Contributed by: Yosef Goldstein, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
The pedagogical song “Hashem is Everywhere!” by Rabbi Yosef Goldstein (1928-2013) can be found in the context of his story, “Where is Hashem?,” the second track on his album מדות טובות Jewish Ethics Through Story and Song (Menorah Records 1972). In the instructions to reciting the lyrics, the singer points first to the six cardinal directions and lastly, by pointing inward towards one’s self. In so doing, one explicitly affirms the idea of the divine within ourselves and implicitly, in each other. . . .
Contributed by: Moshe Tanenbaum, Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Aharon N. Varady (translation), Isaac Gantwerk Mayer (translation)
Variations of the original three lines culminating with “…walk beside me…” first appear in high school yearbooks beginning in 1970. The earliest recorded mention we could find was in The Northern Light, the 1970 yearbook of North Attleboro High School, Massachusetts. In the Jewish world of the early to mid-1970s, a young Moshe Tanenbaum began transmitting the lines at Jewish summer camps. In 1979, as Uncle Moishy, Tanenbaum published a recording of the song under the title “v’Ohavta” (track A4 on The Adventures of Uncle Moishy and the Mitzvah Men, volume 2). . . .
Contributed by: Shraga Friedman (Yiddish translation), Joseph Stein, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
The blessing for Tsar Nicholas II as given in the lines of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof. . . .
Contributed by: Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Zackary Sholem Berger (translation), Refoyl Finkl (translation), Unknown (translation), Peng Chun Chang, Charles Malik, René Cassin, John Peters Humphrey, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English with its translations in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. . . .
Contributed by: comYakowenko (translation), Noam Lerman (translation), Hirsh Glik, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
The Yiddish resistance song, “Partisaner Lid” (The Partisan Song) was composed by Hirsh Glick in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943. . . .
Contributed by: Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
A prayer for the welfare of the government in Yiddish from A Naye Shas Tkhine Rav Pninim (after 1933). . . .
Contributed by: Henry Sapoznik (translation/Yiddish), Irving Berlin, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
The words of the prayer for Armistice Day 1938, “God Bless America” by Irving Berlin, in English and Yiddish. . . .
Contributed by: Unknown (translation), Morris Lichtenstein, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
A brief explanation of the role of prayer in the Jewish Science movement of Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein and his wife Tehilla Lichtenstein, co-founders of the Society of Jewish Science, in Yiddish with an English translation. . . .
Contributed by: Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
This is a faithful transcription of the א תְּחִנָה פאר א שטיף מוטער (“A Tkhine for a Stepmother”) which first appeared in ש״ס תחנה חדשה (Shas Tkhine Ḥadasha), a collection of tkhines published by Ben-Zion Alfes in Vilna, 1922. . . .
Contributed by: Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
“Tsaar Balei Ḥayyim” ([It is forbidden to cause] suffering to a living creature), source unknown. Many thanks to Tiferet Zimmern-Kahan for recording the niggun for the song and to Naftali Ejdelman and The Jewish Daily Forward for providing the lyrics. . . .
Contributed by: Morris Rosenfeld, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
“My America (Our New Hymn)” was written by Morris Rosenfeld and published by the Jewish Morning Journal sometime mid-April 1917. On April 2nd, the United States had entered the World War against Germany and its allies. In the xenophobic atmosphere of the United States during World War Ⅰ, Representative Isaac Siegel (1880-1947), R-NY, offered the hymn as evidence of the patriotism of America’s “foreign-born” Jewish immigrants. The poem in its English translation was added to the Congressional Record on 18 April 1917 in an extension of remarks. Xenophobia in the United States though did not ebb. Nearly a year later, on April 4, 1918, a German immigrant, Robert Prager, was lynched in Collinsville, Illinois. . . .
Contributed by: Refoyl Finkl (translation), Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
The author of this tkhine intended for women to begin their morning devotional reading of prayers by first accepting patriarchal dominion. Women compensate for their inherent weakness and gain their honor only through the established gender roles assigned to them. The placement of this tkhine at the beginning of the Shas Tkhine Rav Peninim, a popular collection of women’s tkhines published in 1916 (during the ascent of women’s suffrage in the U.S.), suggests that it was written as a prescriptive polemic to influence pious Jewish women to reject advancing feminist ideas. . . .
Contributed by: Mordkhe Rivesman, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
A popular song for Ḥanukkah in Yiddish with English translation. . . .
Contributed by: Baruch Jean Thaler (translation), Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
“Women who Have Bad Luck with Children Should Recite this Tkhine” by an unknown author is a faithful transcription of the tkhine published in Rokhl m’vakoh al boneho (Rokhel Weeps for her Children), Vilna, 1910. I have transcribed it without any changes from The Merit of Our Mothers בזכות אמהות A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s Prayers, compiled by Rabbi Tracy Guren Klirs, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992. shgiyot mi yavin, ministarot nakeni. If you can translate Yiddish, please help to translate it and share your translation with an Open Content license through this project. . . .
Contributed by: Tracy Guren Klirs (translation), Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
This is a faithful transcription of the תחנה פון ליכט בענטשין (“Tkhine for Lighting Candles [for Shabbes]”) as it appeared in the Vilna, 1869 edition. I have transcribed it without any changes from The Merit of Our Mothers בזכות אמהות A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s Prayers, compiled by Rabbi Tracy Guren Klirs, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992. shgiyot mi yavin, ministarot nakeni. If you can scan an image of the page from the 1869 edition this was originally copied from, please share your scan with us. . . .
Contributed by: Tracy Guren Klirs (translation), Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
A prayer for a pregnant woman that she not suffer a miscarriage. . . .
Contributed by: Norman Tarnor (translation), Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
This is a faithful transcription of the תְּחִנָּה מִגְדַּל הַשֵּׁן (“Tkhine for a Baby’s First Tooth”) which first appeared in ש״ס תחנה חדשה (Shas Tkhine Ḥaḥadasha), a collection of tkhines published by Ben-Zion Alfes in Vilna, 1922. . . .
Contributed by: Tracy Guren Klirs (translation), Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
A prayer for a pregnant woman whose childbirth is immanent. . . .
Contributed by: Tracy Guren Klirs (translation), Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
A prayer for a pregnant woman approaching her childbirth. . . .
Contributed by: Tracy Guren Klirs (translation), Unknown, Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
“Tkine for a Mother Who Leads Her Child to Kheyder” by an unknown author is a faithful transcription of the tkhine published in Rokhl m’vakoh al boneho (Raḥel Weeps for her Children), Vilna, 1910. I have transcribed it without any changes from The Merit of Our Mothers בזכות אמהות A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s Prayers, compiled by Rabbi Tracy Guren Klirs, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992. shgiyot mi yavin, ministarot nakeni. Please offer a translation of this tkhine in the comments. . . .