Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger on 30 June 1898 (fragment)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Jacob Voorsanger

Shared on:

30 April 2026 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

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

Tags:

56th Congress, 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Prayers of Guest Chaplains, U.S. Senate, Spanish–American War

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	[…] all elements which may come from these sacred walls be extended in the form of God’s blessing to all humanity, and that the flag under which we live, that for which our fathers fought, be forever the sacred emblem of liberty until time shall be no more. […]

This is a fragment of a prayer offered before the United States Senate on 30 June 1898 by Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, rabbi of Temple Emanuel and professor of Semitic Languages at the University of California, San Francisco. Before 1904, prayers offered by guest chaplains were rarely recorded. Full records of these prayers in both Jewish newspapers and newspaper for a wide audience is spotty. Hopefully, a full record of the entire prayer by Rabbi Voorsanger survives… somewhere. If you have seen a more complete record of the prayer, please leave a comment or contact us.

The prayer was offered by Rabbi Voorsanger as part of his travels centered on his attendance at the Central Conference American Rabbis the following week. In a dispatch in the Emanu-El (v.6, n.9, 15 July 1898) on July 4th, he included this anecdote on the heat of the capitol that day in the Sentate: “Last Thursday morning, sitting in the Senate of the United States with Governor Perkins, I saw that august body mopping its august brow, and quaffing ice water in a temperature that would never stop rising, and I felt some gratitude that I could rush out, whilst the Governor was compelled to stay to listen to Bate of Tennessee 1 Senator Perkins is a hero.”

Source(s)

Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger’s Prayer before the US Senate (NY Times, 1 July 1898), p. 4

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.)

Jacob Voorsanger

Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger (1852-1908), born in Amsterdam, was a prominent Reform movement rabbi and scholar in the United States. He was educated at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Amsterdam, and received the degree of D.D. from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He officiated as rabbi at Philadelphia (1873-76), Washington, DC (1876-77), Providence, Rhode Island (1877-78), Houston, Texas (1878-86), and Sand Francisco, California (1886-1908). From 1881 to 1883 Voorsanger was editor of The Jewish South (Houston), and from 1883 to 1886 of the Sabbath Visitor (Cincinnati). Starting 1886, he began serving as rabbi at the Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco, California. In 1894 he was appointed professor of Semitic languages and literature at the University of California. He also officiated as chaplain and special lecturer at the Leland Stanford, Jr., University. In 1895 he founded the paper Emanu-El.

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Flag of the United States Senate

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו׃ (תהלים צ:יז) · "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)

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger on 30 June 1898 (fragment)

Source(s)

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