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a community-grown, libre Open Access archive of Jewish prayer and liturgical resources
This project is sustained through reciprocity for those sharing prayers and crafting their own prayerbooks.
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שָּׁבוּעַ שֶׁל אַחְוָה לְאֻמִּית | National Brotherhood Week (in Israel), an adaptation of Tom Lehrer’s song by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer  Contributor(s): Categories:A satirical look at contemporary Israeli civil society in Hebrew and English, as adapted from Tom Lehrer’s sardonic “National Brotherhood Week” (1965). . . . 📄 שֶׁבַע מִצְוֺת בְּנֵי נֹחַ | the 7 Noaḥide Commands, or those prohibitions mandated upon all of humanity according to early Rabbinic sources Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A comprehensive list of the Noaḥide laws recorded in early rabbinic traditions. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags: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. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags: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. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 21 February 1974. . . . Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Albert A. Goldman on 8 February 1972 Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 8 February 1972. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags: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. . . . “Just Walk Beside Me” (לֵךְ פָּשׁוּט לְצִדִּי | امشي بجانبي | נאָר גיין לעבן מיר), lines from an unknown author circulating in 1971; Jewish adaptation with translations in Aramaic, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Arabic Contributor(s): Tags:Variations of the original three lines culminating with “Just walk beside me” first began to appear in print in 1971. Early on misattributed to the French writer Albert Camus (1913–1960), the lines circulated by newspaper and other periodicals before migrating to yearbook quotes. 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). . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:“National Brotherhood Week” by Tom Lehrer was first released on his album “That Was The Year That Was” (1965). National Brotherhood Week in February was first established in the 1930s by the National Conference of Christians and Jews as a means of promoting the values of inter-religious tolerance and civic interdependence. The week gained federal support from President Franklin Roosevelt during World War Ⅱ as a means of combatting fascist and nativist objections to a vision of democracy built on the foundation of a multicultural civil society. By the time Tom Lehrer lampooned the civic commemoration in 1965, the McCarthyite oppressions of the Red Scare and Lavender Scare during the Cold War, the manufactured Vietnam War, lingering anti-Semitic prejudice and suspicion, the continued struggle for civil rights with its continued lynchings, the assassination of JFK and increasing political violence had all exposed National Brotherhood Week for many young adults as phony, a historical relic that had lost the import of any cultural imperative it might have once possessed. . . . Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 18 February 1963. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:Prayer delivered by Rabbi Uri Miller, President of the Synagogue Council of America, at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963 . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A prayer for Brotherhood Week, written in 1951. . . . 💬 Universal Declaration of Human Rights | אַלװעלטלעכע דעקלאַראַציע פֿון מענטשנרעכט | הַכְרָזָה לְכׇל בָּאֵי עוֹלָם בִּדְבַר זְכֻיוֹת הָאָדָם | Deklarasion Universal de Derechos Umanos (1948) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English with its translations in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:This prayer by Rabbi Dudley Weinberg, National Chaplain of AMVETS after World War II, was included in the anthology, The Prayer Book of the Armed Forces (ed. Daniel A. Poling, 1951), pp. 79-80. The prayer was chosen for publication by the then National Commander of AMVETS, Harold Russell. . . . 💬 Iwo Jima Memorial Address at Fifth Marine Division Cemetery, by Rabbi Chaplain Roland B. Gittelsohn (21 March 1945) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A chaplain’s eulogy over the fallen soldiers of Iwo Jima (also known under the title, “The Highest and Purest Democracy”) . . . Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. Senate on 26 February 1945. . . .  Contributor(s):A prayer for peace from the end of World War II. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A civic prayer for the Sabbath occurring during Brotherhood Week (February 19th-28th) in the United States. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories:“Interdependence” by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958) was originally written for the 50th Anniversary of the World’s Young Women’s Christian Association, 19 November 1944. The prayer was included by Rabbi Morrison David Bial in his anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 55. It’s likely that Rabbi Bial first read the prayer in an anthology of prayer by Stephen Hole Fritchman, Prayers of the Free Spirit (1945), p. 38. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A Declaration of Interdependence co-authored during WW II as part of an interfaith Jewish-Christian response to fascism and “to mitigate racial and religious animosity in America.” . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags: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. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:This “Special Prayer” for a Youth Service (11 April 1942) by the Hon. Lily H. Montagu (1873-1963) from the archives of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, was published in, Lily Montagu: Sermons, Addresses, Letters, and Prayers (ed. Ellen M. Umansky, 1985), p. 351. April 11th that year would have corresponded to the 24th of Nissan, i.e., a day following Passover 5702. . . . Man Is Here for the Sake of Others, by Albert Einstein (1930) as excerpted by Rabbi Morrison David Bial Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:“Man Is Here for the Sake of Others,” a short excerpt from a longer essay by Albert Einstein, was included by Rabbi Morrison David Bial in his collection of supplemental prayers and texts for personal prayer and synagogue services: An Offering of Prayer (Temple Sinai of Summit, New Jersey, 1962). The full text of Einstein’s essay appeared under the title “What I Believe” in Forum and Century 84 (October 1930), no. 4, p. 193-194. David E. Rowe and Robert Schulman (in Einstein on Politics 2007, p. 226) note, “The text was reproduced several times under the title ‘The World as I See It,’ most notably in Mein Weltbild and Ideas and Opinions, and in 1932 the German League of Human Rights released a phonograph recording of Einstein reading a slightly variant version entitled ‘Confession of Belief.'” . . .  Contributor(s): Categories:A prayer for intra-national peace during the interwar period (after World War I). . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A New Declaration of Independence by Emma Goldman. . . . בּרידער | “Brothers” – Y.L. Peretz’s Sardonic Rejoinder to Friedrich Schiller’s Paean to Universal Enlightenment, An die Freude (Ode to Joy) Contributor(s): Tags:Y.L. Peretz rejected cultural universalism, seeing the world as composed of different nations, each with its own character. Liptzin comments that “Every people is seen by him as a chosen people…”; he saw his role as a Jewish writer to express “Jewish ideals…grounded in Jewish tradition and Jewish history.” This is Peretz’s lampoon of the popularity of Friedrich Schiller’s idealistic paean made famous as the lyrics to the climax of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A hymn for peace and the end of war. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:“How beautiful it is to see,” by Penina Moïse, published in 1842, appears under the subject “Brotherly Love” as Hymn 41 in Hymns Written for the Service of the Hebrew Congregation Beth Elohim, South Carolina (Penina Moïse et al., Ḳ.Ḳ. Beth Elohim, 1842), pp. 44-45. . . . An die Freude | שִׁיר לְשִׂמְחָה | ode to Joy (Shir l’Simḥah), a Hebrew adaptation of the hymn by Friedrich Schiller (ca. late 18th c.) Contributor(s): Tags:In 1785 Friedrich Schiller wrote his ‘An die Freude an ode ‘To Joy’, describing his ideal of an equal society united in joy and friendship. Numerous copies and adaptations attest to its popularity at the time. The slightly altered 1803 edition was set to music not only by Ludwig van Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony but also by other composers such as Franz Schubert and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Hs. Ros. PL B-57 contains a Hebrew translation of the first edition of the ode (apparently rendered before the 1803 alteration), revealing that the spirit of the age even managed to reach the Jewish community in the Netherlands. Whereas the imagery of Schiller’s original is drawn from Greek mythology, the author of the שִׁיר לְשִׂמְחָה relies on the Bible as a source. In fact, he not only utilises Biblical imagery, but successfully avoids any allusion to Hellenistic ideas whatsoever. . . . 💬 De Rechten van den Menschen van den Burger | דברי הברית החקים והמשפטים אשר בין אדם לאדם | The Rights of Man and of the Citizen, after the Declaration of the Batavian Republic and the Emancipation of Dutch Jewry (1795/1798) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags: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. . . . 💬 The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America (1776) | די דעקלאראציע פון אומאָפּהענגיקײט (Yiddish translation 1954) | הצהרת העצמאות של ארצות־הברית (Hebrew translation 1945) Contributor(s): Tags:The text of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America and its signatories in English, with a Yiddish translation published in 1954. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:The custom of reciting this intention is attributed to Rav Yitzḥak Luria, circa 16th century, on Leviticus 19:18, recorded in Minhagei ha-Arizal–Petura d’Abba, p.3b by R’ Ḥayyim Vital. . . . |
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