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a community-grown, libre Open Access archive of Jewish prayer and liturgical resources — for those crafting their own prayerbooks and sharing the content of their practice | ||
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2010 תפילה להצבעה | A Prayer for Voting with a Pledge to Help Repair the World, by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid·org)This prayer is broadly speaking a prayer that we learn to work together to create a better future, and it incorporates a pledge to do one thing for healing the world, for tikkun olam, that will make this future a reality. It’s not a prayer about winning or getting other people to see things our way, like some of the others I’ve seen. Whomever we support, we need to pray for strength for the next president, and for the whole country, to face what will be challenging times. . . . God of all spirit, all directions, all winds You have placed in our hands power unlike any since the world began to overturn the orders of creation. . . . תפילה למען תושבי/ות אל־עראקיב | A Thanksgiving Day Prayer for the Residents of Al-Araqeeb (قرية العراقيب), by Rabbi Arik Ascherman (2010)A prayer following the Israel Land Administration’s 2010 eviction and demolition of Al-Araqeeb, a Bedouin village in the Negev. The prayer was written with the intention that its recitation is made “on behalf of justice and the rededication of Israel to the ideals of her Declaration of Independence.” . . . Categories: Conflicts over Sovereignty and Dispossession, 🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday of November) 📖 תפלה שפת ישראל (אשכנז) | Tefiloh Sefas Yisroel (minhag Bad Homburg), compiled by R’ Rallis Wiesenthal (2010)An authentic siddur of Ashkenazic holy congregations without the changes made by later grammarians and maskilim, prepared by Rabbi Rallis Wiesenthal according to the minhag of Bad Homburg. . . . Categories: Comprehensive (Kol Bo) Siddurim Geshem and tal: rain and dew. We pray for each in its season, geshem all winter and tal as summer approaches…not everywhere, necessarily, but in the land of Israel where our prayers have their roots. In a desert climate, water is clearly a gift from God. It’s easy for us to forget that, here with all of this rain and snow. But our liturgy reminds us. Through the winter months, during our daily amidah we’ve prayed “mashiv ha-ruach u-morid ha-gashem” — You cause the winds to blow and the rains to fall! We only pray for rain during the rainy season, because it is frustrating both to us and to God when we pray for impossibilities. . . . In place of the blood of the slaughtered bulls from the covenantal ceremony in Exodus, we looked for another substance to effect the covenant ceremony. Amalya was born right after Shavuot, on which we have a tradition to eat dairy. In fact, milk itself is associated with the acceptance of Torah, as described in the following Midrash which quotes a verse from Song of Songs (4:11): “Sweetness drops from your lips, O bride; honey and milk are under your tongue and the scent of your robes is like the scent of Lebanon.” . . . Categories: Brit Milah & Simḥat Bat Three short havdallah meditations that culminate in a havdallah prayer/blessing. . . . Categories: Motsei Shabbat This is a prayer for parents to say for safe sleep for their newborn children. It is based almost entirely on the longer form of the traditional prayers before sleep. Because of gender there are two forms, for a boy and for a girl. I wrote this as part of my daughter’s naming ceremony in January 2001. I used it again in 2006 when my second daughter was born. . . . Categories: Child care ברכות לנרות חנוכה | Die Segenssprüche beim Anzünden der Ḥanukkah-Lichter (German trans. by Chajm Guski)Just in time for Ḥanukkah, Chajm Guski shares a חנוכה מדריך (Ḥanukkah Madrikh), Handbook for Ḥanukkah, with a Deutsch translation and transliteration of the blessings on lighting the Ḥanukiah, the kavanah, HaNerot HaLalu, and the piyyut, Maoz Tzur. . . . Categories: Ḥanukkah 📰 “Ten Commandments of Jewish Social Networking” (Jonah Lowenfeld, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles 2010)An interview with Jonah Lowenfeld of the Jewish Journal on the values of sharing Torah learning as practiced by the Open Siddur Project. . . . In January 2010, the Jewish Week published a piece about the Open Siddur Project by Steve Lipman, entitled, “Taking Prayer Into Their Own Hands.” The article is no longer available online at the Jewish Week website or in any online cache. We have archived it here for posterity. . . . Categories: Press & Research Articles Tags: Jewish Week 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. 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. . . . Categories: Advocacy Publicly funded work of Jewish non-profits should be shared with Open Content licensing (Future of Jewish Non Profit Summit, 2010)I invite you to think of the Torah as a free and open platform rather than a closed one, and to see your work similarly. The takeaway I have for you today is to adopt an open source strategy for your non-profit work in the manner that Maimonides, Hillel the Elder, or the Sfas Emes would. Express faith in your organizational mission by opening up the development of that which you are innovating to the broader community, maintain a low bar for entry and to cultivate a market for wide adoption, and eschew closed source development and proprietary licensing. When your actions are guided by your business model rather than your mission statement, it’s time to revisit your mission statement and rethink your business model. . . . Categories: Advocacy On the Open Siddur Project, a brochure presented at the Spring Intensive of the Academy for Jewish Religion by Aharon Varady (Open Siddur 2010)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. . . . נֻסְחָאוֹת | A Historical Map of Jewish Liturgical Influence and Variation, by Aharon Varady after Joseph HeinemannMaps showing the relationship between the nusḥaot are quite helpful to us. The Open Siddur Project is seeking to digitize all the extant nusḥaot witnessed in siddurim and other manuscripts, in order to show the evolution of individual prayers and blessings. This will helpfully represent at least the textual diversity of Jewish spiritual expression in the many geographically dispersed Jewish communities over the past three thousand years. I also hope that representing this diversity in t’fillah will be an inspiration to individuals engaging in davvening as an intellectually engaged and creative discourse speaking across generations. The extent to which we’ll be able to realize this vision will be limited to how many source texts we’ll be able to identify, transcribe, and share with open standards and free culture licenses. Seeing that the design of the map appearing in Hoffman’s book left much to be desired, I redesigned it for clarity while adding some additional nusḥaot. I hope that the following map based on Joseph Heinemann’s work will help inspire fellow researchers to contribute to this project. . . . Categories: Liturgical traditions An important licensing update made to a collection of digital fonts maintained by the open-source Hebrew type foundry, the Culmus Project, . . . Categories: Community News Access, Sharing, and Innovation through Digitization and the Public Domain — by Aharon Varady (Open Siddur 2010)Cultures, including our own, breathe creativity and exhale innovation. We rely on the creative works bequeathed to us by earlier generations to remain rooted in our cultural identity. Synagogue members and kids in day schools, summer camps, youth orgs, and creative Jews working on their own can all benefit from our educational, cultural, and spiritual institutions cooperating with one another in sharing the bounty of our cultural heritage. As Jews, are we not all collaborating on a grand project of Torah learning, spiritual improvement, and tikkun olam? It’s time our cultural licensing choices reflect these profound intentions. . . . Categories: Advocacy Technology is a “plus” not “or” proposition: thoughts after NewCAJE — by Efraim Feinstein (Open Siddur 2010)In education, technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself. There are some problems technology can solve, and others it can’t. As Joel Grishaver said better than I can, technology is a “plus” not “or” proposition. Learners will have different success rates using technological solutions, such as distance learning, and the use of computers cannot take the place of a real-world social community. On the other hand, technology also has the potential to transform learning and learning environments and to make both learning materials and the teachers to guide their use accessible where they would not have otherwise been. . . . Categories: Development Tags: NewCAJE At the beginning of the talk, the audience expressed some discomfort with the idea of copying from one website to another, even if the original author is attributed. The main concern seemed to be that the author potentially loses control of his/her message if he/she has no idea of the remainder of the content of the website. On the other hand, one audience member who posts reviews on book review sites had an innate sense of the concept of mutual benefit: she posts reviews of the books she reads in part because she reads reviews posted by others. . . . Categories: Advocacy Tags: NewCAJE Openness, remixability, and free Jewish culture: a response to Russel Neiss — from Efraim Feinstein (Open Siddur 2009)Advocacy for creative works’ freedom represents a paradigm shift in thought among content creators: In a free culture, a premium is not placed on the material as-such or even the particular rights associated with the material. Instead, it is on the users’ freedom, and it is that freedom that is the prerequisite to large-scale creative engagement with educational material. . . . Categories: Advocacy Free, open data prevents the necessity of duplication of effort, which, in turn, prevents the community as a whole from unnecessarily wasteful spending. Particularly for organizations with a social mission, its use is a win for everyone. . . . Categories: Advocacy The Limits of Liturgical Change: selections of halakhic discourse with translations by Rav Ethan Tucker (sourcesheet)A sourcesheet on the halakhic opinions and attitudes towards praying in languages besides Hebrew. . . . Categories: Liturgical traditions Given that more than 50% of the Siddur is comprised of text from the תנ׳׳ך (TaNaKh) any project that seeks to rigorously attribute its sources depends on a critical, digital edition of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew bible. And such is the case for our Open Siddur Project. The entire history of the transmission of such a profoundly important sourcetext illustrates the degree to which we rely on each others most positive intentions to advance our love of the Torah through sharing — regardless of sect, creed, scholarly or theological inspiration. Moving ahead we are supported by each others gifts and by the preserved legacy of our cultural inheritance. . . . Categories: Advocacy Tags: free culture An appreciation of the life of John Bruno Hare, the founder of Sacred Texts, and an early contributor to the Open Siddur Project. . . . Categories: Community News Loading The . . . Categories: Development For a relationship as intimate as that with one’s own spirit, we might assume that the only spiritual tools provided to individuals have this degree of personalization, but this of course, is not so. Printed siddurim were designed with other goals in mind. As a technology the siddur only became widely adopted by the Jewish public in the mid-19th century. Printers of siddurim have designed their siddurim to appeal to mass markets, each edition of the siddur representing a specific communal custom, and when translated, the specific language of a community. It’s no surprise then that for many Jews their spiritual identity is closely mapped to the liturgical variations represented by their Siddurim. . . . We come here ready to fulfill the Creator’s commandment to give blessing for the Sun’s creation and in this year we recognize that the abundance of blessing which Earth receives from the Sun depends on the health of the Skies, which is in human hands for the first time in any generation in all the years of blessing the Sun, from the beginning of the world. . . . Categories: Prayers for the Sun's Renewal A prayer-teaching for grounding one’s intention at the onset of the Amidah. . . . Categories: Weekday Amidah קִדּוּשׁ שֶׁל שִׁחְרוּר עַל שַׁבָּת ט״וּ בִּשְׁבָט | Ḳiddush of Liberation for when Shabbat coincides with Tu biShvat, by Mark X. Jacobs (1993)We call to sukkat shalom, the shelter of peace, all of our various selves To rest from the contortion of social life and the demands of others. We liberate ourselves and each other from roles and titles labels and closets positions and pretendings internalized oppressions and oppressive projections hierarchies and competition. . . . We name our daughters on their fifteenth day of life. This is based on Vayiqra 12:1-5, which describes the length of a woman’s period of impurity after childbirth. If she gives birth to a son, she is impure for seven days; if she gives birth to a daughter, she is impure for fourteen days. The passage seems to connect the baby boy’s circumcision on the eighth day to the conclusion of the mother’s seven day period of impurity. (Similarly, Vayiqra 22:27 says that a newborn animal must remain with its mother for seven days, and on the eighth day and onward it is acceptable as a sacrificial offering.) It seems, then, that for the first seven days of a little boy’s life, and the first fourteen days of a little girl’s life, the child and mother are still closely linked, and both remain separate from the larger family and community. Then, on the eighth day of her son’s life, and on the fifteenth day of her daughter’s life, the mother begins to rejoin her family and community, and the child too becomes incorporated as a member of the family and community. That is why a baby boy’s father becomes obligated to circumcise his son only on the eighth day, and why the baby boy first receives his name at his brit milah; it is then that the baby boy becomes a member of the community of Israel. On our daughter’s fifteenth day, we come together as a family and as a community to welcome this new member and to give her a name. . . . Categories: Brit Milah & Simḥat Bat An article on Rabbi Jacob Freedman’s planned Polychrome Historical Haggadah from his local newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts. . . . Categories: Press & Research Articles This prayer-leaflet was primarily intended for a group of Hebrew Union College students who met every sabbath afternoon for extra-curricular (noncredit) Torah study with Rabbi Dr. Jakob Petuchowki in the mid-1960s. Their service was conducted entirely in Hebrew and in the traditional nusaḥ with some minor but interesting Liberal innovations. Petuchowki writes, “We have omitted only the various repetitions as well as the prayer for the restoration of the sacrificial service. (But we have retained the place of Zion as the symbol of the messianic hope.) In the ‘Alenu prayer, we have preferred a positive formulation of the “Election of Israel” to the traditional negative one.” . . . Categories: Shabbat Siddurim בָּאנוּ חֹשֶׁךְ לְגָרֵשׁ | Banu Ḥoshekh l’Garesh (We come to chase the dark away), by Sara Levi-Tanai (1960)In 1960, the Publishing House of the Composers’ League in cooperation with the Center for Culture and Education (בית הוצאה של איגוד הקומפוזיטורים בשיתוף עם המרכז לתרבות ולחינוך), published the songbook זמר־חן (Zemer Ḥén), containing the now popular Ḥanukkah song and melody “Banu Ḥoshekh l’Garesh” (p. 49), originally simply titled “Ḥanukkah” by Sara Levi-Tanaiׁ (1910-2005). . . . The prayer for the government familiar to all Conservative movement congregations, as written by Rabbi Dr. Louis Ginzberg with an English translation by Rabbi Tim Bernard. . . . A digitial edition of the JPS 1917 English translation of the TaNaKh. . . . Categories: Targumim (Translations) חצות | Tikkun Ḥatsot: Getting Right at Midnight — An Introduction to the Midnight Rite by Shmuel GonzalesThe popular practice of a night time prayer vigil is not well understood. In the siddur, most people pass by it because they don’t know what to do with it. Others are confused because of the lack of consistency in its presentation from one siddur to the next. At the end of the day, this ritual would be regarded as a rite reserved for the pious — for the great tzadikim who made regular use of it. . . . Categories: Ḥatsot 📖 סדר תפלות כל השנה (אשכנז) | The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire, translated and arranged by Rabbi Simeon Singer (1890)Before the Koren-Sacks Siddur (2009), there was the Authorised Daily Prayer Book first published in 1890 and used by Jews throughout the British Empire, while there was a British Empire. It was originally published under the authorization of Great Britain’s first Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler with a Hebrew liturgy based on Isaac Seligman Baer’s Seder Avodat Yisroel (1868). The translation by Rabbi Simeon Singer (1846-1906) was the most extensive English translation of the Siddur ever published, and for this reason most editions are simply referred colloquially as The Singer Siddur. The Standard Prayer Book, published by Bloch in 1915, was an American reprint of The Authorized Daily Prayer Book. . . . Categories: Comprehensive (Kol Bo) Siddurim 📖 סדר עבודת ישראל (אשכנז) | Seder Avodat Yisroel, a critical text of the Siddur annotated by Isaac Seligman Baer (1868)Join us in creating a faithful digital transcription of the Seder Avodat Yisrael (Isaac Seligman Baer, 1868), a critical text of the nusaḥ Ashkeanaz. After transcription and proofreading, this new digital edition will be shared under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Public Domain dedication. The edition will then be encoded in TEI XML and archived in the Open Siddur database, a libre Open Access liturgy database. . . . Categories: Comprehensive (Kol Bo) Siddurim 📖 סידור תורה אור (נוסח האר״י) | Siddur Torah Or, the nusaḥ of the school of Rabbi Yitsḥaq Luria as arranged by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of LyadiWhen Rav Yiztḥak Luria, zt”l, also known as the Holy Ari, davvened in Eretz Yisroel he brought about a series of liturgical innovations witnessed in later siddurim. His particular nusaḥ bridged minhag Ashkenaz and minhag Sefarad (the customs of the Rheinland Jews and the customs of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula) with the teachings of his school of Kabbalists. When two centuries later, the Ḥassidic movement blossomed in Eastern Europe, it found purchase in Lithuania among a mystical school centered around Rav Schneur Zalman of Lyady, the Alter Rebbe and founder of the ḤaBaD movement within Ḥassidism. The Alter Rebbe compiled his own siddur, the Siddur Torah Ohr, “according to the tradition of the Ari.” . . . Categories: Comprehensive (Kol Bo) Siddurim 📖 פְּרִי עֵץ הֲדַר | Pri Ets Hadar (Fruit of the Majestic Tree), the original seder for Tu biShvat (School of Rabbi Yitsḥak Luria, circa 17th century)From the Pri Etz Hadar, the first ever published seder for Tu Bishvat, circa 17th century: “speech has the power to arouse the sefirot and to cause them to shine more wondrously with a very great light that sheds abundance, favor, blessing, and benefit throughout all the worlds. Consequently, before eating each fruit, it is proper to meditate on the mystery of its divine root, as found in the Zohar and, in some cases, in the tikkunim, in order to arouse their roots above.” . . . Categories: Seder Leil Rosh haShanah la-Ilanot (Tu biShvat) The doxological piyyut, Yigdal, in Hebrew with a German translation. . . . 🗐 מִדְרָשִׁים עַל אָדָם הָרִאשׁוֹן וּתְקוּפַת הֶחֹרֶף | Midrashim on the Origin of the Winter Solstice and Kalends Festivals by Primaeval AdamA sourcesheet shared by Dr. Devora Steinmetz to accompany a shiur on the Winter Solstice in Jewish thought. . . . Categories: 🌐 Gregorian New Year's Day (January 1st), Midrash Aggadah, the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere (21 December) | ||
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