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patdroid · 3 months

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Forgotten Breach: A FNaF Security Breach AU

“In a universe where many restaurants are at the top of their game, bringing in many people, there’s one that seems to be forgotten; not only by the people, but also by the owners. This specific location is called the Cartoon Pizzaplex; a location where everyone can meet their favorite cartoon characters. Whether it’s with the Artrock Band and their shows, spending time in the Animaniac Daycare where Solar, Lunar, and Star run it together, or hitting up DJ Botas and DJ Hoho’s music corner to see animated music videos and actual family friendly bands performing songs, it’s a place full of enjoyment. However, it seems like nowadays, whenever someone visits, it’s always known as… A Forgotten Breach.”

It’s my Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach AU! Like most AUs that change up the cast, there’s the band, the daycare, some other characters, but there’s also new changes that come with it, like how it came to be or how certain things fell into place. This happens to mesh both of these things together. (And because of a picture limitation, this will be part 1 of 3, showing all of the characters of the AU.) Starting with the creator himself…

Robot Afton Jones

The robot behind the Cartoon Pizzaplex. During his time in middle school, in the 80s, with his friends Socks, Cubey, and Mitch, he was taught about how some people make their names known by doing many things. Most often, the results would be people being remembered because of the bad things that they did. Robot didn’t want that to happen to him, so after he completed school, he set to work at making his name heard in a good way. All throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s, Robot spent his time building the Cartoon Pizzaplex and by 2003, he was given the name of Robot Afton Jones, which finally shone a good light on the Afton name after many years. (In other words, Robot was now “The Cooler Afton” thanks to his work.)

He wouldn’t be around to see his creation forever, as when 2020 came, he caught a very dangerous virus and…didn’t survive, but before his final flicker of light dimmed for the last time, he gave his business to his three friends, knowing that they can keep the spirit alive. Now, he remains as a kind spirit, watching over his creation with kind eyes. It’s only in recent years that he’s discovering that some things do lose the spark of light without their creators, and now, he’s trying to bring new life into the place with the help of someone he’s never met. Only, he knows to be careful about how he goes through with it. One wrong move and his name will be tarnished forever!

The Artrock Band! (Both current and old members)

Artrock Ben Plotz

The leader of the band. When the Cartoon Pizzaplex first opened in the summer of 2003, he just started out as a backing voice for storytime, fitting his role as a narrator; just like the real Ben Plotz. However, as the company was first setting up the band in the late 2000s, they saw Artrock Ben Plotz as the best fit for the band, and by the Christmas of 2010, when the band premiered, everyone began to adore him. Yes, while he still reads scripts from time to time, nowadays, he’s much more in the action of the stories.

Artrock Chica

The guitarist of the band. Her addition came when the company got word that they needed representation from certain programming that relate to kids who don’t have cable television and bad internet connection. That and the company had an old Chica model from the Fazbear brand, so they found a way to change the type of model, change the color scheme, and make her a great guitar player. The only artifacts of her just so happen to match up with her current inspiration; a chicken named Chica.

Artrock Chica does have a small hunger towards pizza like the Chica she was before, but she usually is the one most associated with birthdays, always ready to sing a special birthday song for anyone in the Cartoon Pizzaplex celebrating a birthday. Not only that, she jams out excellently on her guitar, despite her having wings and not hands. Nobody questions how it’s possible, though.

Artrock Bungo (Bungo Bunny)

The keytar player of the band. At the time of Bungo’s introduction to the band, the show he was on was still airing, which allowed him to gain more of the personality that the real wheeler has; including with his appreciation of signs. While he does appreciate his bandmates, Artrock Bungo gained a bit of a reputation where he calls himself the best in the band, which nobody thought was off, given that it could easily fit with the real deal, but it was only after the show stopped airing did everyone else notice that the reputation isn’t actually a good thing.

Nonetheless, he’s still popular in the Artrock Band despite the flaws. In addition, not only does he have a raceway apply titled “Bungo Bunny’s Raceway”, but he also has an art studio, allowing people to show off their creativity to the whole Pizzaplex! Though, he doesn’t look exactly like his toon self and that’s because Disney was willing to sue the Pizzaplex if they didn’t make any changes to his design. That honestly explains the green on his ears and tail, along with why he was given an outfit. Oh! He also keeps Artrock Ben Plotz up at night when he makes signs for the Pizzaplex.

Artrock Moona (Fairy-Moon Rockstar)

The bassist of the band…well, the second bassist. You see, Artrock Moona was originally just like her cartoon counterpart; a moon fairy. No legs, no long ponytail, no goggles, just a small floating moon fairy. This was until the original bassist began to scare the kids for a really petty reason (and by petty, I really mean that it’s a reason that doesn’t really make much sense) in 2018 and 2019. The company didn’t want people to be scared when visiting, so she was upgraded from a moon fairy to an actual band member, gaining a whole new design in the process. Even though she was added to the band in the easiest way possible, Artrock Ben Plotz seriously believes that she must’ve hurt the original bassist beyond repair.

Despite what Artrock Ben Plotz thinks, Artrock Moona makes the best of her role, even going so far as changing her appearance to mimic that of a true rockstar. Though…it seems that her newfound stardom is causing her to lash out in her dressing room after the shows are done, along with actively trying to use her old magic wand to help…only for that to fail each and every time.

Artrock Tori / Artrock Witch

The original bassist of the band. She was a member of the band from the start in 2010 alongside Artrock Chica, Artrock Bungo, and Artrock Ben Plotz; the latter one becoming her best friend and bandmate. Artrock Tori was mostly known by the advertisements as Artrock Witch, given that she had no official name other than that, but the fans and bandmates gave her the name of Tori, which ultimately stuck for her. However, she wouldn’t be a part of the band forever.

Around late 2017 or early 2018, a few of the preschoolers visiting the Cartoon Pizzaplex had escaped from the daycare within the building to watch the Artrock Band play on stage, along with telling a story. Now, these preschoolers didn’t want to take a nap because…well…they were prematurely exposed to horror movies by one of the older kids, but when the preschoolers arrived to the show and saw the bassist of the band “placing a sleeping spell” on DJ Botas (who was a special guest for the show) and bringing out Sleeping Boots…they got scared. They didn’t know that it was all just an act that the characters were putting on and that resulted with them fearing Artrock Tori.

Throughout 2018 and 2019, those few preschoolers told other kids about what they saw and, like a row of dominoes falling over, more and more people started to fear Artrock Tori, just by that one action alone. The company saw all of that fear and, not wanting to scare the preschoolers anymore, decided to retire Artrock Tori. Though, Artrock Ben Plotz, in between all of the shows together, had actually fallen in love with Artrock Tori and tried to convince the company to keep her around when the shows weren’t going on…but it didn’t work. She was retired.

But she wasn’t destroyed. Instead, she just sits behind one of the bowling lanes in Magical Bowling, waiting for a curious person or toon to find a way behind the area, discover her, and free her from her fate…at least to the point where she can tell Artrock Ben Plotz that she loves him.

Artrock Plex

The alternate Artrock whenever Bungo was out of commission for a while. You see, having one of the main members of the band being from a Disney show, especially when it was still airing new episodes during the first few years of the band, it was tough to ensure safety from a lawsuit, so during the years where personality updates and Disney was hot on the tail of the Pizzaplex, Artrock Plex was the one to call. (And unlike Artrock Bungo, this Artrock had no issues with a lawsuit.)

Even after all of the Disney stuff had fizzled out, Artrock Plex still substituted for Artrock Bungo whenever the latter couldn’t make it to the shows…and everyone didn’t mind that particular switch-up because the actual Plex IS already a keytar player, making the transition so much easier! At first, Artrock Plex was his normal self, but after the show HE was on ended in 2015 (pre-Yo Gabba Gabbaland), he was given a pirate aesthetic, which everyone liked. The only regret that Artrock Plex has is that he wishes that he had more blue in his design.

Artrock Zooble

Not all of the Artrock Band members are full-time performers, but rather…guest performers! These guest performers come on during special events, such as the show that scared a group of preschoolers in the Artrock Tori section, or as promotion for new shows! This is one of those who fit the latter.

In the time where the Cartoon Pizzaplex was starting to be forgotten, Socks, Cubey, and Mitch, the owners of the company after Robot died, decided to try and use someone from a new show…an internet show, and that led to Artrock Zooble; the first ever guest Artrock from the internet. This particular Artrock is only brought out on certain occasions, but does have the unique feature to come apart and be put back together. In fact, there’s a case of parts that the people can use to give Artrock Zooble before the shows start, allowing their appearance to be different each and every time.

However, only the three owners truly know why they allowed Artrock Zooble join the band; it was a desperate attempt to bring the company back in the midst of talking to AI versions of the characters, all of the social distancing that has been going on, and…somehow getting accused at being a rip-off of the Fazbear franchise, despite the looming detail that the Cartoon Pizzaplex has a clean record. The three are just trying to keep Robot’s legacy alive after Artrock Tori was removed from the band and Robot died.

Artrock Tinkerbell

One of the most unexpected members of the band. During the early days, she was a guest performer, but by 2015, she was promoted to being the alternate for Artrock Tori/Artrock Witch, then later Artrock Moona. Artrock Tinkerbell’s design was definitely changed from the original version, mainly because of concerned parents…and Disney. But luckily, the company made sure to differentiate this Tinkerbell from the others. (And it’s more than just the outfit.)

The biggest change comes with the hair of Artrock Tinkerbell. While most of it stays yellow like the version many people know, there’s the addition of a green dyed part in it, which in certain shows can give off even darker green portions.

Luckily for everyone, there’s always proof of those extra details somewhere. Including right here!

To be continued in Part 2…

#fnaf security breach au #Forgotten Breach #Forgotten Breach AU

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sitbc-archive · 1 year

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A random fact about SITBC - Fact #3

There was supposed to be a third season of SITBC, before it got cancelled due to poor viewership

Source (See Screwed by the Network):

#sheep in the big city #sitbc

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gyorslab · 5 years

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Short Sheep comic, give Ben a break

#art #sheep in the big city #ben plotz #comic

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animaniacs-fanfics · 2 years

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Animaniacs Fanfics Masterlist

The fics marked with a asterisk means that it’s a WIP. Ones that are striked out are the ones I don’t ever plan to write.

Aftermath - The Warner siblings attend Lon Borax’s funeral, while a rift between Wakko and Weed Memlo slowly starts to grow. Based on metallideth01’s Bastards of Young series.

Warner Bros B.P. (Before Plotz) - Before Thaddeus Plotz, there was a different CEO for the Warner Bros. studio: His name is Ben Mankiewicz, the brother-in-law of Joseph Mankiewicz. What will the Warners think of him?

(It’s Always the) Same With Cats - A retelling of how Rita and Runt met each other.

The Forgotten Warner Sibling - What if there was supposedly a fourth Warner sibling?

Tics and Tacs - For Wakko Warner, living with Tourette’s Syndrome is hard. Like really hard. Like over-the-top hard. He tries to get through life the best he can, but it’s not easy. (Tourette’s!Wakko AU)

Let Him Cry - When it came to Weed Memlo, Wakko was never allowed to cry or show any emotions at all. He was always forced to smile, even when he was at an all time low. It was only behind closed doors that he was permitted to let his emotions out. Then he stops smiling and being happy altogether, only becoming a shell of a toon. Will he ever be happy again? And what happens when it all becomes way too much for him?

One of These Days - A look into the life of the Warners, from their imprisonment in 1934 all the way until their escape in 1993. This is what happened through this long span of 60 years before the show Animaniacs began airing.

By a Long Shot - Wakko hates his grandmother Angelina I with a burning passion. (Royal AU inspired by “Long Live the Queen”, an Angelina I Lives AU by JanetBrown711)

Song Troubles - “Wakko’s America” was as if not the hardest song Wakko ever had to write. When he has to perform the song for the episode of the same name, he keeps messing up which results in an emotional breakdown. Can he be convinced that he can do it?

Am I Really a Disappointment? - When Weed Memlo insults Wakko in the worst way possible, he shows a different side of himself that no one else has ever seen before.

Hypoglycemia - Wakko was always known to eat everything. But underneath it all, he has a condition called hypoglycemia. It’s a painful realization. He keeps it all under wraps, that is until one day he almost dies. That near-death experience would soon change his life and everyone else around him forever…

You Can Call Me Dot - 1928. Upon creating the Warner siblings, Lon Borax doesn’t have any idea on what to name them. To some working in the Warner Bros. animation department, that would be considered a creator problem... but after a bit of brainstorming, he finally comes up with Yakko, Wakko and Dot.

Night Terrors - Wakko has night terrors. So when Yakko and Dot hear him screaming in his sleep one night they go to investigate, and what they witness horrifies them.

The Photo Album - Weed Memlo destroys something precious to Wakko: his photo album. What happens next? (Follow up to “It’s Not Your Fault” and happens just before the events of “Aftermath”.)

It’s Not Your Fault - When Lon Borax dies, Wakko is convinced that it’s his fault. However, Yakko and Dot tell him it’s not. Will he either believe them or Memlo’s lies?

The Day Comedy Died - It’s 1934, and the Warners get locked up in the water tower never to be seen or mentioned of again. To Yakko, it’s a never ending nightmare he can’t wake up from. This was the day comedy died.

*Dog Teeth - Wakko hates his teeth. Hates how big they are, how sharp they are, how evil they look. He’s also extremely protective of his family, even to the point that he’ll maul someone to death… though he doesn’t intend to. He wants to open up about it, but there is a certain fear within him. Do others see him as a good guy or is it all a façade to say how much of a monster he is, a monster with 𝙙𝙤𝙜 𝙩𝙚𝙚𝙩𝙝?

#my writing #animaniacs 1993 #animaniacs 2020

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tabslabs · 5 years

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Tag Game

tagged by @shimshamrock

Top 4 Ships:

Donro/Pkgyro - It’s just fun, I love friends with mutual pining and secret identity shenanigans is always fun.

Drakepad - They are basically married and also I just love them.

Ben Plotz/Private Public (Sheep in the Big City) - The classic tired x tired, mostly indoctrinated by a friend and I love them.

Can I use my own OCs? Gigamaree/Anette are the perfect OTP for me. Everything about their relationship from the years of mutual pining to the lawful x chaotic nature of it and the constant threat of peril that one day ends happily. I love them and their robot son.

Last Song:

Uhhh we were in a car with songs on shuffle but I think it was Grow For Me from Little Shop of Horrors? The last song I personally put on was If She Ever Leaves Me by the Highwomen (you can listen to it here if you want)

Last Movie:

The last movie I put on was Asterix: Secret of the Magic Potion, the last movie I watched was The Mask

Reading or just finished book:

Uhhh I’m currently reading various smurf albums, but the last book I’ve read is probably Catch 22.

Food Craving:

Literally anything with shrimp. Maybe shrimp alfredo... Just so it’s on the record I eat shrimp meals at least 2 times a week. Usually more.

Sorry to be a leaf but I don’t usually tag folks in these. Readers feel free to do it if you want to though!

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minispixelart · 4 years

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I have this nefarious desire to capture that sheep, but I can't remember why.

Maybe you should check the pilot script, sir.

So, who remembers Sheep in the Big City?

Original.

Enlarged.

These characters are Sheep, General Specific, Private Public, The Angry Scientist, Farmer John, Lasy Virginia Richington, Oxymoron Spokesman, and Ben Plotz.

It’s one thing to break the forth wall, but did this show ever even have one?

_______________

Follow me on Instagram where I share these Minis and photos of my geeky collection. www.instagram.com/minispixelart www.instagram.com/ministoyart

#minis #pixel art #minimal #geek #art #artist #pixel artist #sheep in the big city #cartoon #cartoon network

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sheepinthebigcity · 5 years

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001. c22 002. private public/ben plotz 003. donald duck

this is gonig under a cut

catchbox twenty (two)

Favorite character: mcwatt or wintergreen

Least Favorite character: aarfy die

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): yossarian x wintergreen, cathcart x korn, yossarian x chaplain, milo x mcwatt, and yossarian x orr

Character I find most attractive: wintergreen in pilot cute gorl

Character I would marry: i wouldn’t marry her tho bc she’s evil. mcwatt tho

Character I would be best friends with: i’d say mcwatt but i’d need a weirder friend probably.... dunbar or daneeka

A random thought: heller sure did sink every ship to make milo x wintergreen canon

An unpopular opinion: calling yossarian yo-yo throughout the hulu series was the least of the bad decisions as yo-yo was pretty commonly used by heller in behind the scenes stuff, plays, and sequels

My canon OTP: yossarian and the chaplain

Non-canon OTP: yossarian and orr

Most badass character: de coverly

Pairing I am not a fan of: whoever is out there shipping yossarian and ines i will literally kill you

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): dunbar. heller should have made the dunbar sequel

Favourite friendship: yossarian dunbar and clevinger (replaced by chaplain tappman) dream team

that ship from the sheep cartoon

when or if I started shipping it: shit i was probably like in my 16s or 17s?? maybe even 15. i was super young

my thoughts: they don’t interact at all and it’s a pretty basic person slash ship. but i still really like it.

What makes me happy about them: idk i like the dumb dynamic i came up w in my head

What makes me sad about them: no interactions

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: there’s like one fanfic that isn’t something i wrote half asleep in my notes.

Things I look for in fanfic: more than one fanfic.

My kinks: NOPE

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: honestly for private public. the angry scientist........... for ben. he can just be alone.

My happily ever after for them: becoming friendly with one another, dating, and seeing where it goes.

dumbass duck

How I feel about this character: he’s good......... i love dumbass duck

All the people I ship romantically with this character: oh there are too many. gyro, daisy, jose, panchito, storkules, paperinik sometimes, fenton, launchpad, there’s probably more

My non-romantic OTP for this character: donald gyro and bumbum all being friends

My unpopular opinion about this character: his greatest flaw isn’t that he’s too angry, it’s that he is too much of a damn sap.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: MAKE HIM BI AND/OR GENDERFLUID COWARDS

My OTP: donro

My OT3: dondaisyro or three caballeros

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anon-8518 · 6 months

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Quick Ben Plotz drawing. (See the bottom of the post for the textless version)

To be a lil serious, I have a bit of a passion of characters who are… Well, our beloved narrator says it best. I always wondered what if they didn’t just appear once and were actually main characters. Of course, this automatically applies to X Agent but the same also applies to other characters from different shows. Though, I don’t know the proper name for these type of characters so do let me know in the comments if you have an idea.

Textless Version:

#sheep in the big city #fanart #ben plotz

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smashpages · 5 years

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Harvey Awards announce 7 for their 2019 Hall of Fame class

The Harvey Awards have announced seven inductees into their Hall of Fame for this year, including Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel and five of Harvey Kurtzman’s core 1950s MAD collaborators. This is the largest of all Hall of Fame induction classes in the 31-year history of the Harvey Awards.

“My very first comic industry award was the 1994 Harvey Award for Best Artist on Hellboy. I never expected that award, but I took it as a sign that I might actually be on to something,” Mignola said. “It is a great honor to be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame—something I certainly never could have imagined. And I’ll take it as proof that I haven’t embarrassed myself too badly over the last 25 years.”

After a career at Marvel and DC, where he worked on Rocket Raccoon, Cosmic Odyssey and Gotham by Gaslight, among other titles, Dark Horse release Mignola’s first Hellboy series in 1994. Since then Mignola has created numerous miniseries and one-shots featuring Hellboy and related characters, including B.P.R.D, Lobster Johnson and Abe Sapien. The “Mignolaverse” continues to grow with new stories to this day, with other creators working with Mignola to expand its scope.

Alison Bechdel is known for the strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which ran from 1983 to 2008. She is also the author of two acclaimed graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother? She is currently working on The Secret to Superhuman Strength.

“As someone who existed for so long on the crumbling newsprint margins, it’s surprising and a bit unsettling to receive this recognition from the corridors of comics power. Where did I go wrong?” Bechdel said. “No, just kidding. If you had told me when I was reading Kurtzman parodies in my playpen that I would one day be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame, I would have plotzed. I cannot imagine a greater nor a more furshlugginer honor.”

Paul Levitz will posthumously induct Will Elder, Jack Davis, John Severin, Marie Severin and Ben Oda into the Hall of Fame.

“Inducting these five contributors to the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame is both redundant and obvious,” Levitz said. “As collaborators with Harvey on so much of the great work he did at E.C. Comics, they are already enshrined in every comics scholar and fan’s hall of fame as legends, so they are certainly deserving of the honor of formal induction here. I had the honor of working and being friends with three of the five (Jack, Marie and the inimitable Ben), and loved the work of the other two (Will and John). I can confidently say that they’d be amazed and ever so pleased.”

Additionally, the Comics Industry Pioneer honor will be presented to Maggie Thompson for the work she and her late husband, Don Thompson, did as editors of the Comics Buyer’s Guide.

Created in 1988 as a successor to the Kirby Awards, the Harvey Awards have been given out almost annually since then. The Hall of Fame was referred to as the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame until around 2001, and following about a decade with no inductions, the Hall of Fame returned in 2014. Last year’s inductees were Roz Chast and Dave Gibbons.

The 2019 Harvey Awards will be presented at 8:30 p.m. Oct. 4 at Hudson Mercantile, in conjunction with the New York Comic Con. You can find a complete list of this year’s nominees here.

#comic books #Smash Pages #Harvey Awards

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bigcitylabs · 5 years

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“Maybe spme other time” does it immediately afterwards

#Sheep in the big city #ben plotz #i love him

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ruminativerabbi · 8 years

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Praying for the President

Regular worshipers at Shelter Rock know that we routinely recite a prayer for our nation as part of our Shabbat morning service, but I’m not sure that everybody realizes that I myself wrote that prayer as part of the effort to publish Siddur Tzur Yisrael back in 2006. It was a product of its time, too: written just a few years after 9/11, the sense of America as a nation under siege was audible throughout. (When a synagogue in Boston years later wrote to ask permission to use my prayer in their service and specifically asked me for permission to delete the line “May the wicked plots of whose would destroy us ever come to naught,” I acquiesced, suggesting—only mostly in jest—that we could compromise by shortening it to just “May the wicked plotz.” Either they didn’t think that was as funny as I did or else they didn’t feel the shortened line sufficiently undid what they clearly considered the line’s untoward bellicosity, but they didn’t go for it. I decided not to mind and so it entered their worship service as published in Tzur Yisrael, but without that single line.)

At the time, it felt uncontroversial to include such a prayer in our prayerbook. Later on, however, I began to get regular queries about it, some sincere and others merely serving as a means for the asker to express his or her negative feelings about the president on whom the prayer invokes God’s blessings. My stock response was (and is) to note wryly the illogic of not wishing to pray that God grant wisdom and insight to someone the asker clearly considers in dire need of both, and so the prayer remained (and remains) part of worship at Shelter Rock.

The idea itself of praying on behalf of the government and its officials is ancient. Shelter Rockers all know the words “Pray for the peace of your city for in its peace shall you too have peace,” but not all know how old they are. And they are very old indeed: the prophet Jeremiah spoke them in the first decade of the sixth century BCE after the Babylonians exiled large numbers of ruling-class Judahites in the day of King Jehoiachin to punish them for their unwillingness to acquiesce to foreign domination and for their rebelliousness. Nor was this just the prophet’s personal take on things, but an actual divine oracle. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who are carried away captives, to all whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon,” the prophet reports in God’s name, “‘build houses and dwell in them. Plant gardens and eat their fruit…Seek the peace of the city to which I have caused you to be carried away as captives and pray to the Lord for it, for in its peace shall you too have peace.’” It’s true, I suppose, that the prophet doesn’t specifically tell the people to pray for the government, but praying for the peace of the city to which their captors had brought them comes to the same thing: the idea behind both efforts is to feel justified in praying to God for the city, for the nation, for its leadership…and all who exercise just and rightful authority in its governance. This is not presented as mere altruism either, for the prophet could not be clearer: the people’s security rests in the security of the larger place in which they live and in the success of its leadership in establishing that security.

The earliest reference to praying for the government per se, however, is probably in Pirkei Avot, where we hear that Rabbi Ḥananiah the Deputy High Priest, liked to tell people to “pray for the peace of the government, since were it not for the fear of the government people would swallow each other up alive.” He was in interesting personality in his own right, Rabbi Ḥananiah, serving as one of the few Temple officials to seek and attain rabbinic ordination, and thus serving as an unofficial link between the vanished world of pre-destroyed Jerusalem and the ongoing work of the rabbinic effort to create a version of Judaism that could survive the absence of the Temple. And this interesting personality makes an interesting point: that it behooves law-abiding citizens to pray for their government officials because it is the latter who are responsible for maintaining an orderly, peaceful society in which citizens specifically are not free to cannibalize each other’s work or property.

There were many attempts to formulate prayers for the secular governments of the countries in which Jewish worshipers lived, but the best known, called Ha-notein Teshu∙ah after its first words, was in very wide use by the middle of the seventeenth century. (For an interesting survey by Nathan E. Weisberg of earlier efforts to compose such prayers, click here.) The great Portuguese/Dutch rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657), for example, cited it in English translation in a book he wrote to promote the idea that Jews should be allowed to re-enter and settle in England, declaring it to have be the universal custom of Jews everywhere “on the Sabbath Day or other solemn feast,” to bless “the Prince of the country under whom they live, that all Jews may hear it and say, Amen.”

On American soil, the very first published Jewish prayer published in the New World, called a “form of prayer” and published by Congregation Shearith Israel in New York in 1760, contained the Ha-notein Teshu∙ah and specifically called upon congregants to invoke God’s blessings on “our Sovereign Lord King GEORGE the Second, His Royal Highness, George Prince of Wales, the Princess Dowager of Wales, the Duke, the Princesses, and all the Royal Family,” and also “the Honourable President, and the Council of this Province, likewise the Magistrates of New York.” That suited the moment well enough, I suppose, but by the time the prayer was published for public recitation at the founding of Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia in 1782, the royals were gone and in their place was a reference to “His Excellency the President, and Honourable Delegates of the United States in Congress Assembled, His Excellency George Washington, Captain General and Commander of Chief of the Federal Army of these States.” So we’ve been at this for a long time, praying for our national leaders sincerely and, I feel sure, without any sort of ironic overtone.

Over the years, I’ve noticed versions of the prayer that mention—to cite only nineteenth century personalities—Kaiser Wilhelm I, Czar Nicholas II, Napoleon, and Queen Victoria. I’m sure there must be dozens of other examples—I’ve hardly conducted serious research into the matter and am only mentioning those names I’ve personally come across here and there in my literary travels. Nor was this a feature solely of Orthodox worship—by the time the Reform and Conservative movements started publishing their own prayerbooks, alternate versions of the prayer were routinely composed and used in place of the older version. Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, for example, more or less all Conservative prayerbooks used some version the prayer originally written by Professor Louis Ginzberg (1873-1953) that asked worshipers to pray that God “pour out His blessings on this land, on its President, judges, officers and officials, who work faithfully for the public good.”

We all know the joke from Fiddler: “Rabbi, may I ask you a question?” “Certainly.” “Is there are proper blessing for the czar?” “A blessing for the czar? Of course! May God bless and keep the czar…far away from us!” Hah! But behind the joke is a piece of reality: prayerbooks from nineteenth and early twentieth century prayerbooks published in Russia absolutely did include a passage in which God is asked “to bless, protect, guard, assist, elevate, exalt, and lift upwards our master Czar Nikolai Alexandrovich, his wife the honorable Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, their son the crown prince Alexi Nikolaiovich, and his mother, the honorable Czarina Maria Feodoravna. And the entire house of our king, may their glory be exalted.” ��

To ask whether we should or shouldn’t pray for the welfare of our president based on whether we do or don’t approve of his policies, his politics, or his personal bearing is to miss the point almost entirely.

We live in an age of extreme uncertainty. Even those who voted for President Trump are uncertain what specific campaign promises he will fulfill, or at least attempt to fulfill, and which he will jettison as undoable or unworkable. (He surely would not be the first president to do that.) Nor is it clear, even to his most ardent supporters, what the priorities of this administration are going to be and how vigorously or rigorously those priorities are going to be pursued. Indeed, by electing a president with no prior experience in government, our nation has opted for a national leader who in many ways is himself a tabula rasa, and whose policies and political stances are clearly still works in progress. Like all Americans, I am hoping for the best. But when people ask me if I think we should continue to pray that God bless our President with “wisdom and with a profound and unyielding devotion to justice, equity, and righteousness,” I can only answer robustly in the affirmative. Why wouldn’t we pray for something we all—regardless of our politics and specifically regardless of how we cast our ballot in November—for something we all fervently want and which our country unquestionably needs?

#Hanotein Teshuah #Jewish prayer #Prayer #Politics and Prayer

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