א תחנה פאר א מוטער װאס פירט איהר קינד דעם ערשׁטען מאל אין חדר | Tkhine for a Mother Who Leads their Child for the First Time to Religious School (1910)
Master of the cosmos!
You have commanded in the holy Torah
that parents should teach their children Torah.[1] Deuteronomy 6:7
However, since we have no time to teach our child,
we have hired a melamed (teacher) for them.
דארוּם בּעט איך דיך גאָט
נעם אָן אונזער געלד װיא מיר אלײן װאָלטען מיט אים געלערינט,
דער זְכוּת פון דר תּוֺרָה זאָל אױף אונז מגין זײַן
אז מיר זאָלין האָבּין פון אים נַחַת
אָמֵן׃
Therefore, I beseech You, God,
to accept our money as if we ourselves were teaching them.
May the merit of the Torah protect us
so that we may have much parental joy from them.
Amen.
“Tkine for a Mother Who Leads Her Child for the First Time to Kheyder” by an unknown author is a faithful transcription of the tkhine published in רחל מבכה על בניה Rokhl m’vakoh al boneho (Rokhl 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.
“א תחנה פאר א מוטער װאס פירט איהר קינד דעם ערשׁטען מאל אין חדר | Tkhine for a Mother Who Leads their Child for the First Time to Religious School (1910)” is shared by the contributors with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.
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 Tracy Guren Klirs recieved her B.A. in Yiddish literature at the University of Chicago and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1977. She was ordained as a rabbi from the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati in 1984. Her book, The Merit of Our Mothers: A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s Prayers, was published by HUC Press in 1992. She currently serves as director of education at Temple Israel in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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 comment!
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