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Father of Mercies: We have assembled this day to invoke Thy blessing upon these, Thy daughters, who embark this evening upon careers of consecrated service to their fellow men. | |
Grant them strength, O Father, that they may be enabled to bear up under the endless strain of serving the impatient needs and whims of suffering mankind, and of their harassed co-workers and associates in the mission of mercy. | |
Fill their hearts with understanding, that their service may be more than physical amelioration, for there liveth no man on earth to whom the applause and sympathy of another human being is not of supreme consequence. | |
Imbue their spirits, O Heavenly Healer, with the faith that for every woe there exists a hope, and for every pain a healing balm,– that in the dark sea of endless suffering in which the barque of their life may be cast, they may be fortified in their spiritual fibre to resist the corroding barnacles of callousness that would impair the worthiness of their endeavors. | |
Lend wings to their faith, O Father, that they may shelter the despairing beneath their pinions, and all men may see in their consecrated ministrations the healing hands of Thy ministering angels. Amen. |
“Nurses’ Commencement” at Beth Israel Hospital was first published in Rabbi Avraham Soltes’ collection of prayers, תפלה Invocation: Sheaf of Prayers (Bloch 1959) and dated to September 19, 1951. We are not entirely certain whether this prayer was written for a Nurse’s Commencement ceremony at Beth Israel Hospital in lower Manhattan, next to Stuyvesant Town, which included a School of Nursing, or for a ceremony at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. In 1949, Rabbi Soltes, left his position as assistant rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan to serve as rabbi at Temple Sharey Tefilo in East Orange, New Jersey (which is close to Newark).
Beth Israel Hospital was incorporated on May 28, 1890 by a group of 40 Orthodox Jews on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, each of whom paid 25 cents to set up a hospital dedicated to serving immigrant Jews living in the tenement slums of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. At the time, most of New York’s hospitals would not treat patients who had been in the city less than a year. It initially opened a dispensary at 206 Broadway in 1891, and moved to Jefferson and Cherry Streets in 1895. On March 12, 1929, it moved to First Avenue and 16th Street, facing Stuyvesant Square, and the old building was converted into an old age home, the Home of Old Israel. It purchased its neighbor Manhattan General Hospital in 1964 and was renamed Beth Israel Medical Center on March 10, 1965.
Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, previously Newark Beth Israel Hospital, is the largest hospital in Newark, New Jersey. It was run under auspices of the Newark Jewish Community and its suburban successors from its inception in 1900-1901 until its purchase by Barnabas Health in 1996.
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“[Prayer for a] Nurses’ Commencement, by Rabbi Avraham Samuel Soltes (1951)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.
Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
Avraham Samuel Soltes
[First-year student nurses, including several Holocaust survivors, in a classroom, Beth Israel School of Nursing, Lower East Side, New York] (Roman Vishniac ca. 1949)(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in category lists and in shared links on social media.)- Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Avraham Samuel Soltes.
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