Au Renouvellement Du Mois: Sur la Brièveté de la Vie | At the New Moon: On the Brevity of Life, by Rabbi Arnaud Aron & Jonas Ennery (1848)

Aharon N. Varady (translation)

Founding director of the Open Siddur Project, Aharon Varady is a community planner (M.C.P.) and Jewish educator (M.A. J.Ed.) working to improve stewardship of the Public Domain, be it the physical and natural commons of urban park systems or the creative and cultural commons of Torah study. His work on the adoption of Open Source strategies in the Jewish community has been written about in the Yiddish Forverts, the Atlantic Magazine, Tablet, and Haaretz. Aharon Varady studied environmental planning and planning history at DAAP/University of Cincinnati, and the intersection of theurgy, experiential education, and ecology at the Davidson School of Education/JTSA. Here at opensiddur.org, he serves as hierophant, welcoming new users, adding new posts, and keeping the site up-to-date. If you find any mistakes in his translations or transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin, Ministarot Nakeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you find his work helpful to your own or you'd simply like to support him, please consider donating via his Patreon account.

Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project, which he founded and directs. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin, Ministarot Nakeni 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. Besides his transcription work, Varady occasionally translates prayers and contributes his own original work. (Varady also serves as editor and administrator of the Open Siddur Project website, opensiddur.org, and is an outspoken advocate for open-source in Judaism more of which can be read about in this interview in the Atlantic Magazine.)

Jonas Ennery

Jonas Ennery (Jan. 2, 1801, Nancy - May 19, 1863, Brussels) was a French deputy. He was for twenty-six years attached to the Jewish school of Strasbourg, of which he became the head. In collaboration with Hirth, he compiled a Dictionnaire Général de Géographie Universelle (4 vols., Strasburg, 1839–41), for which Cuvier wrote a preface. Soon afterward he published Le Sentier d'Israël, ou Bible des Jeunes Israélites (Paris, Metz, and Strasburg, 1843). At the request of the Société des Bons Livres he took part in the editorship of Prières d'un Cœur Israélite, which appeared in 1848. In 1849, despite anti-Jewish rioting in Alsace, Ennery was elected representative for the department of the Lower Rhine, and sat among the members of the "Mountain." He devoted his attention principally to scholastic questions. After the coup d'état he held to his socialist republican views and resisted the new order of things. For this, in 1852 he was exiled from France for life. He retired to Brussels, where he lived as a teacher until his death. Ennery's brother, Marchand Ennery, was the chief rabbi of Paris.

Arnaud Aron

Arnaud Aron (March 11, 1807, in Sulz unterm Walde, Alsace – April 3, 1890), the Grand Rabbi of Strasbourg, began his Talmudic studies at an early age at Hagenau and continued them at Frankfort-on-the-Main. In 1830 he became rabbi of the small community of Hegenheim in Upper Alsace; and of Strasbourg in 1833. As he was under thirty, the age prescribed by law, he required a special dispensation to qualify for the office. In Strasbourg, Aron acquired the reputation of an eloquent and inspiring preacher and a zealous communal worker. He assisted in founding the School of Arts and Trades and took active interest in other useful institutions. In 1855 he convened an assembly of the rabbis of the department of the Lower Rhine for the consideration of religious questions. Aron was the author of the catechism used for confirmation as prescribed by the Consistory of Lower Alsace. In 1866 the French government acknowledged his services by appointing him a Knight of the Legion of Honor. In 1870, while Strasbourg was besieged, it was he, together with the archbishop, who raised the white flag on the cathedral. Subsequently he was decorated by the German emperor.