Love and relationships: prayers in Judaism

Texts from their published editions. Guidance on what this tradition does at this moment is on the occasion page, and background on the tradition is at /traditions/jewish.

Texts from their published editions

Each text below comes from the edition named under it and was checked twice, independently, before it appeared. Neither check was a person. Where the two disagreed by even one character, the text is not shown here. That is a claim about wording only: these are not selected or endorsed for any particular situation, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed them. Older spelling is kept as the edition prints it. The full record, including the texts we held back because the two transcriptions disagreed, is at the verification record.

Psalm 128 (JPS 1917)

A Song of Ascents blessing the household: work that feeds, a marriage, children round the table. It is said at the close of the Sabbath and in the bedtime prayers, and it is associated with weddings.

English · The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text (JPS), 1917

A Song of Ascents.

Happy is every one that feareth the LORD,

That walketh in His ways.

When thou eatest the labour of thy hands,

Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost parts of thy house;

Thy children like olive plants, round about thy table.

Behold, surely thus shall the man be blessed

That feareth the LORD.

The LORD bless thee out of Zion;

And see thou the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life;

And see thy children's children.

Peace be upon Israel!

Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917. Published 1917, before 1929, US public domain. Retrieved and verified 2026-09-17. Source

Hebrew · Tanach with Nikkud, a digital edition of the Leningrad Codex, 2026

שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת אַשְׁרֵי כָּל־יְרֵא יְהוָה הַהֹלֵךְ בִּדְרָכָיו׃

יְגִיעַ כַּפֶּיךָ כִּי תֹאכֵל אַשְׁרֶיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ׃

אֶשְׁתְּךָ כְּגֶפֶן פֹּרִיָּה בְּיַרְכְּתֵי בֵיתֶךָ בָּנֶיךָ כִּשְׁתִלֵי זֵיתִים סָבִיב לְשֻׁלְחָנֶךָ׃

הִנֵּה כִי־כֵן יְבֹרַךְ גָּבֶר יְרֵא יְהוָה׃

יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה מִצִּיּוֹן וּרְאֵה בְּטוּב יְרוּשָׁלִָם כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ׃

וּרְאֵה־בָנִים לְבָנֶיךָ שָׁלוֹם עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵל׃

Sefaria, from the Unicode/XML Leningrad Codex at tanach.us, 2026. Tanach.us states that all biblical Hebrew text on its site may be viewed or copied without restriction, and Sefaria labels this version Public Domain. Retrieved and verified 2026-09-17. Source

Share this prayer · How this text was verified · How the Hebrew was verified

Wording and scope vary between editions and between communities, so each edition here is named and this entry makes no claim about which form is right in a given setting. The English keeps the line breaks of one digitisation of the 1917 volume. The second, which it was checked against, stores each verse as running text, so it confirms the words and cannot confirm where a line ends.

Nothing here has been signed by a reviewer credentialed in this tradition. When that happens, reviewed prayers appear above these, and these stay where they are, as an anthology. How that works.