This is an archive of prayers composed for, or relevant to, demands for social justice, peace, and liberty. Click here to contribute a prayer you have written, or a transcription and translation of a historical prayer. Filter resources by Collaborator Name Filter resources by Tag Filter resources by Category Filter resources by Language Filter resources by Date Range
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. . . . 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. . . . This “Prayer for the Success of the Disarmament Conference at Washington [D.C.]” (12 November 1921) was prepared by the Office of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire, Joseph Herman Hertz. The prayer was recited on Shabbat after the prayer for the British royal family. . . . The Opening Prayer given in the U.S. House of Representatives on 18 February 1969. . . . 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. . . . Variations of the original three lines culminating with “…walk beside me…” first appear in high school yearbooks beginning in 1970. The earliest recorded mention we could find was in The Northern Light, the 1970 yearbook of North Attleboro High School, Massachusetts. 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). . . . Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., political and religious anarchism, Arabic translation, Aramaic translation, children's education, Hebrew translation, love your fellow as yourself, Pedagogical songs, Universal Peace, universalist, universalist prayers, Yiddish translation, זמירות zemirot A contemporary Jewish prayer for healng, used at congregation Tzedek Chicago. . . . 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— . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . A translation in Arabic and English of Rabbi Nava Hafetz’s prayer for the children of the world. . . . Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., Arabic translation, English Translation, ארץ ישראל Erets Yisrael, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Jewish-Muslim Friendship, Prayers on behalf of children, safety, תחינות teḥinot, the Next Generation, Universal Peace 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. . . . A prayer for a government when that government is causing pain through malicious policies. . . . 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. . . . Tags: 116th Congress, 21st century C.E., 45th President of the United States, 58th century A.M., democracy, English vernacular prayer, Immigration policy of Donald Trump, Trump administration family separation policy, צדק צדק תרדוף tsedeq tsedeq tirdof, United States, United States Immigration Policy 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. . . . 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. . . . A prayer for peace amidst civil disagreement, difference, and strife before the lighting of Shabbat candles on Erev Shabbat. . . . 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. . . . |
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