This is an archive of prayers composed for or relevant to the immediate congregation and its wider community. Click here to contribute a prayer you have written, translated, or transcribed for this portion of the Torah Reading Service. Filter resources by Collaborator Name Filter resources by Tag Filter resources by Category Filter resources by Language Filter resources by Date Range
Resources filtered by COLLABORATOR: “Unknown Author(s)” (clear filter)The mi sheberakh read for the well-being of one’s own congregation. . . . The mi sheberakh read for the well-being of Jewish congregations worldwide. . . . “Aḥeinu” is the final prayer in a set of supplications recited on Mondays and Thursdays as the Torah scroll is being prepared to be returned to the Aron. The prayer is first found with variations in wording in the surviving manuscripts of the Seder Rav Amram Gaon (ca. 9th c.). . . . This undated 18th century prayer (before 1756) by an unknown author for “the opening of [a] lodge, etc., and used by Jewish Freemasons” was published in “Old Forms of Lodge Prayers,” The Hebrew Leader (31 December 1889), p. 4. (The Hebrew Leader regularly included news of interest to Jewish member of masonic fraternities.) The provenance of the prayer is offered in the lede: “Appended to a copy of the Constitutions of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of F. and A. Masons, published in 1801, by Bro. D. Longworth, at the Shakespeare Gallery, New York City (kindly loaned to us by R.W. Henry C. Banks), we find a number of forms which at the present day appear unique. These forms are spoken of as having been in use for a long period during the last century; and from them we extract two or three Prayers, one or the other of which it was customary to repeat, according to the religious faith of the members of the lodge’ which had assembled. We give them for the benefit of our readers.” The source for the prayer in its re-printed form is a 1756 work, Ahiman Rezon: or, a help to a brother; shewing the excellency of secrecy, … Together with Solomon’s temple an oratorio, as it was performed for the benefit of free-masons by Laurence Dermott (1756). . . . This is an untitled prayer offered in the Evening Service for the Sabbath from the Union Prayer Book Newly Revised (CCAR 1924), pp. 68-69, as a reading between the Shema and the Amidah. As a prayer for protection it fits as a paraliturgical haskivenu, and in New York City, it makes sense in the context of the terrifying news of mass-murder, rape, and genocide being reported from Ukraine at the time. (Find Nokhem Shtif’s “פּאָגראָמען אין אוקראַיִנע : די צײַט פֿון דער פֿרײַװיליקער אַרמײ (The Pogroms in Ukraine: the Period of the Volunteer Army)” (1923) offered in Yiddish and in English translation at In Geveb.) The Ukrainian context of this prayer is further underscored in that the prayer is not found in the 1918 revised Union Prayer Book, but in the later 1924 edition. It may have been unique to Congregation Emanu-El in New York City, who compiled this version of the Union Prayer Book for radio listeners joining their service. . . . |
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