Shabbat happens, If I let it. . . . → Read More: If I Let It: A Kavanah for Kabbalat Shabbat
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Shabbat happens, If I let it. . . . → Read More: If I Let It: A Kavanah for Kabbalat Shabbat
This is Effron Esseiva’s morning Amidah (standing prayer) for weekdays. Effron writes, “It’s called Shmonei Esrei (18) because it used to have eighteen brakhot (blessings). However, it has an additional brakha to bring it to nineteen. This is my interpretation of the Teissa Esrei (19) with abridged kavvanot (intentions).” . . . → Read More: My Weekday Amidah We are grateful to Rabbi Arthur Waskow for contributing his expansion of and meditation on the Shema, originally composed the 6th of Tishrei, 5764 (October 2nd, 2003). Sh’ma: An Interpretation for the 21st Century Sh’sh’sh’ma Yisra’el — Listen, You Godwrestlers! Pause from your wrestling and hush’sh’sh To hear — YHWH/ Yahh Hear in the stillness . . . → Read More: Shema by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
When works are printed bearing shemot, any one of the ten divine names sacred to Judaism, they are cared for with love. If a page or bound work bearing shemot falls to the ground it’s a Jewish custom to draw up the page or book and kiss it. Just as loved ones are cared for after they’ve fallen and passed away, when the binding fails and leaves fall from siddurim and other seforim they are collected in boxes and bins and brought for burial, where their holy words can decompose back into the earth from which their constituent elements once grew, and were once harvested to become paper and books, and ink, string, glue. While teaching at the Teva Learning Center last Fall 2010, I collected all our shemot that we had intentionally or unintentionally made on our copy machine, or which we had collected from the itinerant teachers who pass through the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center on so many beautiful weekend shabbatonim. While leafing through the pages, I found one and kept it from the darkness of the genizah. . . . → Read More: Barukh Shem Kavod Malkhuto — an illustrated meditation on the unification of imagination and awareness through empathy Shmuel Gonzales, who has for years now been transcribing sections of the Nusah Ha-Ari (comparable to the liturgy in Siddur Tehillat Hashem and the Siddur Torah Ohr) graciously shared his latest work: a transcription of the midnight devotional liturgy called the Tikkun Ḥatzot. What follows is Shmuel’s introduction to this work. (All of Shmuel’s transcriptions . . . → Read More: Tikkun Ḥatzot: Getting Right at Midnight
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. . . . → Read More: סידור שפת ישראל | Siddur Sefas Yisroel, a nusaḥ Ashkenaz siddur dedicated to the memory of the Bad Homburg Jewish community
When Rav Yiztḥak Luria, zt”l, also known as the Holy Ari, davvened in Eretz Yisroel he brought about a series of liturgical innovations witnessed in later siddurim. His particular nusaḥ bridged minhag Ashkenaz and minhag Sefarad (the customs of the Rheinland Jews and the customs of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula) with the teachings of his school of Kabbalists. When two centuries later, the Ḥassidic movement blossomed in Eastern Europe, it found purchase in Lithuania among a mystical school centered around Rav Schneur Zalman of Lyady, the Alter Rebbe and founder of the ḤaBaD movement within Ḥassidism. The Alter Rebbe compiled his own siddur, the Siddur Torah Ohr, “according to the tradition of the Ari.” . . . → Read More: סידור תורה אור | Siddur Torah Ohr: the Nusaḥ Ha-Ari according to Rav Schneur Zalman of Lyadi
Before the Koren-Sacks Siddur (2009), there was the Authorised Daily Prayer Book first published in 1890 and used by Jews throughout the British Empire, while there was a British Empire. It was originally published under the authorization of Great Britain’s first Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler with a Hebrew liturgy based on Isaac Seligman Baer’s Seder Avodat Yisroel (1868). The translation by Rabbi Simeon Singer (1846-1906) was the most extensive English translation of the Siddur ever published, and for this reason most editions are simply referred colloquially as The Singer Siddur. The Standard Prayer Book, published by Bloch in 1915, was an American reprint of The Authorized Daily Prayer Book. . . . → Read More: The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire (trans. Rabbi Simeon Singer, 1890) The Amidah’s choreography is designed to call to mind an appearance before a sovereign so as to invoke the proper “stance.” Consider, though, the variety of God-communications depicted just in the book of Genesis: God talks to Adam and Eve, to Cain, Noah, and Abimelech. God even talks to the serpent. God heeds Ishmael “where . . . → Read More: On Standing Before God-Who-Sees-Me |
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