[No.] 8. . . . → Read More: The Sfas Emes on Sharing Torah in Parshat Terumah]]> A belated post that our humble project was mentioned in a cover story in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles on September 28th, 2010. Thanks to writer Jonah Lowenfeld, a very patient interviewer. In his article, “The Ten Commandments of social networking” Jonah felt the Open Siddur Project exemplified the eighth commandment:

[No.] 8. Don’t steal content; share.

For Jews living in accordance with halachah—and law-abiding Americans—there’s no ambiguity when it comes to illegally downloading music, movies, software, books or any other intellectual property.

“Because business ethics are among the most central legal obligations of Judaism in all the Torah,” said Rabbi Dov Fischer of Young Israel of Orange County, “there is just no way that a person can identify as a practicing religious Jew while actively or regularly downloading or sharing protected intellectual property without paying the required fees.”

But if social media pose a challenge to those who wish to protect their work, new technologies also present opportunities for unique projects that could not have been imagined a generation ago. The Open Siddur Project, for instance, allows individuals to craft their own personalized prayer books from texts that have been uploaded to their site, which includes texts that are in the public domain (like the prayers said by Jews living in the Byzantine empire) as well as prayers written by ordinary individuals who choose to share them.

“The golden rule here is that when people share Torah,” said Aharon N. Varady, founder and director of the Open Siddur Project, “Torah is increased in the world.”

In my interview with Jonah, I explained to him the teaching of the Sfas Emes, the Gerrer Rebbe Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, who taught in his drash on parshat Terumah, the following.^[2]

The Midrash Tanhuma 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.

Of this, Scripture says: “God gives strength [=Torah] to His people, God bless His people with peace” (Psalm 29:11). The blessed Holy One’s name is “peace”; God is called the King of Peace, who makes peace in the heights. Torah, too, is composed of names of God and that is why Torah leads us to peace. So, too, it says: “He calls them all by name” (Isaiah 40:26), for the name of God includes all the hosts of heaven, joined together by that name. So, too, are the souls of Israel joined together by Torah.

The same was true in the building of the tabernacle. Each one gave his own offering, but they were all joined together by the tabernacle, until they became one. Only then did they merit Shekhinah‘s presence.

This oneness has to exist on the three planes of thought, word, and deed. The tabernacle and Temple represent oneness in deed, Torah stands for unity of word, and God is the One of thought or contemplation.

The word nefesh, used for the “seventy souls” [who went into Egypt], appears to be singular. They all worshiped the same God, had the same longing and desire in their hearts. All of them were turned to God, and thus they became a single nation.

The Open Siddur Project envisions Jewish spirituality as a shared and collaborative project that is rooted in the wisdom of our traditions and which finds expression through the evolving diversity of our communities and the intimate experiences of our individual relationships. Much like the mishkan, the traveling tent of meeting (or tabernacle) was the focal point for those creatively inspired Israelites to share their work, כֹּל אֲשֶׁר נְשָׂאוֹ לִבּוֹ, as their hearts were stirred (Exodus 36:2), so too we see the Open Siddur Project as a kind of יִחוּד, a unification of holy כַּוָּנוֹת (intentions) for those sharing their חִדּוּשִׁים (innovations) in Jewish spiritual practice, in sacred liturgy, in meditations and exercises, and in understanding through translations and commentary. In an age when our עֲבוֹדָה avodah (intentional practice) is expressed by communities and individuals in a multiplicity of ways, it behooves us to take our avodah seriously, respect and reflect this diversity, and provide the means for crafting newly designed סִידּוּרִים Siddurim accordingly. The Open Siddur Project is a community, space, and licensing framework for sharing those designs and enrich our individual and communal avodah with each others’ creativity and insight.

Go ahead and listen. I have some follow up thoughts on the interview below.

The opinions . . . → Read More: Radio 613: An interview with Aharon Varady on Open Source Judaism]]> Welcome Radio 613 listeners. It was my joy to be interviewed by co-hosts Avi & Malcah on CFRC Kingston 101.9FM last Thursday afternoon. In case you missed it, Avi just posted audio of the show to the radio613 webpage.

Go ahead and listen. I have some follow up thoughts on the interview below.

The opinions shared in the interview (and below) are my own. They should in absolutely no way be interpreted as a philosophy or ideology of the Open Siddur Project — an open source project with a diverse community of contributors inspired and motivated each in their own unique way. For those interested in our mission statement, see here.

Obviously many more people endure the same frustrations as I have… others have simply become numb to the issue or completely disenchanted. A strange group, horribly, become apologists for mediocrity and submission — arguing that the experience of alienation in t’fillah is something akin to a mortification or a right of passage to be proudly endured (perhaps once a year on Yom Kippur). And then there are those who take pride in the practice of t’fillah as the fulfillment of an obligation rather than as a useful, relevant practice, saying in earnest, there is really nothing wrong with the siddur, certainly nothing wrong that a good Jew shouldn’t find some sense of cultural belonging wrestling with. The siddur is an easy victim of the materialist aspirations of modern society, they argue. Hearing this, I can’t help but begin to feel lost myself. Is anyone taking this practice seriously enough to expect it to actually be useful? Or am I just a magical thinker?

A point Ariel Beery emphasized at the PresenTense Institute, was just how important it is to recognize and articulate your sense of dissatisfaction with the world as is — to communicate through your pitch how your project seeks to realize a better future. In this way, social innovation and entrepreneurship enters a Utopian, Futurist, and I think, moshiaḥ-oriented narrative. However subjective, the power of this personal appeal should resonate with the experience of others.

My struggle to realize this project is personal, but I never ever wanted my own dissatisfaction to overshadow what anyone else could bring to this project. We each have a unique creative light, and wow, does it ever grow bright when our light shines together. I knew this project was important because it came as an epiphany — an intersection of multiple passions each calling with their own creative, intellectual, and political genius. I just had to finally listen and take note. In the shadow of the Holocaust, a revitalized Jewish culture must be sought that does not rely entirely on ethnic nationalist movements to advance and preserve Jewish identity. Renaissance in all cultures, including Jewish culture, depends on the freedom of its participants, its cultural constituents, to be creative and expressive individuals, engaging with the meaning that culture broadcasts through its traditions.

Larger societal change begins at home, within the daled amot (four cubits) of an individual — this is a fundamental teaching mussar. Spiritual practices are misunderstood as opiates, however they might feel good. Ultimately, they are founded on an assumption that habitual practice and discipline yields self-improvement, which is ultimately beneficial to communities, societies, and the world at large. Can we engage in practices then that nourish and nurture our propensity to act compassionately and pursue social good, intentionally avoiding hateful, violent, and jealous inclinations? In my practice, I seek imitatio dei where dei is understood as an expansive, creative expression of a collective, evolving, and emergent consciousness in this reality that I am part of. There is nothing we can say about God that we are not also saying about our own creative consciousness and its limits, if only because we are limited creatures ourselves. How then am I created in the likeness of Elohim (God)? In that I too have creative desire. I look to Judaism to discipline that creativity for goodness sake, and understand halakha as a practice for walking in the ways of God — i.e., maturing and sustaining virtues of compassion, loving-kindness, and peace with knowledge, awareness, and correct action (mitzvot). Jewish spiritual practice is one expression of a religiously mandated self-improvement discipline that depends on individual expression even as it is often portrays itself in communal contexts. The degree to which these communities act well depends on how well their constituents embody virtue. But just as these virtues are embodied personally, intentional practices succeed when they are personally chosen, well understood, and creatively engaged.

I said it in the interview but it bears repeating, the lingering dialectic that defines religion as somehow separate from culture relies on a notion that religion is no longer creative — a mere replication of viral memes, in Dawkin’s language. We liberate religion when we return it to culture, as a creative and relevant force for helping to shape our individual and collective consciousness. Religion in this way provides exercises, practices and other social technologies to help us evolve. If its creativity isn’t maintained, its relevance is ceded to other systems to function in its place — or it is ceded to social elements and authorities who might use it to sustain self-serving agendas.

William Morris, the founder of the Arts & Crafts movement (and  modern fantasy literature, as well!) articulated this idea in the mid to late 19th century — explaining to his fellow socialists how alienation is the experience of a worker/craftsmen being mediated from one’s essential creative self. William Morris’ Arts & Crafts movement sought to liberate worker craftsmen from alienation by re-introducing bespoke master art crafted work, for example: woodwork, book binding, printing, typography, etc. Morris typified a romantic socialist who walked proudly forward by looking backward at the inherent value of art for  liberating the human worker economically, socially, and spiritually.

I think this sort of thinking is exactly what is needed for both our cultural renaissance and our individual liberation. Is the alienation of European craftsmen in the face of industrialized factory conditions really so dissimilar from the experience of alienation when individuals most private and intense experience is mediated by mass-produced prayer books? Particularly for Jews, what does our culture ask us to craft if not prayers and blessings every day, from our heart? That is our avodah sh’balev- our work of the heart! How has our tradition’s uncritical adoption of mass-produced technology for accessing t’fillah, and legal structures of copyright mediated us from our creative (divine) selves and ability to share what is most precious to us? How do structures of authority maintain this truly tragic situation? My answer to these vexing questions was to re-appropriate the technology of mass-production and spiritual mediation — liberating it for individuals to compose, remix, and share the meaning they discover in tradition and their own experience. This model is obviously open for anyone to emulate, not only other Jews. But particular for Jews, this model also open up the possibility of really reflecting the true diversity of our people right now as both individuals and communities and through history in whatever documents witness this diversity. We just need to digitize this extant work and make it accessible with standard free culture licensing.

My work with William Morris was a direct outgrowth of my urban planning masters thesis research into a socialist minded free thinker and printer named Henry Watkin, the mentor of the writer, Lafcadio Hearn. Watkin was married to a wonderful woman, Laura Fry Watkin, whose British and Swedenborgian family of master art carved wood craftsmen and women (vegetarian socialists and abolitionists the lot of them) were active in developing a women’s liberation movement in Cincinnati. I learned about Laura’s father Henry Fry and other Swedenborgians Fourier-inspired socialists. These men and women helped realise, among other wonderful social goods, the nascent urban park systems designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Not too long ago I was working at the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence and my motivation to become an urban planner eight years ago stemmed from an interest in promoting city parks, greenways, and trails. Now instead of working on the physical public commons, I’m instead focused on the creative intellectual commons. So the Open Siddur Project is an expression of my passion for 19th century utopian projects, Romanticism, invented worlds of the imagination, and maturing creative potential and compassionate virtues sustained through a disciplined spiritual practice.

AJR is a non-denominational Rabbinical College in Riverdale, New York committed . . . → Read More: Presenting the Open Siddur Project at the Academy for Jewish Religion]]> Working on the Open Siddur Project has afforded me the opportunity to meet some amazing people, communities, and institutions. On Rosh Chodesh Nissan, 5770, (March 16th) this year, I was honored to speak before the good folk at the Academy for Jewish Religion (AJR).

AJR is a non-denominational Rabbinical College in Riverdale, New York committed to pluralism. The school has an annual spring intensive, a three day mini-conference focused on a particularly fertile subject of importance to rabbinical and lay leaders. This year the Intensive entitled “PITḤU LI SHA’AREI TZEDEK: Opening the Synagogue Worship Experience” was focused on understanding, preparing, and selecting resources for communal prayer. Rabbi Jeff Hoffman had heard me speak at Limmud NY in January this year and subsequently recommended me to Sandy Kilstein, dean of AJR. I was asked to speak to show what technologies were “on the horizon” as Sandy put it, understanding that our project is at an early stage of development. Also speaking at the intensive were R’ Lawrence Hoffman (The People’s Prayerbook), R’ Jill Hammer, R’ Jeff Hoffman, Dr. Ora Horn Prouser, Hazzan Ari Priven, Dr. Livia Straus, and others. My only regret is that due to my own intensive schedule at Hadar I was only able to take off that one afternoon to present and wasn’t able to learn from the rest of the program.

I arrived on the campus the College of Mt. Saint Vincent a few days after a particularly horrendous late winter storm. Because of electrical problems our presentations were moved from a large ballroom to an old science building’s lecture hall with stepped seating. I brought a Open Siddur Presentation v.0.2 (3mb PDF) to illustrate my narrative with leading questions, but the room wasn’t really easily set up to use a projector while lecturing from the center stage. Making matters a little more difficult, there was no Internet access to illustrate some of the work we’ve accomplished. Thankfully, I also brought an 8.5 x 14 handout to teach the participants how to make a book (even a siddur!) with a single sheet of paper — a neat piece of kirigami taught me by master book binder, Olivia Antsis.

The final speaker on the second day, I spoke for a bit less than an hour, and then there were some questions and we made books together. I spoke extemporaneously on the vision for the Open Siddur and where it comes from: the importance of collaboration and sharing and how free culture licensing make this possible. How our Jewish spiritual projects are only enlivened and deepened by improving access to all Jews to engage creatively in them, and how the Open Siddur creates a bridge between cultural and individual authenticity. I spoke about romanticism and the Arts & Crafts movement and on the revival of making, on arduino, and on feeling profound ownership in a creative process of making meaning.

I think it went over well. There were a few questions afterward. One question I remember asked for clarification on how the Open siddur was different from a wiki. (The answer is the Open Siddur is committed to privacy in creating personal spaces where the user controls the degree to which their work is shared. Collaborative groups are groups of friends sharing access to particular pieces of work.) Someone else, sensing that the orientation of the project was on individual spirituality, wanted to know more about how this resource might be useful for communities and siddur committees. (The answer is that the resource provides a mechanism for maintaining a text for modification over generations regardless of who prepares it, and that through collaboration a siddur committee could do a great deal more work without organizing their effort with scissors, rubber glue, copy sheets and a binder. All material by a collaboration group is stored in a database and accessible from anywhere over the Internet. Consultants can provide advice or guidance as needed.)

But I think the most fun had by everyone was in making books from a single sheet of paper. Actually, not one book but two books. Since the paper was printed with different text on either side, depending on which direction the paper was folded one would see a different book. One side of the page contained some of the blessings from Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s Siddur Tehillat Hashem. The other side contained an essay explaining the vision and mission of the Open Siddur Project. If you have some blank 8.5 x 14 pages lying around you can make your own. Just print out The Open Siddur Demo v.0.2 on either side of single sheet of 8.5 x 14 paper. The book demonstrates the potential of sharing and modifying free culture licensed texts for print and use as part of a personal or communal spiritual practice.

Instructions

1. fold sheet down the center, lengthwise
2. open up the sheet of paper and fold the sheet again down the center, widthwise
3. open up the sheet of paper again and fold the width-length ends towards the center fold creating quarter folds
4. fold the center of the sheet together widthwise letting the quarter folds open freely. Should look like a T. Make a cut from the center towards the quarter folds
5. fold the sheet over lengthwise, pulling the center out to form an open square.
6. squeeze together the ends. the cover page should go on top.

Just to retrace my steps a bit… This journey really started with my time spent with the myriad of other folk who prepared for and showed up at Jews in the Woods gatherings. It was at one such retreat at the old Eilat Chayyim in upstate New York that I met Dan Sieradski who had worked on his own Open Source Siddur project and who afterward invited me to the advisory board of what was then called Matzat and which might now be called Jew-It-Yourself. I promised him that the siddur we would develop would be an important feature of the larger constellation of resources we were imagining, resources all complementary due to our use of free and open source licensing.

At that time, back in 2006 I was still in Louisiana working for engineering companies as an urban planner and cartographer after hurricane Katrina and Rita. It wasn’t until I left Louisiana and started earnestly looking for work on the East Coast that I began to spend my free seriously working on the Open Siddur Project again. Pretty soon I met Efraim Feinstein and Azriel Fasten, fellow collaborators on the Open Siddur, and thereafter, J.T. Waldman and the kind folks at PresenTense Institute Summer Workshop, Ariel Beery, Aharon Horwitz, and the other fellows there, Russel Neiss, Charlie Schwartz, and Matt Berkowitz. PresenTense opened me to a world of creatives operating all over the Jewish world: Sarah Kass at AviChai, Elisheva at PerlMonks, Avi Warshavsky at the Center for Educational Technology, and Bob Goldfarb at the Center for Jewish Culture & Creativity. And then this year at Yeshivat Hadar, to have so much access to R’ Elie Kaunfer, R’ Shai Held, Dr. Devorah Steinmetz, R’ Ethan Tucker, Ram Avital Hochenstin, and my fellow peers. All of these intelligent people helped me to think and rethink what it was I was really suggesting with the Open Siddur Project, to understand its value and meaning. I think we are just at the beginning of understanding how this this resource could build bridges between our diverse communities.

The Open Siddur is a volunteer driven project to create a free resource for folks crafting their own siddur (Jewish prayer book). We intend to collaboratively build an archive of material that makes up . . . → Read More: Welcome Jewish Week Readers!]]> Once again, the Open Siddur Project has been mentioned in the press, this time by Steve Lipman in the Jewish Week.

The Open Siddur is a volunteer driven project to create a free resource for folks crafting their own siddur (Jewish prayer book). We intend to collaboratively build an archive of material that makes up the siddur — texts, translations, instructional material, commentaries, essays, and other associated media. Along with the archive, we are building the software that can be used to put together the building blocks to customize and personalize the siddur. Ultimately, siddurim prepared from this content may be printed on your home printer, by on-demand print shop, or in cooperation with a book artist.

For more about our mission, click here. To see some early technology demos, click here. To learn move about how you can get involved in helping to build the Open Siddur, read on.

By “open,” we mean that our code and our texts are free to take under permissive copyright licenses. We are creating a community of folks passionate about the siddur and who express their passion by contributing material that can be used by others in the preparation of their own siddurim. This material could be historic or new, familiar or obscure. We seek to design a tool that will provide a resource to help those who take Jewish spirituality seriously engage in their own spiritual practice.

If you’d like to help us, take a look at the following opportunities to contribute (below), fill out our survey, or just contact us. (Donations, if you like, can be made to this project via our fiscal sponsor the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity. )

For more details on our development and to get status updates, please fill out our survey. If you’d like to follow our developments closely and participate, then please join our discussion list, friend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and check out our development wiki (our current storehouse for documentation and texts).

The Open Siddur is a volunteer driven project to create a free resource for folks crafting their own siddur (Jewish prayer book). We intend to collaboratively build an archive of material that makes up the siddur — texts, . . . → Read More: Welcome Tablet Readers]]> What a great morning! We’re honored to have our project the focus of an article in Tablet.

The Open Siddur is a volunteer driven project to create a free resource for folks crafting their own siddur (Jewish prayer book). We intend to collaboratively build an archive of material that makes up the siddur — texts, translations, instructional material, commentaries, essays, and other associated media.  Along with the archive, we are building the software that can be used to put together the building blocks to customize and personalize the siddur. Ultimately, siddurim prepared from this content will be printed with either an on-demand printer or else in cooperation with a book artist.

By “open,” we mean that our code and our texts are free to take under permissive copyright licenses. We are creating a community of folks passionate about the siddur and who express their passion by contributing material that can be used by others in the preparation of their own siddurim. This material could be historic or new, familiar or obscure. We seek to design a tool that will provide a resource to help those who take Jewish spirituality seriously engage in their own spiritual practice.

If you’d like to help us, take a look at the following opportunities to contribute (below), fill out our questionnaire, or just straight out contact us. (Donations, if you like, can be made to this project via our fiscal sponsor the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity. )

For more details on our development and to get status updates, fill out our questionnaire and you’ll be added to our mailing list. If you’d like to follow our developments closely and participate, then please join our discussion list, friend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and check out our development wiki (our current storehouse for documentation and texts).

Update 12/3/09: Broken links in the table have been corrected.

By Raphael Ahren Tags: Aharon Varady, Israel News . . . → Read More: Welcome Haaretz Readers!]]> Raphael Ahren wrote a nice article on the project in this week’s Anglo File Section of Haaretz that appeared both online and in-print (pdf). Please read the article at Haaretz (support Raphael’s page views!), and return here to comment — below the reprint.

Prayer ala carte

By Raphael Ahren

Tags: Aharon Varady, Israel News

Aharon Varady always dreamed of putting together his own prayer book. Realizing that many people – including himself – often see prayer as a dull and robotic exercise in the fulfillment of a religious duty, he thought for years about ways to enable people to create their own prayer book, or siddur, in order to make the most of their experience. A fellow at this year’s PresenTense Institute, Varady earlier this month finally embarked on a daring project, creating a tool for “individuals and groups to build the siddur they’ve always wanted,” as his Web site explains. Varady’s Open Siddur project aspires to funnel all different regional traditions, translations, commentaries and instructional notes that Jews from the four corners of the world have produced through the ages into one Web application. The site will provide the core liturgy and enable users to freely add content, comparable to cooking Web sites where food aficionados exchange and comment on each other’s recipes. Similarly, at OpenSiddur.net users can download different prayers, add creative translations, commentaries and other “siddur recipes,” as the 34-year-old Philadelphia resident put it. Looking for an oriental version of the morning services or a rare medieval religious poem? Chances are that sooner or later someone will upload it to the site, Varady assures. “We believe the text of the siddur is an aggregate of thousands of years of inspired authors,” Varady told Anglo File this week. “This culture, which right now is locked in text we can [only] read on paper, is not yet available easily to manipulation and remixing, adopting and tweaking for people who want to use the siddur as a spiritual tool.” While the new site facilitates the study of Jewish liturgy, he says, its main purpose is helping those who are dissatisfied with the way conventional siddurs dictate prayer. “People don’t feel they can be engaged with their prayer,” Varady says. “It’s programmed for them.” Varady is one of sixteen fellows currently participating in the Jerusalem-based PresenTense Institute, which for the third consecutive summer invited Jewish social entrepreneurs mostly from English-speaking countries into its headquarters on Emek Refaim Street to assist them in launching their various projects. During the six-week program, fellows have a designated work space, whenever their full schedule of skill-building sessions, “Lunch N’ Learn” forums and field trips allows it. Sparking a paradigm shift Ariel Beery, the New York-born co-founder and director of the PresenTense Group, believes that Varady’s project might “spark a paradigm shift in how we approach individual spirituality and group coordination in an age of radical interdependence,” as he told Anglo File this week. “If we’ve learned anything from Facebook it’s that even though every person has their own page and profile, it is the interaction [that] provides the value people seek.” But the soft-spoken Varady, a technology consultant and city planner by profession, takes a more modest approach. “If there’s anything radical about my project,” he says, “it’s that an individual can start creating an archive of personal prayers and keep it private or share it with others.” He notes that his innovative project was inspired by Jacob Freedman’s “polychrome” siddur, which color coded parts of the text to indicate during which time periods various prayers were added. Freedman started his project in the late 1960s but never completed it. Now, Varady says, the time has come to once again try to create a prayer book for people “who take their prayer very seriously, or for independent congregations that are struggling to create a relevant siddur for their community.” Varady realizes that some people – especially those who are proud to pray with their grandfather’s siddur – will not be attracted to a Web site offering prayer a la carte, picking and choosing texts from various geographic areas, time epochs and religious streams. Yet he thinks his project has the potential to make praying interesting to those who otherwise wouldn’t bother. “We can teach children that prayer is important,” he says, “but we can’t take for granted that this will be relevant for them when they are adults, when they have a choice. What we can do is provide the deepest resources for them to engage in this essential creative process.”