Lord! bless and preserve that dear person whom Thou hast chosen to be my husband; let his life be long and blessed, comfortable and holy; and let me also become a great blessing and comfort unto him, a sharer in all his joys, a refreshment in all his sorrows, a meet helper for him in all the accidents and changes of the world; make me amiable for ever in his eyes, and very dear to him. Unite his heart to me in the dearest union of love and holiness, and mine to him in all sweetness, charity and compliance. Keep me from all ungentleness, all interestedness, and humor; and make me humble and obedient, useful and observant, that we may delight in each other according to Thy blessed word and ordinance, and both of us may rejoice in Thee, having our portion in the love and service of God forever. Amen.
“A Wife’s Prayer for Matrimonial Happiness” is one of thirty prayers appearing in Rabbi Moritz Mayer’s collection of tehinot, Hours of Devotion (1866), of uncertain provenance and which he may have written. This prayer is tagged “problematic” owning to the explicit sexism projected onto the role of a woman in her marriage. –Aharon Varady
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.)
Rabbi Moritz Mayer, born 1821 in Dürckheim-on-the-Haardt, Germany, fled to the United States and to New York as a political refugee of the 1848 revolution. In 1856, after a five year stint as a rabbi in Charleston, South Carolina, he returned in poor health to New York where he contributed frequently to the Jewish press, and translated various German works into English: Rabbi Samuel Adler's catechism, Abraham Geiger's lectures on Jewish history, and Ludwig Philipson's pamphlet, Haben die Juden Jesum Gekreuzigt? (the Crucifixion from the Jewish Point of View), et al. In 1866, he published an english translation of Fanny Neuda's Stunden Der Andacht. The following year, Moritz Mayer passed away. He was 45 years old.
![the Open Siddur Project [logo]](https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Open-Siddur-Project-Logo-2016.svg){kind=logo}
Copyleft
Comments, Corrections, and Queries