Ignorance and Evil, a prayer for progress in combatting social ills (CCAR 1923)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Unknown and Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR]

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

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Tags:

20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., Aseret Yemei Tshuvah, education, English vernacular prayer, restorative justice, social justice, teḥinot in English

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	The Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. (Hosea 4:1)
	Therefore My people are gone into captivity for want of knowledge. (Isaiah 5:13)
	That the soul be without knowledge is not good. (Proverbs 19:2)
	Happy is the man whom Thou instructest, O Lord, and teachest out of Thy law; that Thou mayest give him rest from the days of evil. (Psalms 94:12-13)
	This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord. (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
	All the great evils which men cause to each other originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom. A blind man, for example, who has no guide, stumbles constantly, because he cannot see, and causes injury to others. In the same manner, various classes of men, each man in proportion to his ignorance, bring great evils upon themselves and upon other individual members of the species. If men possessed wisdom, which stands in the same relation to the form of man as the sight to the eye, they would not cause any injury to themselves or to others; for the knowledge of truth removes hatred and quarrels and prevents mutual injuries. (From Maimonides’ Moreh Nevukhim 3.11, trans. Michael Friedlander, 1881)
	Ignorance contributes to every type of evil. Although there are some who know the good yet consciously choose evil, yet most of us fall into the captivity of sin merely through lack of knowledge. We sin against our health through ignorance of physical laws; we sin against society through blindness to the laws of social progress; we sin against our heavenly Father by failing to understand what He doth require of us.
	“An ignorant man,” say the Rabbis, “cannot be truly righteous.”^[1] A statement in the name of Rabban Gamliel from Mishnah Avot 2.5 He who does not know his own nature or the nature of his fellow men, blunders into errors and injustice. The first step out of evil must be made in the direction of enlightenment. We must seek to discover the true motives of our fellow men, so as never to sin by misjudging them. We must learn the laws of our souls so as to live lives worthy of our innate divinity. We must meditate on God’s laws, so as to make our own will harmonize with His.
	When we glimpse even a vestige of God’s purposes; then we learn how to receive our good fortune in gratitude, and never fall into the sin of vainglory; we accept pain in patience, avoiding the iniquities of bitterness and rebellion. As knowledge of the laws of science will abolish many physical ills, so knowledge of the laws of God will cure men of anger, selfishness, and hatred. The age of universal peace and brotherhood, will be born of a deepened understanding— ‘the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea’ (Isaiah 11:9).
	Lord, God of Knowledge, no human thought is hidden from Thee. Man’s pretensions to knowledge are vain, and his boasted wisdom is empty in the light of Thine omniscience.
	O Father, I have foolishly confounded good and evil, the true and the false; and now in my darkness I turn my thoughts to Thee in whom there is no ignorance and no evil. Send forth Thy light that it may lead me. Grant that Thy truth may have free access to my mind. Deepen within me the love of knowledge. Enlighten me with true understanding that I may check evils by discovering their source.
	Teach me to understand Thy beneficence that I may never rebel against Thy word. Make me conscious of the brotherhood of all Thy children that I may be delivered from the sin of hatred. Grant me a glimpse of Thy gracious purposes that I may never despair. O lead me from the knowledge of Thy will to a fuller knowledge of Thee, Thou ultimate reality, infinite, and eternal. Amen.

“Ignorance and Evil” is the thirteenth prayer found in ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (CCAR 1923), pp. 47-49. Unfortunately, we do not yet know of a resource providing clear attribution of authorship for any of the prayers in this volume.

Source(s)

Notes

Notes
1	A statement in the name of Rabban Gamliel from Mishnah Avot 2.5

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.)

Unknown

Sometimes the best we can do in attributing a historical work is to indicate the period and place it was written, the first prayer book it may have been printed in, or the archival collection in which the manuscript was found. We invite the public to help to attribute all works to their original composers. If you know something not mentioned in the commentary offered, please leave a comment or contact us.

Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR]

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada.

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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)

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