The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 25 May 1988.

The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 4 May 1988.

The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 20 April 1988.

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.

This prayer was delivered by the U.S. Navy Chaplain, Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, at the 1987 National Civic Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance, in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. It was first published in Days of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust: a Department of Defense guide for commemorative observance (Office of the Secretary of Defence, 1988).

The unabridged edition of the Tu biShvat seder haggadah, The Trees are Davvening.

Suggestions for chaplains on offering public prayers in interfaith settings.

Aleinu, as rewritten in Hebrew and English for Ḥavurat Shalom, Somerville, Massachusetts.

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.

This prayer by Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk at the second inauguration of President Ronald Reagan was recorded in the United States’ Congressional Record on January 21, 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).

תפלות לחיילי צבא ארצות הברית Prayer Book for Jewish Personnel in the Armed Forces of the United States (1984) is a trans-denominational and bilingual Hebrew-English siddur arranged by the Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy of the Jewish Welfare Board. The siddur served to update the prayerbook offered by the organization in 1958. It included elements from The Traditional Prayer Book for Sabbaths and Festivals (ed. Rabbi David de Sola Pool, 1960), The Gates of Prayer (ed. Rabbi Chaim Stern, 1975), and a siddur that had not yet been published in 1984: Sim Shalom (ed. Rabbi Jules Harlow, 1985). On the verso of the title page Rabbi Stephan O. Parnes is credited as editor, while Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, Rabbi Leonard S. Kravitz, and Rabbi Max J. Routtenberg are credited for their editorial work in preparing the manuscript of the siddur in the Acknowledgments section.

This earth pledge by Maryann Shores was included in her published address of the first plenary session of Humanity’s Quest for Unity: a United Nations… colloquium in honour of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “proceedings of a colloquium held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in conjunction with the opening of the 38th meeting of the [UN] General Assembly [26 Sepetember 1983]” (ed. by Leo Zonneveld, 1985), pp. 78-84. The pledge appears on page 78 of “A Positive Approach to Acceptable Peace: the Right Use of Human Energy.”

The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 2 June 1983.

This earth pledge appears without attribution in a justice, peace, and environmentally conscious Catholic textbook, Peace through Justice ((Diocese of Cleveland, 1983) by Louise Marie Prochaska. Sister Prochaska, however, does not recall composing it and it may have been circulating for some time in newsletters or other ephemeral works beforehand. On the page following the quoted pledge, the curricular resource recommends contacting the Union of Concerned Scientists for more information, but that recommendation may have more to do with the pedagogical theme of the section that included the text of the pledge. Among the earth pledges, it is unique. Instead of following the form of Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance, it uses an ABCB rhyme scheme.

The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 12 May 1983.

The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 11 April 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 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.

An El Malé Raḥamim prayer for Victims of Terror in Erets Yisrael, with an English translation by Rabbi Hillel Ḥayyim Lavery-Yisraeli from Prayers for Israel, for Protection from Terror Attacks, and In Memory of the Victims (15 October 2023), page 6.

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 30 March 1982.

The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 20 April 1982.

This earth pledge by Carol T. Gaddy and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn is included in a short essay by Gaddy entitled “Our New Pledge of Allegiance.” The essay can be found in What Will It Take to Prevent Nuclear War: Grassroots Responses to Our Most Challenging Question (ed. Pat Farren 1983), p. 149. Carol Gaddy writes that the pledge “was composed spontaneously by me and Marianne Wolfman-Dawn as we marched on the road to Damascus, Arkansas, April 25, 1981, protesting the nuclear missile site where a Titan missile had exploded the previous November, endangering the people it was meant to protect.”

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.

This earth pledge can be found within “Earth Day” an essay by the writer and Unitarian Universalist minister Clarke D. Wells (1930-2006, and included in his collection Sunshine and Rain at Once (1981), p. 20. It is the only place we have so far located an earth pledge in the context of a prayer. Although published in 1981, the essay, including the prayer and pledge, was likely written the previous year in the lead up to Earth Day 1980.

“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.

The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 13 March 1980.

A ḳinnah composed by a concentration camp survivor.

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.