LibreOffice is a free/libre office suite containing a powerful and user-friendly text editor: LibreOffice Writer. LibreOffice is cross-platform — it can be installed and run on Linux, Macintosh, and Windows operating systems.

Unlike many other text-based applications LibreOffice natively supports open standards and document formats. That way, what you type today should still be readable in the digital world twenty or a hundred years from now. Also, unlike many other text editors it correctly positions niqqud/vowels and ta’amim/cantillation when using Hebrew fonts that correctly support the full range of Hebrew diacritics.

In order to get to work working with Hebrew in LibreOffice, follow the following steps:

1. Download our Open Source Unicode Hebrew Font Pack and install the fonts on your operating system. There are six fonts that support the full range of Hebrew diacritics (niqqud/vowels and ta’amim/cantillation): Ezra SIL/SR, Cardo, Taamey Frank CLM, Keter YG, Keter Aram Tsova, Taamey David CLM, and Taamey Frank CLM.
2. Set up a Hebrew Keyboard Layout for your operating system supporting the full range of Hebrew diacritics.
1. For Windows, a keyboard layout installer is included inside the font pack — look inside the directory named “Keyboards.” Once installed, press Alt-Shift to switch between languages.
2. For Macs, download this keyboard layout and install. Then follow these instructions from Apple.
3. Download and install LibreOffice
4. Open LibreOffice Writer. Select Options –> Language Settings –> Languages.
   
5. Under “Enhanced Language Support” check the checkbox “Enabled for Complex Text Layout (CTL).”
6. Under “Default Languages for Documents” see the option for CTL, and select Hebrew from the drop menu.
7. Select the Hebrew Font you’d like to type in.
8.  
   

   Set the text direction on the toolbar by clicking on the following toolbar button (or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+D)

9. Begin typing.

Yehoyesh-Shloyme Blumgarten (1870-1927)

The Open Siddur Project is pleased to distribute a masterful Yiddish translation of the Tanakh by Yehoyesh Shloyme (Yehoash Solomon) Blumgarten (1870-1927) as published in Torah, Neviʼim, u-Khetuvim (New York: Yehoʼash Farlag Gezelshaft, 1941) that now resides in the Public Domain. (A scan of this translation is available from the Internet Archive.) We hope that this translation will provide a basis for future Siddurim with Yiddish translations of liturgy and for the development of improved Yiddish educational resources.

Leading the effort to transcribe Yehoyesh’s translation was Leonard Prager z”l (1925-2008), founder of the Yehoyesh Project (1998-2006). Robert “Itsik” Goldenberg, Craig Abernethy, Robert Berkovitz, Martin Doering, Matthew Fisher, Jack P. Freer, David Herskovic, Allen Mayberry, Elisheva Schonfeld, Marjorie Schonhaut-Hirshan, and Meyer Wolf all contributed to the success of the project. Explaining the importance of the project, in 2004 Leonard Prager wrote,

There are scores of Bible versions on the Internet in scores of languages; there are many Hebrew Bibles. There is not a single Yiddish Bible translation. David Roskies has written that the greatest single achievement of American Yiddish literature is the monumental translation of the Tanakh by Solomon Bloomgarten (Yehoyesh). We agree. We wish to provide the entire text of Yehoyesh’s great work on the internet for Yiddish-lovers the world over, for this and for future generations. For this effort we long ago received the blessings of Yehoyesh’s grandsons.

At the completion of the Yehoyesh [transcription] Project, Leonard Prager added,

Yehoyesh’s translation is conservative and in some degree archaic. But like the King James Version of the Bible in the Anglophone world, it will continue to occupy a central place in Yiddish letters even if Yiddish-lovers are brave enough to attempt more modern renditions – as was suggested at a World Jewish Congress session in London a half century ago by the alphabet scholar David Diringer. Jews have been translating the Tanakh into Yiddish for centuries, all the major Yiddish writers (Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Y.-L. Perets and Sholem-Aleykhem, etc.) having attempted a translation of one book or another. There is no reason to halt this practice, one that could draw upon the untapped vigor latent in present-day Yiddish.

The Yehoyesh Tanakh received the stamp of approval of Orthodox rabbis and was also hailed and has been loved by secular Jews the world over. It belongs to all Jews as no other work does – it is not only a religious text, a source of ceremony and ritual, a liturgical compendium and encyclopaedia of law, it is also a storehouse of myth and legend and a great work of literature. It is also central for much of Jewish literature.

The Open Siddur Project thanks Itsik Goldenberg and the Prager family for their support in distributing this edition of the Yehoyesh Project’s transcription of Yehoyesh’s Yiddish translation of the Tanakh. Special thanks to Raphael “Refoyl” Finkel for his help and for his open source code in preparing this text in accord with our STML transcription rules. The Yehoyesh Project transcription follows the Yiddish orthography of Takones Fun Yidishn oysleyg (6th ed., New York: YIVO, 1999). Unfortunately, this transcription is not entirely complete as it does not yet include Yehoyesh’s footnotes to his translation. (Please contact us if you’d like to help completing this transcription.) As Yehoyesh’s translation resides in the Public Domain, we are distributing this transcription under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Public Domain dedication.

DOWNLOAD: TXT (zip)

At the outset of the project, Robert “Itsik” Goldenberg, the principal transcriber, wrote the following regarding Yehoyesh in the The Mendele Review:

Yehoyesh (pseudonym of Yehoyesh-Shloyme Blumgarten [Yehoash-Solomon Bloomgarden]) was born September 16, 1872 in Varzhbolove (later Virbaln), near the Russian-German border. He died in New York in 1927. His father was a devout scholar, a maskil and an active member of Khovevey-Tsien (‘Lovers of Zion’). His mother ran a small ironware store to support the family; she was also active in communal charitable organizations.

Yehoyesh began kheyder at the age of 4, then studied Tanakh, Talmud and Hebrew, first with his father and then with private tutors; at an early age he began to read the works of Haskalah writers such as Smolenskin and Gotlober. At 13 he was enrolled in the famous Volozhiner Yeshive, but soon returned home where, under the influence of his sister Sheyne, he studied foreign languages and literature and wrote his first poems in Hebrew. For a time he was a private Hebrew tutor in wealthy homes, but not content with this, he resolved to emigrate to America. In 1889 he brought his first poems to Peretz in Warsaw. Peretz befriended him and foresaw a great literary future for him. David Pinski quotes Peretz’s own words (in “The Jewish Worker,” NY, 1927): ”… Only a young man, in his early 20′s, but filled with torah, with Jewish and worldly knowledge, a language scholar, with a great memory.”

In 1890, perhaps to avoid conscription into the Russian army, Yehoyesh emigrated to America. He earned his livelihood at first as a Hebrew teacher and continued writing poetry in Hebrew. However, he was dissatisfied with his work and destroyed these early poems. He decided to try occupations other than teaching—tailoring, peddling and bookkeeping in a glass factory. In this period he wrote nothing. He then met met Dr. Israel Davidson, a young Hebrew writer, under whose influence he began to write again. He composed a book of Hebrew poems, but sudden illness forestalled its publication. Manuscripts of these poems are in the Yehoyesh archives.

In 1900, Yehoyesh contracted acute tuberculosis and spent the next seven years at the Jewish Consumptives Relief Society sanitarium in Denver, Colorado, setting aside his writing. He was married in 1903, and in 1908, cured of tuberculosis, he made a fund-raising trip across America on behalf of the relief society. These travels enabled Yehoyesh to become acquainted with the landscape and natural beauty of America, and to meet numerous influential people. Returning to New York in 1909, he wrote prolifically until 1914. He also participated actively in Jewish cultural life in New York in those years, especially for the Poale-Tsien (Labor Zionists). His Dictionary of Hebrew and Aramaic words used in Yiddish, co-written with Dr. Khayem Spivak while at the Denver sanitarium, was published in 1911; a second edition was published in 1926.

In January 1914, Yehoyesh and his wife, with their daughter Evelyn, emigrated to Palestine, settling in Rekhovot. There he learned Arabic and studied the Koran and post-Koranic literature. The family lived for several months in Relvan, on the border of the Egyptian desert, not far from Cairo, then returned to New York in the summer of 1915, not long after World War 1 broke out. His travel experiences were serialized in Der tog, including “Biz Rekhoves un Tsurik” (“To Rekhovot and Back”), later published separately as a book. Although Yehoyesh’s literary activity began with Hebrew poetry (which was never published) while he was still attending yeshive, all of his published work is in Yiddish. Encouraged by the Hebrew writer Ben Avigdor, he sent some of his early poems to Peretz, who published them in his Di yudishe bibliotek (Warsaw 1891). These poems included a translation — from English — of a Byron poem, and a translation of Chapter 18 of the Book of Psalms, his first Tanakh translation. He also wrote for Mordecai Spektor’s Hoyzfraynd (Warsaw 1894).

In America, through the years 1891 to 1912 he published poetry and popular historical novels in Der folks-advokat. He wrote for Di yudishe gazetn, Yidishes tageblat, Der forverts, Der varhayt and others: poetry, fables, translations, as well as Chinese, Japanese and Arab legends. From January, 1902 until his death in 1927, he wrote for Der tsukunft: poetry, legends and fables, and translations of Byron, of Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” and of Omar Khayam’s “Rubaiyat.” He contributed to Minikes’ Yontef-bleter and from November 16, 1916, was a regular contributor to Der tog, where he published most of his Tanakh translations. From 1909-1919 he wrote for the humor and satire journal Kundes, including his version of “Around the World in 80 Days.” From 1908-1915 he contributed to Zhitlovski’s Dos naye lebn.

Yehoyesh was a regular contributor to most of the Yiddish periodicals in North America, Canada, Russia, Poland, Argentina, Austria, Palestine and other countries. His poems were translated into English, Polish, Russian, French, German and Hebrew. Many of his poems were included in anthologies and in textbooks used in Jewish schools; many were set to music and performed widely.
His first impulse to translate the Torah came to Yehoyesh in 1904. By 1909 he had completed a translation of Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Ruth, Job and, in 1910, Isaiah. He was dissatisfied with his first efforts and destroyed them. In preparation for his great project he read Bible translations and commentaries in many languages and versions (Septaguint, Vulgate, Onkeles, Ibn Ezra, Rambam, Ramban, and others) and clarified hundreds of interpretations of words and sentences. His translation is not only a monument of the Yiddish language, it is a creative work.

Yehoyesh labored at his translation from 1909 until his premature death in 1927. From 1922-1927, Der tog published hundreds of letters from leading Bible scholars responding to the Tanakh serialized in its pages. According to Leyeles, Yehoyesh destroyed his first Tanakh translation of 1909-1910, including the printing plates and galleys, wanting to purge all daytshmerisms^[1] . Surviving today, and so long as Yiddish is spoken, read and understood, are the later translations of the Pentateuch (1927), the Early Prophets (1927), the Later Prophets (1929), the Writings (1936) and the revisions of 1933 and 1938 (aside from the special editions (Der tog, 1936 and 1941; Der forverts in 2 volumes in 1939). YIVO also issued separately Shir hashirem (1932), Megiles Ester (1936). In 1940 a Khumesh far kinder appeared. In 1949, Mortkhe Kosover edited a lexicon of commentaries based on Yehoyesh’s prolific notes on the Tanakh.

Selections from Yehoyesh’s Tanakh (in English translation!) can be found in the anthologies by Joseph Leftwitch (The Golden Peacock, 1961) and by Howe and Greenberg (Treasury of Jewish Poetry, 1957). Shmuel Niger praised Yehoyesh’s translation and claimed its utility in the study of the Hebrew original. Yankev Glatshteyn credited Yehoyesh with rescuing and immortalizing thousands of forgotten Yiddish words. Until his death, Yehoyesh studied Syriac grammar to help him prepare a Bible translation he hoped would surpass his earlier efforts. A memorial book in 1935 listed over 50 translations of his poems in 10 languages. His yortsayt was celebrated in the ghettos of Warsaw, Lodz and Vilna.

We conclude with the poem, ”Yehoyesh,” written by Avrom Sutskever for a Yehoyesh commemoration in the Vilna Ghetto on April 6, 1943. “Yehoyesh” was published in New York in the April 1946 issue of Yidishe kultur, while Sutskever was still living in Moscow. It was also published in Sutskever’s Lider fun geto (1946) and his Poetishe verk (Tel Aviv, 1963, vol. 1, pp. 296-297).

This sketch was adapted from a translation of the entry “Yehoyesh” by Khayem-Leyb Fuks in the Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, 1961, vol. 6, cols. 233-244 ). Sol Liptzin’s The History of Yiddish Literature and Charles Madison’s Yiddish Literature – Its Scope and Major Writers were also consulted.

So for the last year, I’ve been working on a series of tests to determine how well some popular and some less well-known web browsers perform in supporting the technology for displaying Hebrew text. In particular, I’m interested to see which browsers are failing to use a web standard called CSS @font-face to properly display Unicode Hebrew fonts that support the full range of Hebrew diacritics and which contain excellent font logic for diacritical positioning. I’m also keen on seeing which browsers might even be failing at recognizing bidirectional (BIDI) and right-to-left (RTL) text, given that Hebrew is read RTL and it’s not uncommon to find עִבְרִית and other left-to-right (LTR) languages written together with one another.

With these tests I also hoped to find some simple way by which an individual browsing the web could troubleshoot whether the problem is in their browser, their browser’s settings, or in a web page, when they find a web page that is poorly displaying Hebrew. I learned a great deal in the process and so I also made a page for web designer/coders to learn the correct way to craft a web page that will correctly display Hebrew.

Image: "Copyright Khaf" by Aharon Varady (License: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported)

Last Sukkot 5771 (2011), Efraim Feinstein shared the sourcesheet for his late night shiur (lesson) on copyright in Rabbinic Halakhah (Jewish law). Efraim’s research adds a great deal of important perspective to our work here on the Open Siddur Project. It provides relevant historical context for our work advocating the adoption of free culture principles and free-culture licenses to facilitate sharing (tachlis) within the Jewish world.

Efraim’s sourcesheet is shared (along with the TEX formatted source code and content for his sourcesheet) via his account on tumblr. For the sake of redundancy and redistribution, here is a direct link to downloading a PDF of his sourcesheet:

DOWNLOAD: PDF | TEX (source).

It’s called, Freedom. It’s kind of funny because you’d think it’s an add-on module but it’s actually a core part of the game’s storyline. Yes, there’s tension with it, but that’s the beauty of it. Even in the game, Freedom isn’t free. There are costs, dangers to unrestricted creativity.  That’s why there’s a ruleset — to help keep everyone considerate, playing nice. It mandates… discipline. That’s the tricky part. Because discipline is important in helping players gain experience points, really mature as players. But if they’re not using the Freedom that comes with the game, then the game’s reduced to discipline for its own sake. Ouraboros. The snake devours its own tale. All the Freedom to imagine, create, share, and improve is swallowed up in an ocean of elite pedantry.

Image: Pharaoh's Imagination by Aharon Varady (License: CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported)

Don’t you remember? The story of our gaming ancestors, slaving under a wicked dungeon master, Pharaoh? Some game masters let it go to their head. Just because they’re the storyteller, they think they’re writing the story. They’re not. The game — it’s a collaborative adventure. The story is all around us… we’re part of the telling. The game is about trying to make it a happily ever after story, after all. Because, you know, that’s not guaranteed. There’s more than one possible ending.

So what happened? A frustrated gamer, Moshe, figures out his fellow players are trapped in a game loop engineered by Pharaoh. This realization frees him but not his fellow players, so he runs. Far. He explores the edge of the gameworld, the place called Midbar. Where speech comes from. Where undeveloped narratives spawn endlessly, a grazing pasture for flocks and imaginations. There, Moshe discovers an anomaly, a fire burning but not consuming a small bush. Is it a bug in the game? He takes a closer look. Then suddenly, the story goes meta. There’s a storyteller narrating the story he’s living, the story Pharaoh thinks he’s telling. The Storyteller reveals to Moshe the key to unlocking the level. It seems risky. Fellow players are skeptical. But the key to breaking the level is… you guessed it: Freedom. Freedom to leave the rules of the wicked, game master Pharaoh behind for just one high-carb, community celebrating weekend of Freedom – a GameCon in the magical Midbar. A change of perspective, a taste of freedom to expand your mind.

And so the story went. Denied Freedom for one weekend, the Storyteller intervenes, helps defeat the boss, break the level. The players are finally free from Pharaoh, but still imprisoned by old, poor gaming habits and player expectations. The players were undisciplined… a mess. They kind of liked the familiar structure of Pharaoh’s simple rules, despite their inability to innovate and improve their game, grow their characters. So, the Storyteller sets Moshe up as a new game master to teach a new way of playing. He explains three new game challenges to refine their player characters and explore their potential with Freedom: Manna, an single person game exercising responsibility in gathering one’s own ephemeral food resources, ethically. Shabbat, a single/multi-player game preparing a castle in Time to rest, reboot, and reflect on one’s creative potential. Mishkan, a multi-player game constructing a castle in Space for everyone to collaborate and share with one another all they were inspired to create with their new-found Freedom.

Freedom. It saves us. It rescues our intentions from being enslaved to someone else’s narrative. It liberates our creative imagination – the oxygen we breathe. Freedom. It saves gaming communities from even the best game’s two worst tendencies: 1) to limit creativity out of a feared loss in overall game quality, correct play, and authentic game experience, and 2) to require such complex obedience that play is limited to elite code mavens and robots.

But nowadays, Freedom in the game has been so diminished by a lack of creative engagement that many players don’t even realize they’re playing a game, even when someone gets hurt. There are those who walk away from the game, and embarrassed they know little besides the game’s rules and its discipline, simply despise it. There are those who loosely identify with the game, but who don’t know or don’t care to play it out of ignorance for its rules. Some fear the game will alienate them from their innate creative selves. Others know the game’s story as observers, cheerleaders, critics, but rarely as participants. Some mistake the game for a meta-game dedicated to the survival of the community of gamers – and have little invested in the game itself. They all enjoy Freedom outside the game, knowing little to nothing of Freedom within it.

And then there are those who are dedicated, serious players. They play the game happily, decorating their play, making their every move a thing of beauty. And some through their passion will choose or craft a different, even esoteric, edition of the game’s rulesets. Tension between gamers playing with forked rulesets is a familiar problem in a lot of games. Usually, serious players have really good perspectives and abilities they’ve honed in each of their particular communities. When players with divergent experiences, priorities, and values develop their own rules for playing together, they usually develop respect for one another and realize with joy they have a lot to learn from one another. They enrich each others game immeasurably. That master gamer, BZ of Mah Rabu, talks about it in his Hilkhot Pluralism. The key is making a space, a Maqom, where gamers are free to share. See? Freedom. It redeems the game from it’s own self-destructive tendencies.

A maqom — a holy space — for sharing? The Open Siddur Project, now, that’s what I’m talking about. Here’s an example of a space for free sharing of inspired creativity, a mishkan built out of inspired creativity, cultivated and maintained over the Internet. Where all your spell books, game maps and modules – in any languages ever used for the game –- can be used with the game. Gamers can adopt, adapt, and redistribute what they’ve modified. Everyone sharing has given their permission to do that upfront. See? Lo tignov –- no stealing. Sharing! Everyone appreciates each others creativity, their desire to contribute. It follows the game rule: Gemilut Ḥassadim — act with loving-kindness.

The Open Siddur Project’s already started sharing via their website. Yeah, their application is pre-Alpha, 0.4.1. But when it hits 1.0 it will be kick-ass! And because the code for their platform and toolkit is open source (with an LGPL license), other gamers can build on their work, and all that creative investment can be reused, recycled. It follows the game rule: bal tashchit — never waste! Never fail to appreciate the hard work invested in another’s craft and creation.

See, there will always be little pharaohs looking to pwn the Game. To lock it down, make it their own, proprietary gold farm. A black box, closed to innovation, perhaps even to inspection. It’s happened before. When the inner workings of the game become so hard to understand that only an elite can game it. When gamers forget they are playing it willingly, you know, to grow, because it’s fun, imaginative, creative.

Theoretically, it should be hard to pwn the Game. It’s a role-playing game –- open ended. There are no winners. But there are surely losers –- if the bar to playing it well is set to high. If players can’t own their experience, engage their innate creative and emotional intelligence in it. You know, what some folks call spirituality. For those who feel that the price of Freedom is the loss of an authentic game experience, then the consequence will be an increasingly oppressive and dangerous game experience. Ultimately, creativity is deadened, imagination defeated. Gamers minds enslaved within the prison of a Pharaoh’s imagination. Their’s is a mentality of mitzrayim – constriction.

Creative Commons By Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)	Share your work under the condition that all future derivative works correctly credit you and attribute your original work. All derivative works must be shared with this same license. The CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license is an internationally applicable, remix friendly, free/libre compatible, copyleft.
Creative Commons By Attribution (CC BY)	Share your work under the condition that any first generation derivative work correctly credit you and attribute your original work. The CC-BY 3.0 Unported license is internationally applicable and remix friendly with content shared under other free/libre licenses.
Creative Commons Zero (CC0)	Share your work without any conditions. The CC0 is a Public Domain dedication.

The Open Siddur Project and other like minded projects that believe in free-as-in-libre culture, make sure to protect the freedoms of their contributing users. They ask them to preserve their intent to keep their work free for creative reuse by choosing any one of three complementary licenses appropriate to the type of content shared and their desire for credit and correct attribution in derivative works.

For example, an internationally recognized license, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 3.0 Unported license, uses Copyright Law to legally protect a creator’s intention to share their work, ensuring it remains open instead of closed, to keep it free for creative reuse instead of for proprietary exploitation, and to “Share Alike” – requiring all derivative works to properly attribute the original work, and credit the original creator. Significantly, the license allows the work to be used commercially, even as the work remains free for creative reuse. This freedom permits the work to truly be free — unchained — and be disseminated and remixed within the vast ocean of creative work available to human imagination. Another license, the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 3.0 Unported license, requires attribution but permits creators of derivative works to choose their own license. A third license, Creative Commons Zero (CC0) empowers a creator to take their work out of the domain of Copyright and dedicate their work to the Public Domain where anyone can use it in a derivative work however they like with none of the obligations to attribute or “Share Alike.”

To grow and remain healthy, collaborative projects need to be open for inspection and free for creative innovation. Growing, just as symbiotic organisms grow. Healthy, just as non-parasitic organisms sustain themselves – by creating energy and opportunities for others in their ecosystem. In this game, the opportunities we create are the product of our creative engagement. In our creative ecosystem, everything and everyone builds on each others work.

Free/libre licenses are crucial because under Copyright Law, everything created is closed and proprietary by default. In short, the law makes a Pharaoh out of each of us, whether we want to be or not. It makes sense when we need a monopoly over creative work we do not want others to share, modify, and redistribute. But keeping creative work closed and proprietary is counterproductive for collaborative projects: like games, or religions.

Take a work out of the creative cycle today and one almost guarantees its obscurity as an orphaned work. Those not shared with free-as-in-libre licenses must endure two human lifetimes before they can be creatively reused. Under Copyright Law, everything we create is taken out of the cycle for our entire lives plus 70 years (or 95 years for corporations). How does that help make for creative collaboration in a living breathing community? It doesn’t. Those naïve pharaohs who hope their work will be adopted for communal use but who refuse the Freedom of gaming communities and players to adapt it, are deluding themselves. They truly don’t know the Name of the Game. By forgetting to value Freedom, creativity, and collaboration, they undermine the game itself.

What am I saying? Heresy? Heaven forfend. Do I look like a game master? No, I’m a player character, all the way. Not that I find it easy to find a good game master these days. To game well, I read books, manuals, zines, blogs – and try to build good lasting relationships with my fellow gamers. I’ve been finding more and more players who play because they are passionate about the game and not because they’re slaves to it. But I digress. All I’m saying is, we can do this. We can play this game.

Which of the above Creative Commons licensing option conflicts with the entire copyleft and free/libre license ecosystem? (Image by Aharon Varady, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported)

The Jewish digital media community is young. Welcome to it! Those of you who are posting and innovating now are the trend-setters for the near-term. In addition, as long as the material you and your “students” produce remains relevant, the length of the copyright term will ensure that licensing restrictions placed on your data now last well beyond your lifetime, The community will learn, and I hope to convince you that the non-commercial (NC) term of use sets a dangerous precedent going forward.

The community is currently undergoing a transition from resources that are simply “free as in beer” (do not cost money to download and use) but place restrictions on what can be done with their content (examples here) to resources that recognize the educational and cultural value of remixing. The educational arguments in favor of remixability are remarkably similar to the philosophy of free culture, although they differ in focus. Our community, however, has not yet fully embraced the values of user freedom, and is subject to the confusion created by the choice offered in the spectrum of rights that Creative Commons licenses offer. The Creative Commons brand is recognized, but the differences in terms between the various licenses are not, leading to unhelpful suggestions like “use a Creative Commons license,” without specification of which one. While Creative Commons uses a logo to distinguish its free licenses from its non-free licenses, the brand name itself is still more recognizable than this logo.

One argument that I have heard promoting the use of the non-commercial term is the fear of a larger bogeyman. The identity of this bogeyman differs depending on who is making the argument. For content developers, the bogeyman is often a large publishing house. The new media entrepreneur worries that a larger publishing house will either take their free data and undercut their price or sell their free data without returning anything to its source.

This argument does not distinguish between two types of relationships with commercial entities: simple “commercial use” and “exploitation.” The free culture community answers the exploitation argument by proposing copyleft, also known as ShareAlike. Under copyleft licenses, any derived works of the original work must be released under the same terms as the original. What was once free remains free. The large publishing house bogeyman who publishes a copylefted work must allow the person who received the work to copy, modify, sell, and create derivative works of your work, just like any other user. Their intellectual improvements to the work can therefore be reincorporated into the original, diluting any advantage of the large publishing house’s version aside from the unique value added by their version (such as the fact that it’s a physical bound copy). In addition to the optional copyleft, all Creative Commons licenses except for the “Creative Commons Zero” (CC0) public domain declaration have anti-DRM clauses that prohibit adding digital rights/restrictions management that disallow users from exercising their rights under the license, so a third party is prevented from Tivo-izing your material.

Further, publishing houses that make use of your data can become your supporters. If your project provides them with useful data now, you will likely be able to provide them with useful data in the future, forming symbiotic relationships between publishers and content creators and aggregators.

Non-commercial use restrictions are particularly dangerous in combination with the ShareAlike term, as is the case in the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) license. The reason is that the ShareAlike term ensures that derivative works are released under the same terms as the original. Overuse of the CC-BY-NC-SA license will result in two copyleft ghettos that cannot be mixed with each other: one that allows commercial use and one that does not. The existence of the non-commercial partially-free ghetto can only lead to duplication of effort and waste, both by commercial and non-commercial entities.

Don't make your copyleft, copywrong. License with a CC-BY-SA license instead of the CC-BY-NC-SA (Image by Aharon Varady, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported.)

One proposed resolution to the varying interpretations of the NC term is for the creator to spell out what is expected. MIT OpenCourseWare is one such example of a well thought out model. However, even this liberal interpretation of the NC term blocks innovation and remixability by a large class of users for purposes which provide for the social good but involve an exchange of money beyond at-cost.

The real difference between MIT’s model and the model of many free resources in the Jewish community is that, it seems to me, MIT intends not to limit commercial use, but to reserve rights to commercial use. MIT is acting as a distributor for a collective of a relatively small number of copyright holders (the faculty) who themselves may have outside commercial interests in the material. Because only a few are involved and they are easily found, the NC license invites commercial users to obtain a separate licensing agreement for commercial publication. The NC term is creating a permission culture for commercial use of the work that is separate from the (semi-)free culture of its non-commercial use. Many content creators and aggregators in the Jewish community have no commercial interest in the work, which requires a different thought process from an entity that wants to reserve commercial rights.

A community-driven project that uses an NC term is in an even harder position. Not only is it content-incompatible with truly free resources, including Wikipedia, but it is also limited in what it in itself can do with derivative works of its own creation, once it has accepted a contribution from an outside contributor under the NC terms. For community-created works, there is no single author with whom to negotiate.

Further confusion is generated by the equation in many previous “free” resources of “non-profit” with “non-commercial.” With the advent of new business models, the lines between various entities with social purpose are increasingly blurred. This is the era of the “social enterprise.” While traditional non-profits rely on grants and donations to ensure their continued functioning, many social enterprises prefer to ensure their future sustainability by offering products on the market that help their social mission. A no-commercial use copyright term prevents these enterprises from transacting business with your data unless they negotiate separate terms as described above.

Whatever your form of legal incorporation (if any), it is hard to argue that you have envisioned 100% of the uses of your data from now until 70 years after your death. By blocking commercial use of materials, an entire group of social enterprises has been cut off from any use of your data, no matter how innovative.

For the reasons outlined above, I urge you to avoid licenses that restrict commercial use. If you are worried about exploitation, choose a license with a copyleft (ShareAlike) term.

In Pirkei Avot,^[1] Rabi Yehoshua ben Levi teaches that the 48th quality of the 48 qualities defining excellent students is they should correctly attribute the source of their knowledge.^[2] Failing to do so threatens to “dissolve the world.” In the rabbinic understanding of cosmogony, creation itself is the product of exegesis. In Genesis Rabbah, the Creator looked into the Torah to create the world. The process of exegesis, requires attribution, and so without correct attribution by the Creator to the Torah, the product of the exegesis — the universe — dissolves. The importance of attribution doesn’t get any more tachlis (fundamental) than that.

Rabi Yehoshua ben Levi proceeds to exemplify this teaching by attributing the 48th quality to Queen Esther who in the second chapter of the Scroll of Esther, verse 21, foils the coup de tat of Bightan and Teresh — by relaying warning of the coup to King Aḥashverosh in the name of Mordeḥai. Had Mordeḥai not been correctly credited with notifying the king of the murderous plot, he would not have received his belated thanks in chapter 6,^[3] and Haman would not have endured the embarrassment that presages his downfall. A long chain of events connects the seemingly insignificant action of Queen Esther to the salvation of the Jewish people. The implicit lesson is that our everyday actions matter. The explicit message is that it behooves us to act correctly, especially in regards to attribution of credit.

In the world of academic scholarship, correct attribution is a fundamental ethic. Ignoring it would quickly tear apart the tower of intellect upon which the babel of human knowledge ascends to heaven. The need for correct attribution is of course, no less in new and creative Jewish works. Whether you’re making a translation in a source sheet for a lecture or shir, designing a Hebrew font, crafting your very own siddur, or developing software that helps others craft their own siddur, it behooves you to correctly attribute any sources included in your work or from which your work derives.

The need for correct attribution is widespread and that is one important reason why a requirement for correct attribution is now enshrined in a set of legally binding licenses which creators use to share their work in the world and over the Internet. The significance of these licenses is that by enshrining language assuring attribution, they help to promote sharing. And sharing is of fundamental importance to receiving Torah. As the Gerrer Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, teaches in his Sfas Emes in his d’var torah on Parshat Terumah:

The Midrash Tanḥuma quotes: “I have given you good lekaḥ (teaching)” (Proverbs 4:2). [Lekaḥ can also refer to something acquired by purchase.] It then offers a parable of two merchants, one who has silk and the other peppers. Once they exchange their goods, each is again deprived of that which the other has. But if there are two scholars, one who has mastered the Order of Seeds and the other who knows the Order of Festivals, once they teach each other, each has both orders.

The point is that each one of Israel has a particular portion within Torah, yet it is also Torah that joins all our souls together. That is why Torah is called “perfect, restoring the soul” (Psalms 19:8). We become one through the power of Torah; it is “an inheritance of the assembly of Yaakov” (Deuteronomy 33:4). We receive from one another the distinctive viewpoint that belongs to each of us.^[4]

This is an important lesson to learn regarding our work in teaching Torah since for some, it’s easy to forget that what they’ve received and are transmitting is a collective inheritance of the entire Jewish people. Their honor is in relaying that transmission. Torah and tefillah are in their very nature communications that are meant to be shared, with love, in the manner that other students and teachers can receive it and pass it along without any obstruction. As Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach taught in a quote remembered by Moshe Pesach Geller:

I tell you something very very deep you know. Everybody says what does it mean to love? To love means it’s flowing, like a river. It’s just flowing, you know. The Maharal says something very deep. What happens if I learn and I don’t want to teach you? He says I do the most horrible thing. I take the infinite Torah and make it finite. Because it stops with me really. It flows into me and it stops. And if I keep on teaching it means it’s flowing through me. The question is what level am I on. What level am I learning. If I’m learning on the level of `it’s not Hashem’s word’, it’s just words, finite words, then they stick with me. And if I’m really learning on a Hashem level, on a Mount Sinai level, then it’s just flowing through me. Anyway. So it has to flow. A lot of people teach you Torah, they pour the water right over you and they say “you better grow”. Man, you know, just can’t grow like that. Has to be Torah Ḥessed. Has to be Torah of love. So if someone puts a little bit water over you, and you know mamash feel it you know, so then Hashem’s name becomes bigger.

Or in other words, as animator Nina Paley says, sharing is an act of love. All that Judaism asks for in return is attribution, so the chain of transmission is recorded.

Who would obstruct that kind of sharing? When a new work is created, copyright law doesn’t assume that a creative work was intended for sharing (with or without attribution). Instead, a creative work is immediately protected as private property — not only for the lifetime of the creator, but also for 70 years after their death^[5] — כֹּל זְכוּיוֺת שוֺמְרוֺת, Kol zchuyot shomrot, all rights reserved — to reproduce, distribute, and create derivative works based on it are forbidden, without the explicit written consent of the creator. As stated before here at the Open Siddur Project, this might make sense for creators of new works and music, but it hardly makes sense for cultural projects with communal objectives which rely heavily and assert their authority on the authenticity of works in the Public Domain. The teaching and practice of Judaism is one such communal project. The promise of the Open Siddur Project relies on our sharing creative works and access to the vast corpus of work that we’ve inherited from our creative ancestors. That is why we so heavily depend and advocate for the adoption of open source, free/libre, and copyleft^[6] licenses — so that creative work, protected by default under Copyright law, can nevertheless be shared by creators who give their explicit permission to others to adopt, adapt, study, and attribute their work in new works that are similarly shared and distributed.

To help creators of new works navigate the panoply of free/libre, open source, and copyleft licenses, I made a decision tree flowchart as an image map with clickable links to respective licenses and relevant articles. The tree was inspired by a decision tree by Terry Hancock, which accompanied his article, “Choosing and Using Free Licenses for Software, Hardware, and Aesthetic works.”^[7] Readers of this article are recommended to read Hancock’s follow-up essay, “Confusion and Complexity: High time to prune the Creative Commons licenses?“