Prayer of a Congregational Rabbi upon their Installation, by Rabbi Wolf Gunther Plaut (1961)

Contributor(s):

Wolf Gunther Plaut and Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)

Shared on:

4 September 2022 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Congregation & Community, Labor, Fulfillment, and Parnasah

Tags:

58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, Prayers of Jewish Educators, Holy Blossom Temple, 20th century C.E.

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

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	O Lord, Our God, we thank Thee for Thy countless mercies. For the incomparable gift of love that comes to us from family and friends and from these Thy children to whose service we dedicate our lives.
	We need Thy help, O God, for without Thee the burden is heavy, and the tablets of Thy commandments weigh us down.
	But when Thy writing is clear and Thy spirit upon it, the burden is lifted, the tablets take on wings and the commandments carry us on high.
	Help us, O God, to follow in the way which we have been taught, which our parents gave us as their greatest gift.
	Teach us, O Lord, to follow the path of Joseph, our forefather, always to say like him: “I seek my brethren.” (Genesis 37:16)
	We need Thy help to tread the way before us with surety and confidence, the way hewn out by great leaders who stood here and who served Thy people.
	Help us to be a true Rabbi — a teacher to old and young, to be a friend and counsellor to this Thy holy congregation.
	Help us to speak where silence is cheap;
	help us to be ever sensitive to the heartbeat of our fellow man;
	Help us to preserve our balance in the swirl of human enterprise;
	help us to teach Thy Torah, thereby to magnify Thee day and night, until the end of our days.
	Amen.

“Installation Prayer” by Rabbi Wolf Gunther Plaut was first published in Rabbi Morrison David Bial’s anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 51, from where this prayer was transcribed. Rabbi Plaut held pulpits at Washington Boulevard Temple in Chicago, Illinois (1939-49), Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul, Minnesota (1948–1961), and Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Ontario (beginning in 1961). This prayer may have served for his installation at any one of these, although with the date of publication of Bial’s collection we suspect this prayer was offered by Rabbi Plaut at Holy Blossom Temple. If you know which for certain, please leave a comment, or contact us.

Source(s)

. Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication . 1.0 . Universal .

“Prayer of a Congregational Rabbi upon their Installation, by Rabbi Wolf Gunther Plaut (1961)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

Wolf Gunther Plaut

Wolf Gunther Plaut (1 November 1912 – 8 February 2012), born in Münster, Germany, was an American Reform rabbi and scholar based in Canada. Rabbi Plaut served Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto until 1978. His popular Torah commentary is widely established in the Reform movement.

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.)

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

East Midwood Jewish Center building (credit: David Shankbone, license: CC BY-SA)

A Prayer at the Installation of Congregation Officers for the Ocean Parkway Jewish Center, by Rabbi Jacob Bosniak (ca. 1924)

Flag of the United States House of Representatives

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Alex J. Goldman on 20 April 1961

Inauguration Day Benediction for President John F. Kennedy by Rabbi Dr. Nelson Glueck (1961)

"Reeds catch some winter sunlight along the river Tamar on the Devon/Cornwall border" (credit: Markles55, license: CC BY)

עלינו | An Alternative Opening for Aleinu, by Leon Gunther

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Max M. Landman on 26 January 1961

📖 סדור לימות החול (אשכנז) | Siddur Limot hê-Ḥol :: Weekday Prayer Book (Rabbinical Assembly of America 1961)

Still from the lost silent film How the Jews Care For Their Poor (1913), from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 14, 1913, pg. 59

Benediction for Charity Meeting, by Rabbi Morrison David Bial (1962)

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=46543

Associated Image:

Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut (York University)

(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 Wolf Gunther Plaut and Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription).
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=46543>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication. (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 volunteer contributors, or its 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-commercial, 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.

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