This abridged adaptation of the birkhot hashaḥr combines two separate works of Rivka Jaussi. The first: a translation of the blessing for distinguishing between day and night. The second: a series of haikus in German for seven out of the dozen or so “berakhot shenitani” (“blessings you [Hashem] gave me”).

This is an invitation to begin a new day with a short Jewish meditation for German speakers. I was inspired by Shefa Gold’s Chants, which takes a phrase from each of the daily Psalms and sets it to a melody. My German translation offers a wording that can also be sung alternately with the Hebrew phrase. (For the melodies, find Shefa Gold’s site here.) It works of course also as a way to pause briefly during the day for a Jewish meditative moment.

A paraliturgical Aleinu on the theme of appreciating the overwhelming abundance of possibility in our lives in this world.

A paraliturgical Ashrei on the theme of finding gratitude in divine silence and uniqueness.

Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami shared this prayer for a change of name and gender marker via their Facebook page on 1 November 2024.

This prayer after the horrors of 7 October 2023 perpetrated by Hamas and its allies was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for Yom haShoah in Germany (27 January) containing the El Malé Raḥamim for those who perished in the Holocaust was offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for Ukraine was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for relief from the COVID-19 epidemic was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024, likely in 2020.

This prayer for refugees tragically killed en route to Europe was offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for World AIDS Day was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for the wherewithal to endure chemotherapy was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for International Non-Binary People’s Day was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

A prayer for the Transgender Day of Visibility offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

This prayer for the Transgender Day of Remembrance was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

“Gebet für das Coming-Out” was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami on 19 March 2020.

“Gebet für Pride (HaMaariw Arawim)” was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

“Gebet für den Pride Month” was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami sometime before May 2024.

“Gebet für Berlin Pride” was first offered by Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami in 19 March 2020.

In 2019, Richard Collis released an album providing recordings of the prayers for the Shabbat Morning Services, from Nishmat til the end of Musaf, We Sing We Stay Together: Shabbat Morning Service Prayers. Accompanying liner notes included the romanized Hebrew text for each recorded prayer track, with an original translation in English below each sung phrase. Describing it he wrote, “The 64 track music CD album set We Sing We Stay Together of the Shabbat Morning Service Prayers, and a companion Sing-Along Prayer Book of the same name (to make it beyond easy to learn) is designed to help everyone access the beauty of their Judaic heritage, no prior knowledge required. These prayers belong to all of us.” In 2022, Collis released a follow-up edition with translations in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Russian. This is Richard Collis’s sing-a-long prayerbook for Shabbat morning in German.

This prayer for Tu b’Av by Lior bar-Ami, in German and English, was first offered in 2020.

This prayer by Lior bar-Ami for a synagogue congregation’s Rabbinic Search Committee was first offered in German and English in 2020.

This prayer for setting a holy intention before a board meeting was first offered by Lior bar-Ami around 10 January 2023.

This prayer by Lior bar-Ami for the ḥazzan of services during the Yamim Noraim (days of awe) was first offered in German and English in 2020.

This prayer by Lior bar-Ami for the installation of solar energy generating panels was first offered in German and English in 2020.

This prayer for rain by Lior bar-Ami, including the matriarchs, was first offered in German and English in 2020.

Ramadan Mubarak رمضان مبارك. “A Jewish Prayer for the Month of Ramadan” with its English translation was first published by Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger​ on his website, “Breaking Bread and Barriers: Solidarity through Prayer” on 15 June 2017, and composed by him for a Muslim-Jewish Iftar​ (break-fast) on 14 June 2017.

A prayer in Hebrew and Arabic (with translations in English and German) of solidarity of mothers for there to be peace in the world for the sake of their children.

This is a prayer for parents to say for safe sleep for their newborn children. It is based almost entirely on the longer form of the traditional prayers before sleep. Because of gender there are two forms, for a boy and for a girl. I wrote this as part of my daughter’s naming ceremony in January 2001. I used it again in 2006 when my second daughter was born.

Just in time for Ḥanukkah, Chajm Guski shares a חנוכה מדריך (Ḥanukkah Madrikh), Handbook for Ḥanukkah, with a Deutsch translation and transliteration of the blessings on lighting the Ḥanukiah, the kavanah, HaNerot HaLalu, and the piyyut, Maoz Tzur.

While the theme of the Shema is dedicating oneself to the Divine and their Teaching, this paraliturgical Shema is dedicated to internalizing Jewish identity mindful of the experience of past generations and one’s responsibility to future ones.

A Friday night siddur in Hebrew with German translation produced by the first egalitarian German speaking minyan and Rosh Ḥodesh group in Berlin between 1995 and 1998. “Gut Schabbes,” a project for an equal Ḳabbalat Shabbat at home, was supported by a grant from the ZURÜCKGEBEN Foundation[foot]Zurückgeben = „Giving Back“[/foot] in 1995.

A Proclamation of Fundamental Animal Rights drafted by the West German Green Party in 1989 upon the 200th anniversary of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” (1789), in German with translations in English, French, and Portuguese.

In a poignant reflection on human limitation and the role of religion, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) consoled two rabbis each grieving the painful loss of their children. The first letter dated 12 February 1950, drafted in German before its translation into English, was written for Rabbi Robert S. Marcus after the death of the rabbi’s eleven-year-old son, Jay, from polio in September 1949. The second letter, dated 4 March 1950, was written for Rabbi Norman Salit after the death of Salit’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Miriam. Einstein’s letter to Rabbi Salit borrowed from and expanded upon the composition of his letter to Rabbi Marcus. In a few short lines, the letter expresses Einstein’s opinion on the prison-like delusion of consciousness — and the work of “true” religion to escape this prison through the intentional expansion of compassion beyond one’s self.

Abraham Joshua Heschel’s essay “Das Gebet Als Äußerung Und Einfühlung” published in Monatsschrift Für Geschichte Und Wissenschaft Des Judenthums, vol. 83 (1939).

This is Rabbi Dr. Leo Beack’s prayer for his wife Natalie Baeck née Hamburger (1878-1937), dated 7 March 1937. Natalie had died two days prior on 5 March.

This is the Kol Nidrei as offered by the Hannover Synagogue on Yom Kippur in 1937 according to the text provided in a poster, “Agende für Kol-nidre und Seelenfeier in der Synaogen-Gemeinde Hannover” (10 September 1937). Thank you to David Selis for providing digital images of the poster.

This is the prayer which Rabbi Dr. Leo Baeck had disseminated to Jewish communities throughout Germany to recite on Yom Kippur, 10 October 1935. The German text here is as found in the archival notes of Helmut Grünewald, Ein Judenjunge durfte kein Deutscher sein (Bristol, 1998), pp. 20-21 in the collection of the Leo Baeck Institute. The English translation is as published by Dr. Michael Meyer in Rabbi Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative in Troubled Times (2020), pp. 106-107.

Rabbi Leo Baeck’s essay on prayer “Gebet im Judentum,” was published in the “Judentum und Gebet” issue of Bne Briss (September/October 1935), top of page 82.

This is Albert Einstein’s essay in English, “What I Believe” as published in Forum and Century 84 (October 1930), no. 4, 193–194, set next to his essay in German, “Wie ich die Welt sehe” (How I see the World) as published in Mein Weltbild (1934). The German version includes some thoughts elided in the English which I hope are elucidated in my translation into English of the German version. David E. Rowe and Robert Schulman (in Einstein on Politics 2007, p. 226) note, “The text was reproduced several times under the title ‘The World as I See It,’ most notably in Mein Weltbild and Ideas and Opinions, and in 1932 the German League of Human Rights released a phonograph recording of Einstein reading a slightly variant version entitled “Confession of Belief.” [It]…differs significantly from that in [published in Ideas and opinions: based on Mein Weltbild by] Einstein (in) 1954.”

A birkon and collection of table songs in Hebrew with German translation.

The Masoretic Hebrew text of Proverbs 30:10-31, the alphabetic acrostic “Eshet Ḥayil,” with a German translation by Franz Rosenzweig.

The Ḳaddish d’Rabbanan in Aramaic with its German translation by Franz Rosenzweig.

The popular adjuration of the angels of peace and ministering angels, Shalom Aleikhem, in Hebrew with a German translation by Franz Rosenzweig.

Angie Irma Cohon’s “Day of God” is a hymn for Yom Kippur, an abbreviated adaptation of “O Tag des Herrn!,” a paraliturgical Kol Nidrei by Leopold Stein, translated from German to English by Frederick Lucian Hosmer. Cohon’s abridged rendering is published in תפלת ישראל (Tefilat Yisrael) A Brief Jewish Ritual (Women of Miẓpah 1921), p. 20.

A German translation of the Birkat haMazon prepared by Franz Rosenzweig.

A song in Yiddish bemoaning the suffering brought about in an epidemic.

The prayer for the sovereign as dedicated to the Austrian emperor (and King of Hungary) at the outset of World War Ⅰ.