Vision and Hope, an exhortation for self-discipline while yearning for social progress (CCAR 1923)

Contributor(s):

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

Shared on:

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

Categories:

Tags:

20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, exhortation, footsteps of Moshiaḥ, Messianic Age, progress, teḥinot in English, Universal Peace

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	The Lord reigneth: He is clothed in majesty; He hath girded Himself with strength; yea, the world is established that it cannot be moved. (Psalm 93:1)
	Let the humble eat and be satisfied; let them praise the Lord that seek after Him; may your heart be quickened for ever. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s; and He is the ruler over the nations. (Psalms 22:27-29)
	And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9)
	All the world shall come to serve Thee And bless Thy glorious Name, And Thy righteousness. triumphant The islands shall acclaim. And the people shall go seeking Who knew Thee not before, And the ends of the earth shall praise Thee, And tell Thy greatness o’er. They shall build for Thee their altars, Their idols overthrown, And their graven gods shall shame them, As they turn to Thee alone. They shall worship Thee at sunrise And feel Thy kingdom’s might, And impart their understanding To those astray in night. They shall testify Thy greatness, And of Thy power speak, And extol Thee, shrined, uplifted Beyond man’s highest peak. And with reverential homage, Of love and wonder born, With the ruler’s crown of beauty Thy head they shall adorn. With the coming of Thy kingdom The hills shall break into song, And the islands laugh exultant That they to God belong. And all their congregations So loud Thy praise shall sing, That the uttermost peoples, hearing, Shall hail Thee crowned King. (from “v-Yèə̀tayu Kol l’Avdèkha,” as translated by Israel Zangwill)
	The tenacity of our courage depends upon our larger ideals. Whenever we despair of humanity, we despair of ourselves. Whenever we are poisoned by the thought that mankind labors in vain, our own labor inevitably grows weak and dispirited. Our power to continue even our humblest tasks is rooted deeper than we realize in the soil of our own dreams of God’s kingdom on earth.
	The prophets and the psalmists of Israel encouraged the humble with visions of glory. When men stumbled in the darkness of grief, they bade them ‘rise, shine with the glory of God’ (Isaiah 60:1), assuring them that ‘nations would walk by their light’ (Isaiah 60:3). When men were saddened and embittered, the psalmist cried out: ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song’ (Psalms 96:1), for the time would surely come when all the nations of the earth would shout for joy unto the Lord.
	Without vision we perish. To endure the present, we must dream of the future. We cannot live from day to day without the hope that day is added unto day, and that even the humblest of our achievements count in the total reckoning.
	Our struggle assumes a new value and our labor a new dignity if we believe that every occasion when we curb our anger and forego resentment is treasured by our Father and, by His aid, brings nearer the day when war shall cease.
	How good it is to seek the Lord when we know that every new vision of Him becomes immortal and that, by our growing knowledge of Him, we are hastening the day when all the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.
	O Eternal One, our days, measured by Thine infinity, are but a passing breath. The thought of Thy greatness terrifies us, and in our weakness, we foolishly imagine that Thou dost not regard us, that our efforts are vain and our achievements lost as a voice in the wind.
	Grant us courage, O Father. Send us the assurance that as Thy words are eternal, so dost Thou crown our strivings and dreams with immortality; that no true hope ever perishes and no high vision fades; that Thou preservest all our aspirations so that their total may add to the merit of Thy children and brighten Thine image within them.
	We need Thy help, O God, for we are mortal and weak. Selfishness, blindness and rage often control us, and we delay Thy kingdom as frequently as we hasten it. O illumine our blindness, and enlarge our vision; pardon our anger and increase our serenity; forgive our iniquities and treasure our goodness, so that, in Thine own time, all men acknowledge Thee and live in Thy light. Amen.

“Vision and Hope” is the forty-second prayer found in ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (CCAR 1923), pp. 139-142. Unfortunately, we do not yet know of a resource providing clear attribution of authorship for any of the prayers in this volume.

Source(s)

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.

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=67119

Associated Image:

An allegorical print titled America. To those, who wish to sheathe the desolating sword of war. And, to restore the blessings of peace and amity, to a divided people by Joseph Strutt, after a 1778 painting by Robert Edge Pine, which celebrates the end of the American Revolutionary War.

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Unknown and Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR].
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=67119>.
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׃ (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)

Vision and Hope, an exhortation for self-discipline while yearning for social progress (CCAR 1923)

Source(s)

Read a comment / Leave a comment (moderated)

Leave a Reply Cancel reply