This “Prayer for an end to injustice on Earth” by an anonymous author, was first published in בצרור החיים: A Yizkor Supplement for Palestinian Life (Halachic Left 2024), pages 34-35.

This prayer, “Memorial Prayer for Sacred Life Lost” by Netanel Zellis-Paley, was first published in בצרור החיים: A Yizkor Supplement for Palestinian Life (Halachic Left 2024), pages 12-13.

This El malé prayer, “For activists, journalists, and doctors in Palestine” by Avi Garelick, was first published in בצרור החיים: A Yizkor Supplement for Palestinian Life (Halachic Left 2024), p. 11.

“For the Children in Gaza” by Avital Raff, was first published in בצרור החיים: A Yizkor Supplement for Palestinian Life (Halachic Left 2024).

The author of this qinah is a survivor of the slaughter in Kibbutz Kfar Azza. The qinah was first published in an article by Tamar Biala appearing in The Times of Israel, “O how she sat alone: New laments for a beloved land” on 4 August 2024, appended with the note: “These Lamentations will appear in Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash Vol. 2.”

The author of this qinah is a survivor of the slaughter in Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The qinah was first published in an article by Tamar Biala appearing in The Times of Israel, “O how she sat alone: New laments for a beloved land” on 4 August 2024, appended with the note: “These Lamentations will appear in Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash Vol. 2.”

A supplemental stanza to the popular 13th century piyyut, Maoz Tsur, for the Ḥanukkah occurring in the aftermath of the horrors on 7 October, as written and shared by דנה פרל.

Qinat Be’eri was written by Yagel Haroush in the month of Marḥeshban after the massacres on 7 October and disseminated on social media.

“תפילה נוכח הרעה מדרום | Prayer in the face of the Missiles Falling On Israel” was shared by the Masorti Movement in Israel via their social media account on Twitter on 12 May 2023.

The “Prayer for North American Jews on the 75th Anniversary of Israel’s Founding” was first published and disseminated from the website of T’ruah, via PDF here.

“Tefilah haSha’ah” (Prayer of the Moment) was offered by Rav Avi Novis-Deutsch and shared by the Knesset haRabbanim l’Yisrael via their Facebook page on 29 January 2023. The English translation was shared by the Rabbinical Assembly via their Facebook page a few hours later. We have transcribed the prayer from the source image and set the Hebrew side-by-side with its translation in English.

“A Prayer for Repro Shabbat” was written collectively by the staff of the National Council of Jewish Women and disseminated on Twitter and Facebook 27 January 2022.

This is Mendel Roth’s prayer upon sharing his Shirat ha-Ahavah (song of love). The text of the prayer was provided in the description to the video on Youtube. English translation of the pointed Hebrew by Aharon Varady.

“A Prayer for Those Denied Abortion Care” was composed collectively by the staff of the National Council of Jewish Women and disseminated on Facebook in response to the regressive health care policies of the State of Texas in the United States in 2021.

A prayer for the safety of all the inhabitants of the Land of Israel offered during the November 12th, 2019 Tel Aviv rocket strike.

This prayer was originally published April 13th, 2013 on Dafna Meir’s blog, Derekh Nashim (Women’s Ways), here, writing “את התפילה זכיתי לחבר תוך כדי למידה למבחן תרופות במחלקה הנוירוכירורגית בסורוקה, בה אני עובדת.” (The prayer I composed for a friend while studying for a test at the Neurosurgery department at Soroka Hospital, which I work.) English translation by Moshe F. via Israellycool. More about Dafna Meir, here and here.

A prayer for the welfare of Israel composed during the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict.

A prayer for Israel which reserves the right to criticize its moral failings.

An al hanissim formulation for Yom Ha-Atsma’ut by the scholar Amos Hakham.

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.

“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.

This memorial prayer by Dr. Moshe Sokolow was offered on the first anniversary of the 9/11 massacres on 10 September 2002.

A ḳinnah composed by a concentration camp survivor.

A prayer written for the play David Dances (1997) by playwright Stephen Mo Hanan.

An original Hebrew translation of the blues-rock portion of the Agnus Dei movement from Leonard Bernstein’s MASS (note: always spelled with ALL CAPS), where the crowd of disaffected and disillusioned young parishioners interrupts the offertory to demand peace now, and hold God to account for not giving it to us. It’s unsurprising that for a composer as proudly and openly Jewish as Bernstein that even his setting of the Tridentine Mass has major “shaking your fist at God” energy. Not gonna lie, I was listening to this on a plane out of Jerusalem as the war was starting, and I started to tear up. I immediately started writing this translation and finished it up in the process of about an hour while stuck somewhere a few thousand feet above Greenland. It’s amazing and moving and tragic and enraging and a little full of itself in exactly the right way to hit me in the heart.

“baShanah haBa’ah” (Next Year) by Ehud Manor written in 1968 in memory of his brother Yehudah.

A Hebrew translation of the lyrics to Harry Nilsson’s “One” (1967) as sung by Aimee Mann (1995)

The blessing for Tsar Nicholas II as given in the lines of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof.

This is an adaptation of the “Last Rites of Bokonon” from the 99th chapter of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle (1963) translated by Amatsyah Porat for the 1978 Hebrew language edition of the novel.

The popular Israeli song from the 1950s.

This untitled prayer written by Isaac Bashevis Singer on the back of a receipt (dated 1 March 1952) was discovered by David Stromberg in 2014 in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, and published online by Tablet (1, 2) with permission of the Susan Schulman Literary Agency.

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.

A prayer on praying, singing, and Torah learning by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.

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.

A poem describing the ascent and death of the Tannaitic sage, Shimon ben Azzai.

The prayer-poem, “Take Me Under Your Wing” (1905) by Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik.

The poem, Ayekh (Where are you?), by Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik.

Fanny Neuda’s teḥinah for women experiencing difficulty conceiving children.

A prayer for a pregnant woman anticipating childbirth in the 19th century.

This is Fanny Neuda’s “Prayer for the final days of Sukkot,” faithfully transcribed and proofread with the help of German Wikisource contributors from Fanny Neuda’s Stunden Der Andacht (1855), p. 66.

Herr des Weltalls, reich geschmückt mit deinen Gaben und Segnungen hast du die Natur. Das Thal mit seinem üppigen Grün, der Berg mit seinem Kranz von Wäldern, das Gefilde mit seiner lachenden Frucht ist ein Erzeugnis; deiner Gnade, zum Segen deiner Menschenkinder, zur Nahrung ihres Leibes, zur Stillung ihrer Bedürfnisse, zur Ergötzung ihres Auges, zum Balsam ihrer Wunden; und kein Blättchen ist so klein, kein Grashalm so niedrig in dem weiten Reiche der Natur, daß es nicht wohlthuende heilsame Kräfte für uns enthielte.

This is Fanny Neuda’s prayer “on Simḥat Torah,” faithfully transcribed and proofread with the help of German Wikisource contributors from Fanny Neuda’s Stunden Der Andacht (1855), p. 66-67. We are happy to share your translation of Neuda’s tkhines in any language. The translation provided here was made by Julia Watts Belser for Hours of Devotion: Fanny Neuda’s Book of Prayers for Jewish Women (ed. Dinah Berland, Schocken 2007), and set here for the first time side-by-side with Neuda’s original German.

As part of our ongoing project creating a new digital edition of Fanny Neuda’s collection of tkhines in German, Stunden Der Andacht (1855), we are setting her prayers (for the first time ever) side by side with that of her work’s first English translation.

Reb Noson’s Likutei Tefillot I:37 contains teḥinot derived from Rebbe Naḥman’s Likutei Moharan I:37.

Often, when people refer to “Rebbe Naḥman’s Prayer for Peace,” they are referring to a more recent prayer combining portions of a number of prayers of Reb Noson of Nemyriv, including from this one: Liqutei Tefilot Ⅰ:116. Reb Noson of Nemirov adapted his teḥinot from the teachings of Rebbe Naḥman of Bratslav in Liqutei Moharan Ⅰ:137.

Often, when people refer to “Rebbe Naḥman’s Prayer for Peace,” they are referring to a more recent prayer combining portions of a number of prayers of Reb Noson of Nemyriv, sometimes also including from this one: Liqutei Tefilot Ⅰ:139, a prayer for the spiritual illumination of the Jewish people in the context of opposition to Ḥasidut. Reb Noson of Nemirov adapted his teḥinot from the teachings of Rebbe Naḥman of Bratslav in Liqutei Moharan Ⅰ:228.

Often, when people refer to “Rebbe Naḥman’s Prayer for Peace,” they are referring to a more recent prayer combining portions of a number of prayers of Reb Noson of Nemyriv, sometimes also including from this one: Liqutei Tefilot Ⅰ:141, a prayer for the spiritual illumination of the Jewish people in the context of opposition to Ḥasidut. Reb Noson of Nemirov adapted his teḥinot from the teachings of Rebbe Naḥman of Bratslav in Liqutei Moharan Ⅰ:239.

Often, when people refer to “Rebbe Naḥman’s Prayer for Peace,” they are referring to a more recent prayer combining portions of a number of prayers of Reb Noson of Nemyriv, including this one Liqutei Tefilot Ⅱ:53. In addition to a prayer for peace and the eradication of war, the prayer requests rain in its due time, excellence in Torah study, and protection from unworthy students of Torah. Reb Noson of Nemirov adapted his teḥinot from the teachings of Rebbe Naḥman of Bratslav in Liqutei Moharan Ⅱ:60.

This qinah, a variation of Maaseh Metz, was written by an unknown author and copied by Glikl into her memoirs. The text appearing here was made from that transcribed and published in Chava Turniansky’s critical edition, Glikl: Memoirs (1691-1719) (Shazar 2006), pp. 596-597, and Sara Friedman’s English translation of that edition, edited by Turniansky (Brandeis University Press 2019), pp. 306-307.

A prayer for a pregnant woman anticipating her childbirth.