A Passover Prayer [for Jews in the United States], by Rabbi Norman Salit (ca. 1920s)
Source Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=49943
open_content_license: Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication Date: 2023-04-08
Last Updated: 2025-02-18
Categories: 7th Day of Pesaḥ, Social Justice, Peace, and Liberty
Tags: 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, Americanism, bigotry, liberty
Excerpt: "A Passover Prayer" was written by Rabbi Norman Salit and published in Rabbi Jacob Bosniak's לקוטי תפלות Liḳutei Tefilot: Pulpit and Public Prayers (1927), pp. 46-47. . . .
Content:
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God of our fathers,
on this Festival of Freedom
we assemble in Thy house
to sing Thy praises.
We remember again
Thy goodness of yore.
Thou didst free us
from the yoke of Egyptian bondage.
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But Thou didst more,
when Thou caused us to wander in the wilderness
and earn the freedom we had been given.
This feast of Passover comes to us
as perennial reminder that Liberty has ever been
one of Thy greatest gifts,
one of mankind’s most precious blessings.
And therefore it has been
that the Jew has always made his home
where liberty was not,
so that liberty might make its home
where the Jew was.
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Enable us, O our God,
to guide and elevate our own emancipation.
Make us to be active instruments
in the gaining of wider freedom
and in the pursuing of it on higher levels.
Grant us dissatisfaction of spirit,
so that we may seek to free our souls
for greater grasp and deeper vision,
becoming liberated in more than body,
and so that we may take eager hold
of our own lives and institutions
and earn, as in the days of long ago, that truest liberty
which Thou hast put within our reach.
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Make us loyal to Thee and to Israel,
and therefore to the land in which we live.
Make America loyal to itself
and therefore to Thee and Thy significance.
Bring the deathless spirit of Passover again
to the leaders and masses of our country,
and make them mindful of the early American motto
that “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
Grant that we of America
crush our own tyrants of bigotry and hatred,
which are fathered by fear and mothered by ignorance,
and that we of Israel in America
live the better for the country of our flag
by doing the more for the country of our faith.
Amen.
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“A Passover Prayer” was written by Rabbi Norman Salit and published in Rabbi Jacob Bosniak’s לקוטי תפלות Liḳutei Tefilot: Pulpit and Public Prayers (1927), pp. 46-47.
Source(s)
Contributor: Aharon N. Varady (transcription)
Co-authors:
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Name: Norman Salit
Bio: Rabbi Norman Salit (June 8, 1896 – July 21, 1960), born in Brooklyn, New York, was a lawyer, Conservative rabbi, and community leader who served as the president of the Synagogue Council of America. In 1916, he graduated with a B.A. from City College; in 1919, he graduated with a J.D. from New York University; in 1920, he received his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; and in 1922, he graduated with a M.A. from Columbia University. From 1919 to 1924, he served as the rabbi at Temple Adath Israel in the Bronx and from 1924 to 1929 as the rabbi at Congregation Shaaray Tefila in Far Rockaway, Queens. From 1933 to 1937, he was head of the Queens County Bar Association Committee on Legislation and Law Reform. In addition to being admitted to practice law in New York, in 1938 he was admitted to the bars of the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Treasury Department. During World War II he was the executive director of the Wartime Emergency Commission for Conservative Judaism. In 1949, he received a Master of Hebrew Letters from the Jewish Theological Seminary and in 1956, an honorary Doctor of Letters from the same institution. From 1953 to 1955, he served as president of the Synagogue Council of America. In 1957, he received a Doctor of Humane Letters from the Philathea College in Canada. He later served on the board of overseers of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, as president of the Long Island Council of the American Jewish Congress, on the executive council of the New York Board of Rabbis (1951-1958), as counsel for the Rabbinical Assembly of America, and as a member of the executive committee of the Zionist Organization of America.
Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Salit
Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/norman-salit
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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: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” (Benson Lossing for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1856)
Caption: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" (rendering of the late 18th century revolutionary motto by Benson Lossing for Harper's New Monthly Magazine, July 1856) - inverse
