[Gebet] Am Thora-Freudenfest | [A prayer] on Simḥat Torah, by Fanny Neuda (1855)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription), Wikisource Contributors (proofreading), Julia Watts Belser (translation), Fanny Schmiedl-Neuda and Moritz Mayer (translation)

Shared on:

30 September 2018 under the Fair Use Right (17 U.S. Code §107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use)

Categories:

Shemini Atseret (and Simḥat Torah)

Tags:

19th century C.E., תחינות teḥinot, 57th century A.M., Jewish Women's Prayers, Teḥinot in German, German vernacular prayer, Bohemian Jewry

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 (German)	Translation (English)
„Gottes Gesetze erfreuen das Herz.” (Psalm 19, 9.)	“The precepts of YHVH are just, rejoicing the heart.” (Psalms 19:9 part)
Wir feiern heute ein hohes Freudenfest, das heilige Fest des Glaubens und der Gotteslehre. Mit Freude und Liebe horchen wir den letzten Worten, womit die heilige Thora sich an uns wendet; mit Freude und Liebe begrüßen wir sie, die sich heute von Neuem uns erschließt. Sie ist es, die uns so reich an Gottesfreuden, die uns so wahrhaft glücklich macht. Sie ist der Lebensbaum, an dessen Früchten der unsterbliche Geist sich nährt, und die fromme Seele sich ergötzt; sie ist das Panier, um das sich alle Frommen schaaren und alle Glaubensstarken sich die Hände reichen zum heiligen Bunde; sie ist die Fahne, zu der sie schwören, zu vollbringen das Gute und Heilige, zu Gottes Ehre und zu ihres Glaubens Verherrlichung; sie ist das Banner, dem sie folgen durch die Erdenpilgerschaft; sie ist der Kelch, aus dem wir trinken stille Ruhe und Gottesfrieden für das stark bewegte Herz, frohe Hoffnung und süßen Glauben für das bang verzagte Gemüth, Himmelstrost und Lebensbalsam für die schmerzenswunde Seele; sie ist die Sonne, die uns das dunkle Erdenthal erhellt, sie ist das Licht, das die düstere Hütte des Elends und des Ungemachs verklärt und in reiner Gottesfreude strahlen macht.	Today we celebrate a sublime festival of joy, the sacred feast of faith and the divine law. With delight and love, we listen to the concluding words of the Torah. With delight and love we greet it as we swing open its doors again. This is the Torah that blesses us with the richness of heavenly joys and makes us truly happy. It is the tree of life, whose fruits nourish the eternal spirit and rejoice the pious soul. It is the banner around which all the pious gather and beneath which all true believers join hands in holy covenant. It is the standard on which they swear to perform all that is good, holy, and for the honor of God and the glorification of their tradition. It is the cup from which we drink peace and tranquility for the afflicted soul, renewed hope and sweet faith for the drooping spirit, heavenly comfort and a healing balm for the lacerated heart. It is the sun that illumines the earth’s dark valleys. It is the light that cheers the gloomy huts of misery and misfortune and makes them shine with pure joy in God.
Dank und Preis und Ruhm dir, Allerhöchster, daß du ein solches Kleinod uns hast anvertraut. Verherrlichung und Anbetung dir, daß du durch dein Wort, durch deine Lehre unser Leben so reich, so bedeutungsvoll gemacht. Ohne sie wäre unser Leben nur ein wüster, banger Traum, eine Brücke ohne Lehne, ein Kahn ohne Führer auf stürmischer See.	Thanks to you, O God, for entrusting such a jewel to us. We adore and worship you for enriching us and enhancing our lives through your Torah. Without it, our life would be a barren, fearsome dream, a small boat without a guide on a stormy ocean.
O, mir schwindelt, wenn ich bedenke, was ich ohne sie wäre, und heiliger Jubel durchzieht meine Seele, wenn ich denke, was ich in ihr besitze. Gib, Allmächtiger, daß dein göttliches Wort stets in mir lebe, mein Herz veredle und stark mache, stark im Glauben, stark in der Liebe und Treue zu dir, stark im Dulden und Tragen deiner Prüfungen und Schickungen. Möge nie der Segen deiner Lehre von meinem Hause, von meinen Kindern und von meinen Kindeskindern weichen; möge der helle Strahl deines Gottesfriedens und deiner Gottesfreuden uns stets erleuchten und verklären. Amen.	I shudder to think of where I would be without it. Sacred exultation moves my soul when I recall what a treasure I possess in it. Grant, Almighty One, that your divine word may ever be alive within me, that it may ennoble and fortify my heart, that it may strengthen my faith, my love, my hope in you through suffering and hardship and in all the trials and calls to courage I may encounter on my way. May the blessings of your word never leave my home or those of my children and my children’s children. May the brilliant rays of your heavenly peace and joy always inspire and cheer me. Amen.

This is Fanny Neuda’s prayer “on Simḥat Torah,” faithfully transcribed and proofread with the help of German Wikisource contributors from Fanny Neuda’s Stunden Der Andacht (1855), p. 66-67. The translation provided here was made by Julia Watts Belser for Hours of Devotion: Fanny Neuda’s Book of Prayers for Jewish Women (ed. Dinah Berland, Schocken 2007), and set here for the first time side-by-side with Neuda’s original German.

Rabbi Moritz Mayer (L. Frank 1866) was the first to offer an English translation of this prayer. While many prayers offered in his 1866 edition of Hours of Devotion (published by L. Frank) deviate considerably from Neuda’s German, his translation of this prayer remains close to the source.

Source(s)

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

“[Gebet] Am Thora-Freudenfest | [A prayer] on Simḥat Torah, by Fanny Neuda (1855)” 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.)

Wikisource Contributors (proofreading)

Wikisource is a collaborative transcription site and part of the family of user-generated content sites administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Open Siddur Project uses Wikisource for collaborative transcription by taking advantage of the Proofread Page MediaWiki extension installed as a feature for public use. For detailed attribution information for any text, please refer to the "View History" link on specific Wikisource pages.

Julia Watts Belser (translation)

Julia Watts Belser is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University. She is the author of Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity (Cambridge Univ. Press 2015) and Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem (Oxford University Press 2018).

Fanny Schmiedl-Neuda

Fanny Neuda (1819-1894) was a Jewish German-speaking writer best known for her popular collection of prayers, Stunden Der Andacht. She was born in Lomnice to the family of Rabbi Yehudah Schmiedl (1776-1855). After marrying Abraham Neuda (1812-1854), the couple moved to Loštice to Moravia, where her husband held the position of rabbi. They had three sons: Moritz (1842), Julius (1845) and Gotthold (1846). After her husband's death in 1854 she stayed for some time in Brno and later settled in Vienna . She died at the age of 75 years in the spa town of Merano (present-day Italy).

Moritz Mayer (translation)

Rabbi Moritz Mayer (originally Moses Maier, later Maurice Mayer; 1821-1867) born in Dürckheim-on-the-Haardt, Germany, fled to the United States and to New York as a political refugee of the 1848 revolution. In 1859, after seven years as the rabbi of Ḳ.Ḳ. Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, he returned in poor health to New York where he contributed frequently to the Jewish press, and translated various German works into English: Rabbi Samuel Adler's catechism, Abraham Geiger's lectures on Jewish history, and Ludwig Philipson's pamphlet, Haben die Juden Jesum Gekreuzigt? (the Crucifixion from the Jewish Point of View), et al. In 1866, a number of his English translations of Fanny Neuda's teḥinot in German (from her Stunden Der Andacht, 1855/1858) were published in a volume he titled Hours of Devotion. The work also included a number of his own prayers as well as those of Marcus Heinrich Bresslau. The following year, Moritz Mayer passed away. He was 45 years old.(We are indebted to Anton Hieke for his research on Mayer, "Rabbi Maurice Mayer: German Revolutionary, Charleston Reformer, and Anti-Abolitionist" published in Southern Jewish Life, 17 (2014), pp. 45-89.)For Mayer's original prayers, please visit here.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

[Gebet] An den ersten Tagen des Laubhüttenfestes | [A prayer] on the first days of Sukkot by Fanny Neuda (1855)

Image: Sukkot in the Synagogue (Examining the Lulav) (1895) by Leopold Pilichowski (1869 - 1933)

[Gebet] Am Laubhüttenfest beim Kreisgang mit dem Lulaw und Esrog | [Prayer] on Sukkot at the Haḳafot with the Lulav & Etrog, by Fanny Neuda (1855)

[Gebet] An den letzten Tagen des Laubhüttenfestes | [A prayer] on the last days of Sukkot, by Fanny Neuda (1855)

[Gebet] Am Neumonde | Prayer for the Day of New Moon, by Fanny Schmiedl-Neuda (1855)

[Gebet] Vor der Entbindung | [Prayer] Before the Childbirth, by Fanny Neuda (1855)

detail of Fanny Neuda's prayer "Gebet einer Frau, deren Mann auf Reisen ist"

Gebet einer Frau, deren Mann auf Reisen ist | Prayer of a woman whose husband is travelling, by Fanny Neuda (1855)

Gebet einer Mutter, deren Kind in der Fremde ist (Fanny Schmiedl Neuda 1855) - cropped

Gebet einer Mutter, deren Kind in der Fremde ist | Prayer of a mother whose child is in a foreign land, a teḥinah by Fanny Neuda (1855)

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=21914

Associated Image:

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

Source: XML | JSON | 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), Wikisource Contributors (proofreading), Julia Watts Belser (translation), Fanny Schmiedl-Neuda and Moritz Mayer (translation).
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=21914>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Fair Use Right (17 U.S. Code §107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use). (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