“Prayer for Friday night” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in Essays and Miscellanies (1853), in the section “Sacred Communings,” pp. 169-170. In the UK edition of Sacred Communings (1853) the prayer appears with small variations of spelling and punctuation on pages 75-76. The UK edition also includes the detail that this prayer was written when the family lived in Teignmouth, Devon (1828-1840).

“Prayer before retiring to rest” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in Essays and Miscellanies (1853), in the section “Sacred Communings,” pp. 202-203. In the UK edition of Sacred Communings (1853) the prayer appears with small variations of spelling and punctuation on pages 91-92.

“Prayer for the Government of the Thoughts” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings (1853), pp. 74-75.

“Prayer for grace” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in Essays and Miscellanies (1853), in the section “Sacred Communings,” pp. 229-230.

“Prayer for the Penitential Days” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in the UK edition of Sacred Communings, pp. 90-91. It is not found in the US edition.

“Concluding supplication for every morning” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in Essays and Miscellanies (1853), in the section “Sacred Communings,” pp. 207-208. In the UK edition of Sacred Communings (1853) the prayer appears with small variations of spelling and punctuation on pages 87-88.

“Meditation on Death” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in the UK edition of Sacred Communings, pp. 82-87. It is not found in the US edition. A note on the title indicates clarifies that Grace wrote this in June 1835. Another note in the text (from Sarah) shares that Grace’s posture towards death in this prayer also appeared to describe her experience of passing twelve years later in 1847.

“Gebet an der Jahrzeit des Vaters, während man fastet” was written by Yehoshua Heshil Miro and published in his anthology of teḥinot, בית יעקב (Beit Yaaqov) Allgemeines Gebetbuch für gebildete Frauen mosaischer Religion. In the 1835 edition, it appears as teḥinah №129, on pp. 244-245. In the 1842 edition, it appears as teḥinah №130, pp. 251-252.

This prayer by Sir Moses Montefiore appears in Order of Service at the Dedication of the Synagogue Founded by Moses Montefiore and Judith his Wife, in commemoration of the happy event of their visit to the holy city of Jerusalem, the inheritance of their forefathers and as an humble tribute to the Almighty for his great and manifold blessings (Ramsgate: 30th Sivan (16th June) 5593 [1833]. — Eve of Rosh Ḥodesh), pp 9-10.

This untitled poem by Sir Robert Grant was published posthumously by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) as the third poem (“Ⅲ”) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 9-11. It was first published without attribution as hymn №19 in the Appendix of Hymns for private devotion, selected and original (ed. Bethia Fuller-Maitland, 1827) on pages 190-191.

This is the poem by Sir Robert Grant known best from its incipit “O Worship the King,” as published posthumously under the title “Psalm ⅭⅣ” by his brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 33-35. It was first published without attribution as hymn №31 in the Appendix of Hymns for private devotion, selected and original (ed. Bethia Fuller-Maitland, 1827) on pages 206-207. It was first published with attribution as psalm №104 in Psalms and Hymns for Public, Private, and Social Worship (ed. Henry V. Elliott, 1835) on pages 34-35. Identified as an adaptation of Psalms 104 (and with five of its six stanzas) the hymn was included as №16 in the Union hymnal for Jewish worship (1914). Brian Hehn writes, “This hymn, one of Grant’s most popular, is a paraphrase of Psalm 104. It was originally thought to have been a rendering of William Kethe’s setting of the same psalm in the Anglo-Genevan Psalter of 1561. However, Episcopal hymnologist Raymond F. Glover contends that this is a misconception. He argues that the two settings are in the same meter only because they were written for the same psalm.”

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning Sabbath service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1830.

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1826.

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning Sabbath service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1826.

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning Sabbath service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1826.

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning Sabbath service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1826.

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning Sabbath service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1830.

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning Sabbath service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1826.

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning Sabbath service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1826.

This historically significant prayer for the government of the United States of America offered by the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.), appears in The Sabbath service and miscellaneous prayers, adopted by the Reformed society of Israelites, founded in Charleston, S.C., November 21, 1825 (1830, Bloch: 1916).

“Licht und Wahrheit (Light and Truth)” is a hymn translated by Felix Adler from Allgemeines Israelitisches Gesangbuch: eingeführt in dem Neuen Israelitischen Tempel zu Hamburg (1833), hymn №125, pp. 155-157, and published in Hymns, for Divine Service in the Temple Emanu-El (1871), hymn №12, pp. 24-25. We have tentatively dated this hymn to 1868, since another hymn by Adler (“School-hymn, no. 36”) can be found appended from another unattributed work in A Guide to Instruction in the Israelitsh Religion (Samuel Adler, trans. M. Mayer, Temple Emanu-El, 1864, 4th printing 1868). The hymn as printed in the Hamburg Temple Hymnal is nine stanzas long. That hymnal credits the hymn as printed in the collected sermons of Eduard Kley, Sammlung der neuesten Predigten (1826) where it appears on pages 49-50 in three stanzas as part of a discourse on Passover.

A hymn provided for opening or concluding the morning Sabbath service of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, S.C.) ca. 1826.

“Sabbath Blessing” by Caroline de Litchfield Harby (ca.1800-1876), is included in the so-called Isaac Harby Prayerbook (1974) also known as the Cohn Lithograph, a handwritten prayerbook attesting to the prayers of the Reformed Society of Israel.

The hymn “Although the vine its fruit deny” by Abraham Moïse (ca.1799-1869), is presented as Hymn 1 in The Sabbath service and miscellaneous prayers, adopted by the Reformed society of Israelites, founded in Charleston, S.C., November 21, 1825 (1830), p. 55.

“A Prayer for Pentecost” by the Reformed Society of Israelites is found in The Sabbath service and miscellaneous prayers, adopted by the Reformed Society of Israelites, founded in Charleston, S. C., November 21, 1825 (1830), as reprinted by Barnett A. Elzas in The Sabbath Service and Miscellaneous Prayers (1916), pp. 51-52.

“Father, whate’er of earthly bliss” is the incipit to Hymn №6 in Barnett A. Elzas’s The Sabbath Service and Miscellaneous Prayers (1916), an edited reprinting of The Sabbath service and miscellaneous prayers, adopted by the Reformed Society of Israelites, founded in Charleston, S. C., November 21, 1825 (1830).

“Brich aus in lauten Klagen” by Heinrich Heine was preserved in a letter he wrote to his friend Moses Moser dated 25 October 1824. The poem is included in Heinrich Heine’s Letters on The Rabbi of Bacharach, the manuscript of which only survived in a fragment, the rest having been lost, according to Heine, in a fire. The English translation here by Nina Salaman was transcribed from her anthology, Apples & Honey (1921) where it appears under the title of “Martyr-Song,” published at an earlier date in The Jewish Chronicle.

This paraphrase of Psalms 49 in English verse by Sir Robert Grant was first published under the title “Psalm ⅩⅬⅨ. Imitated.” without attribution in Poems Divine and Moral: Many of Them Now First Published (ed. John Bowdler, 1821), pp. 59-61. It was later published posthumously by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 22-24.

The National Anthem of the United States of America with a Yiddish translation by Berl Lapin.

“Composed for the Day of Atonement during the Prevalence of the Yellow Fever in New York in 1803,” this prayer was likely composed by Abraham Mears Isaacks (1765-1815). It was published in the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society number 20 (1911), p. 158, as submitted by Rebecca E. Mitchell, one of Isaacks descendants.

This paraphrase of Psalms 71 in English verse by Sir Robert Grant was first published posthumously under the title “Psalm ⅬⅩⅩⅠ” by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 31-32.

This paraphrase of a portion of Psalms 84 in English verse by Sir Robert Grant was first published posthumously under the title “Part of Psalm ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅣ. Imitated” by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 36-37.

This paraphrase of the second half of Psalms 19 in English verse by Sir Robert Grant was first published posthumously under the title “Psalm ⅩⅠⅩ” by Robert’s brother Charles Grant (Lord Glenelg) in Sacred Poems by the Late Right Hon. Sir Robert Grant (1839), pp. 28-30. As Charles Grant writes as introduction to the poem, it “is intended as a sequel or counterpart to Addison’s hymn, “The spacious firmament.” It corresponds to the latter portion of the 19th Psalm, as Addison’s does to the former.”

The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America, were first adopted in 1791. They were closely modeled on the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights drafted by George Mason in May 1776. This translation, by Judah David Eisenstein was published in 1891.

A ḥatimah (closing) prayer delivered by Ḥazzan Gershom Seixas at a special Thanksgiving Day service by K.K. Shearith Israel in 1789.

A prayer of a physician from Markus Herz in German with its Hebrew and English translations.

“A PRAYER composed and delivered by the Reverend Isaac Touro, in the Jewish Synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island, on Thursday the 28th Day of November, 1765, being the Day appointed, by his Honour the Governor’s Proclamation, for a general Thanksgiving in this Colony. Translated from the Hebrew.”

This undated 18th century prayer (before 1756) by an unknown author for “the opening of [a] lodge, etc., and used by Jewish Freemasons” was published in “Old Forms of Lodge Prayers,” The Hebrew Leader (31 December 1889), p. 4. (The Hebrew Leader regularly included news of interest to Jewish member of masonic fraternities.) The provenance of the prayer is offered in the lede: “Appended to a copy of the Constitutions of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of F. and A. Masons, published in 1801, by Bro. D. Longworth, at the Shakespeare Gallery, New York City (kindly loaned to us by R.W. Henry C. Banks), we find a number of forms which at the present day appear unique. These forms are spoken of as having been in use for a long period during the last century; and from them we extract two or three Prayers, one or the other of which it was customary to repeat, according to the religious faith of the members of the lodge’ which had assembled. We give them for the benefit of our readers.” The source for the prayer in its re-printed form is a 1756 work, Ahiman Rezon: or, a help to a brother; shewing the excellency of secrecy, … Together with Solomon’s temple an oratorio, as it was performed for the benefit of free-masons by Laurence Dermott (1756).

An exhortation given by Ḥakham Ishak Nieto published before his translation of the Sliḥot, in Spanish with English translation by Isaac Pinto (1766).

A kinah/elegy for those massacred in the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648–1649 composed by a possible eyewitness to the tragedy.

A piyyut providing the 42 letter divine name as an acrostic, recorded in the work of Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz.

The piyyut, Yedid Nefesh, in Hebrew with an English translation.

A translation of the piyyut Yom Zeh l’Yisrael.

An abridged rhymed translation of the piyyut Yom Zeh l’Yisrael.

This translation of “Yom Zeh l’Yisrael” by Rabbi David Aaron de Sola of a piyyut by Rabbi Yitsḥaq Luria was first published in his Ancient Melodies of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (1857).

The piyyut, Yah Ribon, in Aramaic with an English translation.

The piyyut, Yah Ribon, in Aramaic with an English translation.

The piyyut, yah Ribon Olam, in Hebrew with a rhyming English translation.

This translation by Rabbi David Aaron de Sola of “Yah Ribon” by Rabbi Yisrael Najara was first published in his Ancient Melodies of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (1857).

Barukh shèAmar for Shabbat and festivals, in the Old Persian rite, as recorded in MS Adler 23 ENA in the JTS Library. The Old Persian rite shows some fascinating unique linguistic features. The first thing that immediately strikes one is its tendency towards poetic extensions and doublings, even in texts (such as the Avot blessing) where most other rites are almost completely uniform. It also shows some nonstandard vocalizations that appear to be influenced by the Babylonian system of vocalization. In modern Persian communities the standard rite is a variation of the Sephardic rite used throught the Mizraḥi world, but this older rite with its unique facets deserves to be preserved as well. This Barukh shèAmar is an intricate rhyming acrostic chock full of Biblical references.