https://opensiddur.org/?p=25384God’s Goodness — the Testament of Man, a prayer for Thanksgiving Day by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (1945)2019-05-28 22:29:45"God’s Goodness — the Testament of Man" by Rabbi Milton Steinberg appears on pages 556-557 of <em><a href="https://opensiddur.org/compilations/shabbat-siddur/sabbath-prayer-book-by-mordecai-kaplan-1945/">The Sabbath Prayer Book</a></em> (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945) as part of a service for Thanksgiving Day. It is the last of four "testaments," the other three being the testament of <a href="https://opensiddur.org/prayers/secular-calendar/united-states/thanksgiving-day/gods-goodness-the-testament-of-nature-by-milton-steinberg-1945/">Nature</a>, Israel, and <a href="https://opensiddur.org/prayers/secular-calendar/united-states/thanksgiving-day/gods-goodness-the-testament-of-america-by-milton-steinberg-1945/">America</a> respectively.Textthe Open Siddur ProjectAharon N. Varady (transcription)Aharon N. Varady (transcription)Milton Steinberghttps://opensiddur.org/copyright-policy/Aharon N. Varady (transcription)https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday of November)20th century C.E.58th century A.M.English vernacular prayerAmerican Jewry of the United Statesבני אדם bnei adam
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
Hebrew
English
God’s Goodness — the Testament of Man
Your goodness is inscribed in the Testament of Man,
in the powers of his body,
the skill of his hand,
in his capacity to think,
to feel,
to aspire,
in his ability to communicate with his fellows,
in his will to labor cooperatively at their side.
Aye, it is written large and bold in the nobility of man’s spirit.
This is a sign of the goodness of God,
that there are men
ready to surrender their comfort
and their happiness
out of love for their fellows,
pity for the suffering
and devotion to high ideals.
This is a sign of the goodness of God,
that, hungering insatiably after truth,
they will sacrifice themselves to attain it,
and possessing it, defend it with their lives.
This is a sign of the goodness of God,
that they will be free,
and, being free,
will not rest until freedom be the lot of all men.
This is a sign of the goodness of God,
that, though they might be at ease in the world as it is,
they labor steadfastly to convert it into what it ought be.
Wherefore with the psalmist we speak our grateful praise to you.
O YHVH, our Lord,
How glorious is your name in all the earth,
Whose majesty is sung above the heavens![1] Psalms 8:2.
When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which you have established;[2] Psalms 8:4.
O YHVH, our Lord,
How glorious is your name in all the earth![8] Psalms 8:10.
“God’s Goodness — the Testament of Man” by Rabbi Milton Steinberg appears on pages 556-557 of The Sabbath Prayer Book (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945) as part of a service for Thanksgiving Day. It is the last of four “testaments,” the other three being the testament of Nature, Israel, and America respectively. I have supplied the Hebrew verses corresponding to the vernacular English text provided by Rabbi Steinberg. I have replaced “Lord” with YHVH as the signifier for the Tetragrammaton, replaced anglicizations, and removed archaisms. –Aharon Varady
Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeniשְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)
Milton Steinberg (November 25, 1903 – March 20, 1950) was an American rabbi, philosopher, theologian and author. Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised with the combination of his grandparents' traditional Jewish piety and his father's modernist socialism. He graduated as valedictorian of his class at DeWitt Clinton High School and then majored in Classics at City College of New York which he graduated from summa cum laude in 1924. Steinberg received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1928 and then entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he was ordained. In seminary, he was strongly influenced by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983), the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. After five years in a pulpit in Indiana, he was invited by the Seminary to assume the pulpit of Manhattan's Park Avenue Synagogue, then a small congregation with a Reform orientation. In his sixteen years at the congregation, he grew it from 120 to 750 families. In 1943 he had a near fatal heart attack. While a disciple of Kaplan who considered himself a Reconstructionist, Steinberg was critical of Kaplan's dismissal of metaphysics. Steinberg's works included Basic Judaism, The Making of the Modern Jew, A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem, and As A Driven Leaf, a historical novel revolving around the talmudic characters Elisha ben Abuyah and Rabbi Akiva. In his final years, he began writing a series of theological essays. This project, which he had hoped would conclude in a book of theology, was cut short by his death at age 46. An unfinished second novel, The Prophet's Wife, about the Tanakh characters Hosea and Gomer, was published in March 2010. (via his entry in Wikipedia)
Comments, Corrections, and Queries