![the Open Siddur Project [logo]](https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Open-Siddur-Project-Logo-2016.svg){kind=logo} the Open Siddur Project ✍︎ פְּרוֹיֶּקט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ
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.
Get Involved ✶ Upload Work ✶ Donate ✶ Giftshop בסיעתא דשמיא |
  Contributor(s): Tags:This is a petition for the worker in the style of “Av Haraḥamim” and similar texts, using Biblical and Mishnaic language and co-opting it into a new meaning. It could be read after the Torah service (like many other petitionary texts) or focused on in private. The Biblical relationship between God, humanity, and labor is fascinating. Often it is treated as a curse placed upon us, and just as often as the purpose of humanity. In Genesis 3:19 it is the curse placed upon a disobedient First Adam, but less than a chapter earlier in Genesis 2:15 it is the reason for First Adam’s creation in the first place! In the past century or so, traditional Judaism has somewhat tilted away from the ideas of worker’s rights so clearly stated in the Tanakh and in rabbinic texts. Partially this was to disassociate from the Bundists, partially out of fear of “looking too Communist” in a xenophobic American society, and partially because the Jewish working class is nowhere near as substantial a part of the community as it once was. If this text is meant to do anything, it’s to show that love of God and love of the worker aren’t opposed to each other – in fact, they go hand in hand! . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A worker’s prayer by Rabbi Stephen Belsky, dedicated to Noam Ezra ben haRav Moshe z”l. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:“Closing Prayer [for Labor Day]” was first published in The Faith of America: Readings, Songs, and Prayers for the Celebration of American Holidays (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation 1951), p.165. . . . The Dignity of Labor, a prayer for Labor Day by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, J. Paul Williams, and Eugene Kohn (1951) Contributor(s): Tags:“Dignity of Labor” is a prayer for Labor Day first published in The Faith of America: Readings, Songs, and Prayers for the Celebration of American Holidays (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation 1951), p.176-177. . . . Opening Prayer on the Significance of Labor Day, by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, J. Paul Williams, and Eugene Kohn (1951) Contributor(s): Tags:“Opening Prayer on the Significance of [Labor] Day” was first published in The Faith of America: Readings, Songs, and Prayers for the Celebration of American Holidays (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation 1951), p.165. . . . Opening prayer for the 12th U.A.W.–C.I.O. Labor Convention in Milwaukee, by Rabbi Joseph Baron (1949) Contributor(s): Categories:This prayer, initially delivered by Rabbi Joseph Baron as an invocation at the opening of the 12th U.A.W.-C.I.O. Labor Convention in Milwaukee, July 1949, was included in the anthology, The Prayer Book of the Armed Forces (ed. Daniel A. Poling, 1951), pp. 81-82. The prayer was selected for the anthology by Walter P. Reuther (1907-1970), a Lutheran, a leader of organized labor, and a civil rights activist who built the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into one of the most progressive labor unions in American history. . . . Salvation through Labor, a prayer for the Sabbath before Labor Day, adapted from the writings of A.D. Gordon by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1945) Contributor(s): Tags:“Salvation through Labor,” adapted by Rabbi Mordecai Menaḥem Kaplan from the writings of Aaron David Gordon, can be found on p. 548-551 of his The Sabbath Prayer Book (New York: The Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945). The translation was attributed in the Sabbath Prayer Book to its editors (Mordecai Kaplan & Eugene Kohn, assisted by Ira Eisenstein and Milton Steinberg). . . .  Contributor(s): Categories:This prayer by an unknown author is first found in Evening Service for the Sabbath from the Union Prayer Book (Newly Revised) (1924), p. 45. (It also appears on the same page of the 1940 edition of the “newly revised” UPB.) The prayer is included as a third variation of a Reform synagogue’s Shabbat evening service, in the Amidah before the silent meditation. Rabbi Michael Satz of Temple B’nai Or (Morristown, New Jersey) affectionately refers to it as the “Coal Miner’s Prayer.” . . .  Contributor(s):This prayer for “The Sabbath” by Rabbi Abraham Cronbach is found in his, Prayers of the Jewish Advance (1924), on pages 69-72. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:“The City of Light” is a poem written by Felix Adler. The earliest publication I could find for it dates to 1882, in Unity: Freedom, Fellowship and Character in Religion vol. 8, no. 12 (16 Feb. 1882), p. 477. . . . הָאִינְטֶרְנַצְיוֹנָל | the Internationale, by Eugène Pottier (1871); Hebrew translation by Avraham Shlonsky (1921) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:The Chanson Internationale (‘International Song’) was originally written in 1871 by Eugène Pottier, a French public transportation worker, member of the International Workingmen’s Association (The First International), and activist of the Paris Commune. He wrote it to pay tribute to the commune violently destroyed that year. The song became the official anthem of The Second International, of the Comintem, and between 1921 and 1944 also of the Soviet Union. Most socialist and communist parties adopted it as their anthem during the last decades of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, adapting it in local languages (Russian, Yiddish, etc.) to their particular ideological framework. The anthem was first translated into Hebrew by Avraham Shlonsky in 1921. . . . |