  Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Eli Kevodi (My God, My Glory”), for seudah shelisheet, was composed by Asher Hillel Burstein in 2018. The hymn was awarded the “Rabbi Hershel Matt Creative Liturgy Award,” the first prize in the creative liturgy contest sponsored by ARC (The Association of Rabbis and Cantors), an interdenominational group of Jewish clergy. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Liturgy for a motsei shabbat havdallah ritual centering the experience of those with long-COVID. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: This version of Eyshet Ḥayil replaces valor with value, and while it speaks of man in terms of family, community, and the natural world, it is not heteronormative. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Some communities have a practice of singing a song about Miriam alongside the well-known Havdalah song about Elijah the Prophet. But Miriam isn’t really a parallel to Elijah — she’s a parallel to Moshe and Aaron. When we’re talking about distaff counterparts to Elijah the clearest example is Seraḥ bat Asher. Seraḥ, the daughter of Asher, is mentioned only a handful of times in the Tanakh, but is given great significance in the midrash. Like Elijah, she is said to have never died but entered Paradise alive, and comes around to the rabbis to give advice or teachings. This song, which includes several references to midrashim about Seraḥ, is meant to be sung to any traditional tune of “Eliyahu haNavi.” It is dedicated to Ḥazzan Joanna Selznick Dulkin (shlit”a), who introduced me to the legends of Seraḥ bat Asher. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A paraliturgical translation of “k’Gavna” — a portion of the Zohar on parashat Terumah read before Ma’ariv in the ḥassidic-sefardic nusaḥ. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: This formulation of the Birkat Yeladim (Blessing of the Children) maintains a connection with tradition and serves to degender the blessing by calling upon quoted, mixed gender texts which have merit for children of any gender. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A short amidah for the Friday evening service for Shabbat. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A prayer for focusing one’s mind and intention during the separation of dough in the preparation of halah before Shabbat. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A companion to the classic piyyut, Yigdal. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The popular piyyut for welcoming the Shabbat, in Hebrew with translations in Assyrian-Aramaic and English. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: “Between the Fires: A Prayer for lighting Candles of Commitment” was composed by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, drawing on traditional midrash about the danger of a Flood of Fire, and the passage from Malachi. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The Blessing over Separations was first read by Shelby Handler on Rosh Ḥodesh Kislev at the 2017 ADVA Reunion, a reunion of the community of Adamah Farm fellows and Teva Learning Center educators at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Benyamim’s Sedaka’s English translations of the Israelite-Samaritan “Prayer to be Read by the Eldest Reader of the Sabbath Portion” and Abraham ben Marchiv Tsedaka Hassafari’s poem to be read after reading the last portion of the Torah reading . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Benyamim Sedaka’s English translations of the Israelite-Samaritan “Blessing on the Food” (Kiddush) and Abraham ben Marchiv Tsedaka Hassafari’s opening to the Friday night Shabbat meal . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: In the year 5775 (2015), the vernal equinox coincided with Rosh Ḥodesh Nissan, the Hebrew month known also as Aviv (Spring), as well as the onset of Shabbat, and a total solar eclipse. Here is a short meditation to receive the shabbat in embrace of the new season. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Two mothers, one plea: Now, more than ever, during these days of so much crying, on the day that is sacred to both our religions, Friday, Sabbath Eve Let us light a candle in every home – for peace: A candle to illuminate our future, face to face, A candle across borders, beyond fear. From our family homes and houses of worship Let us light each other up Let these candles be a lighthouse to our spirit Until we all arrive at the sanctuary of peace. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: This is pre-Shabbos reflection that can be done in a shower or bath. Shabbat is a time when I am less focused on my selfish desires and instead my thoughts drift to my place in the larger community and world. I find myself doing some version of this before Shabbos most weeks and am welcome for the time to reflect on truly what it is to cease from lay work and consider the work that needs to be done to make the world a better place. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Shabbat happens, If I let it. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A prayer-poem inspired from the liturgical prayer, Nishmat. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A prayer-poem supplication for the afternoon of Shabbat. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A prayer-poem inspired by the ritual Havdallah, preparing a separation between Shabbat and weekday time. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The following is a meditation I wrote (with the help of my friend Shira Gura, who teaches meditation and Yoga) to be used on Friday before Shabbat at the mikveh. It is based on midrashim related to Shabbat (for example, the notion that we receive an additional soul on Shabbat), as well as meanings behind mikveh in general (for example, the connection between the waters of Creation and the mikveh waters), and on some kavanot (sacred intentions) that came out of the Kabbalah and Ḥassidut movements. There is a strong tradition to write kavanot to use before immersing in the mikveh, since, as Maimonides writes in his Mishneh Torah 11:15, “If a person immerses but without buttressing him or herself [with sacred intention], it is as though he or she has not immersed at all.” . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: English vernacular prayer, entering, welcoming, candle lighting, Light, 21st century C.E., potential, 58th century A.M., fire, כוונות kavvanot, kindling, English poetry, Prayers as poems Please God Let me light More than flame tonight. More than wax and wick and sliver stick of wood. More than shallow stream of words recited from a pocket book. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: אשת חיל eshet ḥayil, eros, acrostic, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., Alphabetic Acrostic, Masorti, Modi'in, ישראל Yisrael, Feminism, role models, love Peri and Alex Sinclair’s adaptation of the traditional Eishet Ḥayil, replacing a number of verses with ones selected from Shir haShirim (the Song of Songs/Canticles), Genesis, and elsewhere in Mishlei (Proverbs). . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Trisha Arlin shares “Motzi”, a kavanah (intention) for the blessing, Hamotzi Lehem Min Ha’aretz, over challah. Describing the kavanah she writes that it’s, “based on Rabbi Ellen Lippmann’s tradition on having us create a chain of touch around room that leads to and from the challah, which she then explains as both exemplifying the connection created when people eat together and the chain of work that went to creating the challah itself.” . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Three short havdallah meditations that culminate in a havdallah prayer/blessing. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: An interpretive translation of the shabbes hymn, Yah Ekhsof. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: תפלין tefillin, תפילות קודם התפילה Prayers before Praying, petiḥah, Openers, Opening Prayers, 15th century C.E., 53rd century A.M., devotional interpretation, prayers of kabbalists, interpretive translation, פתח אליהו Pataḥ Eliyahu Elijah began saying: Lord of the worlds You Who are One and not just a number You are the highest of the highest most hidden of the undisclosed no thought scheme grasps You at all. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The piyyut, El Adon, in Hebrew with an interpretive “praying translation” by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalom, z”l. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s interpretive “praying translation” of the piyyut, Adon Olam. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags:   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A “praying translation” of the piyyut, Anim Zemirot. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: An interpretive translation of a piyyut composed as an introduction to the prayer Nishmat Kol Ḥai. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s interpretive translation of Proverbs 31:10-31, popularly read before the first festive meal for shabbat on Friday night. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: An interpretive translation of Yehudah haLevi’s shabbat song, “Yom Shabbaton.” . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Shabbat Affirmations for erev shabbat in preparation of welcoming the shabbat. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The Amidah for the Shabbat Shaḥarit service in Reb Zalman’s devotional English adaptation, set side-by-side with the corresponding Hebrew liturgy. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman introduced the tradition of reading these verses from Isaiah during the month of Kislev through the end of Ḥanukkah in his Siddur Ha’Avodah Shebalev of Kehillat Kol HaNeshamah (R’ Levi Weiman-Kelman, R’ Ma’ayan Turner, and Shaul Vardi, 2007). The translation provided here was adapted from the one made by Shaul Vardi in Siddur Ha’Avodah Shebalev. –Aharon Varady. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: An interpretive translation in English of the shabbes hymn Yom Zeh l’Yisrael. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags:   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: We call to sukkat shalom, the shelter of peace, all of our various selves To rest from the contortion of social life and the demands of others. We liberate ourselves and each other from roles and titles labels and closets positions and pretendings internalized oppressions and oppressive projections hierarchies and competition. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A prayer written for the play David Dances (1997) by playwright Stephen Mo Hanan. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The pedagogical song “Hashem is Everywhere!” by Rabbi Yosef Goldstein (1928-2013) can be found in the context of his story, “Where is Hashem?,” the second track on his album מדות טובות Jewish Ethics Through Story and Song (Menorah Records 1972). . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: This is the scholar Dr. Jakob Petuchowski’s translation of the Amidah for Shabbat Minḥah from his Shabbat Minḥah prayer-pamphlet (1966), p.5r-13r. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: “Sabbath Eve (In the Home)” by Rabbi Ely E. Pilchik was first published in Rabbi Morrison David Bial’s anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 28, from where this prayer was transcribed. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: “Apologia on the Sabbath” by Rabbi Morrison David Bial was first published in his anthology, An Offering of Prayer (1962), p. 31, from where this prayer was transcribed. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The philosophical-creed-as-piyyut, Yigdal, in Hebrew with an English translation. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The cosmological piyyut, Adon Olam, in its Ashkenazi variation in Hebrew with an English translation. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The popular Israeli song from the 1950s. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A paraliturgical adaptation of Psalms 92. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The cosmological piyyut, Adon Olam, in its Ashkenazi variation in Hebrew with an English translation. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: “Where We Can Find God,” a prayer-poem inspired by passages appearing in David Frishman’s Hebrew translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: This prayer by Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, first penned in his diary for 23 August 1942, was first published in The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan, by Mel Scult (1990). Although the prayer was not included in Kaplan’s Sabbath Prayer Book (New York: The Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945), it was added to the loose-leaf prayerbook he kept at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism synagogue. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The philosophical-creed-as-piyyut, Yigdal, in Hebrew with an English translation. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A rhyming translation in English to the popular piyyut, Adon Olam. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The poem “Sambatyon” (1931) by Rabbi Alter Abelson. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The poem “Friday Eve” by Rabbi Alter Abelson (1931). . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The cosmological piyyut, Adon Olam, in its Ashkenazi variation in Hebrew with an English translation. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The philosophical-creed-as-piyyut, Yigdal, in Hebrew with an English translation. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: creeping creatures, cosmological, 5th century C.E., hymns of creation, 43rd century A.M., heikhalot literature, ההיכלות ויורדי המרכבה haHeikhalot v'Yordei haMerkavah, Openers, Late Tannaitic, Early Ammoraic, animals, Early Middle Ages, birds Talmudic and midrashic sources contain hymns of the creation usually based on homiletic expansions of metaphorical descriptions and personifications of the created world in the Bible. The explicitly homiletic background of some of the hymns in Perek Shira indicates a possible connection between the other hymns and Tannaitic and Amoraic homiletics, and suggests a hymnal index to well-known, but mostly unpreserved, homiletics. The origin of this work, the period of its composition and its significance may be deduced from literary parallels. A Tannaitic source in the tractate Hagiga of the Jerusalem (Hag. 2:1,77a—b) and Babylonian Talmud (Hag. 14b), in hymns of nature associated with apocalyptic visions and with the teaching of ma’aseh merkaba serves as a key to Perek Shira’s close spiritual relationship with this literature. Parallels to it can be found in apocalyptic literature, in mystic layers in Talmudic literature, in Jewish mystical prayers surviving in fourth-century Greek Christian composition, in Heikhalot literature, and in Merkaba mysticism. The affinity of Perek Shira with Heikhalot literature, which abounds in hymns, can be noted in the explicitly mystic introduction to the seven crowings of the cock — the only non-hymnal text in the collection — and the striking resemblance between the language of the additions and that of Shi’ur Koma and other examples of this literature. In Seder Rabba de-Bereshit, a Heikhalot tract, in conjunction with the description of ma’aseh bereshit, there is a clear parallel to Perek Shira’s praise of creation and to the structure of its hymns. The concept reflected in this source is based on a belief in the existence of angelic archetypes of created beings who mediate between God and His creation, and express their role through singing hymns. As the first interpretations of Perek Shira also bear witness to its mystic character and angelologic significance, it would appear to be a mystical chapter of Heikhalot literature, dating from late Tannaitic — early Amoraic period, or early Middle Ages. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: 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. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The text of the piyyut, “HaMavdil,” with a German translation by Franz Rosenzweig. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The Masoretic Hebrew text of Proverbs 30:10-31, the alphabetic acrostic “Eshet Ḥayil,” with a German translation by Franz Rosenzweig. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The popular adjuration of the angels of peace and ministering angels, Shalom Aleikhem, in Hebrew with a German translation by Franz Rosenzweig. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The text of Yehudah haLevi’s piyyut, “Al Ahavatekha Eshteh Gəvi’i,” with a German translation by Franz Rosenzweig. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags:   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The poem “Friday Night” by Miriam del Banco (1858-1931) was included in The Standard Book of Jewish Verse (ed. Friedlander & Kohut 1917), p. 269. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The piyyut and popular shabbat table song, Ki Eshmera Shabbat, in Hebrew with a rhyming translation. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: This is a faithful transcription of the תחנה פון ליכט בענטשין (“Tkhine for Lighting Candles [for Shabbes]”) as it appeared in the Vilna, 1869 edition. I have transcribed it without any changes from The Merit of Our Mothers בזכות אמהות A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s Prayers, compiled by Rabbi Tracy Guren Klirs, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992. shgiyot mi yavin, ministarot nakeni. If you can scan an image of the page from the 1869 edition this was originally copied from, please share your scan with us. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags:   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags:   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags:   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The prayer-poem, “Take Me Under Your Wing” (1905) by Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The poem, Ayekh (Where are you?), by Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: This translation of Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik’s “Shabbat ha-Malkah” by Israel Meir Lask can be found on pages 280-281 in the Sabbath Prayer Book (Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945) where it appears as “Greeting to Queen Sabbath.” The poem is based on the shabbat song, “Shalom Alekhem” and first published in the poetry collection, Hazamir, in 1903. I have made a faithful transcription of the Hebrew and its English translation as it appears in the Sabbath Prayer Book. The first stanza of Lask’s translation was adapted from an earlier translation made by Angie Irma Cohon and published in 1920 in Song and Praise for Sabbath Eve (1920), p. 87. (Cohon’s translation of Bialik’s second stanza of “Shabbat ha-Malkah” does not appear to have been adapted by Lask.) . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The popular table song calling for the redemption of the Messianic age in Tsiyon. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A piyyut and table song for Shabbat by the chief rabbi of the Ottoman Empire. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: A rhymed translation of the piyyut sung following the Havdallah ritual. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The cosmological piyyut, Adon Olam, in its Ashkenazi variation in Hebrew with an English translation. . . .   Contributor(s):  Categories:  Tags: The sephardic folk-song “Kuando el rey Nimrod” in Ladino with English translation. . . . |