This prayer of the guest chaplain was offered in the fifth month of the first session of the 50th US Senate. It was published in The Jewish Exponent, “A Prayer in Congress: Rev. Dr. H.P. Mendes of New York Opens the United States Senate,” 27 April 1888, page 13. It was also published in The American Hebrew (27 April 1888), p. 11. Rabbi Medes’ prayer was the fourth to be offered in the Senate, preceded by prayers by Gustav Gottheil and Edward B.M. Browne, both in 1884. (The first in the US Senate was offered in 1870 by Isaac Mayer Wise.) On the front page of the American Hebrew, the following opinion was offered:

The United States Senate was opened with prayer on Tuesday by Rev. Dr. H. Pereira Mendes, the Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of this city. This act of inviting a Jewish rabbi to perform this religious ceremony before the highest legislative body in the country, is not simply an empty tribute of respect to the Jewish community, but emphasizes the fact which we have recently dwelt upon, that while it is not the business of the State to recognize any particular form of religious worship, nor to give aid and support to any church, it is bound not to ally itself with either Atheism or Agnosticism, and must, therefore, officially, on due and proper occasions, give expression to its adherence to those fundamental truths upon which all religious minds in this country at least, are united, and can readily formulate. Hardly a finer illustration could be afforded of the fact that in fundamental religious truths all of us can find a common meeting ground, than the brief but fervent prayer uttered by Rabbi Mendes. It breathed a lofty and fervid spirit of religion, and yet there is not a word in it that could conflict with the religious principles of any one in the Senate Chamber. This is all the more notable in that it does not simply voice what may be called by some the modern standpoint, but he who uttered it had deftly interwoven into it the aspirations of the Jewish poets of the ancient past. The opening is made up from two well known Jewish prayer expressions, the one the penitential prayer, Shebashamayim, and the other the ancient Ḳaddish.

The day the prayer was offered, 24 April, corresponded in 1888 to the 13th of Iyyar, during the period between Passover and Shavuot.

This prayer is one of approximately 20 prayers offered by rabbinic guest chaplains before Congress before such prayers were recorded in the Congressional Record. This prayer was located by Aharon Varady as part of his search for these “lost” prayers in preparation for his Natalie Feld Memorial Fellowship work at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA) 2024-2025.

Source(s)

A Prayer in Congress (Jewish Exponent, 27 April 1888), p. 13

Prayer of Henry Pereira Mendes in the US Senate (American Hebrew, 27 April 1888), p. 11

“Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes on 24 April 1888” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

Henry Pereira Mendes

Rabbi Dr. Henry (Ḥaim) Pereira Mendes (Hebrew: חיים פריירה מנדס), (13 April 1852 – 21 October 1937), born in Birmingham, England, was an author and prominent communal leader in the Western Sepharadi world. He was educated at Northwick College (rabbinics), at University College (London). In 1874, he became Minister of the newly formed Sephardic congregation in Manchester, England. In 1877, he was called to the Congregation Shearith Israel of New York where he served until 1920, retaining the title of Rabbi Emeritus. In addition, he studied and graduated from the medical school of New York University, taking the degree of M.D. (1884). The degree of D.D. was conferred upon him by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1904). In addition, to synagogue duties, Rev. Mendes served as professor of homiletics at Yeshiva Isaac Elchanan from 1917 to 1920. After retiring in 1920, he traveled for four years through Europe and South America. During that time, he reconnected with his first congregation in Manchester and spent some time in St. Thomas, reviving the S&P community there and leading services. He participated in the founding of a number of significant organizations. In 1881, he was one of the founders of the New York Board of Ministers and acted as its secretary from its foundation up to 1901 when he became president. In 1886, Rev. Mendes joined Sabato Morais in helping to establish the Jewish Theological Seminary, of which he became secretary of the advisory board and professor of history. On the death of Dr. Morais, he became acting president of the faculty until the appointment of Solomon Schechter in 1902. In 1884, the centennial of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore, Rev. Mendes moved his congregation to convene the leading Jews of New York to mark the event by some practical work. The outcome was the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, established in the same year—and which later became Montefiore Medical Center. In 1896, he was made vice-president of the Guild for Crippled Children, and in 1901 established the Jewish branch of that guild. He promoted the formation of the Union of Orthodox Congregations of the United States and Canada (1897) and was subsequently elected its president. He was also one of the founders of the Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York (1902).

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=56756

Associated Image:   

Flag of the United States Senate

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in category pages and 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:

1. Properly attribute the work to Henry Pereira Mendes and Aharon N. Varady (transcription).
2. 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.)
3. Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=56756>.
4. 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