מײן אַמעריקא (אונזער נײע הימנע) | My America (Our New Hymn) by Morris Rosenfeld (1917)

“My America (Our New Hymn)” was written by Morris Rosenfeld and published by the Jewish Morning Journal sometime mid-April 1917. On April 2nd, the United States had entered the World War against Germany and its allies. In the xenophobic atmosphere of the United States during World War Ⅰ, Representative Isaac Siegel (1880-1947), R-NY, offered the hymn as evidence of the patriotism of America’s “foreign-born” Jewish immigrants. The poem in its English translation was added to the Congressional Record on 18 April 1917 in an extension of remarks. Xenophobia in the United States though did not ebb. Nearly a year later, on April 4, 1918, a German immigrant, Robert Prager, was lynched in Collinsville, Illinois. . . .

Tags: 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, Patriotic hymns, Prayers as poems, rhyming translation, United States home front during World War Ⅰ, World War Ⅰ, Yiddish translation, Yiddish vernacular prayer

Contributor(s): Morris Rosenfeld and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

For Those At Home, a prayer for the home front during war by Rev. Howard A. Bridgman adapted by Rabbi Morris Lazaron (1918)

“[Prayer] for those at home,” a variation of a prayer by Rev. Howard A. Bridgman (1860-1929), is found adapted (without Christian god-language) by Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron in his World War Ⅰ era prayerbook, Side Arms: Readings, Prayers and Meditations for Soldiers and Sailors (1918), on page 25. The original version of the prayer was first published in The Service Song Book (Young Men’s Christian Associations 1917), pp. 86 in the abridged edition. . . .

Categories: Travel, War

Tags: 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., ecumenical prayers, English vernacular prayer, military, מוסר mussar, prayers of military chaplains, United States home front during World War Ⅰ, World War Ⅰ

Contributor(s): Morris Samuel Lazaron, Howard Allen Bridgman and Aharon N. Varady (transcription)