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Elsie Davis (translation)

Elsie Naomi Davis Schryver (1876-1933), born in Derby, England, was a Jewish translator of liturgy and a mother. She was born at Friarfield House, Derby, the oldest of two children of Louisa (née Jonas) and Arthur Davis. Her father's family were secular Jewish precision instrument makers, who had immigrated to England from Bavaria in the early nineteenth century. A civil engineer by trade, Arthur Davis became religiously observant and mastered the Hebrew language, becoming an accomplished Hebraist noted for his study of cantillation marks in the Tanakh. The family moved to Kilburn, London when Nina was six weeks old, later settling in Bayswater. There, Davis gave his daughters an intensive scholarly education in Hebrew and Jewish studies, teaching them himself each morning before breakfast from the age of four, and taking them regularly to the synagogue. The Davis's moved in learned Jewish circles, and friends of Nina's parents included the families of Nathan Adler, Simeon Singer, Claude Montefiore, Solomon Schechter, Herbert Bentwich, and Elkan Adler. Arthur Davis was one of the "Kilburn Wanderers"—a group of Anglo-Jewish intellectuals that formed around Solomon Schechter in the 1880s—members of which took an interest in Nina's work and helped her find publication for her writings. Eleven of Elsie's translations of piyyutim are credited in the maḥzorim of Herbert Adler and her father Arthur Davis. With her husband, Samuel Barnett Schryver, she was the parent of two daughters, Rosalind Leah Schryver and Priscilla Naomi Schryver. Elsie was the older sister of Nina Salaman Davis (1877-1925), who also translated medieval piyyutim.

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אֶתֵּן לְפוֹעֲלִי צֶֽדֶק | Ètén l’Fōali Tsedeq (“My Maker’s Justice”), a piyyut by Rabbi Shimon bar Yitsḥaq of Mainz (rhyming English translation by Elsie Davis, 1907)

Contributed by: Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Elsie Davis (translation), Shimon bar Yitsḥaq of Mainz

This is the alphabetic acrostic piyyut “Etén l’Foali Tsedeq” by Shimon bar Yitsḥaq (b. Abun of Mainz, identified via his acrostic signature), as translated into rhymed English verse by Elsie Davis, and published in Herbert Adler and Arthur Davis’s Maḥzor Avodat Ohel Moed: Avodat Yom haZikaron (1907), p. 104 (also, p. 200).


אֲשֶׁר אֵימָתֶֽךָ | Asher Eimatekha (Thou whose fear…), a qerovah piyyuṭ by Meshullam ben Ḳalonymous for Yom Kippur (translated by Elsie Davis)

Contributed by: Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Elsie Davis (translation), Meshullam ben Ḳalonymus

This is the piyyut “Asher Eimatekha (Thou whose fear…)” a piyyut by Meshullam ben Ḳalonymous for the reader’s repetition of the Yom Kippur musaf amidah, published in Adler and Davis’s Maḥzor for Yom Kippur, Avodat Yom ha-Kippurim vol. 2 (1904), pp. 147-149.


אַשֶׁר אֹֽמֶץ תְּהִלָּתֶֽךָ | Asher Omets Tehilatekha (Thou, the might of whose praise), a qerovah piyyuṭ for Yom Kippur (translated by Elsie Davis)

Contributed by: Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Elsie Davis (translation), Meshullam ben Ḳalonymus

This is the piyyut “Asher Omets Tehilatekha (Thou, the might of whose praise)” a piyyut by an unknown paytan (possibly Meshullam ben Ḳalonymous) in the qerovot section of the reader’s repetition of the Yom Kippur shaḥarit amidah, published in Adler and Davis’s Maḥzor for Yom Kippur, Avodat Yom ha-Kippurim vol. 2 (1904), p. 68.


מַעֲשֵׂי אֱלֹהֵינוּ | Ma’aseh Eloheinu (The work of our God), a qerovah piyyuṭ by Meshullam ben Ḳalonymous for Yom Kippur (translated by Elsie Davis)

Contributed by: Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Elsie Davis (translation), Meshullam ben Ḳalonymus

This is the piyyut “Ma’aseh Eloheinu (The work of our God)” a piyyut by Meshullam ben Ḳalonymous in the qerovot section of the reader’s repetition of the Yom Kippur shaḥarit amidah, published in Adler and Davis’s Maḥzor for Yom Kippur, Avodat Yom ha-Kippurim vol. 2 (1904), p. 67.



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