Arise, my soul! with rapture rise! — a morning hymn of the Reformed Society of Israelites (Charleston, South Carolina, ca. 1825)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Unknown and Reformed Society of Israelites

Shared on:

23 April 2026 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

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Tags:

19th century C.E., 56th century A.M., ascent, English vernacular prayer, hymns, waking

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Arise, my soul! with rapture rise! And, fill’d with love and fear, adore The awful Sov’reign of the skies, Whose mercy lends me one day more.
	And may this day, indulgent Power! Not idly pass, nor fruitless be; But may each swiftly flying hour Still nearer bring my soul to Thee!
	But can it be? that power divine Is thron’d in light’s unbounded blaze; And countless worlds and angels join To swell the glorious song of praise.
	And will he deign to lend an ear, When frail and humble mortals pray? Yes, for his boundless love will hear, Nor cast the humblest wretch away.
	Then let me serve thee all my days, And let my zeal with years increase: For pleasant, Lord, are all thy ways, And all thy paths are paths of peace.

“Arise, my soul! with rapture rise!” is the incipit to Hymn №2 in Barnett A. Elzas’s The Sabbath Service and Miscellaneous Prayers (1916), an edited republication of “The Sabbath service and miscellaneous prayers, adopted by the Reformed society of Israelites, founded in Charleston, S. C., November 21, 1825.” The hymn appears on pages 55-56 without any additional attribution.

Source(s)

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

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Reformed Society of Israelites

The Reformed Society of Israelites (1824-1833) was a group of forty-seven congregants of Ḳ.Ḳ. Beth Elohim, Charleston, South Carolina, who gathered in late 1824 to petition the congregation to modify the service of prayers with an adapted liturgy emphasizing English translations, original hymns, and other modifications. Among other reforms, the group called for shorter services and sermons conducted in English that would relate the weekly parashah to everyday life. Prominent leaders in the group were Isaac Harby (1788–1828), Abraham Moïse (1799-1869), and David Nunes Carvalho (1784-1860). After Harby's death in 1828, the group published a prayerbook (later reprinted by Barnett Elzas/Bloch in 1916). In 1833, the group dissolved but in rejoining Beth Elohim they also managed to succeed in their original mission in putting the congregation on a firm Reform movement trajectory.

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Camp of the Israelites in the Midbar (August Fleishman, Nuremberg 1708)

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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)