Opening prayer for the Ceremonies at the Site of the Statue of Religious Liberty by the Independent Order of B’nai Brith, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (5 July 1875)

This was the opening prayer offered by Rabbi Sabato Morais at the “Ceremonies at the Site of the Statue of Religious Liberty by the Independent Order of B’nai Berith” for the Celebration of the Ninety-Ninth Anniversary of American Independence in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, July 5th, 1875 and published in a booklet containing the same. The site of the ceremonies was “the Walnut Street Railway, near the Centennial grounds.” The statue, “Religious Liberty,” was commissioned by B’nai B’rith and dedicated “to the people of the United States” as an expression of support for the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. It was created by Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a B’nai B’rith member and the first American Jewish sculptor to gain international prominence. . . .

Categories: 🇺🇸 Independence Day (July 4th)

Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, dedications and consecrations, English vernacular prayer, liberty, statues of liberty, United States centennial

Contributor(s): Sabato Morais and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

מײן אַמעריקא (אונזער נײע הימנע) | My America (Our New Hymn) by Morris Rosenfeld (1917)

“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. . . .

Categories: 🇺🇸 Independence Day (July 4th), 🇺🇸 Veterans Day (11 November), 🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday of November)

Tags: 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, Patriotic hymns, Prayers as poems, rhyming translation, United States home front during World War Ⅰ, World War Ⅰ, Yiddish translation, Yiddish vernacular prayer

Contributor(s): Morris Rosenfeld and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

🇺🇸 Independence Day (July 4th)

אמעריקע | America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee), a patriotic hymn by Samuel Francis Smith (1832) with Yiddish translation by Berl Lapin (1950)

Opening prayer for the Ceremonies at the Site of the Statue of Religious Liberty by the Independent Order of B’nai Brith, by Rabbi Sabato Morais (5 July 1875)

אַמעריקע די פּרעכטיקע | America the Beautiful, a patriotic hymn by Katharine Lee Bates (1895) with Yiddish translation by Berl Lapin (1950)

מײן אַמעריקא (אונזער נײע הימנע) | My America (Our New Hymn) by Morris Rosenfeld (1917)

That America Fulfil the Promise of Its Founding, a prayer for Independence Day by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1945)