Prayer for the Protection of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania after the Battle of Gettysburg by Rabbi Sabato Morais (4 July 1863)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Sabato Morais

Shared on:

18 August 2022 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

War, United States of America

Tags:

19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., Philadelphia, English vernacular prayer, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Slaveholders' Rebellion (1861-1865), Ḳ.Ḳ. Miḳveh Israel (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Battle of Gettysburg

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)
	Almighty God! Suffer our entreaty to ascend Thy throne, and hearken unto it, as Thou didst hearken unto that of King Hezekiah and Isaiah the prophet. Our merits cannot, like theirs, intercede for us, but Thy mercy is not measured by human virtues, for, alas! we should then have long since been driven from Thy presence.
	Behold our confusion by reason of him that reproacheth and derideth. Uplift us from the dust into which our sins have cast us. Raise the horn of our salvation. Encircle Pennsylvania with Thy mighty shield, protect the lives of her inhabitants. Let her adversaries be foiled in their devices; let the fowler’s snare be broken, and the souls of Thy suppliants be delivered. Cause the din of war to cease from this our beloved State. But let the sound of Thy praises be heard in her borders, at the tidings of her success.
	Oh! return unto us! O God of our salvation, remove from Thy servants Thy fierce anger. Then this day which has brought us trouble, rebuke, and derision, will henceforth be celebrated with a joyful heart, with glory and national happiness.
	God, in Thee alone we trust, O Most High! and through Thy divine aid we shall again walk in enlargement. So may it speedily be, and say ye, Amen.

This prayer by Rabbi Sabato Morais was offered on US Independence Day (4 July 1863) at the conclusion of a sermon reguested by the “Philadelphia Union League” and delivered before Congregation Mikveh Israel, that was published in The Jewish Messenger on 10 July 1863. July 4th, 1863, was the day following the Battle of Gettysburg, and hand’t yet been recognized as the crucial turning point in the defeat of the Confederacy during the Slaveholder’s Revolt. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 22, clipping 023), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.)

Source(s)

Independence Day prayer [4 July 1863] (Sabato Morais Ledger p. 22, clip no. 023)

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“Prayer for the Protection of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania after the Battle of Gettysburg by Rabbi Sabato Morais (4 July 1863)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Aharon N. Varady (editing/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.)

Sabato Morais

Rabbi Sabato Morais (שבתאי מוראיס; April 13, 1823 – November 11, 1897) was an Italian-American rabbi, leader of Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia, pioneer of Italian Jewish Studies in America, and in 1886, co-founder (with Henry Pereira Mendes) of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America to preserve the knowledge and practice of traditional, historical rabbinic Judaism in the United States.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

Prayer for the United States on a Civic Fast Day during the Civil War, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (30 April 1863)

Prayer for the United States on Thanksgiving Day on the First Day of Ḥanukkah during the Civil War, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (28 November 1861)

prayer for the national fast day at the outbreak of the civil war [1861-09-26] (Sabato Morais Ledger, p. 21 clipping 022) - a

Prayer for the United States on a Civic Fast Day to avert Civil War, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (26 September 1861)

Thanksgiving Day Prayer [1864-11-24] (Sabato Morais Ledger, p. 23, clipping 028)

Prayer for the United States on Thanksgiving Day during the Civil War, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (24 November 1864)

Prayer after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by Rabbi Sabato Morais (18 April 1865)

Prayer [1865-12-08] (Sabato Morais Ledger, p. 24, clipping 030) - a

Prayer for the United States after the Civil War, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (8 December 1865)

Prayer on the Confederate Day of Fasting and Prayer, by Rabbi Max Michelbacher (27 March 1863)

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=46198

Associated Image:

Independence Day prayer [4 July 1863] (Sabato Morais Ledger p. 22, clip no. 023)

(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 Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Sabato Morais.
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=46198>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (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 contributors, patrons, or 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-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. If you like what you've found here, please help keep our project alive and online with your financial contribution.

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