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Our God and the God of our fathers,
we beseech you this day
to bless our adopted country,
America.
Grant unto it the precious gift of Americanism.
Prevent it from losing its own soul.
Cause it not to wander in the paths of other peoples.
Make it ever loyal to those proud principles
of liberty
of thought,
of conscience,
and of action
with which it so bravely began its career as a nation.
In a world seeking desperately for deliverance
from the nightmare of passion and prejudice,
of oppression and bureaucracy,
make this country to be the leader of liberal thought
and of broad human sympathies.
Purge our land from every hate of soul,
from every lust of plutocracy,
from every intolerance of bigotry
and narrowness of vision.
Make our leaders conscious of the fact
that to be mindful of any group only,
instead of all our inhabitants,
is to be guilty of nothing less than treason
to the genius and to the people of our country.
Restore to this country, O Lord,
its dearest possession, namely:
its pure reliance,—
not upon might or upon power,—
not upon the might of the sword or the power of gold,—
but upon Thine own spirit—
and cause all Thy people Israel within this country’s borders
to remember and to understand
that we need not be less the Jew in order to be more the American,
but rather that we can never be more American
than when are most the Jew.
Amen.
This prayer is the fourth in “Prayers for the Country and Government” in Rabbi Jacob Bosniak’s collection of tehinot, Likutei Tefilot (1927). I have replaced most archaisms (Thou, hast, etc.). –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.)
Norman Salit
Rabbi Norman Salit (June 8, 1896 – July 21, 1960), born in Brooklyn, New York, was a lawyer, Conservative rabbi, and community leader who served as the president of the Synagogue Council of America. In 1916, he graduated with a B.A. from City College; in 1919, he graduated with a J.D. from New York University; in 1920, he received his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; and in 1922, he graduated with a M.A. from Columbia University. From 1919 to 1924, he served as the rabbi at Temple Adath Israel in the Bronx and from 1924 to 1929 as the rabbi at Congregation Shaaray Tefila in Far Rockaway, Queens. From 1933 to 1937, he was head of the Queens County Bar Association Committee on Legislation and Law Reform. In addition to being admitted to practice law in New York, in 1938 he was admitted to the bars of the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Treasury Department. During World War II he was the executive director of the Wartime Emergency Commission for Conservative Judaism. In 1949, he received a Master of Hebrew Letters from the Jewish Theological Seminary and in 1956, an honorary Doctor of Letters from the same institution. From 1953 to 1955, he served as president of the Synagogue Council of America. In 1957, he received a Doctor of Humane Letters from the Philathea College in Canada. He later served on the board of overseers of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, as president of the Long Island Council of the American Jewish Congress, on the executive council of the New York Board of Rabbis (1951-1958), as counsel for the Rabbinical Assembly of America, and as a member of the executive committee of the Zionist Organization of America.
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