This is an archive of prayers, prayer-poems, and songs for Thanksgiving Day in the United States, a civic festival observed on the fourth Thursday of November. Click here to contribute a prayer you have written, transcribed, or translated for Thanksgiving Day. Filter resources by Name Filter resources by Tag Filter resources by Category
“A PRAYER composed and delivered by the Reverend Isaac Touro, in the Jewish Synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island, on Thursday the 28th Day of November, 1765, being the Day appointed, by his Honour the Governor’s Proclamation, for a general Thanksgiving in this Colony. Translated from the Hebrew.” . . . The prayer for the government presented by Gershom Seixas at K.K. Shearith Israel on Thanksgiving Day 1789. . . . A ḥatimah (closing) prayer delivered by Ḥazzan Gershom Seixas at a special Thanksgiving Day service by K.K. Shearith Israel in 1789. . . . This Thanksgiving Day prayer for welfare of the country and congregation by Rabbi Sabato Morais was offered at the end of his sermon on 27 November 1851 and recorded in The Asmonean on 12 December 1851. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 2, clipping 001), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) . . . This prayer is found in conclusion to “A Sermon Delivered on Thanksgiving Day (November 25, 1852) Before the Congregation Mikvé Israel at their Synagogue in Cherry Street by the Rev. S. Morais, Reader of the Congregation,” pp. 10-11. . . . This Thanksgiving Day prayer by Rabbi Sabato Morais was offered at the conclusion of a “Thanksgiving Discourse. An Address. Delivered by a member of the order on the 24th of November, it being the Thanksgiving Day appointed by the Governor of the State of Pennsylvania.” and recorded in The Masonic Mirror and Keystone on 7 December 1853. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 3b-c, clipping 002), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) . . . This Thanksgiving Day prayer by Rabbi Sabato Morais was offered at the conclusion of a “The Watchfulness of Providence over Nations. A Thanksgiving Address delivered by the Rev. S. Morais, Minister of the Portuguese Synagogue, of Philadelphia, on the 20th November, 1856.” and recorded in The Asmonean (on 28 November 1856. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 8, clipping 007), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. A note next to the clipping reads, “His lecture aimed to oppose knownothingism (???) antagonism indirectly shown.” (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) . . . This Thanksgiving Day Prayer for 28 November 1861 was reprinted in The Jewish Messenger (vol. 10, no. 12, p. 91), on 13 December 1861. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 22, clipping 023), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) Unfortunately, that bit of clipping containing the prayer had disintegrated enough to make much of the prayer illegible. But thankfully, a microfilm copy of the The Jewish Messenger for the date of printing was available at the HUC-JIR Klau Library, Cincinnati. . . . This prayer by Rabbi Sabato Morais was offered on Thanksgiving Day at the conclusion of a sermon reprinted the following day in The Philadelphia Inquirer on 25 November 1864. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 23, clipping 028), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) . . . This Thanksgiving Day prayer by Rabbi Sabato Morais was offered in conclusion to a sermon reprinted the following day in The Philadelphia Inquirer on 30 November 1866. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 25, clipping 031), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) . . . This Thanksgiving Day Prayer was reprinted in The Philadelphia Inquirer on the following day, 29 November 1867. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 35, clipping 042), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) . . . This Thanksgiving Day Prayer for 27 November 1868 was reprinted in The Philadelphia Inquirer on 27 November 1868. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 36, clipping 044), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) . . . This Thanksgiving Day Prayer for 24 November 1870 was reprinted in The Philadelphia Inquirer on the following day 25 November 1870. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 44, clipping 057), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) Unfortunately, due to the fragility of the paper, a bit of the newsclipping providing the beginning of the prayer was lost. Thankfully, the missing text was recovered from a scan of the newspaper page made by the Fulton History project. . . . This Thanksgiving Day prayer was offered by Rabbi Sabato Morais at the end of his sermon at Mikve Israel in Philadelphia on 27 November 1873, and reprinted in The Jewish Messenger on 5 December 1873. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 61), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) . . . This prayer for the government by Rabbi Sabato Morais, preserved in an undated newspaper clipping from an unknown newspaper, was offered on Thanksgiving Day (24 November) in 1881. It was preserved by Rabbi Sabato Morais in his ledger (p. 234, clipping 414), an archive of newsclippings recording material he contributed to the press, among other announcements. (Many thanks to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for helping to make this resource accessible.) We were able to date the prayer from the context offered by surrounding clippings that detailed the circumstances in which the prayer was given. Another clipping provided an outline of the sixty-first annual meeting of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society (founded 1820, thus giving the date of 1881). With that date likely, references to activities in surrounding clippings began to make sense, especially the attention given to the relief work that year of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in eastern Europe. The Kiev pogrom of 1881 began during the spring that year. In the prayer itself, the year 1881 provides the necessary context for understanding Rabbi Morais’s references to the “hour of peril” and “the stability of the government” — the mortal injury to President James A. Garfield shot that summer and who died that fall. When this prayer was offered, Chester A. Arthur, was president of the United States. . . . This is the sonnet, “The New Collosus” (1883) by Emma Lazarus set side-by-side with its Yiddish translation by Rachel Kirsch Holtman. Lazarus famously penned her sonnet in response to the waves of Russian-Jewish refugees seeking refuge in the Unites States of America as a result of murderous Russian pogroms following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Her identification and revisioning of the Statue of Liberty as the Mother of Exiles points to the familiar Jewish identification of the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence, in its feminine aspect) with the light of the Jewish people in their Diaspora. . . . This prayer was prepared for use in a special service on the Sabbath before Thanksgiving Day, 1905, in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the settlement of Jews in the United States. It was published in The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the Jews in the United States, 1655-1905 (New York Co-operative Society: 1906), pp. 253-256. (The prayer also appears in the 14th volume of Proceedings of the American Jewish Historical Society (1906).) It was prepared by a committee consisting of a seven-starred constellation of prominent Reform and early Conservative movement rabbis: Rabbi Dr. Henry Pereira Mendes (chair), Rabbi Dr. M.H. Harris, Rabbi Dr. Philip Klein, Rabbi Dr. Kaufmann Kohler, Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schechter, Rabbi Dr. Samuel Schulman, and Rabbi Dr. Joseph Silverman. . . . The opening prayer offered by Rabbi Joseph Silverman for “the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the Jews in the United States, 1655-1905,” at Carnegie Hall, New York City, Thanksgiving Day, 30 November 1905. The prayer was published in the Publications Of The American Jewish Historical Society number 14 (1906). . . . “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. . . . The Prayer for the Government offered by Rabbi David de Sola Pool in his service for Thanksgiving Day in 1945. . . . “God’s Goodness — the Testament of America” by Rabbi Milton Steinberg appears on pages 559-560 of The Sabbath Prayer Book (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945) as part of a service for Thanksgiving Day. It is the last of four “testaments,” the other three being the testament of Nature, Man, and Israel, respectively. . . . “God’s Goodness — the Testament of Israel” by Rabbi Milton Steinberg appears on page 558 of The Sabbath Prayer Book (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945) as part of a service for Thanksgiving Day. It is the last of four “testaments,” the other three being the testament of Nature, Man, and America respectively. . . . “God’s Goodness — the Testament of Man” by Rabbi Milton Steinberg appears on pages 556-557 of The Sabbath Prayer Book (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945) as part of a service for Thanksgiving Day. It is the last of four “testaments,” the other three being the testament of Nature, Israel, and America respectively. . . . “God’s Goodness — the Testament of Nature” by Rabbi Milton Steinberg appears on pages 553-556 of The Sabbath Prayer Book (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945) as part of a service for Thanksgiving Day. It is the last of four “testaments,” the other three being the testament of Man, Israel, and America respectively. . . . This closing prayer for Thanksgiving Day was first published in The Faith of America: Readings, Songs, and Prayers for the Celebration of American Holidays (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation 1951), p. 327-328 — following at the end of a number of readings selected by Mordecai Kaplan, Eugene Kohn, and J. Paul Williams for the day. . . . This opening prayer for Thanksgiving Day, “The Significance of the Day,” was first published in The Faith of America: Readings, Songs, and Prayers for the Celebration of American Holidays (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation 1951), p. 304 — as preface to a number of readings selected by Mordecai Kaplan, Eugene Kohn, and J. Paul Williams for the day. . . . A prayer of gratitude to be recited on Thanksgiving Day (or the Shabbat prior). . . . “Prayer for National Holiday” by Rabbi Morrison David Bial was first published in his anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 71, from where this prayer was transcribed. . . . “Teach Us to Be Thankful” by Rabbi Louis M. Epstein was first published in Rabbi Morrison David Bial’s anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 36, from where this prayer was transcribed. . . . A prayer for thanksgiving day in the United States by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. . . . A prayer following the Israel Land Administration’s 2010 eviction and demolition of Al-Araqeeb, a Bedouin village in the Negev. The prayer was written with the intention that its recitation is made “on behalf of justice and the rededication of Israel to the ideals of her Declaration of Independence.” . . . A prayer for “Thanksgivukkah,” on the rare year that the two festivals intersect. . . . Opportunities to express gratitude on civic days of patriotic thanksgiving demand acknowledgement of an almost unfathomably deep history of trauma — not only the suffering and striving of my immigrant ancestors, but the sacrifice of all those who endured suffering dealt by their struggle to survive, and often failure to survive, the oppressions dealt by colonization, conquest, hegemony, natural disaster. Only the Earth (from which we, earthlings were born, Bnei Adam from Adamah) has witnessed the constancy of the violent deprivations we inflict upon each other. The privilege I’ve inherited from these sacrifices has come at a cost, and it must be honestly acknowledged, especially on civic days of thanksgiving, independence, and freedom. I insert this prayer after Al Hanissim in the Amidah and in the Birkat Hamazon on national days of independence and thanksgiving. . . . Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., acquisition, על הנסים al hanissim, colonization, conquest, eco-conscious, Gratitude, hegemony, immigration, Indigenous Peoples, מודים Modim, Needing Translation (into Hebrew), נודה לך Nodeh L'kha, primordial scream, refugees, sanctuary, settlement, shomrah ul'ovdah, stewardship, subjugation An indigenous land acknowledgement for Jewish communities located in the historic lands of the Shawnee and Miami people. . . . |
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