Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn on 13 September 1989

Shared on: 27 November 2022 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories: 🇺🇸 United States of America, Opening Prayers for Legislative Bodies

Tags: 101st Congress, 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, U.S. House of Representatives, Prayers of Guest Chaplains, תחינות teḥinot

Guest Chaplain: Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn, Temple Sinai of City of New Orleans, Louisiana
Date of Prayer: 13 September 1989
Sponsor: Rep. Lindy Boggs (D-LA)

Sen. Boggs: Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my expression of gratitude to Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn, for the beautiful prayer with which he has opened our session today. Rabbi Cohn, born in Baltimore, received his B.A. degree from the University of Cincinnati, his master’s from Hebrew Union College and his doctorate from the St. Paul School of Theology. He has served in Atlanta, Macon, Georgia, Kansas City, Missouri, and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In 1987 he came to us in New Orleans as rabbi of the prestigious Temple Sinai to lead a congregation with a long and distinguished history of service to our city and our State.
This year is one of special preparation for the auspicious celebration of Temple Sinai’s 120th anniversary, the length of days of Moses’ life and worthy of the comparison.
Steeped in the tradition of significant leadership carried forward in recent years by my good friends the late Rabbi Julian Leibelman and Rabbi Murray Blackman, Temple Sinai is fortunate to have Dr. Cohn as rabbi at this precious moment in its history.
Rabbi Cohn is married to the lovely former Andrea Levy and they have two daughters, Jennifer and Debra.
We regret that they are not with us today, but we are pleased to have with us the presence of Dr. Cohn’s parents, Rebecca Weiner Cohn and Rudolph J. Cohn, who are celebrating a very special wedding anniversary, and his aunt and uncle, Gertrude Weiner and Ben Weiner.
Welcome, and thank you, Dr. Cohn.

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 pray in the words of the Psalmist: Zeh Hayom Asah Adonai Nagilah V’nism’cha Vo! This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
	Heavenly Father, in these soul-stir-ring times, O Lord, when from one comer of the world to the other, the hope of liberty and the hunger for freedom are being proclaimed and celebrated, let us give great thanks for the privilege which is ours to live in this day and age.
	Bless Thou, the people of this glorious land of liberty and democracy; all of our Nation’s leaders, and each one of the Representatives who serve in this distinguished House. May they successfully labor to address the pressing and complex issues of our times with insight, with compassion, and with wisdom. For the blessing of all and for the hurt of none; For the abundance of all and for the scarcity of none; For the life of all and for the distress of none. Amen.

Source(s)

101st Congress, 1st Session. C-SPAN.
Congressional Record, Vol. 135, Part 15 — Bound Edition, p. 20325.

Congressional Record v. 135, part 15 – 13 September 1989. p. 20325

. Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication . 1.0 . Universal .

“Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn on 13 September 1989” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

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)

Edward Paul Cohn

Edward Paul Cohn was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1948. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from the University of Cincinnati in 1970, his Master of Hebrew letters degree from Hebrew Union College-Jewish of Religion in 1974, and his Doctor of Ministry degree from the St. Paul School of Theology in 1984. From 1974 to 1976, Cohn was the Assistant Rabbi at The Temple, in Atlanta, Georgia. He served as the Rabbi of Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia from 1976 to 1979, and of the New Reform Temple in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1979 to 1983. Before his selection as Senior Rabbi of Temple Sinai in New Orleans in 1987, Cohn was Rabbi of Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is past president of the Southwest Association of Reform Rabbis. He was appointed by the Mayor of New Orleans to chair the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial Project. He also served as founding chairman of the City Human Relations Committee and is an active leader in the Jewish and larger communities of the New Orleans metropolitan region. From 2005-2007, Cohn served as ethics consultant for MSNBC and appeared on “The Ethical Edge.” Cohn was named contributing editor of the prestigious national journal of preaching, Pulpit Digest, and was asked to serve on the Union for Reform Judaism Congregation Committee on the Family. He was appointed to the Joint Commission on Interfaith Relations sponsored by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, The Men of Reform Judaism and the Union for Reform Judaism. He is past president of the Rabbinical Council of Greater New Orleans and has served as adjunct professor at Dillard University. Cohn currently serves on the Board of Visitors of Xavier University.

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.)

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=47670

Associated Image:

Flag of the United States House of Representatives

(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 the Congressional Record of the United States of America, Edward Paul Cohn and Aharon N. Varady (transcription).
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=47670>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication. (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