As an open source and free software project, the Open Siddur would not be possible at all were it not for the in-kind contributions of its volunteer developers, transcribers, translators, commentators, artists, designers, and promoters.
We look forward to thanking you. Please join our community and contribute to the Open Siddur by transcribing or translating texts, researching, providing art and comments, sharing ideas, or if you have technical skills, helping us build the Open Siddur web application. If you would like to support the Open Siddur Project financially, tax free donations can be made via a donation page sponsored by Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, a 501(3)c non-profit providing the Open Siddur with fiscal sponsorship.
Aharon Varady, who founded the Open Siddur in 2000, directs the project, and administersm, curates, and provides light-touch editing for all the content on opensiddur.org. Efraim Feinstein is the lead developer of the effort to create what we hope will be an open source application for folk to craft their own siddur from a database of carefully tagged liturgy and liturgy-related work.
We would like to thank the following organizations and individuals for their early contributions to this project.
Harry Aizenstadt and Lisa Rubins (Family of Rabbi Jacob Freedman, z”l, for the late Rabbi’s papers)
Efraim Feinstein
Culmus Project
Aharon Varady
Russell Allen
Ze’ev Clementson
Ilan Cohen
Azriel Fasten (aka, the Shadkhan)
Efraim Feinstein
Raphael Finkel
David Troidl
Ariel Beery and Aharon Horwitz (PresenTense Institute)
Dan Brown (e-Jewish Philanthropy)
Bob Goldfarb (Center for Jewish Culture & Creativity)
Joel Katz (Religion and State in Israel)
Devorah Priess, Ed.D.
Daniel Sieradski and Sarah Chandler (Jewschool, Jew-it-Yourself)
Nili Simhai, Teva Learning Alliance
J.T. Waldman (Tagged TaNaKh, Jewish Publication Society Special Projects)
Avi Warshavsky (CET)
Supporting Infrastructure
eXist-db, a native XML database
MediaWiki
Saxon by Saxonica
Text Encoding Initiative
WordPress
Licensing & Standards Framework
Creative Commons
Free Software Foundation
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the Open Document Fellowship
Wikimedia Foundation
Server Hosts
Josh Rosenberg (our wiki’s host and server admin)
VAserv (our VPS provider)
Google Code (our code repository)
Google Groups (our listserve hosts)
In the summer of 2009, the Open Siddur was one of sixteen innovative projects chosen for participation in the PresenTense Institute 2009 Summer Workshop for Jewish social entrepreneurship in Jerusalem. Modest travel grants to attend the workshop were provided by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and the Jewish Publication Society. Aharon Varady was selected as the Rena and Josh Kopelman Chair of Online Community Organizing, an honor presented by the Kopelman Foundation, and the Open Siddur is grateful for their sponsorship of his work at PresenTense. We also deeply appreciate the participation and interest of the PresenTense staff in the public launch of Open Siddur: Ariel Beery, Aharon Horwitz, Brachie Sprung, Shai Davis, and Brian Blumenthal. Their skill building advice, ideas, and ability to connect us with helpful collaborators was extremely useful and made for a productive summer. We would also like to thank the advice and support provided at that time by J.T. Waldman and Avi Warshavsky (Director of Israel’s Center for Educational Technology Department of Humanities).
In January 2010 and again in February 2013, Aharon Varady presented the Open Siddur Project at Limmud NY. Thank you to the staff and volunteers of Limmud NY for supporting this and other innovative projects.
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