This is a Prayer for American Victory in the Spanish-American War by Rabbi Joshua Seigel (1846-1910), New York: Eliakum Zunser, [1898]. While this prayer will be widely recognized as an expression of Jewish American patriotism, I think it should also be recognized as a prayer on behalf of justice and freedom for the Cuban people. The Cuban War of Independence saw the first use of modern concentration camps as innovated under Spanish rule. This is the use of the medium of prayer for rallying Jewish opinion for the sake of another people and that, I believe, is special, especially in the evolution of the particularly American Jewish conception of Judaism as working for repair of brokenness in our world, tiqun olam. I also read this prayer as providing something of a precedent for the prayers that many of us feel today in regards to Russian aggression in its invasion and the suffering and death they’ve forced upon Ukraine.

We are grateful to Sothebys for sharing an image of this prayer at a high enough resolution sufficient for a relatively straightforward transcription. Thank you to David Selis for informing us of this prayer. Many thanks to the Baruch Thaler for looking over my rough translation and suggesting corrections. Please leave a comment or contact us with any corrections or improvements to this translation — and thank you. –Aharon Varady

Source

Prayer for United States victory in the Spanish-American War (Joshua Seigel 1898), cropped from an image of an item in auction at Sothebys

“תפלה לבני ישראל בעד הצלחת יושבי ארצנו בּמלחמתם עם השׂפּנים | Prayer for the success of the United States in its war with Spain, by Rabbi Joshua Seigel (1898)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Joshua Seigel

Rabbi Joshua Seigel (1846–1910), rabbi. Born in Kitzburg, Poland, Seigel began his career as a Talmud scholar under the direction of Rabbi Leibel Ḥarif of Plotsk and Rabbi Joshua of Kutna, who gave him semikhah. Seigel received a second semikhah from Rabbi Joseph Kara of Vlatzlovak. He inherited his father's pulpit as rabbi of Sierpc, Poland, but not with unanimous consent from the community. Seigel was not a ḥasid, so many of the ḥasidic members of Sierpc resisted his leadership, despite the intervention of Rabbi Joshua of Kutna. Later known as the "Sherpser Rav," Seigel left Europe in 1884 and immigrated to the United States. In New York, he became rabbi of a poor congregation of families divided between ḥasidic and non-ḥasidic traditions. His Polish ancestry set him apart from the Lithuanian rabbis who came to the United States in the late 19th century. Due to this tension, Seigel declined to join the Agudat Harabbonim, a union of mostly Lithuanian-educated rabbis formed in 1902. Seigel negotiated a position as mashgi'aḥ for several New York slaughterhouses and butcher shops, a good way to earn supplementary income to his modest – inadequate – synagogue-pulpit salary. By 1890 almost twenty Galician congregations relied on Seigel for kashrut guidance, and many Galician butchers remained under his rabbinic supervision. Seigel is perhaps best known for his controversial halakhic treatise, Eruv ve-Hoẓa'ah, an interpretation of Jewish law that allowed Jews to carry things on the East Side of Manhattan on the Sabbath. He believed that the island of Manhattan was surrounded by a natural eruv, a stance rejected by most of his rabbinic peers. In 1908, Seigel went to Palestine in hopes of living in Jerusalem, but the harsh climate prevented him from taking up permanent residence there. A year later, he returned to New York. Seigel left a a posthumous work of responsa titled Oznal Yehoshua. (adapted from the Jewish Virtual Library/Encyclopedia Judaica 2008)

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.)

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Associated Image:   

Theodore Roosevelt leading the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, 1898; print created by Kurz & Allison. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-pga-01946)

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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