The first twenty-two lines of the prayer are an alphabetical acrostic wherein each line spells out the entire letter in which it starts. For instance, the first line spells out Alef, Lamed, and Pe, which spells out the full name of the letter Alef. This is followed by three Biblical verses all starting with the word “Good,” a brief poem in Hebrew, and a concluding passage largely in Judeo-Arabic.

Here the editor has included the original text, along with a non-gendered English translation and a transcription of the Judeo-Arabic text into Arabic script.

Note: “The Cause” is used to translate the Divine Name YHVH, based on the philosophical idea of God as the Prime Mover and on the interpretation of the Name as a causative form of the copula – “causes to be.”

The featured image is a luaḥ otiyot, an alphabet chart, from Yemen in the late 19th century. The text of El Libbi Păthaḥ can be found along the right side and bottom.

Recordings

A video of some Yemenite-Jewish children singing this melody:

Source(s)

Alef-Bet Chart, Aden (Single Leaf, undated) from a Kedem Auction House auction

Reb Noson’s Liqutei Tefillot I:37 was first translated to English and published by Avraham Greenbaum in The Fiftieth Gate Volume 2: Prayers 21-40 (Breslov Research Insitute 1992). Greenbaum is a far better translator than I, but his style sometimes abridges the text and in some case omits important phrases. I have attempted to correct passages omitted from his translation by first setting down the entire text opposite his translation, adding all citation references, and making additional changes. Lacunae still remain, so please if you can, help to make a more complete translation of this prayer.

This prayer is tagged with our “problematic prayers” tag since it contains curses that we believe should be contextualized within the anti-Enlightenment and reactionary currents of 19th century Jewry. Amidst these anxieties is an admonishment on gazing at women which may be misapplied, we believe, to the repression of women visible in the public sphere. We share this prayer for historical interest and the possibility of revision through adaptive reuse.

Source

Source(s)

Source(s)

“Morning Song [splendor of the morning sunlight]” is a hymn by Felix Adler, published in The Sabbath School Hymnal, a collection of songs, services and responses for Jewish Sabbath schools, and homes (4th rev. ed., 1897), hymn no. 23.

Source(s)

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. The unattributed quote appears at the very start of the front matter (before another unattributed quote — by Benjamin Disraeli) and a dedication to Robert Leslie Guthrie (1943-2022), a beloved teacher and coach who had graduated the high school less than a decade earlier. The use of the quote in the context of counseling in high schools is attested in an article, “Just Be My Friend” by Dr. William F. Knox in his column “Living, Today” (Quincy Sun, 2 December 1971), p. 11. Attesting to the variations in wording and arrangement in circulation, I also found a version handwritten in a 1971 reprint of Mabel Collins’ Light on the Path (1889). (The copy containing this note is held in the collection of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.)

As a quote, the lines have been popularly misattributed to Albert Camus (1913-1960). The misattribution, which begins circulating as early as 1971, is possibly explained by a robust effort of legend weaving by Christian missionaries eager to bring the famous existentialist and Atheist closer to their religious movement. The correct attribution will likely be found somewhere in the 1950s or 60s. The line “Lead me, guide me, walk beside me” is found in a popular hymn of the Church of Latter Day Saints written in 1957 by Naomi W. Randall. In 1964, NBC produced a TV movie on the life of the Christian apostle Paul, “Walk Beside Me.” From the mid-1960s through 1970, the poet Ben Boroughs invoked the phrase “walk beside me” in at least five of his prayer-poems disseminated via his popular syndicated newspaper column “Sketches.” The heavyweight boxer, Mohammed Ali, was also quoted in 1965 joking before a fight in Poland Spring, Maine, that he was being treated there “better than home. Police here walk beside me instead of behind me.”^[3] ”Challenger Set for [Cassius] Clay Tuesday” in The New York Times, 22 May 1965, page 23. 

In the Jewish world of the early to mid-1970s, a young Moshe Tanenbaum began transmitting the lines at Jewish summer camps. (There is no record of the song being sung in Jewish schools or summer camps before this era. While not entirely certain, he thinks he may have first picked up the lines while working at the Bathurst Street Y Day Camp in Toronto.) 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 origin of the Hebrew translation is likewise difficult to track down. The one appearing here was the most common in my searches (again, misattributed to אלבר קאמי). Besides adding niqud and the Hebrew text of RASHI on Leviticus 19:18, I have provided a Hebrew translation for “and together we will walk in the way of Hashem,” the novel line in its Jewish context. Popularly, the latter portion of Isaiah 2:4 is appended. The earliest date we have heard of it’s inclusion is in 1987 at a summer camp in Ontario. (Thanks to Aurora Mendelsohn for this detail.)

Just in case it may also do some good in these difficult times, I am also adding translations in Yiddish and Arabic. The Yiddish translation is entirely new, except for Yehoyesh Blumgarten’s translation of Leviticus 19:18. The Arabic translation is a combination of the original three lines as found in Arabic here, with Leviticus 19:18 as found in the Arabic Bible (SVD). (Many thanks to Isaac Gantwerk Mayer, Eliran Sobel, and Baruch Jean Thaler for reviewing and improving my Yiddish here.) Isaac Gantwerk Mayer contributed the translation in Aramaic. The translation of Isaiah 2:4 is from the JPS 1917. The Aramaic translation of Isaiah 2:4 is from Targum Yonatan. –Aharon Varady

Recording(s)

Source(s)

I have here transcribed Rabbi Yosef Goldstein’s introduction to the story, “Where is Hashem?” framing the song “Hashem is Everywhere!”^[2] This seems to be the informal, popular title for the song, as given on the liner notes of the second album in the series (מדות טובות Jewish Ethics Through Story and Song vol. 1, no. 2, Menorah Records 1972). There is no title given for the song on the cover and liner notes of the album on which it originally appears. Only the name of the framing story is provided there.  as well as his instructions for reciting the song, which begins as follows:

A wise man was once asked, “Can you tell me, where is God?” To this he answered, “Can you tell me where he is not?”^[3] This question is almost certainly referencing Yehudah haLevi’s 12th century piyyut Ana Emtsaeka. A short prayer on this theme is quoted in Ḥovot haLevavot (Duties of the Heart, First Treatise on Unity 10:69) by Baḥya ibn Paquda (1050-1120): ונאמר על קצת מן החכמים שהיה אומר בתפלתו אלהי אנה אמצאך אך אנה לא אמצאך נסתרת ולא תראה והכל ממך מלא. דומה למה שאמר יתברך אֶת־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ אֲנִי מָלֵא נְאֻם־יְהוָה (ירמיהו כג:כד) (It is said of one of the Sages who would say in his prayer: “My elo’ah, where can I find you, yet where can I not find you. You are hidden and invisible yet everything is filled with you, similar to the verse “‘Do I not fill heaven and earth,’ says Hashem (Jeremiah 23:24)”). Find also Proverbs 7:15 and Song of Songs 8:1. 

God is everywhere. Yes, dear children, God is everywhere. True, we cannot see him. He is invisible, but he is everywhere. He fills the world and surrounds it too.^[4] This idea is foundational within speculative Jewish thought from the piyyut Anim Zemirot through Zohar III:225a (Raya Mehemna, Parshat Pinchas) to the Schneur Zalman of Lyadi’s Tanya and Rebbe Naḥman’s Likutei Moharan. In the Zohar, the phrase is: מְמַלֵּא כָּל עָלְמִין וְסוֹבֵב כָּל עָלְמִין. 

Oh what a lovely feeling to know that God is at all times and in all places together with us. He is looking over us with an ever watchful eye. He protects us and blesses us with all good.

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). To the best of my limited abilities, I have added a Yiddish translation. Please offer corrections, improvements, or additional translations. (Leave a comment or contact us.) Many thanks to Baruch Thaler for his improvements!

We have not yet been able to determine whether the song was originally published along with the album, or whether the notes to the album were, themselves, registered with the Copyright Office. No copyright notice appears on the album cover, a requirement for materials receiving copyright at the time of its publication. Since the copyright status of this work is ambiguous at best, we are invoking the rarely used Fair Use declaration under which this sort of content may still be shared, dina malkhuta dina, in the United States, for non-commercial, scholarly, and educational purposes only. However, we should stress, this work may indeed already be in the Public Domain due to the lack of a copyright notice on the album cover on which the work was published.

One last point. While we don’t know (yet) how long this song existed before it was recorded, I believe that the phrase “here, there, and everywhere” helps to date it to after the Beatles’s album Revolver (1966), as the fifth track, “Here, There, and Everywhere,” by Paul McCartney became very well established. It would be lovely to learn whether the line “Here, there, and everywhere” in “Hashem is Everywhere!” was inspired by (or composed in response to) any work by the Beatles. For a song whose explicit theme is directly related, find George Harrison’s “Within You Without You” from Sgt. Pepper (1967). –Aharon Varady

Recordings

Source(s)

Midot Tovot- Jewish ethics through story and song (Yosaif Goldstein 1972) – verso cover

Midot Tovot- Jewish ethics through story and song vol. 1 no. 2 (Yosef Goldstein 1972) – verso cover