ON THE FIRST DAYS OF PASSOVER by Fanny Neuda

Dear God, the festival of Passover has come —
The joyful feast memorializing the days of jubilee,
When you redeemed our ancestors
From inhuman oppression and carried them
With an outstretched hand
Into the beautiful land of liberty,
From the dark dwellings of error and false belief
Into the sunny realms of knowledge and the pure,
Gladdening faith in you and your divine word.

With deep emotion and joy, we celebrate this holiday,
Which reminds us of that happy time
When you chose Israel for your inheritance,
Elected her from all nations,
Wedded her to you as a bridegroom weds his bride
And bound her to you with the ties of grace and love —
The time when your people, in return, clung to you,
As a youthful bride to the heart of her beloved,
As a child to its mother’s breast —
When they followed you, full of love and faithfulness
Into a strange, unknown land,
Followed you into a vast desert wilderness.

A long space of time has since passed,
And the heart of your people has often changed,
But your love has always remained the same.
You have been a help and refuge
To our ancestors from eternity,
A shield and a help to their children after them
Throughout all generations.
You are our guide, our protector, our guardian,
As you have been in all times.

We have passed through more than one Egypt.
Hatred and prejudice have set
A heavy yoke around our necks,
But through the darkness of misery and oppression
A ray of your grace has continually shone above us
And has at last brought a morning of redemption
In which our human dignity is recognized
And we live free and undisturbed
Under the protection of mild and just laws.
Oh, may you, O God, continue to be with us.
As in the days when you burst the chains
In which we sighed, and with an awful hand
Broke the yoke of bondage and tyranny,
So may you deliver and redeem our souls
That they may rise above all attacks
From within or without.
As you hurled the many idols and gods of Egypt
From their altars, so may your boundless mercy
Release us from the idols that attract us today,
And let every cell and organ of our bodies be filled
With your incomparable, exalted, and glorious being.
May we be thoroughly infused by faithfulness and love,
By unconditional, unwavering confidence,
And boundless attachment to you.
You are the shield and savior of every human being
As well as of whole nations.
You comfort them
In the midst of trouble and suffering. Amen.

Fanny Neuda was a Moravian Rabbi's wife in the 19th century. Her 1855 Hours of Devotion was the first book of Jewish prayers written for women by a woman, at a time when such daily prayer books were quite popular, since women in those days were generally not taught Hebrew but wanted to fulfill the rabbinic injunction to pray at least once daily. Neuda's book was a bestseller in German for many decades, containing prayers for each day of the week, for every Jewish holiday, and for many female occasions and rites of passage ("For a Bride on Her Wedding Day"; "For a Childless Wife"; "A Daughter's Prayer for Her Parents"; "For A Mother Whose Son Is In Military Service"). It was often a cherished gift from mother to daughter.

Poet and editor Dinah Berland became fascinated by Neuda's role as a pioneer in advocating a religious education for young Jewish women, and her heartfelt, beautifully crafted prayers. In creating a new edition of Neuda’s prayers, Berland made the choice to format the prayers as poetry. Fanny's prayers tend to follow the traditional pattern of the Psalms, Berland tells us, "flowing from the heavens above to the earth below, from the universal to the personal." She explains, "It should come as no surprise that the relationship of poetry and prayer is as old as Hebrew scripture itself. The Torah, or Five Books of Moses, is often referred to as shira, literally 'song' or 'poem,' and the last of the Torah's 613 commandments requires that every Jew study the Torah as a shira: 'Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, so this poem may be my witness...' "

We have passed through more than one Egypt.

Pesach blessings to all.

Here is a very interesting bio of Fanny Neuda:

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MaryAnn..Thank you for posting this remarkable woman’s poem!

From Fanny Neuda’s Preface to Hours of Devotion

These prayers were not originally written for publication. During my lifetime, so richly filled with the most diverse events, I frequently felt powerful, inescapable urges to enter into dialogue with the sublime Spirit of the Universe – who is enthroned so high and yet sees down so low – that I might find the insight and the strength in God not to stray from or sidestep the path of duty, which so often demanded great sacrifice. That is how most of these prayers were written. In them I found the staff of Moses calling forth to me from the arid rocks of a sad fate, a wellspring of elevating emotions and heavenly consolations – Jacob’s ladder, on which the angels of patience, hope, and devotion to God descended from heaven.

The above is just an excerpt from what is continued in the bio. Her legacy lives on.
A

Neuda has been getting some press lately because Knopf just published Berland's poetic re-interpretation of Neuda's prayers.

I think this would be one small indication:

"May his transfigured soul in the life beyond recognize in them the faithfulness and love with which I strove to make his life happy here below."

I will take a look at Berland's book. See if he has a side by side of her work and his interpretations..I don't know what re-interpretation would mean..Who's on first?
A

According to my original post, she merely re-formatted it as poetry - the dreaded chopped-up prose, I guess.

MA..

When I read what you posted..I wasn't thinking 'poetry vs prose,' ..the lines as they moved, were like an onging invocation of praise and history. A long personal prayer..The chopped up did come through, but there is enough rhythm and sincerity to bridge the rough connections. Whitman too has his long interior conversations with himself that could raise the same questions about prose/poetry.

When the chopped up 'prose' is dead in the water and reads as filler, I don't care what it is called.
A

OK, I know this is a far more flippant response to your poem than you expected, but do you realize that if Fanny Neuda and Pablo Neruda had married, she would be Fanny Neuda-Neruda?

IT, when I first saw Fanny Neuda's name, I thought she was Pablo Neruda's wife or mother.....

True story -- A woman at the college I went to was named Elizabeth Cotton. She met a man at a mixer who said his name was Charles Gauze/Gause? She thought he was mocking her name. To make a long story short, they ended up getting married.

MA

Did they have kids or was she Sterile?

(Hold your Bronx cheers and raspberries. I've saved you the trouble. I'm hitting myself wih my slipper.)

What a beautiful devotional poem!

"It should come as no surprise that the relationship of poetry and prayer is as old as Hebrew scripture itself. The Torah, or Five Books of Moses, is often referred to as shira, literally 'song' or 'poem,' and the last of the Torah's 613 commandments requires that every Jew study the Torah as a shira: 'Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, so this poem may be my witness...' "

Indeed...although the verse cited above (Deuteronomy 31:19) refers specifically to Deuteronomy 32:1-43 (no more, no less). This is one example out of many of a specific verse being applied as a general principle. It's a way of "proof-texting" the antiquity of the cantillation (melodic rendition) of Hebrew Scripture, as far back as the Torah.

A better verse for this subject would be Psalms 119:54: "Your statutes have been my zemirot (songs accompanied by a plucked string instrument such as a lyre) in the house of my pilgrimage." Not only was all sacred and epic literature sung in public reading in the ancient world, but by default it was accompanied. Even the Torah could be so accompanied, which is not the case in the synagogues today.

I don't have a Torah text on YouTube yet, but Psalms 130 relates to this time of year in the apostolic Christian Passover, and so I include a link here.

wr ()()

the psalm 130 is EXQUISITE

thank you so

shann, how nice that you should stop by the PoemsFray and Culturebox during National Poetry Month! We miss your daily April poems -- are you still doing them?

What's up with you? Still providing Richmond with a vital dose of poetry? I'm still teaching poetry to retired folks each fall at a local college; leading a discussion of various poets at monthly get-togethers at a local library; starting a memoirs writing workshop in a few weeks; and, of course, hanging out here.

Zinya married Montfort. Zbigley is working on a Ph.D. in medieval literature at Stanford. Now we have three Fray editors at Slate (including Moira Redmond, who still lives in England), but they manage to do less work than the one we used to have.

So it goes.

Mary Ann