Prayer for Others, an exhortation (CCAR 1923)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Unknown and Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR]

Shared on:

10 March 2026 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Tags:

20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, exhortation, teḥinot in English, תוכחות tokheḥot, universalist prayers

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Pray now unto the Lord our God for us. (Jeremiah 37:3)
	Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you. (I Samuel 12:28)
	And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, ‘Heal her now, O God, I beseech Thee.’ (Numbers 12:13)
	And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said: ‘Lord, why doth Thy wrath wax hot against Thy people?’ (Exodus 32:11)
	Whoso is able to pray for another but neglects to do so is a sinner. (Berakhot 12b.6)
	This people is like a vine. The men of means are the sprigs. The men of learning are the clusters. The untutored are the leaves. The delinquent ones are the sapless fibres. Let the clusters pray for the leaves for there can be no clusters unless there are leaves. (Hullin 92a.15-16)
	Our prayers should ever be the expression, not alone of our yearning for communion with God, but also of our deepest concern and love for our neighbors and friends, for the whole world of humankind. We ask, when we pray, for some blessing, for some great gift from the boundless store of God’s bounty; but how soon would the blessing, when granted to us, begin to pall and end in joyless discontent, if any of our brothers living by our side are pining and vainly struggling for these same gifts with which we are happily blessed! Can we be truly happy when God’s own children are in misery and want? Yea, can we ignore the needs of our fellowmen and yet hope to receive an answer to our own petitions from Him whose love embraces all of His children?
	It behooves us, therefore, to recall that we are not alone in this world, and that, when we breathe forth our petitions to God on high, we should reach out beyond ourselves and our own selfish interests. When our prayers are selfish, they lose their spiritual value and power. The very presence of the God of justice is denied us, if we prove unjust to the needs of others. The God of mercy hearkens only to the supplications of the merciful. We come nearest to God, when we pray for the good of others. The noblest, truest kind of prayer, is that which is offered in behalf of others.^[1] Corrected from the published line which reads, “The noblest, because truest kind of prayer, is that which is offered in behalf of others.” The errant “because” in the line is repeated in the 1951 republication of the prayer in the Union Home Prayerbook. For such prayer marks our deepest realization that God is love. Such prayer reveals us to be one with those for whom we pray; and all spiritual union among the finite is a necessary condition as it is a clear intimation of our complete union with the Infinite.
	Heavenly Father, Thou dost bid us love our neighbor as ourselves. We pray to Thee for many blessings, we seek our own prosperity and health and joy at Thy hands. O grant us the love to seek with equal zeal the good of our fellowmen. Deepen our insight into the hearts of those around us. May we discover all that is precious within them that we shall feel prompted to invoke upon them Thy blessing. Grant that we may look beneath and beyond all that is repelling and discern in others all that inspireth love. As Thou art one and Thy name is one, do Thou unite Thy children. O bring us spiritually nearer to one another and thus eternally nearer to Thee. Amen.

“Prayer for Others” is the twenty-seventh prayer found in ברכה ותהלה Blessing and Praise: A Book of Meditations and Prayers for Individual and Home Devotion (CCAR 1923), pp. 93-95. Unfortunately, we do not yet know of a resource providing clear attribution of authorship for any of the prayers in this volume.

Source(s)

Notes

Notes
1	Corrected from the published line which reads, “The noblest, because truest kind of prayer, is that which is offered in behalf of others.” The errant “because” in the line is repeated in the 1951 republication of the prayer in the Union Home Prayerbook.

Aharon N. Varady (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.)

Unknown

Sometimes the best we can do in attributing a historical work is to indicate the period and place it was written, the first prayer book it may have been printed in, or the archival collection in which the manuscript was found. We invite the public to help to attribute all works to their original composers. If you know something not mentioned in the commentary offered, please leave a comment or contact us.

Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR]

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada.

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=66492

Associated Image:

Grapes Sundowner 2015 (credit: Joachim Jung, license: CC BY)

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

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Unknown and Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR].
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=66492>.
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׃ (תהלים צ:יז) · "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)

Prayer for Others, an exhortation (CCAR 1923)

Source(s)

Read a comment / Leave a comment (moderated)

Leave a Reply Cancel reply