← Back to Languages & Scripts Index Asarah B’Tevet (10th of Tevet) is one of the minor fast days in the Jewish calendar. Mechon Hadar’s Rabbi Ethan Tucker provides an overview of the various halakhic issues that are raised by a fasting on a Friday due to the upcoming Shabbat – how do we balance the tragedy of the fall of Jerusalem in 6th century BCE, which our fasting commemorates, with the joy of Shabbat? . . . Lauren Deutsch designed a High Holy Days greeting card that is a yad (pointer) for all readers to use in their siddurim during services. It also functions as a place holder when one wishes to take a rest from following along. . . . The time we are in now is a time to ask: are we so determined to undo God’s rainbow covenant? Will we truly burn the sea, chemically and literally, with the oil we unleash from inside the Earth? Will we flood the sea with death as the land was flooded according to the Noah story of so long ago? As the cleanup continues and the effects will continue for decades, what new floods will we unleash in the coming years? . . . The following seven lessons by Rabbi Hillel Ḥayim Yisraeli-Lavery to help the student prepare for their reading of Megillat Esther. The nusaḥ taught is Israeli style Ashkenaz-Lithuanian. . . . When works are printed bearing shemot, any one of the ten divine names sacred to Judaism, they are cared for with love. If a page or bound work bearing shemot falls to the ground it’s a Jewish custom to draw up the page or book and kiss it. Just as loved ones are cared for after they’ve fallen and passed away, when the binding fails and leaves fall from siddurim and other seforim they are collected in boxes and bins and brought for burial, where their holy words can decompose back into the earth from which their constituent elements once grew, and were once harvested to become paper and books, and ink, string, glue. While teaching at the Teva Learning Center last Fall 2010, I collected all our shemot that we had intentionally or unintentionally made on our copy machine, or which we had collected from the itinerant teachers who pass through the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center on so many beautiful weekend shabbatonim. While leafing through the pages, I found one and kept it from the darkness of the genizah. . . . The popular practice of a night time prayer vigil is not well understood. In the siddur, most people pass by it because they don’t know what to do with it. Others are confused because of the lack of consistency in its presentation from one siddur to the next. At the end of the day, this ritual would be regarded as a rite reserved for the pious — for the great tzadikim who made regular use of it. . . . It’s always a real struggle for the Left to successfully tackle oppression within its own ranks. But when we do it, our movements gain, every time, from the deeper understandings that emerge. To start the process this time, we need some basic information about what anti-Jewish oppression is and how to counter it. But it has to come from a perspective of justice for all people, not from opportunistic attempts to slander or censor social justice efforts that are gaining strength. . . . Eternal God, You created earth and heavens with mercy, and blew the breath of life into animals and human beings. We were created amidst a world of wholeness, a world called “very good,” pure and beautiful, but now your many works are being erased by us from the book of life. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 14 September 2006. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 6 April 2006. . . . “Mi she-Berakh Prayer for Agunot and Women who are Denied a Writ of Divorce (mesorvot get)” was written by Dr. Yael Levine in the summer of 2006 and first published in the journal De’ot in advance of Purim 2007. The Hebrew version of the prayer was subsequently reprinted in the monumental Sefer ha-Shabbat, edited by Yonadav Kaploun and issued by Yediot Aharonot in 2011 (p. 260). The English translation was first published in The Jerusalem Post 16 March 2016 (Comment & Features), p. 13. The Hebrew annotation of the sources appeared already in the initial article in De’ot, and was subsequently published, inter alia, in an article published on kipa.co.il on 13 March 2019. . . . In Jewish tradition, on this very day of disaster Mashiaḥ (Messiah) was born, but hidden away till a generation would come that is ready to make peace and eco-social justice in the world. So this year, we offer this story of hope and redemption to be read by Jews and Muslims together on the fast day or for the evening break-fast when it ends. . . . Judy Gumbo co-authored this Al Ḥeit with her partner Stew Albert, ז״ל, before his passing in 2006. This Al Ḥeit was most recently used as part of Yom Kippur Kol Nidre services across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street 5772. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 12 July 2005. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 26 May 2005. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 12 April 2005. . . . A prayer for the State of Israel during conflicts over sovereignty and dispossession. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 21 September 2004. . . . A blessing by Reb Zalman for Peace, Health, Joy, Prosperity, and Kindness which he wrote in spray paint on a municipal water tank behind his house in Colorado. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 9 September 2004. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 7 July 2004. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 22 June 2004. . . . A prayer composed by Rabbi Shai Held in the aftermath of the devastating 2004 Asian Tsunami. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 3 June 2004. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 20 May 2004. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 5 May 2004. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 18 March 2004. . . . This egalitarian adaptation of the Me she’Ana seliḥah for the season of Teshuvah was made by Julia Andelman and Lisa Exler in September 2004. . . . The full text of Rabbi Ronne Friedman’s invocation offered on the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention, July 29th, 2004. . . . A ḳinah (lamentation) for Israeli Prime Minister Yitzḥak Rabin, assassinated on 4 November 1995, the yahrzeit of which is י״א בְּמַרחֶשְׁוָן (11 Marḥeshvan). . . . This prayer for Israel was written by Rabbi Naḥum Waldman (1931-2004) for T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. T’ruah works to ensure that Israel remains a safe and secure home for Jews and a place that lives up to the ideal stated in the State of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence that Israel “will foster the development of the country for all of its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” . . . This is an untitled prayer by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, originally offered by him in an address given at the Roundtable Dialogue for the visit of the 14th Dalai Lama together with other Nobel Laureates in Vancouver, B.C., entitled “Balancing Educating the Mind with Educating the Heart.” The event was held at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, on Tuesday, April 20, 2004. While the video documenting the address is currently offline, thankfully the original text of the prayer is given in its transcription by Gabbai Seth Fishman. The prayer is presented here alongside an adaptation found in the High Holy Days Maḥzor of Congregation Nevei Kodesh: Jewish Renewal Community of Boulder (2018), p.36, Section 10: Prayers for Rosh haShanah. The prayer in this form, as revised by Netanel Miles-Yepez and Reb Zalman, can be found at Kol Aleph (2014) and the now defunct Sufi Hasidim website (2009). . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 19 November 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 26 June 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 17 June 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 16 June 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 13 June 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 11 June 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 21 May 2003. . . . I wanted my students to start thinking of prayers as expressions of an interior world, rather than as descriptions of the exterior one. I suggested to them that they think of a prayer as a kind of mask, much like the ones worn in religious rituals by many peoples. The job of the mask-wearer is to discover the reality on the “inside” of the mask and bring it to life. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 19 May 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 5 May 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 30 April 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 29 April 2003. . . . “A Memory’s fire burns within me still” was adapted by Andrew Meit from Gabriel Seed’s translation of the kinah, Aish Tukad b’kirbi (“A Fire Shall Burn Within Me”). . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 28 April 2003. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 22 January 2003. . . . “Kinah Lekhurban Gan Eden” was written by Richard Kaplan and first published as the fourth track to his album Life of the Worlds: Journeys in Jewish Sacred Music (2003). This work is under the copyright stewardship of the estate of Richard Kaplan and was republished here at the request of Barak Gale who made a recording of the song with the permission of Richard Kaplan while he was alive. . . . |
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