From the title page, “an authentic siddur of Ashkenazic holy congregations without the changes made by later grammarians and maskilim.”
Download Siddur Sefas Yisroel
(v.1.14.1, March 15th, 2013) TXT | ODT | PDF
| Section | ODT | TXT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title and Attribution | ODT | TXT | |
| Table of Contents | |||
| INTRODUCTION | |||
| Bad Homburg | ODT | TXT | |
| Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz | ODT | TXT | |
| Yiddish Dictionary | ODT | TXT | |
| Sharishei Minhagei Ashkenaz (part 1): On Piyutim | ODT | TXT | |
| Sharishei Minhagei Ashkenaz (part 2): Tehillim, Peyot, Sefiras Haomer, etc. | ODT | TXT | |
| Sharishei Minhagei Ashkenaz (part 3): Kadish, Pronunciation Guide, etc. | ODT | TXT | |
| WEEKDAY PRAYERS | |||
| Shacharit | ODT | TXT | |
| Minchah | ODT | TXT | |
| Arvit | ODT | TXT | |
| SHABBES | |||
| Tefillot L’Layl Shabbes | ODT | TXT | |
| Shacharit Shabbes | ODT | TXT | |
| Musaf Shabbes | ODT | TXT | |
| Minchah Shabbes | ODT | TXT | |
| Arvit Shabbes | ODT | TXT | |
| HOLIDAYS | |||
| Seder Hallel | ODT | TXT | |
| Musaf Rosh Hodesh | ODT | TXT | |
| Shalosh Regalim and Musaf Hol Hamoed | ODT | TXT | |
| Musaf Sukkot Hoshanot and Hashanah Rabbah | ODT | TXT | |
| Yamim Noraim – Rosh Hashanah | ODT | TXT | |
| Yamim Noraim – Yom Kippur | ODT | TXT | |
| Hanukkah | ODT | TXT | |
| Purim | ODT | TXT | |
| ADDITIONAL SECTIONS | |||
| Berakhot | ODT | TXT | |
| Simchot | ODT | TXT | |
| Kaddish | ODT | TXT | |
| Torah Readings | ODT | TXT |
Tefillos L’layl Shabbos: TXT | ODT | PDF
For the past twelve years, Rabbi Rallis Wiesenthal has been laboring on the holy task of preparing a German Rite Nusaḥ Ashkenaz siddur, in Memory Of The Bad Homburg Kehilloh (1335-1942). Recently completed with help from Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz and K’hal Adas Yeshurun-Jerusalem (KAYJ), Rabbi Wiesenthal describes the history of the Siddur Bnei Ashkenaz:
It started as a project to compile a siddur that I could daven from. Living in Chicago, most of the siddurim which are available are Artscroll, Birnbaum, etc. Just to try and find a Rodelheim, or Baer’s Avodat Yisroel is nearly impossible. That was about twelve years ago.
Along the way, I compiled many versions of my siddur. What improved the siddur immensely was finding out about a remarkable gentleman, Rav Binyamin Shlomo Hamburger the head of Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz. Numerous conversations and notes from his website moreshesashkenaz.com helped form most of the minhag and halachic directions in the siddur. [The sections of the siddur which are labeled "Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz" are taken directly from the website. Rav Hamburger allowed me to use them so long as I labeled them that way.]
The final piece of the puzzle, are the notes on the numerous sections of the text which I compiled and edited from the website of KAYJ. It’s forum contains Halacha and Minhagim sections where I and others pose questions which are mostly answered by Rav Hamburger himself.
One of the important inspirations of Rav Hamburger to Rabbi Wiesenthal is his hope that Ashkenazim (descendants of Rhineland Jewry) recover their historic communal and familial customs and traditions. Most descendants of European Jewry including Ḥasidim are descendants of Ashkenazi families (with the important exception of Jews descending from the Spanish-Portuguese communities expelled in 1492 — the Sepharadim, and some other ancient European Jewish communities diminished during the Holocaust — the Byzantine Romaniote Jews of Greece and the Jews of Italy). The survival of these traditions largely depends on the Jews of Ashkenazi descent to honor and preserve these traditions. As Rabbi Wiesenthal writes:
I would like to challenge all those who come across this work, no matter how religious or not you are, and regardless as to which movement you feel you belong, to write down as best as you can, your family minhagim [customs]!
For myself, I wrote down the following categories: everyday, weekdays, Shabbat, Yom Tov, Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, Succot, Ḥanukah, Purim, Tisha B’Av, Bar Mitzvah, etc. Then I went about filling these categories throughout the year, by in large, recalling at the time, “What did we do growing up?”, “What did my mom/dad say about what their families did when they were growing up?”, “What minhagim did the shul/community do in their town?” It will give your children and grandchildren a rich heritage to pass on to them in written form.
Regarding the creation of the Siddur Bnei Ashkenaz, Rabbi Wiesenthal writes:
It started when I purchased 3 machzorim on the Ebay. One Yamim Noraim Machzor [1720] from Bad Homburg (my father’s hometown), two machzorim [1722]; a Yamim Noraim & Shalosh Regalim from Bad Homburg and a Yamim Noraim & Shalosh Regalim from Frankfurt Am Main. (The commentary in German-Yiddish originates from the 1720 Bad Homburg Machzor.)
I noticed as well that a number of old siddurim included Taamei Hamikrah for whole sections of Tanach and so I included those sections with taamim as well in the siddur.
I used all the siddurim and sefarim listed [below] to compile the siddur.
מחזור לראש השנה ויום הכיפורים (מק”ק הומבורג אן דער הא) 1720
מחזור לשלש רגלים (מק”ק הומבורג אן דער הא) 1722
’מחזור מכל השנה’ (מק”ק פרנקפורט דמיין) 1722
סידור ‘עבודת ישראל’ (זליגמן בער) 1868
סידור ‘שפה ברורה’ (רדלהיים) 1884
סידור ‘שפת אמת’ (רדלהיים) 1909
מנהגי ישורון’ לקוט מנהגים של ק”ק קהל עדת ישורון נוא יארק 1988′
סידור ‘אזור אליהו’ (דוד כהן) 2004
סידור ‘תפילה כמנהג ק”ק אשכנזים’ (מכון מורשת אשכנז) 2008
’דברי קהלת המסודר’ מנהגי תפלות ק”ק פפד”מ (אברהם שלמה בן אריה ליב סולומון) 2009
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All digitized content in this siddur sourced from Public Domain content is shared with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Public Domain Dedication. |
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The siddur is also available as a fully rendered (but not yet Unicode) PDF with a layout designed by R’ Wiesenthal, and is shared with a Creative Commons By Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 3.0 Unported license. (You are free to redistribute this work so long as you correctly attribute Rabbi Wiesenthal and Mechon Moreshes Ashkenaz in any derivative work, and share your derivative work with this same CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported license.) |
Version 1.14
- Replaced all letters that have a shva na with a bold shva underneath rather than a line over the letter ala Artscroll.
- Double checked all the taamim from pesukim in Tehillim (used “The PSALMS” with commentary by Rabbi S.R. Hirsch )
- Added more sections about Bad Homburg including a timeline.
- Moved most comments and elucidations regarding the tefillot to footnotes rather than in the middle of the text.
- Replaced the long section about Minhag Ashkenaz previously appearing in all Hebrew with an English translation that has more explanation and clarity.
Version 1.13
- Changed order
- enlarged text
- added table of contents
- added instructions
- new commentary.
Version 1.12
The version attached comes with some recent improvements:
1) Sources and Ta’amim for all Pesukei Tanach in the siddur (except in the introductory pages)
2) The English commentary corrected and elaborated upon
3) Pesukei D’Zimro, Kabbolas Shabbos and certain other Mizmourim appear in a more poetic form which will hopefully lead to their being read with kavonoh and at a slower pace.
4) Additions and Amidous for Youm Touv and Yomim Nouroim
Thank you all for bearing with the numerous versions and changes over the years!
As always, please let me know your thoughts, suggestions, etc..
Bauen Zie Gut!Rallis Wiesenthal
Version 1.11
From Birchous HaShachar until the Shmouneh Esreh has been recently updated with Maarei Mekoumous. I hope to do so with the rest of the Siddur soon.
I have noted the difference between a Shva Na and a Shva Nach in most of the siddur’s text.
The siddur’s commentary has been expanded since last year as well as the German – Yiddish dictionary.
I would like to thank Mrs. Miriam Berele, for her expertise in both English and Hebrew grammar and sentence structure.
I have added the Mincho – Kabbolas Shabbos – Arvis L’Shabbos siddur, I have printed for the Kehillas Ashkenaz Chicago minyon.
As always I look forward to your comments and suggestions.
Chag Urim Samayach!
R. Rallis Wiesenthal
Folk are welcome and invited to help the Open Siddur Project craft a new edition of this siddur using standard Unicode Hebrew fonts. Rabbi Wiesenthal’s layout guide is as follows:
Regarding the order of the tefillot, I decided to retain the order Shacharit, Musaf, Mincha, Arvit and incorporate everything together but to color code and label them.
By in large, the colors I used were Black (Chol), Blue (Shabbat), Green or Green/Blue (Yom Tov), Brown (Pesach), Burgandy (Rosh Chodesh),Purple (Chanukoh/Purim).
The fonts used were the following:
Layout Hebrew Font English Font Default text Davka Siddur Times New Roman Sections with Taamim Davka Keren Sections without Taamim Davka Siddur Instructions Davka David, Davka Siddur Page On the Tallit Davka David, Davka Siddur Times New Roman German-Jewish sections Davka Yerushalmy Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz Introduction Davka David Introduction to Mesorat Ashkenaz and the Nigunim Stonehenge GuttmanD Ashknaz Music notation for Iyov, Mishlei, Tehillim Davka Rashi, Davka Siddur Memorial Page to Bad Homburg Jewish Residents Davka Siddur Vinque Memorial Page to Bad Homburg Rabbis GuttmanD Mantova-Deco, Davka Hadassah Vinque Memorial Page to German Rabbis Davka Siddur Titles on Pages GuttmanD Keren Book Sources Davka David, GuttmanD Ashknaz Table of Contents GuttmanD Keren Page Numbers Calligrapher Cover Page GuttmanD Calligraphic, Davka Siddur Diploma, Alte Schwabacher Back of Cover Page Davka Siddur, Davka Stam Vinque
“סידור שפת ישראל | Siddur Sefas Yisroel, a nusaḥ Ashkenaz siddur dedicated to the memory of the Bad Homburg Jewish community” is shared by Rallis Wiesenthal with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
It is a truly wonderful siddur. Thanks so much for your clear time and efforts put into this.
wonderful!!
Am I allowed to put this on lulu( I don’t want to make money off of it(chas veshalom) but I wan’t to have a print version of it, and to give my Rov (a Yekke) one.
My understanding is that by contributing this with a
Public Domain declarationCreative Commons By Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, Rabbi Rallis Wiesenthal has explicitly granted permission for you to adopt, adapt, and redistribute this work,without any restrictionsso long as all derivative works correctly attribute the original source and are redistributed with this same license. The CC-BY-SA license is a free/libre license and thus does not restrict commercial use.I would only add that occasionally, Rabbi Rallis offers corrections. The complete text of the Siddur Bnei Ashkenaz in Unicode Hebrew. My recommendation is that whether you make a new layout for the siddur using this source text, or whether you use the PDF that Rabbi Rallis offered, that you make certain to include a date for when you accessed the file in your print version and indicate the URL where it was accessed from.
Saddly I know nothing about PDFs and Lulu rejected it saying that some fonts are not embeded :( kinkos quoted me a ridiculous 200 dollars for one copy and since its not on HebrewBooks it can’t be used for Print your Sefer website ;( anyone can help suggest something?
Hi Aharon,
Can you paste the full error message you got from Lulu if it has more information than you already gave us?
Unfortunately, the fonts used in the original PDF are non-free, so we can’t provide them in full. I don’t have any of the fonts on my system and the PDF displays correctly, so I have to assume that it’s using partial embedding. You can try a different online print-on-demand house and see if they’ll accept it.
It may be a lot of work to put the whole thing into all-free fonts, but it’s doable. There may be some tricks to get the system to do automated font substitution.
Aharon Vaharonium — Do we have an editable source version for the PDF that we can provide?Eventually, when we get our interface in order, you won’t have to worry about these issues, but I appreciate that you don’t want to wait 1-2 years.
(Two Aharons in one comment thread is causing a rip the space-time continuum!)
We can print it without it being on HebrewBooks.org, please email us for information at: reprints /at/ publishyoursefer.com
@aharon and @efraim We have an editable source (see above) and standard unicode Hebrew fonts.
As Efraim pointed out, until we build the Open Siddur web application, some offline work is required to have what you’d like done. You will need to apply a new layout with Rabbi Wiesenthal’s sourcetext with Unicode 4.0+ Hebrew fonts. I think that would be a very worthwhile project if you did so using a tool that respects open and standard file formats (like openoffice.org. Please share your work and save others from having to redo the important work you do.
@yakov Thank you for offering this service. We welcome partnerships in bringing freely licensed and Public Domain resources to print. Wherever possible. we would really appreciate that some percentage of any revenue derived from commercial use of source shared through our project be contributed to our project as an investment in our future ability to share Jewish liturgy and related creative work. To note tax-deductible donations can be made to the Open Siddur Project via our 501(3)c licensed fiscal sponsor, the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity. Thank you.
p.s. changing my handle to “aharonium” (and making disambiguating edits to the comments above) to restore conventional laws to the physics of social discourse :)
Anybody have a copy of Rabbi Wisenthals Release, he did not state the license in the Siddur itself so its causing problems with Hebrewbooks.org they are being hesitant/cautious about adding it to their archive. Or possibly his contact info, Thanks
I just noticed Hebrewbooks and publishsefer is same person, so hes already here, you can just give him the contact info or declaration .
Just spoke with Rabbi Wiesenthal and he will be including a license statement in the next edition of the Siddur Bnei Ashkenaz. Currently, version 1.04 does not have this statement. Expect version 1.05 to include it. Rabbi Wiesenthal is graciously sharing his PDF with a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license. This license covers the layout and any copyrighted content contributed by Rabbi Wiesenthal and Mechon Moreshet Ashkenaz. All content derived from Public Domain sources remains shared with a Creative Commons Zero Public Domain dedication.
@aharonium — Thanks for the disambiguation. Mentioning a separate license for public domain content is unnecessary. Creative Commons was prescient enough to explicitly exclude public domain material from any licensing restrictions in their CC licenses (term #2 in the legalese), so there’s no suspicion that CC licenses attempt to (legally or illegally) reclaim content from the public domain. The meaning of the term in plain English in the deed. That’s what happens when you have good lawyers with an interest in freedom writing your licenses for you.
Re: an editable source, I meant, the source from which the PDF was generated, not the data.
PS We should have a record of licensing data for everything that’s contributed to us.
Yes I contacted Rabbi Wiesenthal and he got in touch with Hebrewbooks,so hopefully they will upload it and I will order a copy or too soon.
@efraim The error message from Lulu.com is all about font embedding in the PDF. Here’s the error:
Looking at Rallis’ PDF properties, there are a good number of fonts embedded, all Guttman and Davka fonts, so I think it’s interesting that the errors are on the more familiar Times and Arial fonts. Could be Davka isn’t embedding those fonts like it does it’s own Hebrew fonts. To know more we’d probably need to play around with DavkaWriter and Rabbi Wiesenthal’s source DWD file.
Hi, this is outstanding and kol hakavod!
However, there seems to be a technical problem, namely that the text cannot be downloaded. Trying to download the .txt or the .pdf simply redirects again to this page.
I would love to see this text so please see if this can be corrected!
Shabbat Shalom
Let me know if this is still a problem.
I’ve been looking for a Yekke siddur. Thanks for putting this together. I have a hard copy of the siddur Rav Hamburger supervised. A PDF of the Shabbos and Yomtov portions is available, but strangely enough, not the weekday portions.
I just put this on my kindle. Would it be possible to add a table of contents? Kindle’s PDF support is kind of weak, and a properly linked TOC would make it much more useful.
Has the siddur been published and where can it be bought?
the S’fas Emes siddur is still in print from Goldschmidt in Switzerland.
a French version (ie instructions in French) of the “Sha’are Tfilo” siddur known as the Bloch Siddur (originally also Roedelheim) is also available. In most cases it corresponds to the yekkish minhag–it is actually Minhag Alsace.
Not sure why you found it so difficult to get hold of a Roedelheim Sfas Emes siddur. They are readily available in Washington Heights. :-)
if you know of a sefas emes with German instructions, I would appriciate if you could hook me up. thanks
Wonderful! Does this Siddur come in a printed format?
I have several Rodeheim siddurim. I am from Frankfurt, having come here as an infant prior to the war. I have all the minhagim and rituals as observed by my family from a family history written by my late great uncle.
I stumbled upon this siddur and I would love to have a print version of it. But it seems that this is not happening or much too complicated and lots of discussions about fonts and licences. Why do you not put it onto lulu so that anyone can just order it there?
Best regards
Schlomi (great-grandson of Rabbi Kottek)
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