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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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  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A mi sheberakh prayer for the preservation of democracy in the face of the judicial reforms of the 37th government of the State of Israel. . . . תְּפִלָּה עַל הָעַרְבוּת בְּעַד כׇּל יוֹשְׁבֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל | Prayer on Erev Shabbat for the Sake of All Residents of Israel, by Rebbitsen Hadassah Froman & Rabbah Tamar Elad-Appelbaum (2023) Contributor(s): Tags:A prayer for peace amidst civil disagreement, difference, and strife before the lighting of Shabbat candles on Erev Shabbat. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:A prayer for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), written in response to their laudable decision to halt the deportation of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda. . . . Prayer for Reparation and Restoration, an alternative to the Prayer for Welfare of the Government by Rabbi Brant Rosen (Tzedek Chicago 2020) Contributor(s): Categories:A prayer for collective and communal well-being with an emphasis on dismantling systems of oppression and repairing their harms. . . . תפילה על האיחוי והרעות | A Prayer for Brotherhood, Unity, and Friendship on Israeli Election Day (2020) Contributor(s): Tags:Based on the Prayer For Freedom from Strife and the Prayer that One Be a Lover and a Pursuer of Peace taken from the Liqutei Tefilot of Reb Nosson of Nemirov. Edited and reworked by Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum. English Translation: Rabbi Martin S. Cohen. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:An invocation by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of T’ruah, offered at the opening dinner of the Council on Foreign Relations annual Religion and Foreign Policy Workshop, June 2019. . . .  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. . . . How Desolate Lie Our Borders, a prayer adaptated from Eikhah for a Tishah b’Av vigil at an immigrant detention center by Rabbi Brant Rosen (2019) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A prayer for the correction of the United States immigration policy in support of immigrants and open borders. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:Psalms 140 decries the injustice tolerated, supported, and rallied around within the community of Israel. This contemporary adaptation does the same. . . . תְּפִלָּה בְּעַד מֶמְשֶׁלֶת שָׁלוֹם | Prayer for a Government of Peace, by Zackary Sholem Berger (2019) Contributor(s): Tags:A prayer for a government when that government is causing pain through malicious policies. . . .  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. . . . תפילת הדרך | Tefilat haDerekh, a traveler’s prayer for safety and peace (trans. Rabbi David Seidenberg, neohasid.org) Contributor(s):In this Tefilat haDerekh (the prayer for travel), I’ve made a synthesis of Ashkenazi and Sefardi nusaḥ. Even though the translation is pretty close to literal in most places, it comes across as an extraordinary and activist prayer for peace. So I think of this prayer not just as a prayer for the beginning a physical journey, but for any spiritual journey, and especially for any campaign or action for justice and peace that a person or group might undertake. When applied to activism, the “enmity and ambush and theft and predation” we ask to be rescued from could also be interpreted as hatred, deceit, jealousy, and aggression, i.e., the kinds of feelings that cause people to work against each other, even within an organization, instead of working together. I first used this version of the prayer at the beginning of a tour of Israel and Palestine focused on the human rights and non-violent resistance, when the group passed through the first checkpoint of the trip. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A prayer for justice offered for the Poor People’s Campaign Rally for Action at Grace Lutheran Church in Evanston on March 22, 2018. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:A translation in Arabic and English of Rabbi Nava Hafetz’s prayer for the children of the world. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:“Does joy come in the morning, where weeping has not tarried for the night? Can we dance together, if we have not yet joined in lament?” This prayer is a kavanah for the morning blessings, using language and images from the prayer “Mah Tovu” [how lovely are your tents] commonly recited in the early morning blessings. Offered with special intention for the healing of Congress Heights, Capitol View, and other neighborhoods in Washington, DC, rocked by persistent violence. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A teḥinah (supplication) for divine help after terrible violence that interferes with the recognition of each person being made in the likeness of the divine image. . . . תפילה למעמד המשותף | أغنية الحياة والسلام | Prayer of Mothers for Life and Peace, by Sheikha Ibtisam Maḥameed & Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A prayer in Hebrew and Arabic (with translations in English and German) of solidarity of mothers for there to be peace in the world for the sake of their children. . . . תפילה לשלום ופיוס לישראלים ולפלסטינים ולכל העם | A Prayer for Peace and Reconciliation for Israelis, Palestinians, and all People by Rabbi Samuel Feinsmith (2014) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:Master of compassion and forgiveness, Cosmic Majesty Who is peace— Teach us Your ways, Show us the path that preserves life. Take note, Lord, for we are suffering deeply. Our guts are wrenched, Our hearts are turning within us. Violence has devoured outside, and inside it feels deathly. When enemies rose up against us to kill our babes, Courageous, precious boys, full of the light of life, shining like the radiance of the sky, Our hearts became angry, our vision lost its strength, and our spirits sunk. And still we turn to you— . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A personal declaration to become a shomer/et shalom on Yom Kippur. . . .  Contributor(s):A contemporary Jewish prayer for healng, used at congregation Tzedek Chicago. . . . Prayer for Immigrant Justice at an Interfaith Vigil at the Broadview Detention Center, by Rabbi Brant Rosen (2008) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A prayer offered at the Broadview Detention Center for an interfaith vigil in support of the detainees and for change in US immigration policy. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:These are a series of kavvanot prepared by Rabbi Emanuel S. Goldsmith (1935-2024), z”l, for a Shaḥarit service containing the call to prayer (Barkhu), the blessings preceding the Shema, tthe conclusion of the Amidah, before and after the Torah reading service, and Aleinu. Rabbi Ben Newman, who shared these kavvanot in eulogy for Rabbi Goldsmith in a Facebook post, writes, “My dear teacher, friend, and mentor Rabbi Dr. Emanuel Goldsmith died on Friday. He was an amazing man who taught me a lot about how to be a rabbi, a Reconstructionist, a liturgist, philosopher of religion, and Yiddishist. He also was the “head rabbi” who officiated at my wedding to Rabbi Shoshana Leis….I had him write out for me [these kavvanot] when I substituted for him leading at Congregation Mvakshe Derekh in Scarsdale, NY, 20 years ago as a student rabbi.” . . . “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). . . . The “Dona Nobis Pacem” blues from Leonard Bernstein’s MASS (1971), original Hebrew translation by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:An original Hebrew translation of the blues-rock portion of the Agnus Dei movement from Leonard Bernstein’s MASS (note: always spelled with ALL CAPS), where the crowd of disaffected and disillusioned young parishioners interrupts the offertory to demand peace now, and hold God to account for not giving it to us. It’s unsurprising that for a composer as proudly and openly Jewish as Bernstein that even his setting of the Tridentine Mass has major “shaking your fist at God” energy. Not gonna lie, I was listening to this on a plane out of Jerusalem as the war was starting, and I started to tear up. I immediately started writing this translation and finished it up in the process of about an hour while stuck somewhere a few thousand feet above Greenland. It’s amazing and moving and tragic and enraging and a little full of itself in exactly the right way to hit me in the heart. . . . Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Jack M. Rosoff on 18 February 1969 Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 18 February 1969. . . .  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:This undated “Prayer for Peace Celebration” 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. 356. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A prayer for American democracy as enshrined in Little League Baseball. . . . [Prayer before] the Chamber of Commerce and Civics [of the Oranges & Maplewood, New Jersey], a Cold War prayer by Rabbi Avraham Samuel Soltes (1950) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:A prayer for the continuance of “the American way of life” offered during the Cold War (1947-1953) in northern New Jersey. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:“On Abandoning the Gold Standard” by Rabbi Norman Michael Goldburg, was offered before the California state legislature on 21 April 1933, and published in California Legislature 50th Session 1933: Prayers Offered at the Daily Sessions of the Assembly, p. 74. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:“On the Legalization of Beer” by Rabbi Norman Michael Goldburg, was offered before the California state legislature and published in California Legislature 50th Session 1933: Prayers Offered at the Daily Sessions of the Assembly, p. 32. . . .  Contributor(s): Categories:A prayer for intra-national peace during the interwar period (after World War I). . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:This untitled prayer was written by Rabbi Norman Salit and published in Rabbi Jacob Bosniak’s לקוטי תפלות Liḳutei Tefilot: Pulpit and Public Prayers (1927), pp. 35-36 (in the section titled “Prayers for Succoth”). . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:“A Passover Prayer” was written by Rabbi Norman Salit and published in Rabbi Jacob Bosniak’s לקוטי תפלות Liḳutei Tefilot: Pulpit and Public Prayers (1927), pp. 46-47. . . . Prayer on Behalf of the Religious Diversity of Humanity, by the Jewish Religious Union of London (1902) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:This prayer for a pluralism respecting religious and philosophical differences, first appears in A Selection of Prayers, Psalms, and Other Scriptural Passages, and Hymns for Use at the Services of the Jewish Religious Union (1902), where it is №7 on page 6. (In the revised 1903 edition of the prayerbook, it is №20 on page 20.) . . .  Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:“[Prayer] for the Persecuted” was written by Lilian Helen Montagu and published in Prayers for Jewish Working Girls (1895), pp. 31-32. . . . Prayer of praise for Tsar Alexander II, emancipator of the serfs of the Russian Empire (HaMelitz, 1861) Contributor(s): Categories: Tags:This prayer of praise of Tsar Alexander II (1818-1881), for largely ending feudalism by emancipating the serfs of the Russian Empire was written by an unknown author and published in HaMelitz on Thursday, 28 March 1861. . . .  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. . . .  Contributor(s): Tags:“Der Arme” was translated/adapted by Yehoshua Heshil Miro and published in his anthology of teḥinot, בית יעקב (Beit Yaaqov) Allgemeines Gebetbuch für gebildete Frauen mosaischer Religion. It first appears in the 1829 edition, תחנות Teḥinot ein Gebetbuch für gebildete Frauenzimmer mosaischer Religion as teḥinah №77 on pp. 117-119. In the 1835 edition, it appears as teḥinah №78 on pp. 141-144. In the 1842 edition, it appears as teḥinah №81 on pp. 146-149. . . . |