This is an archive of prayers, prayer-poems, and songs for Yom haKippurim (the Day of Expiation), the second of the three Yamim Nora’im (Days of Awe). Click here to contribute a prayer you have written, or a transcription or translation of a historical work by someone else. Filter resources by Collaborator Name Filter resources by Tag Filter resources by Category Filter resources by Language Filter resources by Date Range
“O Tag des Herrn!” is a paraliturgical Kol Nidrei by Leopold Stein. All the translations I’ve found from the 19th or early 20th century were produced for use in choirs and try to emulate the rhymed structure in the Stein’s German. So here is a straight translation I’ve made of the stanzas that avoids that pretense. –Aharon Varady . . . A prayer offered on erev Rosh haShanah or Yom Kippur to visit the local Jewish cemetery. . . . Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., Bohemian Jewry, cemetery prayers, erev yom kippur, German vernacular prayer, memento mori, סעודה המפסקת seudah hamafseket, תחינות teḥinot, Teḥinot in German, ימים נוראים yamim noraim A meditation on Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippurim. . . . One of the most revolutionary alterations made by the early Reform movement in Germany was their replacement of Kol Nidre with a German hymn, sung to the same melody: O Tag des Herrn. But when the early Reformers came to the United States, they adopted a new language, English. In 1866, the American Reform Jewish community was largely bilingual in German and English, and Isaac Mayer (No Relation) Wise’s 1866 service for the Day of Atonement took account for that, including a singable English translation of the singable German replacement for Kol Nidre. I have also included a musical score which uses I. M. Wise’s English text in Louis Lewandowsky’s original setting of O Tag des Herrn. . . . A prayer for a woman pleading for atonement in the final service of Yom Kippur at sunset. . . . A prayer for a woman pleading for atonement on Yom Kippurim. . . . This penitential prayer dated “Tishri 5628 [October 1867]” was offered in conclusion to “A Penitential Sermon” reprinted in The Jewish Messenger on 25 November 1867. It was preserved by Rabbi Morais in his ledger (page 34, clipping 041), 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 is the poem “פעלד־מעסטען” by Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923) written before 1898. We have transcribed the poem as it was published in Rosenfeld’s collection of poems Gezamelṭe lieder (1906) pp. 135-136. The poem was romanized and translated into English by Leo Wiener and published under the title, “The Measuring of the Graves” in Songs from the Ghetto (1898), pp. 46-49. A rhyming translation by Rose Pastor Stokes & Helena Frank under the title, “Measuring of the Graves” was published in Songs of Labor and Other Poems (1914), pp. 70-71. If you know the date of the earliest publication of this prayer, please leave a comment or contact us. . . . “O Tag des Herrn!” is a paraliturgical Kol Nidrei by Leopold Stein. Here it is translated from German to English by the Unitarian minister Frederick Lucian Hosmer on behalf of the Reform rabbi Isaac S. Moses. Hosmer’s translation appears in Hymns and Anthems for Jewish Worship (ed. Isaac S. Moses, 1904), hymn №107 pp. 69-71. . . . “Feldmesten or Measuring the Graves” by Alter Abelson, appears in the section “The Modern Period” in The Standard Book of Jewish Verse (Joseph Friedlander and George Alexander Kohut, 1917), pp. 698-699. The poem may have first been published in the 26 September 1913 edition of the Hebrew Standard, p.10. . . . Angie Irma Cohon’s “Day of God” is a hymn for Yom Kippur, an abbreviated adaptation of “O Tag des Herrn!,” a paraliturgical Kol Nidrei by Leopold Stein, translated from German to English by Frederick Lucian Hosmer. Cohon’s abridged rendering is published in תפלת ישראל (Tefilat Yisrael) A Brief Jewish Ritual (Women of Miẓpah 1921), p. 20. . . . This prayer for “The Child’s Al Chet” by Rabbi Abraham Cronbach is found in his, Prayers of the Jewish Advance (1924), on pages 124-126. . . . The prayer-poem ““Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin”” by Miriam del Banco (1858-1931) was included in her posthumously published anthology, Poetry and Prose (1932), p. 94-95. . . . This is the prayer which Rabbi Dr. Leo Baeck had disseminated to Jewish communities throughout Germany to recite on Yom Kippur, 10 October 1935. The German text here is as found in the archival notes of Helmut Grünewald, Ein Judenjunge durfte kein Deutscher sein (Bristol, 1998), pp. 20-21 in the collection of the Leo Baeck Institute. The English translation is as published by Dr. Michael Meyer in Rabbi Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative in Troubled Times (2020), pp. 106-107. . . . This is the Kol Nidrei as offered by the Hannover Synagogue on Yom Kippur in 1937 according to the text provided in a poster, “Agende für Kol-nidre und Seelenfeier in der Synaogen-Gemeinde Hannover” (10 September 1937). Thank you to David Selis for providing digital images of the poster. . . . |
![the Open Siddur Project [logo]](https://opensiddur.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Open-Siddur-Project-Logo-2016.svg){kind=logo}
