Inauguration Day Prayer for President Ronald Reagan, by Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk (1985)

Contributor(s): Alfred Gottschalk and the Congressional Record of the United States of America

Shared on: 22 January 2015 under the Public Domain (17 U.S. Code §105 - Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works)

Categories: 🇺🇸 Inauguration Day (January 20th), Coronations & Inaugurations

Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., democratic process, English vernacular prayer, United States

TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):

ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!

COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.

TABLE HELP

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	We the people turn to You, O God, in prayer. We have come again to this place which stirs our hearts to reaffirm the highest ideals of our Nation. The sacred oaths about to be pronounced in Your name reflect the awesome responsibilities entrusted to our President and Vice President by the American people.
	May You, who are the rock of ages, guide them in protecting the Constitution of our beloved Commonwealth, founded in faith, which ensures unity without uniformity. Sustain them, O God, as they advance the American way which “gives to bigotry no sanction”^[1] From George Washington’s “Letter to the Jews of Newport,” August 17th, 1790. to “malevolence no hope.”^[2] Ibid, but with creative liberty.
	O source of all life, enshrine in their hearts the knowledge that all are created in Your image and that life — Your gift to us — is sacred.
	Inspire our leaders to defeat hunger and hurt, to promote compassion and to find successful ways to assure the weak their share of America’s promise.
	In humility, we pray that this opportunity for renewal will advance reconciliation in the family of nations, guaranteeing peace in our world and tranquility in the farthest reaches of our universe.
	May those who follow us, our children and our children’s children, bless our President and Vice President, their families, and all those associated with them in Government, and may all remember this time and this administration as that in which their future was made secure.
	O God, may You, who makes peace in high places, help us here on Earth to find the way to peace.
	Blessed are You, O God. Aleichem Shalom, grantor of peace. Amen.

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.

Source(s)

Inauguration Day Prayer for President Ronald Reagan by Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk (1985) part 1

Inauguration Day Prayer for President Ronald Reagan by Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk (1985) part 2

Notes

Notes
1	From George Washington’s “Letter to the Jews of Newport,” August 17th, 1790.
2	Ibid, but with creative liberty.

. Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication . 1.0 . Universal .

“Inauguration Day Prayer for President Ronald Reagan, by Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk (1985)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

Alfred Gottschalk

Alfred Gottschalk (March 7, 1930 – September 12, 2009) was a German-born American Rabbi who was a leader in the Reform Judaism movement, serving as head of the movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC) for 30 years, as president from 1971 to 1996, and then as chancellor until 2000. In that role, Rabbi Gottschalk oversaw the ordination of the first women to be ordained as rabbis in the United States and Israel, and admitted gay and lesbian students to the school's seminary. During his tenure as president, he oversaw the development of new HUC campuses in Jerusalem, Los Angeles and New York City, three of the school's four campuses. In perpetuating and expanding the modernizing tradition of the Reform movement, Gottschalk performed the June 1972 ordination of Rabbi Sally Priesand, the first woman to be ordained in the United States. In 1975, Rabbi Gottschalk oversaw the designation of American Reform Judaism's first female hazzan (cantor), Barbara Herman. In July 1992, he oversaw the "historic and symbolic" ordination of Israel's first woman rabbi, Naamah Kelman.

the Congressional Record of the United States of America

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Printing Office and issued when Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks. At the end of a session of Congress, the daily editions are compiled in bound volumes constituting the permanent edition. Statutory authorization for the Congressional Record is found in Chapter 9 of Title 44 of the United States Code. (wikipedia)

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=11293

Associated Image:

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Alfred Gottschalk and the Congressional Record of the United States of America.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=11293>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Public Domain (17 U.S. Code §105 - Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works). (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of volunteer contributors, or its institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture.

ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17

Pocket Reddit Facebook Bluesky Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email