Teach Us to Be Thankful, by Rabbi Louis M. Epstein (1962)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Louis M. Epstein

Shared on:

5 September 2022 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday of November)

Tags:

Cold War (1947–1953), 20th century C.E., thankfulness, 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, anti-war

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Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Almighty God, we pray Thee this day for the gift of a tranquil spirit, a spirit of contentment with our daily portion from Thine hand. When Thou openest Thine hand and satisfiest every living thing with favor, ours is the glory of praising Thy name. As Thou sendest forth Thy sun to shed its light on Thy handiwork, so causest Thou the blessings of the field and the orchard to yield daily sustenance to all Thy children.
	If our spirit, therefore, lacks tranquility and our soul is in want of contentment, it is because we fail to thank Thee, O Lord, for Thy goodness to us, and Thy fatherly care of us, day by day, because we spend our peace of the day in worry of the morrow. Oh, that we would sense in our life’s experience the steadiness and the certainty of Thy providence! Oh, that we were not ever building sky-high defenses against the rover that might come, and thus end our years in the fear of a shadow.
	Teach us, O Lord, to thank Thee day by day, and thus continually bless Thy name for ever and ever.

“Teach Us to Be Thankful” by Rabbi Louis M. Epstein was first published in Rabbi Morrison David Bial’s anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 36, from where this prayer was transcribed.

Source(s)

. Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication . 1.0 . Universal .

“Teach Us to Be Thankful, by Rabbi Louis M. Epstein (1962)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

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 naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת 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.)

Louis M. Epstein

Louis M. Epstein (1887-1949), born in Anyksciai, Lithuania, was an American Conservative rabbi and scholar of Jewish marriage law. He studied in the yeshivah in Slobodka before emigrating to the United States and graduating from Columbia University. After receiving semikhah at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1913, he served in Dallas and Toledo before, in 1918, being appointed as rabbi of Beth Hamedrosh Hagodol in Roxbury, Massachusetts and soon after to Kehilath Israel in Brookline. Rabbi Epstein serves as president of the nascent Rabbinical Assembly (1922-1925) and chaired its committee on Jewish Law (1936-1940). He is best known for his proposal for solving the halakhic problem of agunot as presented in Li-She'elat ha-Agunah (1940). He wrote The Jewish Marriage Contract (1927), Marriage Laws in the Bible and Talmud (1942), and Sex Laws and Customs in Judaism (1948).

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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