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Mighty God!
Today, I take upon myself [to follow] three important things:
[1] with my Khupe, I become obligated to be a wife, for my husband only,
[2] [to be] a house-keeper to our house —
[3] and with time, [become] a mother to [our] children.
And I will fulfill, even when weak, the following three things:
[1] Nidah [marital purity],
[2] [separating] Chalah,
[3] lighting the [Sabbath] candles.
However, I know that Your holy obligation [to follow the above]
is for our own benefit;
therefore, I wish to fulfill them.
Strengthen and empower me,
Beloved God, that I have the energy to do what You desire,
and to serve You with my entire heart —
Amen and Amen!
“A Tkhine for a Kaleh before the Khupe” by an unknown author is a faithful transcription of the tkhine published in Rokhl m’vakoh al boneho (Rokhel Weeps for her Children), Vilna, 1910. I have transcribed it without any changes from The Merit of Our Mothers בזכות אמהות A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s Prayers, compiled by Rabbi Tracy Guren Klirs, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992. shgiyot mi yavin, ministarot nakeni. Translation by Baruch Jean Thaler.
Source
“א תחנה פאר א כלה קודם החופה | A Tkhine for a Bride [to say] before the Khupe [wedding canopy ceremony]” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
Baruch (B.J.) Thaler received his B.R.S. from United Lubavitch Yeshivah Tomchei Temimim (Morristown); Smichah (Rabbinical Ordination) from Central Yeshivah Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch (770); B.A. (Eng. Lit./Creative Writing) & M.F.A. (Film) from Columbia University. Baruch grew up Chabad in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, speaking Yiddish. Later, he worked for the Folkbeine Yiddish Theater and the New Yiddish Repertory, translating and acting in stage classics. He also worked on Yiddish translation for the Milken American Jewish Music Archives and others, and was a writer-editor for the Yiddish “Algemeiner Journal” and film-editor for "The Forward." His Hebrew translation projects include “The New American Haggadah,” the works of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, and of other Hasidic-Kabbalistic masters. Film credits include: “Projecting Freedom,” “Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish,” “Punk Jews”; he also filmed Yiddish legends Mine Bern and Mike Burstyn. He has spent some time organic farming. Still a Shliach (outreach “rabbi”) in heart - Baruch coordinated a troubadouring tribe of kindred spirits, first called “Home of HoWL” (Holy Wow Love) and more recently as Nitzotzot, who are creating new exciting ways to reexperience the traditions and rituals of yore, bridging heimish hasidism with homie hipsterdom. When the spirit is right, Baruch comes up with a niggun or two -- especially if it will help enhance davvening with kavvanah...
Sometimes the best we can do in attributing a historical work is to indicate the period and place it was written, the first prayer book it may have been printed in, or the archival collection in which the manuscript was found. We invite the public to help to attribute all works to their original composers. If you know something not mentioned in the commentary offered, please leave a comment or contact us.
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 naqeniשְׁגִיאוֹת 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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