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The following seven lessons by Rabbi Hillel Ḥayim Yisraeli-Lavery to help the student prepare for their reading of Megillat Esther. The nusaḥ taught is Israeli style Ashkenaz-Lithuanian. The complete reading of Megillat Esther Related liturgy and liturgy-related work:Ta’amei Hamiqra (cantillation) for Megillat EstherThe Ritual of the Seder and the Agada of the English Jews Before . . . → Read More: Learn the Kriyat Megillat Esther 
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 
This week on the holiday of Simḥat Torah, the Jewish people will begin to read the Torah anew, starting with Parashat Bereshit. The JET is a new English translation of Parashat Bereshit that is meant to be readable (and enjoyable to read), useful to people who want to study the parashah, and faithful to the Hebrew text of the Torah. JET stands for the “Jewish English Torah” (or for the “Jewish English Tanakh” if we want to be very ambitious). I would like to invite others to contribute further Open Content translations for parts of the Torah or Tanakh to the Open Siddur Project, whether by following my method or in any other style. In time, together we could create a rich resource full of translations of all parts of the Tanakh in a variety of useful forms. That would be a wonderful thing to start on Simḥat Torah. . . . → Read More: The Jewish English Torah: A new CC-BY-SA (copyleft attribution) licensed translation As we move not just toward a new “year” (shanah) but toward a moment when repetition (sheni) becomes transformation (shinui), I hope we will remember — the roots of Jewish renewal in the upheavals of the 1960s as well as the upheavals of the 1760s, the roots of Judaism in the great “political” speeches of the Prophets, and the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said that in a great civil rights march his legs were praying, and who argued again and again that “spirituality” and “politics” cannot be severed. As Heschel also said, “Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive.” . . . → Read More: Haftarah for the Fast of Yom Kippur (translated by R’ Arthur O. Waskow) 
The idea that tragedy and disaster are punishment for our sins is alien to most most modern Jews. The author(s) of Eikhah believed that what happened to Zion was divine punishment. (This is one reason why it is hard to connect the Holocaust with what we mourn on Tish’a B’av.) Besides the obvious consolation of believing that the tragedy had meaning, the reader might also consider that for the ancients, the two choices were to believe that the destruction was punishment, or that God simply had no interest in them. It is easy to imagine why people would choose the image of a punishing God over the complete absence of God – though the latter possibility is suggested in the very last line of the text, before we go back to repeat the more comforting line “Turn us…” . . . → Read More: Megillat Eikhah (Lamentations) for Tisha B’Av by Rabbi David Seidenberg What the Rabbis taught about teaching and learning was that all Torah study should begin and end with blessings, just as eating does. Often, in liberal Jewish circles today, these blessings are not done. But without them, it is easier for Torah study to feel like a mere academic discussion, devoid of spirit. And where the blessings are said but only by rote, it is easier for Torah study to feel merely antiquarian and automatic. In Jewish-renewal style, how can we bring new kavvanah — spiritual meaning, intention, focus, intensity — to these blessings — and therefore to the process of Torah study itself? . . . → Read More: Blessing Group Torah Study with Brakhot, Kaddish, and Kavvanah 
The Open Siddur Project is pleased to offer the world the first freely licensed Seder Megillat Esther. We would like to thank our contributors: the Jewish Publication Society for sharing an authoritative digital edition of their 1917 English Translation of the TaNaKh (The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text), Christopher Kimball and the Westminster Leningrad Codex digitzation project for an authoritative digital text of the TaNaKh. We would also like to thank Rabbi Rallis Wiesenthal for his contribution of the Siddur Bnei Ashkenaz, Shmueli Gonzales for his transcriptions of siddurim witnessing the Nusach Ha-Ari, and Aharon Varady, the editor of opensiddur.org and founder of the Open Siddur Project. If you have any free licensed resources representing other nuschaot and minhagim, please share them. . . . → Read More: Seder Megillat Esther for Purim For aspiring ba’al koreh (readers) of Megillat Esther studying its various styles of cantillation (Hebrew, ta’amei hamiqra or in Yiddish, trope), a fair number of recordings are popping up online, but only one so far is being shared with a free/libre, copyleft license thanks to Gabriel Seed, lead developer of zemirotdatabase.org. The audio file is . . . → Read More: Ta’amei Hamiqra (cantillation) for Megillat Esther The 1985 JPS may be on the Amazon best seller list but it won’t be until 2080 before its contents enter the Public Domain. Thankfully an excellent English translation of the TaNaKh already exists that we can use, modify, and importantly, update: The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text: A New Translation with the . . . → Read More: תנ״ך | The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation (JPS 1917) |
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