“God’s Goodness — the Testament of Israel” by Rabbi Milton Steinberg appears on page 558 of The Sabbath Prayer Book (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945) as part of a service for Thanksgiving Day. It is the last of four “testaments,” the other three being the testament of Nature, Man, and America respectively. I have supplied the Hebrew verses corresponding to the vernacular English text provided by Rabbi Steinberg. I have replaced “Lord” with YHVH as the circumlocution for the Tetragrammaton, replaced Anglicizations and other archaisms. –Aharon Varady

Source(s)

“God’s Goodness — the Testament of [Am] Yisrael, a prayer for Thanksgiving Day by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (1945)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

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.)

Milton Steinberg

Milton Steinberg (November 25, 1903 – March 20, 1950) was an American rabbi, philosopher, theologian and author. Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised with the combination of his grandparents' traditional Jewish piety and his father's modernist socialism. He graduated as valedictorian of his class at DeWitt Clinton High School and then majored in Classics at City College of New York which he graduated from summa cum laude in 1924. Steinberg received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1928 and then entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he was ordained. In seminary, he was strongly influenced by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983), the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. After five years in a pulpit in Indiana, he was invited by the Seminary to assume the pulpit of Manhattan's Park Avenue Synagogue, then a small congregation with a Reform orientation. In his sixteen years at the congregation, he grew it from 120 to 750 families. In 1943 he had a near fatal heart attack. While a disciple of Kaplan who considered himself a Reconstructionist, Steinberg was critical of Kaplan's dismissal of metaphysics. Steinberg's works included Basic Judaism, The Making of the Modern Jew, A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem, and As A Driven Leaf, a historical novel revolving around the talmudic characters Elisha ben Abuyah and Rabbi Akiva. In his final years, he began writing a series of theological essays. This project, which he had hoped would conclude in a book of theology, was cut short by his death at age 46. An unfinished second novel, The Prophet's Wife, about the Tanakh characters Hosea and Gomer, was published in March 2010. (via his entry in Wikipedia)

Stable Link:    https://opensiddur.org/?p=25392

Associated Image:   

Szyk and Haman (1950)

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

This post, editable:    XML | ODT

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

1. Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Milton Steinberg.
2. 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.)
3. Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=25392>.
4. 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.)

Note:    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.

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

Works of related interest:

 

God’s Goodness — the Testament of America, a prayer for Thanksgiving Day by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (1945)

God’s Goodness — the Testament of Nature, a prayer for Thanksgiving Day by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (1945)

God’s Goodness — the Testament of Man, a prayer for Thanksgiving Day by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (1945)

הַנּוֹתֵן תְּשׁוּעָה | Prayer for the Government on Thanksgiving Day, offered by Rabbi David de Sola Pool (1945)

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Milton Balkany on 7 November 1991

📖 מנחת תודה | Minḥat Todah :: Service for Thanksgiving Day, arranged by Rabbi David de Sola Pool (1945)

Opening Prayer on the Significance of Thanksgiving Day, by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, J. Paul Williams, and Eugene Kohn (1951)

prev next