https://opensiddur.org/?p=8358
פרויקט הסידור הפתוח ✍︎ the Open Siddur Project
2014-01-07 20:23:14
Text
the Open Siddur Project
the Hierophant
the Hierophant
https://opensiddur.org/copyright-policy/
the Hierophant
the Open Siddur Project ✍︎ פְּרוֹיֶּקט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ
a community-grown, libre Open Access archive of Jewish prayer and liturgical resources
This project is sustained through reciprocity for those sharing prayers and crafting their own prayerbooks.
Get Involved ✶ Upload Work ✶ Donate ✶ Giftshop בסיעתא דשמיא | ||
The Open Siddur is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-denominational, and non-prescriptive community project growing a vast collection of digitized Jewish prayers, liturgies, and related works (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure), composed in every era, region, and language Jews and related Israelites have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide those working with the content of Jewish devotional practice (e.g. for those crafting prayerbooks סִדּוּרִים ⋅ siddurim), a platform for accessing and disseminating text, tools, and resources shared under libre/open terms for creative reuse. Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, to preserve customs, to cross-pollinate wisdom, and to foster openness and vitality in religious culture.
Why are we so animated by this mission? We think it's key to keeping religious Jewish practice vital, relevant, beautiful, and liberating. Jewish prayers, liturgical customs, and ritual praxes were all developed as part of a cultural commons, built upon decades, centuries, and millennia of innovation. We think of siddurim not only as containers of Jewish identity and spiritual heritage, but also as public repositories of effective exercises, prompts, and methods — shared praxes, cultural technologies — for growing the creative and emotional intelligence in those utilizing them in their committed practice. And for those who seek a more expansive cultural literacy, an open siddur is a gateway into the diverse customs and languages of the historic and contemporary Jewish world. We are a community spanning students studying private and communal Jewish prayer in its literary and historical context, educators preparing curricular resources, authors of new prayers and liturgies, translators of prayers new and old, transcribers of digital text from printed and handwritten works, and ultimately, living practitioners actively producing new siddurim for ourselves and others. We are opposed to the imposition of over-reaching access controls on the content of Jewish prayerbooks by proprietary interests, whether they be prestige-driven, sectarian/denominational, private/commercial, or any other self-interest. (We take no issue with the layout, arrangement, and design choices of any one or group so long as the underlying semantic data remain accessible for redistribution and creative reuse under open standards and proper attribution.) If we truly believe that our avodah (sacred labor/work/craft) is life changing and integral to the repair of the world, then it should remain shareable in every channel available to its distribution, and guarded from monopolization by proprietary interests. In short, public resources should be shared with open licenses. We grow and maintain this archive of words, insight, and ritual praxis as a repository for those "whose hearts have been stirred" to craft and contribute just as their spiritual forbearers for the Mishkan (Tabernacle, cf. Exodus 36:2). Almost every resource shared through our project that is not already in the Public Domain is shared by its creator or copyright steward with an Open/Libre Content license. This is very important to us because we believe that everyone engaged in Jewish prayer should always possess the autonomy to craft their own prayer resources — but do so with careful attention to the attribution, provenance, and lineage of these texts. Open Content licenses require that our value of preserving attribution is grounded in the sacred work of editing, arranging, remixing, and redistributing these works — creative processes where details of authorship, origin, and provenance are easily lost when their importance is not underscored. From the verse "And Esther said in the name of Mordekhai" (Esther 2:22) we learn that through attribution, our world is redeemed (Megillah 15a:20, Pirkei Avot 6:6): the lineage of the source is preserved, the creator is honored, and the lattice of kindness supporting the selfless creative act is reinforced. Cultures breathe creativity like we breathe oxygen. Our multilingual cultural infrastructure ossifies with the imposition of artificial scarcity; with arbitrary and proprietary barriers to access, our diversity devolves into monoculture. Our individual creativity calcifies without the freedom to process the spiritual insights of our deepest selves and our received traditions. Without consideration for personal autonomy, religious tools structured to complement the most profound experiences and relationships can devolve into instruments of control, inhibiting imagination, vision, and possibility. As personal and communal prayer remains one of the most primary and private experiences of Jewish devotional practice, and siddurim are the primary means for accessing and engaging in Jewish prayer, we want every practitioner to afford all the resources that would otherwise limit them in compiling their own prayerbook. (One committed at heart to the craft of their own prayerbook should really only be limited by their knowledge of prayers and liturgical customs.) So that Jewish religious culture may continue to grow and thrive, the resources and technologies collected and utilized by this project are shared freely: gratis (without cost) and libre (without restriction). Our commitment to collaboration and sharing is why we call our siddur project “open.” We aspire to be a resource of Jewish prayer as freely shared as the Torah of Loving-kindness (תּוֹרָת חֶסֶד) described in Sukkah 49b, transmitted as openly and earnestly as the Torah was shared in the Midbar Sinai, as free a resource for all who enter into the world as fire, water, and wilderness (cf. Mekhilta d'Rebbi Yishmael on Shemot 20:2, §Baḥodesh). In observing this principle, we align our project values with the definition of open content and open data maintained by the Open Knowledge Foundation, the definition of open-source maintained by the Open Source Initiative, and the four values of libre/free culture maintained by the Free Culture Foundation. Have a favorite prayer, piyyut, or praxis? If it's not yet in the archive, then please upload it! Make it available to others studying Jewish prayer or crafting their own prayerbooks. ☞ Read more about our mission and project history, and copyright policy. If your question isn't answered there or in our FAQ, please contact us. (For a technical introduction, please consult this presentation. If you'd like to improve this website or help build our Open Siddur web-to-print application, please contact us and join us on github.) Read more Main Categories:For Upcoming Festivals, Feasts, & Fasts:For Upcoming Civic Days:For the Season:Additional Prayers & Readings:More categories... Recently Added Prayers, Songs, and Other Resources
Contributor Highlight![]() Ze'ev KainanZe'ev Kainan is the CEO of Mosad Bialik Publishing House. Ze'ev was the CEO of Keren Malki - an Israeli nonprofit organization that assists families of children with special needs, and the director of education and special projects at Tikvatenu Centers network. Ze'ev worked for years with youth and was a delegate to the Ramah camps (California, Canada, Poconos, and the Ramah Seminar in Israel) as well as other JCC camps. From 1997 to 2000, he served as a central emissary for the USY movement in North America, on behalf of the Jewish Agency. He later served as the director of the youth movement of the Masorti Movement in Israel for seven years and is also the editor of the siddur va'Ani Tefillati - Siddur Yisraeli and the Poteach Sha'ar Machzor for the High Holidays of the Masorti Movement. Ze'ev was born and raised in the religious kibbutz of Sa'ad in the northern Negev, three kilometers east of Gaza City and now lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Dr. Lisa Kainan and their three children - all graduates of Noam. Author Spotlight![]() Grace AguilarGrace Aguilar (2 June 1816 – 16 September 1847) was an English novelist, poet and writer on Jewish history and religion. Although she had been writing since childhood, much of her work was published posthumously. Among those are her best known works, the novels Home Influence and A Mother's Recompense. Aguilar was the eldest child of Sephardic Jewish refugees from Portugal who settled in the London Borough of Hackney. An early illness resulted in her being educated by her parents, especially her mother, who taught her the tenets of Judaism. Later, her father taught the history of Spanish and Portuguese Jews during his own bout with tuberculosis which had led the family to move to the English coast. After surviving the measles at the age of 19, she began to embark on a serious writing career, even though her physical health never completely recovered. Aguilar's debut was an anonymous collection of poems, The Magic Wreath of Hidden Flowers. Three years later she translated Isaac Orobio de Castro's Israel Defended into English at her father's behest. Later her The Spirit of Judaism drew interest and sales in both Britain and the United States after being published in Philadelphia by Isaac Leeser. He added a preface to the work elucidating his differences with her, the first of many clashes her work would have with mainstream Jewish thought. In the 1840s her novels began to attract regular readers, and Aguilar moved back to London with her parents. Despite her success, she and her mother still had to operate a boys' Hebrew school to stay solvent, which she resented for the time and energy it took from her writing. In 1847, she became ill again with a spinal paralysis which she did not let prevent her from visiting her brother in Frankfurt. Her health worsened and she died there that September. Recently Imaged Prayerbooks
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https://opensiddur.org/?p=8358
פרויקט הסידור הפתוח ✍︎ the Open Siddur Project
2014-01-07 20:23:14
Text
the Open Siddur Project
the Hierophant
the Hierophant
https://opensiddur.org/copyright-policy/
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