תפלה על המגפה שתעצר | Prayer for Cessation of the Disease Now Raging, by Rabbi Dr. Moses Gaster (1892)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Moses Gaster

Shared on:

12 April 2020 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Epidemics & Pandemics

Tags:

British Jewry, Epidemic, 1881–1896 cholera pandemic, 19th century C.E., Spanish-Portuguese, 57th century A.M.

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Source (Hebrew)	Translation (English)
אֵל מֶלֶךְ רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן, אֲשֶׁר בְּיָדְךָ נֶפֶשׁ כׇּל חָי וְרוּחַ כׇּל בְּשַׂר אִישׁ, מֵמִית וּמְחַיֶּה מוֹרִיד שְׁאוֹל וּמַעֲלֶה, הַבִּיטָה מִמְּעוֹן קָדְשְׁךָ וּרְאֵה כִּי עָלָה מָוֶת בְּחַלּוֹנֵינוּ בָּא בְּאַרְמְנוֹתֵינוּ לְהַכְרִית עוֹלָל מִחוּץ וּבַחוּרִים מֵרְחֹבוֹת, (ירמיה ט:כ) מִבְּכוֹר הַמֶּלֶךְ הַיּוֹשֵׁב עַל כִּסְאוֹ עַד בְּכוֹר הַשְּׁבִי אֲשֶׁר בְּבֵית הַבּוֹר, (שמות יב:כט) כׇּל רֹאשׁ לָחֳלִי וְכׇל לֵבָב דַּוָּי׃	Merciful and Gracious El, in whose hands is the soul of every living thing, and the spirit of all flesh; who killest and makest alive, who bringest down to the grave and bringest up. Look down from Thy holy abode and see: death is come up into our windows, it is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without and the young men from the streets.^[1] Jeremiah 9:20. From the firstborn of the king who sitteth upon his throne to the firstborn of the captive that is in the dungeon,^[2] cf. Exodus 12:29. every head is sick, every heart is faint.
אֲהָהּ אֱלֹהִים! שׁוּב מֵהֲרוֹן אַפֶּיךָ וֶאֱמוֹר לְמַלְאָךְ הַמַּשְׁחִית רַב עַתָּה הֶרֶף יָדֶיךָ׃ (שמואל ב׳ כד:טז חלק)	O Elohim, turn from Thy fierce wrath, and say unto the angel that destroys: It is enough, now stay thine hand.^[3] 2 Samuel 24:16.
רְפָאֵנוּ ה׳ וְנֵרָפֵא הוֹשִׁיעֵנוּ וְנִוָּשֵׁעַ, הַעֲלֵה רְפוּאָה לְתַחֲלוּאֵינוּ חֲבוֹשׁ אֶת מַכְּתֵינוּ, הָסֵר חֹלִי וּמַדְוֶה מִקִּרְבֵּנוּ, מְחֵה דִמְעָה מֵעַל כׇּל פָּנִים וְשַׁלֵּם נִחוּמִים לָנוּ וְלַאֲבֵלֵינוּ, שְׁלַח לָנוּ מַרְפֵּא אֲרוּכָה מַרְפֵּא בְרָכָה מַרְפֵּא רַחֲמִים וְשָׁלוֹם וְחַיִּים וְאוֹרֶךְ יָמִים, וְכֵן יְהִי רָצוֹן וְנֹאמַר אָמֵן׃	Heal us, O YHVH, and we shall be healed: save us and we shall be saved.^[4] From the blessing in the Amidah for healing. Vouchsafe healing to our pains, bind up our wounds, remove sickness and disease from our midst, wipe away the tears from off all faces. Restore comfort unto us and our mourners; send us in mercy and grace, healing, peace and length of life. May this be Thy gracious will. Amen.

This is a prayer prepared in January 1892 by Rabbi Dr. Moses Gaster and offered in London in the Spanish & Portuguese synagogues under his aegis in response to the danger of a cholera pandemic. From Wikipedia, “The fifth cholera pandemic (1881–1896) was the fifth major international outbreak of cholera in the 19th century. It spread throughout Asia and Africa, and reached parts of France, Germany, Russia, and South America. The 1892 outbreak in Hamburg, Germany was the only major European outbreak; about 8,600 people died in that city.”

The prayer, offered in Hebrew with an English translation, is not consistent in the translation of divine names. I have re-Hebraized all divine names invoked. –Aharon Varady

Source(s)

Notes[+]

Notes
1	Jeremiah 9:20.
2	cf. Exodus 12:29.
3	2 Samuel 24:16.
4	From the blessing in the Amidah for healing.

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“תפלה על המגפה שתעצר | Prayer for Cessation of the Disease Now Raging, by Rabbi Dr. Moses Gaster (1892)” 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.)

Moses Gaster

Moses Gaster (17 September 1856 – 5 March 1939) was a Romanian, later British scholar and rabbi, the Ḥakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation, London, a folklorist, and a Hebrew and Romanian linguist. In Leipzig, he received his PhD in 1878, followed in 1881 with his Hattarat Hora'ah (rabbinical diploma) from the Jewish Seminary in Breslau. Before his expulsion from Romania in 1885 by the government of Ion Brătianu for his early Zionist organizing, he was lecturer on the Romanian language and literature at the University of Bucharest (1881–85), inspector-general of schools, and a member of the council for examining teachers in Romania. He also lectured on the Romanian apocrypha, the whole of which he had discovered in manuscript. His history of Romanian popular literature was published in Bucharest in 1883. Gaster was a central figure of Hibbat Zion in Romania and played a central role in the 1882 establishment by Jews from Moineşti of the Samarin (Zamarin) settlement, known since 1884 as Zichron Ya'akov. In England, in 1886 and 1891, he held a lectureship in Slavonic literature at the University of Oxford. In 1895, at the request of the Romanian government, he wrote a report on the British system of education, which was printed as a "green book" and accepted as a basis of education in Romania. In 1887 Gaster was appointed hakham of the Sephardic or Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in London, in which capacity he presided over the bicentenary of Bevis Marks Synagogue. He was a member of the councils of the Folklore, Biblical, Archaeological, and Royal Asiatic societies, writing many papers in their interest. He was the only ordained rabbi ever to become president of The Folklore Society, in 1907–1908. He became vice-president of the First Zionist Congress in Basel, and was a prominent figure in each succeeding congress. The first draft of the Balfour Declaration was written at the Gaster home on 7 February 1917 in the presence of Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, Baron Rothschild, Sir Mark Sykes and Herbert Samuel. In 1925, Gaster was appointed one of the six members of the honorary board of trustees (Curatorium) of the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) in Wilna, alongside Simon Dubnow, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Edward Sapir, and Chaim Zhitlowsky.

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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