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
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. . . . A prayer for intra-national peace during the interwar period (after World War I). . . . “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. . . . “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. . . . Tags: 1933 Banking Act, 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., California State Legislature, Emergency Banking Act of 1933, English vernacular prayer, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Gold Reserve Act, Great Depression in the United States, Prayers of Guest Chaplains, United States A prayer for the continuance of “the American way of life” offered during the Cold War (1947-1953) in northern New Jersey. . . . A prayer for American democracy as enshrined in Little League Baseball. . . . 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. . . . Prayer delivered by Rabbi Uri Miller, President of the Synagogue Council of America, at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963 . . . 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 |
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