Prière du père et de la mère le jour de l’initiation de leur enfant | Prayer of the father and mother on the day of their child’s initiation (as a Bar/Bat Mitsvah), by Jonas Ennery & Rabbi Arnaud Aron (1852)

Contributor(s): Jonas Ennery, Arnaud Aron and Aharon N. Varady (translation)

Shared on: 18 June 2020 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories: Bnei (Bar/Bat) Mitsvah & Other Birthday Prayers

Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., Angelic Protection, French Jewry, French vernacular prayer, parents, prayers for adolescents, תחינות teḥinot

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Source (French)	Translation (English)
Prière du père et de la mère le jour de l’initiation de leur enfant.	Prayer of the father and mother on the day of their child’s initiation.
Pendant qu’on récite la prière ci-dessus:	While the above prayer is being recited:
«Je l’ai consacré à l’Éternel poor toute sa vie» (Samuel 1, 28).	“I have consecrated him to the Lord all his days” (Samuel 1:28).
Seigneur, tu m’âs accordé la grâce d’élever mon enfant jusqu’à ce jour. A travers la fragilité des premières années, à travers les dangers sans nombre qui ont menacé sa frêle existence, ta main tutélaire l’a conduit jusqu’ici; et je viens, ô mon Seigneur, d’un cœur reconnaissant, comme jadis les parents de Samuel, le consacrer à ton service!	Lord, you have granted me the grace to raise my child to this day. Through the fragility of the first years, through the countless dangers that threatened his frail existence, your tutelary hand has led him here; and I come, O my Lord, with a grateful heart, as Samuel’s parents did in the past, to consecrate him to your service.
Tu viens de le recevoir dans l’alliance d’Israël; désormais, ô mon Dieu, c’est sur sa propre tête que reposera la responsabilité de sa conduite envers toi et envers les hommes.	You have just received him in the covenant of Israel; from now on, O my God, the responsibility of his conduct towards you and towards men will rest on his own head.
Je m’èffraie quand je songe aux dangers qui l’attendent sur son chemin, aux séduetions qui viendront au devant de lui, aux erreurs et aux fautes qu’il pourra commettre!	I am frightened when I think of the dangers that await him on his path, the seductions that will come before him, the errors and faults that he may commit!
Dans cette appréhension, c’est encore auprès de toi, ô mon Dieu, que je viens calmer mes angoisses et réfugier mes espérances. O daigne étendre ta main protectrice sur mon enfant; veille sur sou adolescence comme tu as veillé sur son berceau; s’il vient à chanceler sur sa route, envoie à son secours l’ange gardien qui conduisit le jeune Tobie; aplanis devant lui les difficultés de l’existence, ne le soumets pas à des épreuves trop rudes; fais-lui trouver grâce aux yeux des hommes par des qualités estimables. Ne permets pas surtout, ô Seigneur, qu’il oublie les vœux qu’il vient de prononcer, mais qu’il reste fidèle à la foi de son Dieu, et attire sur lui les bénédictions du ciel et l’amour des hommes! Amen.	In this apprehension, it is again to you, O my God, that I come to calm my anxieties and to give refuge to my hopes. O deign to extend your protective hand over my child; watch over his adolescence as you watched over his cradle; if he should stumble on his path, send to his aid the guardian angel who led the young Tobias; smooth out before him the difficulties of life, do not subject him to too harsh trials; make him find grace in the eyes of men through qualities that are worthy of esteem. Above all, O Lord, do not allow him to forget the vows he has just taken, but let him remain faithful to the faith of his God, and draw upon him the blessings of heaven and the love of men! Amen.

“Prière du père et de la mère le jour de l’initiation de leur enfant” appears as the third prayer in a Bnei Mitsvah service for boys and girls as published in Imrei Lev: Prières D’un Cœur Israélite (second edition, 1852) by Jonas Ennery and Rabbi Arnaud Aron.

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“Prière du père et de la mère le jour de l’initiation de leur enfant | Prayer of the father and mother on the day of their child’s initiation (as a Bar/Bat Mitsvah), by Jonas Ennery & Rabbi Arnaud Aron (1852)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Jonas Ennery

Jonas Ennery (Jan. 2, 1801, Nancy - May 19, 1863, Brussels) was a French deputy. He was for twenty-six years attached to the Jewish school of Strasbourg, of which he became the head. In collaboration with Hirth, he compiled a Dictionnaire Général de Géographie Universelle (4 vols., Strasburg, 1839–41), for which Cuvier wrote a preface. Soon afterward he published Le Sentier d'Israël, ou Bible des Jeunes Israélites (Paris, Metz, and Strasburg, 1843). At the request of the Société des Bons Livres he took part in the editorship of Prières d'un Cœur Israélite, which appeared in 1848. In 1849, despite anti-Jewish rioting in Alsace, Ennery was elected representative for the department of the Lower Rhine, and sat among the members of the "Mountain." He devoted his attention principally to scholastic questions. After the coup d'état he held to his socialist republican views and resisted the new order of things. For this, in 1852 he was exiled from France for life. He retired to Brussels, where he lived as a teacher until his death. Ennery's brother, Marchand Ennery, was the chief rabbi of Paris.

Arnaud Aron

Arnaud Aron (March 11, 1807, in Sulz unterm Walde, Alsace – April 3, 1890), the Grand Rabbi of Strasbourg, began his Talmudic studies at an early age at Hagenau and continued them at Frankfort-on-the-Main. In 1830 he became rabbi of the small community of Hegenheim in Upper Alsace; and of Strasbourg in 1833. As he was under thirty, the age prescribed by law, he required a special dispensation to qualify for the office. In Strasbourg, Aron acquired the reputation of an eloquent and inspiring preacher and a zealous communal worker. He assisted in founding the School of Arts and Trades and took active interest in other useful institutions. In 1855 he convened an assembly of the rabbis of the department of the Lower Rhine for the consideration of religious questions. Aron was the author of the catechism used for confirmation as prescribed by the Consistory of Lower Alsace. In 1866 the French government acknowledged his services by appointing him a Knight of the Legion of Honor. In 1870, while Strasbourg was besieged, it was he, together with the archbishop, who raised the white flag on the cathedral. Subsequently he was decorated by the German emperor.

Aharon N. Varady (translation)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer translator for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his translations, 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 transcribes prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes for the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

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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

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