 Contributor(s): Exalted are you Lincoln. Who is like you! You were highly respected among Kings and Princes. All that you accomplished you did with a humble spirit. You are singular and cannot be compared to anyone else. Who among the great are like Lincoln? Who can be praised like you? . . . Contributor(s): In honor of Juneteenth, the holiday of American liberation, this is a translation of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation into Biblical Hebrew. . . . Contributor(s): A megillah for a Purim Sheni commemorating a day of salvation the Jewry of the United States during the Civil War. . . . Contributor(s): The life of Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yeḥiel Michel (MALBIM, 1809-1879) as a wandering rabbi and brilliant intellect reflects the changing expectations of Jews and Jewish religious authorities during the period of emancipation in 19th century Eastern Europe. In his capacity as the chief rabbi of Bucharest, Romania, MALBIM composed a prayer for Prince Alexander Ioan I Cuza (1820-1873), Domnitor. The prince had united the Danube principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1862 to form the Kingdom of Romania. During his reign, he managed to bring about a series of important land reforms benefiting the peasantry of Romania, and he did try to improve the situation for Jews under his rule. The emancipation of the Jews of Romania, announced with the Proclamation of Islaz during the Wallachian Revolution of 1848, had never actually gone into effect. In 1865, the prince announced a project which would lead to the “gradual emancipation of the people of Mosaic faith” but this effort was never realized due to Alexandru Ioan’s forced abdication and replacement by a Prussian King in 1866. . . . Contributor(s): 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. . . . Contributor(s): This prayer of gratitude for the emancipation of French Jewry was included by Rabbi Arnaud Aron and Jonas Ennery in their opus, אמרי לב Prières d’un Coeur Israelite (Société Consistoriale de Bons Livres, 1848), pp. 61-62. In the second edition published in 1852, it appears on pp. 95-96. . . . Contributor(s): A prayer composed for honoring Napoleon Ⅰ by the emancipated Jews of France. . . . Contributor(s): A speech given in honor of Napoleon concluding with a prayer by Abraham de Cologna, chief rabbi of the Central Consistory of Israelites, in 1809 on the anniversary of the emperor’s coronation. . . . Contributor(s): A prayer composed for convening the Grand Sanhedrin established under the court of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807. . . . Contributor(s): A prayer offered at the inaugural session of the Grand Sanhedrin (9 February 1807) by Rabbi David Sinzheim, as found in Italian in Raccolta degli atti dell’assemblea degli Israeliti di Francia e del regno d’Italia (1807), p. 21-23, and in French in Collection des Proces-verbaux er decisions du Grand Sanhedrin (1807), p. 23-25. . . . Contributor(s): A prayer by Rabbi David Sinzheim given during the Festival of Napoleon the Great on 15 August 1806, as recorded in Collection des Actes de l’Assemblée des Israélites de France et du Royaume d’Italie, pp. 218-219, and Raccolta degli atti dell’assemblea degli Israeliti di Francia e del regno d’Italia, p. 221. . . . Contributor(s): In 1785 Friedrich Schiller wrote his ‘An die Freude an ode ‘To Joy’, describing his ideal of an equal society united in joy and friendship. Numerous copies and adaptations attest to its popularity at the time. The slightly altered 1803 edition was set to music not only by Ludwig van Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony but also by other composers such as Franz Schubert and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Hs. Ros. PL B-57 contains a Hebrew translation of the first edition of the ode (apparently rendered before the 1803 alteration), revealing that the spirit of the age even managed to reach the Jewish community in the Netherlands. Whereas the imagery of Schiller’s original is drawn from Greek mythology, the author of the שִׁיר לְשִׂמְחָה relies on the Bible as a source. In fact, he not only utilises Biblical imagery, but successfully avoids any allusion to Hellenistic ideas whatsoever. . . . Contributor(s): This is De Rechten van den Menschen van den Burger (“The Rights of Man and of the Citizen” 1795) and its Hebrew translation, דברי הברית החקים והמשפטים אשר בין אדם לאדם (1798), upon the establishment of the Batavian Republic and the ensuing emancipation of Dutch Jewry in the Netherlands. The text of the Declaration, with nineteen articles, follows after the French Republic’s much expanded Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen de 1793 written by Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles. (The French Declaration, ratified by popular vote in July 1793, was a revision of the initial Declaration from 1789 written by the commission that included Hérault de Séchelles and Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just during the period of the French Revolution.) Declarations such as these enshrined the liberal values of the Enlightenment which changed the situation and status of Jews under their aegis. Ultimately, these values were largely enshrined under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by member states of the nascent United Nations in 1945. . . . Contributor(s): “Lamnatseaḥ Shir” composed by Moses Ensheim, and its accompanying paraliturgical French translation by Isaïah Berr Bing, was first published in 1792 when it was sung in the synagogue of the Jewish community of Metz in celebration of the victory of the French Revolution and their emancipation as full citizens of France in 1791. . . . |
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