Resources using Latin script← Back to Languages & Scripts Index We name our daughters on their fifteenth day of life. This is based on Vayiqra 12:1-5, which describes the length of a woman’s period of impurity after childbirth. If she gives birth to a son, she is impure for seven days; if she gives birth to a daughter, she is impure for fourteen days. The passage seems to connect the baby boy’s circumcision on the eighth day to the conclusion of the mother’s seven day period of impurity. (Similarly, Vayiqra 22:27 says that a newborn animal must remain with its mother for seven days, and on the eighth day and onward it is acceptable as a sacrificial offering.) It seems, then, that for the first seven days of a little boy’s life, and the first fourteen days of a little girl’s life, the child and mother are still closely linked, and both remain separate from the larger family and community. Then, on the eighth day of her son’s life, and on the fifteenth day of her daughter’s life, the mother begins to rejoin her family and community, and the child too becomes incorporated as a member of the family and community. That is why a baby boy’s father becomes obligated to circumcise his son only on the eighth day, and why the baby boy first receives his name at his brit milah; it is then that the baby boy becomes a member of the community of Israel. On our daughter’s fifteenth day, we come together as a family and as a community to welcome this new member and to give her a name. . . . Aleinu, as rewritten in Hebrew and English for Ḥavurat Shalom, Somerville, Massachusetts. . . . Suggestions for chaplains on offering public prayers in interfaith settings. . . . The following work was published by a Havurah publication in the late 1970s or early 1980s by Rab Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. In it, Rab Zalman presciently describes a digital database of liturgy and liturgy-related work that havurah groups across the world could use to bring together custom designed and crafted works for use in communal prayer. We are grateful to Reb Zalman for bringing this work to our attention. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 18 June 1986. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 25 February 1986. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 13 November 1985. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 22 October 1985. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 4 June 1985. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 15 April 1985. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 28 March 1985. . . . The full text of Rabbi Martin Weiner’s invocation offered on the second day of the Democratic National Convention, July 17th, 1984. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 21 June 1984. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 14 June 1984. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 2 April 1984. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 8 March 1984. . . . This Prayer for Peace by Samuel Avital was composed in January 1984 for a gathering of spiritual teachers from all over the world at Mt. Sinai in March 1984. A month later, the State of Israel would return the Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty. While that event was not documented in any media, the prayer was first published in Four Worlds Journal vol. 2 no. 4, (January 1985), pp. 16-17. Of the event itself, Samuel Avital adds, “I performed there some of my mime performances like Jacob & Angel, Black & White and others.” The prayer for peace is included in Samuel Avital’s Passover Haggadah (2021). . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 2 June 1983. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 12 May 1983. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 21 April 1983. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 11 April 1983. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 1 February 1983. . . . This is a kavvanah (intention) for anyone in a desperate circumstance of needing to eat or drink for their mortal health, to do so with the full confidence that they are fulfilling a mitsvah required for them in the Torah, to preserve their life. The kavvanah was related by Rav Yitschok Zilberstein in his Toras haYoledes (1983), chapter 52, section 10, p. 357 (pp. 331-332 in the bilingual edition 1989), “הועתק ממחזור עתיק” (as “copied from an old maḥzor”). Unfortunately, we can’t provide a more direct reference to this maḥzor. If you know, please leave a comment or contact us. . . . In the early 1980s, while speaking at Oberlin College Hillel, Susannah Heschel was introduced to an early feminist haggadah that suggested adding a crust of bread on the seder plate, as a sign of solidarity with Jewish lesbians (suggesting that there’s as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate). Heschel felt that to put bread on the seder plate would be to accept that Jewish lesbians and gay men violate Judaism like ḥamets violates Passover. So, at her next seder, she chose an orange as a symbol of inclusion of gays and lesbians and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. She offered the orange as a symbol of the fruitfulness for all Jews when lesbians and gay men are contributing and active members of Jewish life. . . . The closing prayer at the Nov 13, 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. by Rabbi (Navy Chaplain) Arnold E. Resnicoff. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 24 June 1982. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 21 April 1983. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 20 April 1982. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 30 March 1982. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 16 March 1982. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 12 May 1981. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 19 March 1981. . . . “The Song of Miriam” by Rabbi Ruth Sohn was first published as “I Shall Sing to the Lord a New Song,” in Kol Haneshamah: Shabbat Vehagim, Reconstructionist Prayerbook, 1989, 1995 Second Edition. Reconstructionist Press, pp. 768-769. (This poem was also published in several haggadot and other books and set to music by several composers in the U.S. and Israel.) Rabbi Sohn wrote the poem in 1981 as a rabbinical student after immersing herself in the Torah verses and the traditional midrashim about Miriam, and after writing a longer modern midrash about Miriam. Part of this modern midrash was published as “Journeys,” in All the Women Followed Her, ed. Rebecca Schwartz (Rikudei Miriam Press, 2001). . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 18 March 1980. . . . A ḳinnah composed by a concentration camp survivor. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 13 March 1980. . . . The earliest “Earth Pledge” circulated between Earth Day 1970 and 1983. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 14 June 1979. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 2 May 1979 in the event of the 31st anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 27 March 1979. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 27 March 1979. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 8 March 1979. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 27 July 1978. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 15 June 1978. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 17 May 1978. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 18 April 1978. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 6 April 1978. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 4 April 1978. . . . |
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