דיזי שיני נייאי תפילה | Dize sheyne naye tfile (This Beautiful New Prayer), by the typesetter Gele bat Moshe v’Freyde (1710)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription), Kathryn Hellerstein (translation) and Gele bat Moshe

Shared on:

15 July 2017 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Labor, Fulfillment, and Parnasah

Tags:

תחינות tkhines, געולה ge'ulah (redemption), 55th century A.M., 18th Century C.E., colophon, Halle, Brandenburg-Prussia, children's prayers, Yiddish vernacular prayer

TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):

ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!

COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.

TABLE HELP

Source (Yiddish)	Translation (English)
דיזי שיני נייאי תפילה פום אן פאנג ביז צום ענד: האב איך גיזעצט אלי אותיות מיט מייני אייגני הענד: געלה בת הר״ר משה המדפיס ואמי מרת פריידה בת הר״ר ישראל כ״ץ ז״ל	This beautiful new prayer from the beginning to the end: I have set all the letters with my own hand: Gele, daughter of the Rov Reb Moshe the Printer And my mother Meres (Ms.) Freyde daughter of the Rov Reb Yisroel Kats, of blessed memory.
די הוט מיך צווישן צעהן קינדר שי׳ גיבארן איך בין איין בתולה נאך עטוואש אונטר צוועלף יארן:	She bore me among ten children, may they live, I am a maiden, not quite twelve:
נעמט אייך קיין (חידוש) דז איך מוז ארבייטן. (הרכה והענוכה בת ישראל) זיצט אין גלות לנגי צייטן:	Do not be surprised that I must labor. The gentle and dainty daughter of Israel has sat in Exile forever:
איין יאר גיט דא הין אונ׳ דאש אנדרי יאר מוט קומן. אונ׳ מיר האבן פון קיינר (גאולה) נאך נייקש פר נומן:	One year departs and another commences. And we have not yet been granted Redemption:
מיר שרייאן אונ׳ מיר בעטן צו גאט אלי יאר. ווער וואלט רז אונזרי תפילות בייא השם יתברך זעלטן קומן פאר:	We shout and we pray to God every year. If only our prayers should before the Blessed Name appear.
וויא וואול איך מוז שוווייגן שטיל. איך אונ׳ מיין פאטרש הויז טארן ניט רידן פיל:	How nicely I must keep quiet and still. I and my father’s house must hardly speak at all:
וויא עש כל ישראל ווערט דר גין. אזו זאל אונש אויך גישעהן.	However all of Israel shall come to its end. So to us it shall also happen:
דען דער פסוק טוט זאגן. עש ווערן זיך פרייאן אלי לייט דיא אויף דאש (חורבן) פון (ירושלים) האבן טון קלאגן.	Then as the verse does mention. All people shall rejoice who mourned Jerusalem’s Destruction.
אונ׳ דיא אויף דאש (גלות) האבן פר טריבן גרוש לייד. דיא ווערן מיט דער (גאולה) ווידר האבן גרושי פרייד.	And those who in the Exile suffered such great sadness. They will again with the Redemption have great gladness.
אמן וכן יהי רצון.	Amen, and may it be His will.
(אהובי רבותי) קויפט דיא תפילה פאר איין גרינג געלט. דען מיר האבן זונשטן קיין אנדרי (מחיה) אין דער וועלט. ווייל עש השם יתברך אזוא וואול גיפעלט.	Dear readers, buy this Prayer for one small coin. Otherwise we’ll have no other income in this world. Because it pleases well the Blessed Name.
— וזה חלקינו מכל עמרינו׃ ויי אלהי ישראל ירחוב ארת גבולינו׃ ויתן לנו לחם ושמלה בפי צרכינו׃ להחיות עם־רב ואתו עוללינו וטפינו׃ וישם לנו שלום עם כל ישראל אחינו׃ אמן וכן יהי רצון׃	And this is our share from all our labors. May the Lord, God of Israel widen our borders. And, according to our needs, may He give us bread and clothing. To make a great nation live,^[1] end of Genesis 50:20, (thank you Emily Fishman) and with it, our children and offspring. And may He grant us peace with all our brethren in Israel. Amen, may it be His will.

This is a faithful transcription of the prayer of Gele (Gella), daughter of the printer Moshe, as found at the end of Tefillah l’Mosheh (2nd ed., Halle, Germany, 1710), a prayerbook Gele typeset when she was only 11-years-old. This prayerbook is rare owing to the destruction of the press following the incarceration of Gele’s father for publishing a prayerbook containing the prayer “Aleinu,” which had been forbidden by royal decree.^[2] Kathryn Hellerstein in in A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987 (2014, Stanford University Press). The translation provided here was made by Dr. Kathryn Hellerstein as found in A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987 (2014, Stanford University Press), p. 63-4. The layout of Gele’s prayer follows that of Ezra Korman from his anthology of Jewish women’s poetry, Yiddishe Dikhterins, also the source of the page image provided. If you know the location of a copy or digital scan of this siddur, please contact us.

Source

Notes[+]

Notes
1	end of Genesis 50:20, (thank you Emily Fishman)
2	Kathryn Hellerstein in in A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987 (2014, Stanford University Press).

17 U.S. Code 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

“דיזי שיני נייאי תפילה | Dize sheyne naye tfile (This Beautiful New Prayer), by the typesetter Gele bat Moshe v’Freyde (1710)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project under their Fair Use Right (17 U.S. Code §107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use), in respect to the copyrighted material included. Any additional work that is not already in the Public Domain is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)

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 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 translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

Kathryn Hellerstein (translation)

Kathryn Hellerstein is Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, specializing in Yiddish, and the Ruth Meltzer Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gele bat Moshe

Gele, daughter of Moshe and Freyde, was a typesetter employed by her father along with her older sister, Ele, in his printing shop in Halle, Germany (then part of Brandenburg, Prussia). Her father, a convert to Judaism, worked in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Frankfurt am Oder, before settling in Halle in 1706 at "the press established by J.H. Michaelis," according to Marvin Heller. Not much more is known of Gele outside of the difficulty we imagine that she and her family must have experienced after her father was imprisoned and his press destroyed following the 1710 publication of a siddur containing the prayer, "Aleinu," recently forbidden by royal decree. (source: K. Hellerstein, A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987 (2014, Stanford University Press), p. 66)

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

הַנּוֹתֵן תְּשׁוּעָה | A Prayer for the Welfare of the Government of Franklin D. Roosevelt during WWII (from A Naye Shas Tkhine Rav Pninim, ca. 1942)

Colonial Candle Making (Kevin Childress)

תחנה פאר די ליכט מאכין אום ערב יום כפור | Tkhine for Candlemaking on Erev Yom Kippur, by Sarah bat Tovim (ca. early 18th c.)

A colony of Acropora millepora (Credit: Mikaela Nordborg/Australian Institute of Marine Science, license: CC BY-SA)

תחינה פון ראש חודש בענטשן | Prayer for Blessing the New Moon on the Shabbat Mevorkhim, by Sarah bat Tovim from the Tkhine of Three Gates (ca. early 18th c.)

Image: Challah by Brad Greenlee (license CC-BY-2.0)

תְחִינָה פון דיא מִצְוֺת חַלָה | Prayer for the Mitsvot of Preparing Ḥallah, by Sarah bat Tovim from the Tkhine of Three Gates (ca. early 18th c.)

תְחִינָה פון דיא מִצְוה הַדְלָקַת הַנֵר | Prayer for the Mitsvah of Kindling the Shabbat Lights, by Sarah bat Tovim from the Tkhine of Three Gates (ca. early 18th c.)

prev next

2 comments to דיזי שיני נייאי תפילה | Dize sheyne naye tfile (This Beautiful New Prayer), by the typesetter Gele bat Moshe v’Freyde (1710)

Shaul Vardi
2023-03-26 at 6:02 am · Reply.
Amazing poem and beautiful translation! In the third stanza there’s a transcription glitch – חירוש should be חידוש
- Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
  2023-03-26 at 6:24 am · Reply.
  Thank you Shaul. Fixed!

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=15900

Associated Image:

colophon from Tfile LeMoshe (2nd ed., Halle, Germany, 1710)

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription), Kathryn Hellerstein (translation) and Gele bat Moshe.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=15900>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of contributors, patrons, or institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture. If you like what you've found here, please help keep our project alive and online with your financial contribution.

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