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(The Reader, taking a glass of wine in his hand shall then say:) | |
We are gathered to-night within the home-sanctuary in honor of our holy religion and of our great and eventful history. We cannot help feeling grateful that although another cycle of seasons has passed, we are atill spared to one another. We are thankful to God for the goodness He has shown us, for the blessings of health and home, friends and country. | |
Our religion is most elevating, our history is most ennobling. Both of them have claims upon us which demand our constant devotion. To our religion may we remain steadfast, to our history may we remain true, by carrying on the work for which our fathers so nobly struggled, suffering death in preference to desertion and torture rather than be traitors. | |
Memories sad and sweet, tearful and joyful, does this evening awaken. But it likewise arouses hopes fair and bright, unsullied and unstained as the gladsome light of day in a morning without clouds. To these memories and hopes I pledge this glass of wine, and as it passes from lip to lip, may there go with it the loving promise to live for the faith of our fathers and to strive for it bravely and unfaltering!y, until victory crowns our efforts with success and all men unite with us in proclaiming the Unity of God, and the Unity of the Human Family. Amen. | |
(The glass shall then be passed around as a loving-cup, and all having drunk therefrom the Parents should pronounce a benediction on the head of each of their children. After being again seated one of the younger members of the family shall ask…)[1] The 2nd and third edition have instead: “The glass of wine shall then be passed around to all present.” The sixth and seventh edition have instead: “The wine shall then be drunk.” |
This is the Ḳiddush the Passover seder by Rabbi J. Leonard Levy to his Haggadah or Home Service for the Festival of Passover (1896) pp. 4-5, reprinted with different page numbers in subsequent editions. The prayer threads the needle between the particularly Jewish communal focus of Passover and the universalist themes that animated Levy’s Liberal Jewish mission. –Aharon Varady
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Notes
1 | The 2nd and third edition have instead: “The glass of wine shall then be passed around to all present.” The sixth and seventh edition have instead: “The wine shall then be drunk.” |
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“Ḳiddush in the Home Service for the Festival of Passover, by Rabbi J. Leonard Levy (1896)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
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