“Enseigne-nous à compter nos jours,
afin que la sagesse pénétre dans nos cœurs” (Ps. 90, 12).
“Teach us to count our days,
that wisdom may enter our hearts.” (Psalms 90:12)
Seigneur Zébaoth, lorsque tu formas les deux grands luminaires, flambeaux du jour et de la nuit, ta souveraine sagesse voulut qu’ils fussent des signes visibles de la division des temps, pour nous apprendre à connaître rinstabilité de notre vie. Le lever et le coucher du soleil nous montrent la prompte succession des jours; le retour régulier de la lune nous indique la révolution rapide des mois et des années. Ainsi s’envolent les instants de notre existence fugitive, et nous arrivons bien vite au terme que ta Providence a fixé. Ce n’est que dans la conscience d’avoir été utiles, d’avoir noblement employé les heures de notre vie, que nous pouvons nous réjouir d’avoir vécu, et jeter un regard tranquille au delà du tombeau.
YHVH (Adonai) Tsevaöt, when you formed the two great luminaries, flambeaux of day and night, your sovereign wisdom wanted them to be visible signs of the division of time, to teach us to know the uncertainty of our lives. The rising and setting of the sun shows us the swift succession of days; the regular return of the moon shows us the rapid revolution of months and years. Thus fly away the moments of our fleeting existence, and we arrive very quickly at the end which your Providence has fixed. It is only in the awareness of having been useful, of having nobly used the hours of our life, that we can rejoice in having lived, and look calmly beyond the tomb.
Que voudrions-nous avoir fait à l’heure de la la mort? Faisons ce que nous voudrions avoir fait alors. Il n’y a point de temps à perdre; chaque moment peut-être le dernier de notre vie. Plus nous avons vécu, plus nous sommes près du tombeau.
What would we want to have done [with our lives] at the hour of death? Let’s do what we [will] wish we’d have done. There is no time to lose; each moment may be the last of our lives. The more we have lived, the closer we are to the tomb.
C’est pourquoi, Seigneur tout-puissant, Dieu d’Israël, je te supplie de m’accorder ta grâce et ta bénédiction dans ce nouveau mois qui com-mence; que par ta divine protection, il s’écoule pour moi et pour tous tes enfants dans la paix de l’àme, dans la pratique de ta loi, dans la piété et la charité; qu’aucune action, aucune pensée coupable ne trouble mon esprit ni mon cœur, et que le travail de mes mains suffise à la nourrie ture de mon corps. Que ton amour, ô notre Père, veille sans cesse sur nous. Amen.
Therefore, YHVH (Adonai) Tsevaöt Elohei Yisrael, I beg you to grant me your grace and your blessing in this new month that is beginning; that through your divine protection, I and all your children may flow in peace of soul, in the practice of your law, in piety, and charity; that no act or guilty thought may disturb my spirit or my heart, and that the work of my hands may be enough to nourish my body. May your love, O our Parent, watch over us unceasingly. Amen.
To the best of my ability, this is a faithful transcription of a teḥinah (supplicatory prayer) composed in parallel to the Prayer for the New Moon, following in the paraliturgical tradition of Yiddish tkhines, albeit written in French. (This particular paraliturgical prayer may be original or it may be based on an earlier work in German or Yiddish. Please contact us or comment below if you can identify it.) The prayer is included by Rabbi Arnaud Aron and Jonas Ennery in their opus, אמרי לב Prières d’un Coeur Israelite published in 1848 by the Société Consistoriale de Bons Livres. I have been aided by the DeepL translator in translating this prayer from French to English. –Aharon Varady
Source(s)
“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)” is shared by the contributors with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
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 a hierophant, welcoming new users, editing new posts, keeping the site up-to-date, and occasionally contributing his own original work. If you find any mistakes in his translations or transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin, Ministarot Nakeniשְׁגִיאוֹת 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 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 Nakeniשְׁגִיאוֹת 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 (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 (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.
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