This is Joshua Giorgio-Rubin’s English translation of Rabbi David Einhorn’s adaptation of the opening prayer “Mah Tovu” as found in Rubin’s Olat Hadashah: A Modern Adaptation of David Einhorn’s Olat Tamid for Shabbat Evening (2020). Rabbi Einhorn identifies the prayer by its familiar incipit from the verse Numbers 24:5, but left that verse untranslated.

Source(s)

“מַה־טֹּבֽוּ | Mah Tovu, translated from Rabbi David Einhorn’s Olat Tamid (1858) by Joshua Giorgio-Rubin (2020)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Joshua Giorgio-Rubin

Joshua Giorgio-Rubin is a Senior Lecturer of English at Indiana University South Bend, and he spent ten years as the spiritual leader of the Jewish community at Culver Academies in Culver, Indiana. He is the high holidays ḥazzan at Temple Israel in Valparaiso, Indiana, and a student of all things Jewish. He lives in South Bend, Indiana, with his husband, son, and small menagerie.

David Einhorn

David Einhorn (November 10, 1809 – November 2, 1879) was a German-Jewish rabbi and leader of Reform Judaism in the United States. Einhorn was chosen in 1855 as the first rabbi of the Har Sinai Congregation in Baltimore, the oldest congregation in the United States that has been affiliated with the Reform movement since its inception. While there, he compiled a siddur in German and Hebrew, one of the early Reform Jewish prayerbooks in the United States. (The siddur, later translated to English, became one of the progenitors of the Reform Movement's Union Prayer Book.) In 1861, Einhorn's life was threatened by a mob angered by his strong abolitionist anti-slavery views, and was forced to flee to Philadelphia. There he became rabbi of Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel. He moved to New York City in 1866, where he became rabbi of Congregation Adath Israel. (from his wikipedia article)

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.)

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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