For All Mothers, a prayer by Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch adapted by Rabbi Morris Lazaron (1918)

Source Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=48468

Date: 2023-01-19

Last Updated: 2025-02-02

Categories: 🇮🇱 Yom ha-Ém (30 Shəvat), 🇺🇸 Mother's Day (2nd Sunday of May)

Tags: 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., ecumenical prayers, English vernacular prayer, social gospel

Excerpt: "For the Mothers," a variation of the prayer by Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch, 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 26. The original version of the prayer was first published in For God and the People: Prayers of the Social Awakening (Walter Rauschenbusch 1910), pp. 85-86. . . .

Content:

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	O God, we offer Thee praise and benediction for the sweet ministries of motherhood in human life.
	We bless Thee for our own dear mothers who built up our lives by theirs; who bore us in travail and loved us the more for the pain we gave; who nourished us at their breast and hushed us to sleep in the warm security of their arms.
	We thank Thee for their tireless love, for their voiceless prayers, for the agony with which they followed us through our sins and won us back, for the divine power of sacrifice and redemption in mother-love.
	We pray Thee to forgive us if in thoughtless selfishness we have taken their love as our due without giving the tenderness which they craved as their sole reward.
	And if the great treasure of a mother’s life is still spared to us, may we do for her feebleness what she did for ours.
	Amen.

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“For the Mothers,” a variation of the prayer by Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch, 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 26. The original version of the prayer was first published in For God and the People: Prayers of the Social Awakening (Walter Rauschenbusch 1910), pp. 85-86.

Source(s)

 

 

Contributor: Aharon N. Varady (transcription)

Co-authors:

• 
  Name: Morris Samuel Lazaron
  Bio: Morris Samuel Lazaron (1888–1979), was a Reform Jewish rabbi in the United States. Born in Savannah, Georgia, he was ordained by Hebrew Union College in 1914. He served as rabbi in Wheeling, West Virginia, for a year and in 1915 was appointed rabbi of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, the large and distinguished Reform synagogue in Baltimore where he served for 31 years as rabbi and rabbi emeritus. During World War I, he wrote Side Arms: Readings and Meditations for Soldiers and Sailors (1918). As rabbi he initiated youth-oriented programming, introduced innovative rituals, and was an early supporter of the interfaith movement, working with the National Conference of Catholics and Jews and traveling throughout the United States with a priest and a minister to represent the three faiths of America. Lazaron's retirement from this office in 1949 was linked to his active identification with the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, of which he was a founder and vice president. This position was not problematic with his congregation until after the Holocaust, and especially after the establishment of the State of Israel. This led to the severing of his relationship with Baltimore Hebrew, including his resignation as rabbi emeritus. He was also a member of the National Council of the American Friends of the Middle East. He wrote several works, including Ask the Rabbi (1928); The Consolidation of Our Father (1928); Homeland or State: The Real Issue (1940); In the Shadow of Catastrophe (1956); Is This the Way? (1942); and Olive Trees in a Storm (1955).
  Website: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lazaron-morris-samuel
  Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/morris-samuel-lazaron
• 
  Name: Walter Rauschenbusch
  Bio: Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) was an American theologian and Baptist pastor who taught at the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School. Rauschenbusch was a key figure in the Social Gospel and single tax movements that flourished in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rauschenbusch
  Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/walter-rauschenbusch
• 
  Name: Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
  Bio: Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)
  Website: https://aharon.varady.net
  Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/aharon-varady-transcription

Featured Image:

Title: 62.695.135
Caption: The Mothers, undated print by Käthe Kollwitz (in the collection of the MET, 62.695.135) - slightly cropped