O Soul, Heavenly Spirit, given to me by Almighty God! not here beneath, not in this weary state of probation, canst thou hope to find thy home; this dark, perishable and frail cover was not designed for thy eternal habitation; no, thou wilt take thy flight into infinity; thou wilt soar up to those realms whence thou earnest: Fellow inhabitant of the world of immortality, from the hand of the Eternal this house of clay received thee; thou wilt again reach the hand of the everlasting God, and enjoy the purest and sublimest felicity in yonder fields of inextinguishable light.
When the sun shall sink for me on earth, when the arduous struggle for life shall be completed, and with it shall vanish the delusions of imagination, a new day will dawn for me yonder, where no winter follows the beautiful spring: yonder, where I shall again meet the dear ones whom death has torn away from me.
Full of consolation I therefore exclaim with the Psalmist “Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave; neither wilt Thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence is fulness of joy at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”[1]Psalms 16:10-11.Amen.
Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project, which he founded and directs. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin, Ministarot Nakeniשְׁגִיאוֹת 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. Besides his transcription work, Varady occasionally translates prayers and contributes his own original work. (Varady also serves as editor and administrator of the Open Siddur Project website, opensiddur.org, and is an outspoken advocate for open-source in Judaism more of which can be read about in this interview in the Atlantic Magazine.)
Marcus Heinrich (also Mordecai Ḥayyim/Hyman/Heyman) Bresslau (ca. 1808-15 May 1864) was a Hebraist and newspaper editor. Born in Hamburg, he settled in England when young. For some time from 1834 he was Baal Ḳoreh (reader) at the Western Synagogue. He then taught Hebrew at the Westminster Jews’ Free School and went on to tutor privately. A maskil, he became involved with M. J. Raphall’s Hebrew Review and Magazine of Rabbinical Literature (1834-6). In October 1844 he was appointed editor of the relaunched Jewish Chronicle by proprietor Joseph Mitchell. Prickly and quarrelsome, he resigned in July 1848 but returned in around September. He remained until about October 1850. After Mitchell’s death in June 1854 he became proprietor (his middle name appearing as Heyman) and edited it until February 1855 when new proprietor Abraham Benisch succeeded him. Bresslau, who tried vainly to revive the Hebrew Review, wrote Hebrew poetry, produced a Hebrew grammar and a Hebrew dictionary, and translated various Hebrew manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. Bresslau compiled (we think) the first compilation of teḥinot in English for women. (Much of this information via Bresslau's entry in The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History)
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