rabbi Joseph B. Meszler is the spiritual leader of Temple Sinai of Sharon, Massachusetts. He also has a regular blog on the Huffington Post and is the author of several books and articles. Rabbi Meszler has lectured widely and been heard in many venues, including Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio. He has also been an instructor at the Kehillah Schechter Academy and previously served at Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, DC. He was ordained at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1999.
Rabbi Solomon H. Metz (1891-1959) born in Kulen, Lithuania was a Conservative movement rabbi in the United States. After emigrating to the United States, he graduated from City College of New York in 1916 after which he entered the Jewish Theological Seminary and was ordained in 1918. Rabbi Metz was installed as rabbi of Washington Heights Synagogue in New York in 1930, and subsequently served as the leader of Adas Israel Congregation
in Washington DC from 1930-1951.
Rabbi Kurt L. Metzger (1909-1992) born in Nuremberg, was from 1935-1938
the district Rabbi of Landau. He was arrested on 10 November 1938 in Breslau, where he attended the Jewish Theological Seminary, and incarcerated in the Buchenwald concentration camp for several months. After his release, he served as the rabbi of Nuremberg until his immigration to the United States in 1940. From 1942-1962 he was the rabbi of Temple Beth El in Glen Falls, New York. He returned to Germany many times, and in 1977 was named Honorary Rabbi of his native Nuremberg. He is buried in his wife's family plot at the cemetery in Landau.
Rabbi Carole Meyers (1957-2007) was the first woman in Southern California to lead a congregation full-time. Meyers was ordained in 1983 by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and spent three years as assistant rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. She became the rabbi of Temple Sinai of Glendale in 1986, when she was 29. She resigned in 2001, and died in 2007 of bone cancer. Posthumously, a book of her sermons was published, titled Leaning on God: Sermons (2018). She first became interested in becoming a rabbi after her father died when she was 13 and her stepfather died when she was 19, and the rituals and community support of the synagogue helped her through her grief.
Ron Lee Meyers is an attorney in New York. His submissions to Open Siddur have been developed within the creative community of Minyan Maat, where he is a frequent darshan and shofar blower.
Sarah M. is a third year medical student in Israel studying how to be a doctor, a friend, and an engaged citizen.
Yosef Chaim (1 September 1835 – 30 August 1909) (Iraqi Hebrew: Yoseph Ḥayyim; Hebrew: יוסף חיים מבגדאד) was a leading Iraqi ḥakham (Sephardi Rabbi), authority on halakha (Jewish law), and Master Kabbalist. He is best known as author of the work on Halakha Ben Ish Ḥai (בן איש חי) ("Son of Man (who) Lives"), a collection of the laws of everyday life interspersed with mystical insights and customs, addressed to the masses and arranged by the weekly Torah portion.
Rabbi Maximilian Joseph Michelbacher (1810-1879) was born in Oettingen, Bavaria and educated in Germany. Michelbacher emigrated to the United States in 1844, arriving in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1846, he became the rabbi at Congregation Beth Ahabah in Richmond, Virginia, where he remained through the Civil War and for the rest of his life. He married first Mary Rachel Traub (ca. 1817-1849) in Philadelphia 20 August 1845, and they had three children. After her death, he married Miriam Angle in Richmond 18 September 1850, and they had ten children.
Rabbi Rachel Mikva is the Rabbi Herman E. Schaalman Chair & Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, and Senior Faculty Fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary, Illinois, United States.
Netanel Miles-Yépez is an artist, religion scholar, and spiritual teacher.Born into a Mexican-American family, in his late teens, Miles-Yépez discovered his family's hidden Jewish roots and began to explore Judaism and other religions seriously. After studying history of religions and comparative religion at Michigan State University, he moved to Boulder, Colorado to study with the innovative Hasidic master and leader in ecumenical dialogue, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. In addition to Schachter-Shalomi, he also studied with various Sufi masters and teachers of Buddhism, and counts Father Thomas Keating, Trappist monk and founder of the Centering Prayer movement, as an important influence. In 2004, he and Schachter-Shalomi co-founded the Sufi-Hasidic, Inayati-Maimuni Order, fusing the Sufi and Hasidic principles of spirituality and practice espoused by Rabbi Avraham Maimuni in 13th-century Egypt with the teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov and Hazrat Inayat Khan. Currently, he teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.As a writer on religious subjects, he is known for his critically acclaimed commentaries on Hasidic spirituality (written with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi), A Heart Afire: Stories and Teachings of the Early Hasidic Masters (2009) and A Hidden Light: Stories and Teachings of Early HaBaD and Bratzlav Hasidism (2011). He is also the editor several ecumenical works, including The Common Heart: An Experience of Interreligious Dialogue (2006) and Meditations for InterSpiritual Practice (2011).As an artist, Miles-Yépez is mostly known for his vibrant paintings, influenced by traditional religious imagery and his Mexican-American heritage. His work in general represents a lifelong fascination with religious iconography, myth and symbol, image and archetype, cultural impressions and his own ancestry. Most of his work is concerned with the acculturation and use of traditional symbols and iconic forms in a new multi-cultural paradigm.
Rabbi Joseph Miller (1895-1967) served Shaare Torah of Flatbush from 1922 through 1967 and served as president of the New York Board of Rabbis.
Rabbi Lester M. Miller was an Orthodox rabbi in the United States. He served as the rabbi of Herzlia Adath Yeshurun Congregation (Winnipeg, Manitoba), Montefiore Woodmoor Congregation (Baltimore, Maryland), and
Congregation Beth Israel in Metairie (near New Orleans), Louisiana. We know very little else about Rabbi Miller; if you know more, please contact us.
Louis E. Miller (1866–1927), born Efim Samuilovich Bandes, was a Russian-Jewish political activist who emigrated to the United States of America in 1884. A trade union organizer and newspaper editor, Miller is best remembered as a founding editor of Di Arbeiter Tsaytung (The Workers' Newspaper), the first Yiddish-language weekly published in America, and a co-founder with Abraham Cahan of the Jewish Daily Forward, the country's first and foremost Yiddish-language daily.
Rabbi Uri Miller (1906-1972) was an orthodox Jewish rabbi and leader in the United States. He joined Beth Israel synagogue in New Orleans in 1935, a post he would hold through the early 1940s. He was president of the Hebrew Theological College Alumni from 1936 to 1938, and of its successor the Rabbinical Council of America from 1946 to 1948. He was the rabbi of Beth Jacob in Baltimore from 1945 to 1972. From 1963-1965 he served as president of the Synagogue Council of America.
Rabbi Jessica Minnen is the founding director of Seven Wells and the assistant director of the Jewish Journey Project. She is an alumna of Washington University in St. Louis, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Paideia: The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, Baltimore Hebrew University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Jessica sits on the Board of Directors of the American Jewish Society for Service and is a visiting rabbi at Beth El in Bethesda, Maryland.
Yehoshua Heshil ben Rabbi Binyamin Miro (fl. first-half 19th c.) was a writer and Jewish educator in Prussia, an early advocate and teacher of Jewish girls. He worked as a professor at a private school, and a teacher at the Königliche Wilhelms-Schule (and possibly also the Industrial School for Israelite Girls), in then Prussian Breslau. We know very little else about Miro aside from his publication of a popular anthology of teḥinot for German speaking women first published in 1829. If you know more about Miro, please contact us.
Dr. Yehudah Mirsky is a professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. He teaches courses on Zionism and Israel, Jewish intellectual and religious history, and human rights. He received a BA at Yeshiva College, JD at Yale and PhD (Religion) at Harvard, and rabbinic ordination in Jerusalem. He worked in Washington as a Senate aide to Bob Kerrey and Al Gore, at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and as special advisor in the US State Department's human rights bureau during the Clinton Administration. He was formerly on the faculty of Yeshvat Chovevei Torah and after the September 11 attacks he was a chaplain for the Red Cross. From 2002-2012 he lived in Jerusalem and was a fellow at several think tanks and and was one of the founders of Ha-Tenuah Ha-Yerushamit, a pluralistic, grass-roots community organizing network.
Ephraim Mirvis (born 1956) is an Orthodox rabbi who serves as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Traditionally the post has entailed that he also serves as the head of all British Jews as the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. He served as the Chief Rabbi of Ireland between 1985 and 1992. (via his Wikipedia article)
Mishkan Shalom, founded in 1988, is a Reconstructionist synagogue located in the Roxborough-Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia, dedicated to repair of the world through prayer, study and acts of caring.
A Mitzvah to Eat is an international, pluralistic group of educators and clergy who feel passionately about the Jewish principle of piḳoaḥ nefesh (saving a life). The organization supports those who need to connect to fast days, mitzvot, or holidays differently to protect their health and save their lives. They empower individuals and communities with learning, prayers, and rituals to bring holiness to acts of piḳoaḥ nefesh.
Asher Mizrahi (also Acher Mizrahi, אשר מזרחי; 1890 – 27 October 1967) was a Jerusalem-born Tunisian tenor singer and musician, who eventually settled in Israel, where he was born under Ottoman rule.
Rabbi Nina Mizrahi is the director of the Pritzker Center for Jewish Education of the JCC of Chicago. Raised as a free-range child, Rabbi Nina Mizrahi’s deep spiritual center is rooted in the woods of upstate New York. After studying Biology and Environmental Chemistry in college, she worked in a research lab. Later ordained at HUC-JIR, her approach to Jewish life draws from all expressions of Judaism and is influenced by science, nature and neo-chasidism. Rabbi Nina honors all learning styles and inspires learners to think in new ways. Identified as a community rabbi, she seeks to bring together believer, atheist and agnostic, humanist, deist and seeker, to discover a shared tradition of ethical and spiritual values.
Yosef ben Yuzl Mogilntski (also Magilntski and Magilntzky, Americanized: Joseph Magil, March 17, 1870-February 10, 1945) was born in Raseyn (Raseiniai), Kovno district, Lithuania. Until age fourteen he attended religious elementary schools and yeshivas, while stealthily studying modern Hebrew and Russian. At age sixteen he published essays in Hamelits (The spectator) and Yudishe folksblat (Jewish people’s newspaper). In 1889 he moved to Mitave (Mitava), Courland. There he studied German and acquainted himself with German literature. In 1890 he returned to Raseiniai and became a teacher in the school for the society “Banot Tsiyon” (Daughters of Zion). In 1892 he made his way to the United States, settled in Philadelphia, and founded there a Hebrew-Yiddish school called “Bene Tsiyon” (Children of Zion). In 1894 he founded in Philadelphia Yudishes folks blat (Jewish people’s newspaper), a biweekly published by the Mogilnitski Brothers and edited by Yoysef Mogilnitski, which came out for approximately one year. He also published articles in Der literarishe shtrahl (The literary ray [of light]), “monthly with an English division”—motto: “Literature and Science”—in Philadelphia, first volume (September 1899), last issue (February 1906). He also wrote (using the pen name “A. Mogil”) for Nyu-yorker yudishe folks-tsaytung (New York Jewish people’s newspaper) (1886-1889) and other publications. He published textbooks for schools and Talmud-Torahs (in Yiddish with English translation), including: Mogilnitskis linyen skul khumesh, oder oyzer hamore vehatalmid (dem lehers un shilers hehilfe) (Mogilnitski’s linear school Pentateuch, or an aide for the teacher and the student), “an entirely new and easy method of instruction in the entire Pentateuch, without change or abridgement, with great success, with assistance from a new ‘linear system,’ for [secular] schools, religious elementary schools, Talmud-Torahs, and self-study” (Philadelphia, 1899); Mogilnitskis hamekhin lakhumesh (Mogilnitski’s preparation for Pentateuch [study]) (Philadelphia, 1906), 199 pp.; Mogilnitskis linyen megiles ester (Mogilnitski’s linear Scroll of Esther) (Philadelphia); Mogilnitskis hagode shel peysekh (Mogilnitski’s Passover Haggada); Mogilnitskis kovets shire tsien veshire am (Mogilnitski’s collection of poems of Zion and poetry of the people) (Philadelphia, 1906), “fifty-six of the best poems in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English, with notes to sing and play in pocketbook format.” He also published: Sider lebote-seyfer velam (Prayer book for schools and the people) (Philadelphia, 1904), 176 pp., “complete prayer book for the entire year, all of the prayers all in one place, for every Jewish home, religious elementary schools, and schools, with important remarks and special notes by means of which everyone can know where one finds the two kinds of shva, by Yoysef son of Yude Mogilnitski.” He died in Philadelphia. (from the short biography by Zaynvl Diamant posted at Yiddish Leksikon. See there for sources.)
Avraham Menaḥem Mendel Mor (April 11 , 1815 - 29th May 1868), born in Lemberg, was a Galician Jewish scholar, publisher, translator and author in Hebrew and Yiddish. He was one of the members of the Haskala movement in Galicia. Mortkhe Yofe has a nice article written up for him at the Congress for Jewish Culture.
Abraham Moïse (1799-1869), the brother of Penina Moïse, was a lawyer in Charleston, South Carolina born to the prominent family of his parents Abraham Moïse (c. 1736–1809) originally from Strasbourg in Alsace, France, and Sarah from the Jewish community on St. Eustace.. Along with Isaac Harby and David Nunes Carvalho, he helped in leading the Reformed Society of Israelites.
Columbus Moïse (1809-1871) born in Charleston, South Carolina, was the son of Aaron Moïse and Sarah Cohen Moïse. He married Fanny Emma Levy, a daughter of D.C. Levy of Philadelphia, Pa. For thirty-five years he was president of the principal bank of New Orleans, Louisiana. He was postmaster of that city, and was chosen by its citizens to receive Gen. Zachary Taylor on his return from the battle of Buena Vista in 1847. He was granted a large tract of land in Florida for services rendered in the Indian War. Columbus Moïse wrote many short poems, one of which was sung at the laying of the cornerstone during the consecration of the new synagogue building for Ḳ.Ḳ. Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina.
Penina Moïse (1797-1880) was born to a large and wealthy family in Charleston, South Carolina, the progeny of her merchant father, Abraham Moïse (1736-1809), originally from Strasbourg in Alsace, France, and her mother Sarah from the Jewish community on the Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius in the Netherlands Antilles. Her brother, also named Abraham, was a leader in the Reformed Society of Israelites, and so we imagine she was closely associated with the reformist wing of the congregation it wished to and ultimately succeeded in reforming, Ḳ.Ḳ. Beth Elohim. Moïse wrote at least 187 prayers for Beth Elohim's hymn books published in 1842 and in 1856. Moïse was also a gifted teacher and, in 1845, became head of Beth Elohim’s religious school. Moïse was a prolific writer, earning praise for her 1833 collection of poems, Fancy’s Sketch Book, as well as her articles for various newspapers across the country. After the Civil War, she returned to Charleston and ran an academy with her sister and niece. Though her eyesight eventually deteriorated into blindness, she continued to work and write until the end of her life. (This short biographical sketch includes material adapted from her entry in the Jewish Women's Archive by Jay M. Eidelman.)
Cordelia Moïse Cohen (1810-1869) was born in Charleston, the younger daughter of Cherie (Cherry) Moïse and Esther Moses. She married Dr. Philip Melvin Cohen of Charleston in 1832 and with him had eleven children. In The Moïse Family of South Caroline (1961) Harold Moïse writes that "she is remembered by her gift for poetry. She wrote a series of hymns for Congregation Beth Elohim which supplemented those of her aunt Penina Moïse. Cordelia, keen in wit and repartee, was the center of a brilliant circle of admirers. She suffered bitterly from poverty and anxiety during the Civil War, her physician husband in the service of the Confederacy, her family scattered. They were in Columbia when that city was burned by Sherman." She died in Charleston in 1869.
The Hon. Lilian Helen "Lily" Montagu, CBE (22 December 1873 – 22 January 1963) was the first woman to play a major role in Progressive Judaism. Until the age of 15, she was educated at Doreck College, and privately educated thereafter. In 1893 she founded with Emily Marion Harris the West Central Jewish Girls Club (which subsequently merged into the Jewish Girls' Brigade). She was active in social improvement, particularly in respect to unemployment, sweat shops and bad housing. In 1901 and 1902, Montagu laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Jewish Religious Union in London. In February 1902 she arranged the first meeting of the Jewish Religious Union for the Advancement of Liberal Judaism at her sister Henrietta Franklin's house. The Union set up the first synagogue in Liberal Judaism in the UK and helped found the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Montagu was a founding member with her sister of the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage. She sat on the executive committee and led the meetings in prayer. Following the retirement of Leo Baeck, Montagu served for a brief stint (1955–1959) in her 80s as president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, before handing the reins over to Solomon Freehof.
Simon Montagu is a translator and software engineer. He worked as an internationalization (i18n) engineer involved for the Mozilla project beginning in 1999, originally through IBM in Israel, later on the staff of Netscape Communications Corporation from 2001-2003, after that as an independent contributor, and from 2006-2015 as a contractor for the Mozilla Corporation.
Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore, also Goldsmid–Montefiore or just Goldsmid Montefiore (1858–1938) was the intellectual founder of Anglo-Liberal Judaism and the founding president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic literature and New Testament. He assisted Rabbi Simeon Singer in preparing the Authorised Prayer Book in 1890. He was a significant figure in the contexts of modern Jewish religious thought, Jewish-Christian relations, and Anglo-Jewish socio-politics, and educator. Montefiore was President of the Anglo-Jewish Association and an influential anti-Zionist leader, who co-founded the anti-Zionist League of British Jews in 1917.
Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, FRS (24 October 1784 – 28 July 1885) was a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London. Born to an Italian Sephardic Jewish family based in London, after he achieved success, he donated large sums of money to promote industry, business, economic development, education and health among the Jewish community in the Levant. He founded Mishkenot Sha'ananim in 1860, the first settlement outside the Old City of Jerusalem. As President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, he corresponded with Charles Henry Churchill, the British consul in Damascus, in 1841–42; his contributions are seen as pivotal to the development of Proto-Zionism.
James Alan Montgomery (June 13, 1866 – February 6, 1949) was an American Episcopal clergyman, Oriental scholar, and biblical scholar who was professor of Old Testament and Semitics (Hebrew and Aramaic), first at the Philadelphia Divinity School, and later, from 1913 to 1948, at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as president of the American Oriental Society and Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis.
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.
Michael A. Morgan was the translator of an English edition of Sefer ha-Razim based on the work of Mordecai Margoliot. If you have any more information about this scholar, please contact us.
Gouverneur Morris (January 31, 1752 – November 6, 1816), born in what is now New York City, was an American statesman, a Founding Father of the United States, and a signatory to the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. He wrote the Preamble to the United States Constitution and has been called the "Penman of the Constitution." While most Americans still thought of themselves as citizens of their respective states, Morris advanced the idea of being a citizen of a single union of states. He was also one of the most outspoken opponents of slavery among those who were present at the Constitutional Congress. He represented New York in the United States Senate from 1800 to 1803. Morris was born into a wealthy landowning family in New York. After attending King's College (now Columbia University) he studied law under Judge William Smith and earned admission to the bar. He was elected to the New York Provincial Congress before serving in the Continental Congress. After losing re-election to Congress, he moved to Philadelphia and became the assistant U.S. Superintendent of Finance. He represented Pennsylvania at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in which he advocated a strong central government. He served on the committee that wrote the final draft of the United States Constitution. After the ratification of the Constitution, Morris served as Minister Plenipotentiary to France. He criticized the French Revolution and the execution of Marie Antoinette. Morris returned to the United States in 1798 and won election to the Senate in 1800. Affiliating with the Federalist Party, he lost re-election in 1803. After leaving the Senate, he served as chairman of the Erie Canal Commission.
Dr. Christopher S. Morrisset is the Sessional Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Trinity Western University.
Rabbi Isaac S. Moses (1847–1926), born in Zaniemysl, Poznan, became a Reform rabbi in the United States in the early 1870s. He was appointed to rabbinic positions in Quincy, Illinois (1876), Milwaukee (1879), and Chicago (1888). In 1901 he became rabbi of the Central Synagogue, New York, where he remained until his retirement in 1919. In his early days in the United States, Moses was considered a radical Reformer, but later he took a more moderate position. In 1884 he introduced his own prayer book (Tefillat Yisrael). Moses was a founding member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and a member of the Reform committee charged with compiling an official prayer book.
Lada Moskalets is a historian, graduate student at Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland), and coordinator of the “Jewish Studies” program at Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv, Ukraine). Her academic interests include the social history of Eastern European Jewry, and Yiddish.
Dr. Mossbridge is a mystic and scientist studying human consciousness and time. You can learn more about her work at The Institute for Love and Time (TILT).
Rabbi Linda Motzkin is the founder of the Community Torah Project, a long-term endeavor providing learning opportunities for all ages in scribal arts and hands-on participation in the making of a Torah scroll. She has led programs and workshops throughout the United States and abroad and is available for educational programs in a variety of formats and settings. She has served as co-rabbi of Temple Sinai of Saratoga Springs, New York since her rabbinic ordination in 1986.
Rabbi Dr. Israel Mowshowitz (1914–1991), born in Poland was an Orthodox rabbi in the United States. He emigrated with his family in 1929, attended Yeshiva University for his undergraduate degree and was ordained at its Rabbi Yitzhak Elchanan Theological Seminary in 1937. He earned a Ph.D. in psychology from Duke University and Yeshiva University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1966. He served synagogues affiliated with the Conservative movement, first in Durham, North Carolina, and then at Omaha, Nebraska. In 1949, he was appointed rabbi of Hillcrest Jewish Center in Queens, New York, becoming rabbi emeritus in 1983. Respected in both the Orthodox and Conservative movements, Mowshowitz rose to become arguably the most prominent Jewish communal leader in New York. He was a founder of the International Synagogue at Kennedy International Airport and served as its honorary president. He also served on the boards of numerous charitable, interfaith, and interracial organizations in New York. He was active in the American civil rights movement and joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965. Mowshowitz helped establish Crossroads Africa, a pilot project that was a forerunner of the Peace Corps. In the 1960s, Mowshowitz was the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, and in that capacity, became a nationally quoted spokesman on political and social issues impacting Jewish interests. New York Governor Mario M. Cuomo, a Roman Catholic called Mowshowitz "my rabbi." He held the title of special assistant for community affairs in the governor's office, where he negotiated issues between the state and religious groups. According to Israel Miller, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, "[Mowshowitz] was the one all of us would call when we needed something done of a political nature." Mowshowitz traveled throughout the world on behalf of Jewish causes. In 1956, he was a member of one of the first delegations of rabbis to visit the Soviet Union to investigate the conditions of Soviet Jewry. He also traveled to Poland, South Africa, Iran, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and other countries on similar missions, including a study trip to 13 countries with the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The New York Board of Rabbis established the annual Rabbi Israel and Libby Mowshowitz Award, to honor both them and rabbis who excel in public service. He wrote two books, Fires to Warm Us (1978) and To Serve in Faithfulness (1975). With Debra Orenstein he co-authored, From Generation to Generation (1992).
Wilhelm Münz (also, Mintz; born April 2, 1856 in Tarnów, western Galicia; died January 20, 1917 in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia) was a German-Jewish rabbi and author.
Ben Murane works for the New Israel Fund, the leading organization promoting social justice and equality for all Israelis. Ben’s focus has been developing emerging Jewish communities around Israel, prayer, and social justice. Previously, he worked for New Voices, Hazon, and Breaking the Silence. He has held local and national lay leadership positions for J Street, Kol Zimrah, and the National Havurah Committee. He is also a co-publisher of Jewschool.com.
Isaac Henry Myers (1811-June 22, 1877), secretart to Sir Moses Montefiore and rabbi of the latter's Ramsgate synagogue from 1833-1877. Rabbi Myers officiated at weddings in Canterbury, of which congregation he was a honorary member. According to the Jewish Chronicle of 1st October 1847, he delivered the opening sermon at the laying of the foundation stone of the new Canterbury Synagogue by Sir Moses Montefiore. Isaac Myers was also an active educator and before 1842 he established a small boarding school at Ramsgate, the curriculum of which included Hebrew, English, Latin, German and French. The school was open to Jewish and non-Jewish pupils. In 1845, together with another brother, the Rabbi Moses Henry Myers, who was then assistant Reader of the Duke's Place synagogue, and Hebrew Master at its Talmud Torah school. Together, they published a booklet entitled Twelve hundred questions and answers on the Bible. The school was well supported and in 1865, after reorganization, it became known as the Ramsgate Middle Class school.
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