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Welcome to the Open Siddur Project

Imagine a printing press and book arts studio shared by everyone in the world looking to design and craft their own siddur.

The Open Siddur Project is building it, online, on the web: a collaborative digital-to-print publishing application where you can make your own siddur, share your work, and adopt, adapt, and redistribute work shared by others — work intended for creative reuse and inclusion in new siddurim and related works of Jewish spiritual practice.

Imagine a social network focused on publishing built around privacy, collaboration, and a public database and digital library of Jewish liturgy in a format that can easily show historical variations and changes across Jewish traditions, manuscripts, and facsimile editions. Imagine a collection of text and recordings, freely licensed for creative reuse in every language Jews pray in or have ever prayed. Reimagine your siddur, custom tailored to your practice, replete with your insights and those selected from your friends, family, and the complete corpus of Jewish tradition, and a record of your family’s and community’s minhagim and nusaḥ.

We’re not there yet. (Progress towards version 1.0 is tracked on our development roadmap; we’re currently at 0.4.4).

In the meantime, take a look at the prayers, translations, exercises, art, and recordings that folk are already sharing with free/libre licenses that permit their creative reuse. That means that you can use these works right now in the creation of new siddurim (alas, offline) while we continue developing the Open Siddur web application. There’s a list of free/libre and open source software and fonts that can help you do that right now.

Please start a conversation with us, join this project by sharing your own work, introduce yourself on our technical and non-technical discussion lists, and begin to imagine the siddur and spiritual practice you’ve always wanted. . . . → Read More: Welcome to the Open Siddur Project

תנ״ך | Yehoyesh’s Yiddish Translation of the Tanakh

Yehoyesh Blumgarten (1870-1927)

The Open Siddur Project is pleased to distribute a masterful Yiddish translation of the Tanakh by “Yehoyesh” (Yehoash) Shloyme Blumgarten (1870-1927) as published in Torah, Neviʼim, u-Khetuvim (New York: Yehoʼash Farlag Gezelshaft, 1941) that now resides in the Public Domain. . . . → Read More: תנ״ך | Yehoyesh’s Yiddish Translation of the Tanakh

In Search of Seraḥ: A Prayer to Seraḥ by Chaya Kaplan-Lester

Image: Jewish cemetery in Linjan, Esfahan Province, Iran, the location of Seraḥ's tomb. Attribution: Farhad24 (Public Domain)

[In Parshat Vayigash] we read of the members of Jacob’s family who went down to Egypt. There were 53 grandsons listed, but only a single granddaughter – Seraḥ, the daughter of Asher. The commentators wonder, what was so exceptional about this girl that her name was recorded? The Midrash spills forth with stories portraying an image of a unique and endearing Biblical heroine. Seraḥ stands as a trusted, beloved sage of the people. She possessed an uncommon gift of healing through poetry and music. Somewhat as Orpheus is to Greek myth, so is Seraḥ to the Biblical myth – the archetypal poet and bard. . . . → Read More: In Search of Seraḥ: A Prayer to Seraḥ by Chaya Kaplan-Lester

A Prayer for Candle-lighting by Chaya Kaplan-Lester

Image: "Candlelight" by apdk (License: CC-BY 2.0)

Please God Let me light More than flame tonight. More than wax and wick and sliver stick of wood. More than shallow stream of words recited from a pocket book. . . . → Read More: A Prayer for Candle-lighting by Chaya Kaplan-Lester

Testing Web browsers as Platforms for Hebrew Text Publishing

Given that one important aspiration of the Open Siddur Project is the development of a web application for anyone to edit, maintain, and share the content of a personal prayerbook that they can craft online, I’m very concerned at how well web browsers today display the Hebrew language with all of its diacritical (vowels, cantillation) . . . → Read More: Testing Web browsers as Platforms for Hebrew Text Publishing

Call Congress: Stop SOPA and PIPA

stop_sopa_450

Keep the Internet open, like Avraham’s tent. . . . → Read More: Call Congress: Stop SOPA and PIPA

A Kavanah for Waking Up by Andrew Shaw

Image: Good Morning Sunrise by Ha-Wee (License: CC-BY 2.0)

An original liturgical poem inspired by the Modah|Modeh Ani prayer. . . . → Read More: A Kavanah for Waking Up by Andrew Shaw

מודה אני | Modah/Modeh Ani (translation by Andrew Shaw)

Image: Good Morning by khawkins04 (License: CC-BY 2.0)

Thankful am I in your Presence, Spirit who lives and endures, for You’ve returned to me my soul with compassion. Abundant is your faith! . . . → Read More: מודה אני | Modah/Modeh Ani (translation by Andrew Shaw)

Nomi and Aharon’s Ḥanukah Madrikh!

Ḥanukah on Ice by Foxtongue (CC-BY)

Nomi Lerman and I were co-teacher’s this past season at Kolot Ḥayeinu’s religious school in Park Slope Brooklyn this past season, and as a Ḥanukah present we made a Ḥanukah Madrikh for our Kittah Gimmel class. I’m certain there are Jewish educators all over the world preparing curricular resources for Ḥanukah right about now and hope that by sharing this they can take it and improve on it, or else we’ll save them some energy so they’ll be able to do even more mitzvot. . . . → Read More: Nomi and Aharon’s Ḥanukah Madrikh!

On Using Siddurim — a sourcesheet with suggestions by R’ Mordechai Torczyner

Some rabbinic sourcetexts related to the topic of how to write in your siddur, shared with translations by Rabbi Mordechai Torczyner. . . . → Read More: On Using Siddurim — a sourcesheet with suggestions by R’ Mordechai Torczyner

Life Sentence by Eprhyme

‘Life Sentence’ is a poetic exploration of solitary authorship — interpreting the old-world literary tradition and archetypes for the ‘ADD’ generation. This is a boundary and genre-crossing work that exists at the intersection of Radical Jewish, Indy and Hip-Hop culture. . . . → Read More: Life Sentence by Eprhyme

A Pushka-appeal

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