This is an archive of prayers composed for, or relevant to, United Nations Day, the anniversary of the Charter of the United Nations, ratified by its member states on 24 October 1945, at the end of World War Ⅱ. In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly declared the day as one which “shall be devoted to making known to the people of the world the aims and achievements of the United Nations and to gaining their support for” its work. In 1971, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a further resolution (United Nations Resolution 2782) declaring that United Nations Day shall be an international observance or international holiday and recommended that it should be observed as a public holiday by United Nations member states. (This summary contains material derived from Wikipedia) Click here to contribute a prayer you have written for United Nations Day. Filter resources by Name Filter resources by Tag Filter resources by Category
This is De Rechten van den Menschen van den Burger (“The Rights of Man and of the Citizen” 1795) and its Hebrew translation, דברי הברית החקים והמשפטים אשר בין אדם לאדם (1798), upon the establishment of the Batavian Republic and the ensuing emancipation of Dutch Jewry in the Netherlands. The text of the Declaration, with nineteen articles, follows after the French Republic’s much expanded Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen de 1793 written by Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles. (The French Declaration, ratified by popular vote in July 1793, was a revision of the initial Declaration from 1789 written by the commission that included Hérault de Séchelles and Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just during the period of the French Revolution.) Declarations such as these enshrined the liberal values of the Enlightenment which changed the situation and status of Jews under their aegis. Ultimately, these values were largely enshrined under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by member states of the nascent United Nations in 1945. . . .
A hymn for peace and the end of war. . . .
A prayer for intra-national peace during the interwar period (after World War I). . . .
This prayer by Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943) was first publicly read in 1942 in the course of a United Nations Day speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. . . .
A chaplain’s eulogy over the fallen soldiers of Iwo Jima (also known under the title, “The Highest and Purest Democracy”) . . .
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English with its translations in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. . . .
A prayer for universal peace offered by Hillel Yisraeli-Lavery as an opening prayer to a talk given in Hamilton, Canada by 2011 Nobel Prize winner Leymah Gbowee. . . .
A prayer for human solidarity to mitigate the danger that comes when our particular identity as Bnei Yisrael greatly eclipses our universal identity as Bnei Adam. . . .
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