Memorial Day Prayer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, by Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff on 28 May 2018

Contributor(s):

Arnold E. Resnicoff

Shared on:

9 December 2018 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Memorial/Decoration Day (last Monday of May), United States of America

Tags:

English vernacular prayer, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Decoration Day, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M.

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)
	Almighty God, We pray, reflect, meditate in different ways … but come together to mourn our dead, remember their sacrifice, and honor their memory.
	150 years ago – almost to the day – after the Civil War, America created Decoration Day: a time to visit graves of our war dead, and decorate them with flags and flowers. Time passed. New wars fought. Many graves now too far to visit: across the seas, or even in the ocean, deep; some bodies, destroyed by ever more powerful weapons of war, had no graves at all.
	So Decoration Day became Memorial Day: a time not just to decorate graves, but to commemorate lives, and to consecrate sacrifice, heroism, loss – through the stories we tell, and the lives that we lead.
	Today, as we remember those whose names are on this wall, along with all who perished, fighting America’s wars, let us recall the words of Archibald MacLeish in his poem “The Young Dead Soldiers”:^[1] Full title: “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak.” “They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace, and a new hope… or for nothing, we cannot say. It is you who must say this. We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning. We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.”
	God, on this Memorial Day we mourn, remember and honor our fallen. May their sacrifice help us build a world where we might finally beat our swords into ploughshares and war will be no more.^[2] Cf. Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3. And may we say, Amen.

Source

Notes[+]

Notes
1	Full title: “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak.”
2	Cf. Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3.

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“Memorial Day Prayer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, by Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff on 28 May 2018” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Arnold E. Resnicoff

Arnold E. Resnicoff (born 1946) is a Conservative rabbi who began his career serving as a military officer and then as a military chaplain. He served in Vietnam and Europe before attending rabbinical school after which he was a U.S. Navy Chaplain for almost 25 years. After the Vietnam War, he promoted the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and delivered the closing prayer at its 1982 dedication. Rabbi Resnicoff was present at the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing and the following year, President Ronald Reagan shared Rabbi Resnicoff's eyewitness account. After retiring from the military he became the National Director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee and served as Special Assistant (for Values and Vision) to the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, serving at the equivalent military rank of Brigadier General. Resnicoff holds several degrees, including an honorary doctorate. His awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Department of the Air Force Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, and the Chapel of Four Chaplains Hall of Heroes Gold Medallion.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

A virtual rendering of Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff before the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for a Memorial Day commemoration during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic

Memorial Day Prayer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, by Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff on 25 May 2020

The Lincoln Memorial reflects from the face of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial after a snowfall. (credit: Don-Montgomery, license: Public Domain)

Memorial Day Prayer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, by Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff on 31 May 2021

Arnold Resnicoff at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day 2022

Veterans Day Prayer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, by Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, Chaplain, USN (Ret.)

"US flag reflexion on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, National Mall, Washington, D.C. (credit: Mariordo (Mario Roverto Durán Ortiz), license CC BY-SA, 2011)

Prayer at the Dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff on 13 November 1982

Flag of the United States House of Representatives

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff on 20 November 2018

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff on 5 May 2003

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff on 19 May 2003

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=22893

Associated Image:

“Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, retired Navy chaplain, stands next to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. ” (NCR photo, Rick Reinhard, 2017)

(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 Arnold E. Resnicoff.
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=22893>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (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