PRAYER BEFORE THE NEW MOON
MAY it be Thy will, O Lord our God and the God of our fathers, to renew unto us this coming month for good and for blessing. O grant us long life, a life of blessing, of sustenance, of bodily vigour, a life marked by the fear of Heaven and the dread of sin, a life free from shame and reproach; a life in which the desires of our heart shall be fulfilled for good.
May the Holy One, blessed be He, renew it unto us and unto all His people, the house of Israel, for life and peace, for gladness and joy, for salvation and consolation; and let us say, Amen.
DAILY PRAYER BOOK.
THE SEDER[64]
FAIR is the twilight,
And fragrant and still:
Little by little
The synagogues fill.
One by one kindle
The night’s gleaming eyes;
Candles in windows
And stars in the skies.
Ended in Shool is
The service divine;
Seder is started
With legends and wine.
Father is blessing
The night of all nights;
All who are hungry
To feast he invites.
‘All who are homeless
Yet masters shall be,
Slaves who are this year—
The next shall be free!’
Children ask ‘questions’,
And father replies;
Playfully sparkle
The wine and the eyes.
Hymns of redemption
All merrily sing;
Queen is each mother,
Each father a king.
Midnight. The Seder
Is come to an end;
Guardian angels
From heaven descend.
Each one a message
Of liberty brings;
Scattering blessings
Of peace from his wings.
P. M. RASKIN.
לֵיל שִׁמּוּרִים
ISRAEL’S WATCH-NIGHT
ISRAEL’S great watch-night dates its origin from the very Deliverance it was to commemorate through all the coming years. Ah! With what a delirious impatience did Pharaoh’s slaves await the midnight hour that was to be at once the knell of Egypt’s tyranny and the joy-note that announced their own freedom! God Himself had singled it out as the time for fulfilling His ancient promise—singled it out, as the Rabbins tell us in hyperbolical language, from the days of creation itself. Too long had unrighteousness flourished. Too long had God seemed to slumber in His Heaven; but now He was to show that the cry of the oppressed had never failed to reach Him, for accumulated wrongs were to be redressed by a complete and unparalleled deliverance. It was for so signal a vindication of the Divine justice that this night was reserved. It wasas though the Supreme had set His finger upon this night, in the almanac of Heaven, and declared: This shall witness the long-deferred triumph of Right over Might; this shall tell for all time that I am the Lord, that I reign, and that righteousness and justice are the foundation of My throne, the principles on which I govern My world. This night shall show to all coming generations that it is only the fool who says in his heart ‘There is no God’; that the earthly despot who pursues his career of cruelty, thinking that he has only his victims’ tears to reckon with, is deluding himself to his own ruin.
And is this truth not worth treasuring in these latter days? Often does God seem to hide Himself, to have deserted earth and shut Himself up in Heaven. It is the souls of the meek and the faithful from which humanity’s tears are distilled, from which the painful chorus of a world’s lament goes up, and seemingly up in vain. But the lesson taught to Pharaoh and to Israel on that awful, that joyous night of deliverance, is still a living lesson; not one jot of its force is abated. God neither slumbers nor sleeps. He watches ever. Not one sigh passes unrecorded in the Heavenly Volume.
MORRIS JOSEPH, 1893.