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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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2011 —⟶ Page 3 This week on the holiday of Simḥat Torah, the Jewish people will begin to read the Torah anew, starting with Parashat Bereshit. The JET is a new English translation of Parashat Bereshit that is meant to be readable (and enjoyable to read), useful to people who want to study the parashah, and faithful to the Hebrew text of the Torah. JET stands for the “Jewish English Torah” (or for the “Jewish English Tanakh” if we want to be very ambitious). I would like to invite others to contribute further Open Content translations for parts of the Torah or Tanakh to the Open Siddur Project, whether by following my method or in any other style. In time, together we could create a rich resource full of translations of all parts of the Tanakh in a variety of useful forms. That would be a wonderful thing to start on Simḥat Torah. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): How good are you playing this amazing, venerable role-playing game called Judaism? Playing your whole life? Grand. So is it fun? Is it worthwhile? Would you recommend it to your friends? No. All right… so why not? Oh. Yeah. Oh… true. Ok, yeah, those are all good reasons. But what if I told you there was a way to play it better. Not everyone will catch on at first, but it should satisfy the most conservative players AND the most innovative. The geeks will love it and it will lower the bar for entry to even the most simple of players. Ok, it does sound too good to be true. But hey, what’s the point of playing the game if you’re not willing to suspend the physics of the familiar and try on a new set of rules. Embrace the illusion. Try on a new reality. Help create a new one, together. I just want players to use their imagination, feel appreciated instead of alienated, and just improve the game for everyone. So what is it? I’ll tell you. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): Language is simultaneously a portal and a barrier to prayer. Jews have prayed in Hebrew for millennia, yet our oldest sources also speak of prayer in other languages. Come explore the history of the language of prayer, how our linguistic preferences define what prayer is about, and how we might approach this issue today. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): We are grateful to Rabbi Joshua Boettinger and Rabbis for Human Rights–North America (RHR-NA) for sharing the following petitionary prayer, A Misheberakh for Victims of Slavery. Originally published by RHR-NA on their website in 2009, the prayer attends to the desperate need to eradicate all forms of slavery that persist today, especially in advance of the holiday celebrating our Z’man Cheruteinu, the season of our freedom, every Spring, every Pesaḥ. . . . In Israel, the Reform movement, which is called the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ), dates back to the 1950s, but a serious concern for women’s role in liturgy is a relatively recent development, namely since the last decade of the 20st century. This paper examines the modes of liturgical change with regard to the role and presentation of women in Jewish ritual and worship within Israel: what they do to regain their voice[s] through worship and how they are depicted in contemporary liturgies. Today, gender-related issues are among the most heated issues faced by contemporary liberal, non-Orthodox Jews; discussions on the subject dominate the religious and academic spheres as well as the socio-cultural arena. This paper is based upon the assumption that the Israeli case is a distinct one compared to the North American treatment of gender in the liturgy, because Hebrew is not only the liturgical language, but also the vernacular for Israeli Jews. This makes it much harder to change liturgy, as it is perceived as holy matter. Another unique aspect of the Israeli liberal liturgy is the fact that it operates in a rather conservative religious environment: both Orthodox and secular Jews in Israel are less prone to experimental approaches toward liturgy and ritual. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): Eternal God, You created earth and heavens with mercy, and blew the breath of life into animals and human beings. We were created amidst a world of wholeness, a world called “very good,” pure and beautiful, but now your many works are being erased by us from the book of life. . . . Categories: Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., על חטא Al Ḥeyt, communal confession, eco-conscious, וידוי vidui Contributor(s): Judy Gumbo co-authored this Al Ḥeit with her partner Stew Albert, ז״ל, before his passing in 2006. This Al Ḥeit was most recently used as part of Yom Kippur Kol Nidre services across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street 5772. . . . Categories: Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., על חטא Al Ḥeyt, English vernacular prayer, liberation, North America, סליחות səliḥot, וידוי vidui Contributor(s): A prayer composed by Rabbi Shai Held in the aftermath of the devastating 2004 Asian Tsunami. . . . Categories: Tags: 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., catastrophe, disaster, Floods, הדר Hadar, Needing Vocalization, ocean, tsunami Contributor(s): Sh’sh’sh’ma Yisra’el — Listen, You Godwrestlers! Pause from your wrestling and hush’sh’sh To hear — YHWH/ Yahh Hear in the stillness the still silent voice, The silent breathing that intertwines life; YHWH/ Yahh elohenu Breath of life is our God, What unites all the varied forces creating all worlds into one-ness, Each breath unique, And all unified; YHWH / Yahh echad! Yahh is One. Listen, You Godwrestlers! No one people alone owns this Unify-force; YHWH / Yahh is One. . . . Categories: Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., Deuteronomy 11:13-21, Deuteronomy 6:4, eco-conscious, interpretation as prayer, Numbers 15:37-41, paraliturgical shema, Philadelphia, Pnai Ohr, Prayers as poems, והיה אם שמע v'haya im shemo'a Contributor(s): Tired of people who can’t tell their ḳiddish (blessings for the Sabbath) from their ḳaddish (prayer for the dead)? Well, it sets Samuel L. Jackson off too! But he found a way of making a bracha (blessing) and mourning the dead at the same time. Now I can’t vouch for the origins of his nusaḥ (custom) but it sounds very effective! Most people haven’t noticed, the only real part from the Bible is that last section, the first part is actually his own spiel: . . . Tu biShvat, the 15th of the month of Shevat, was designated by the Talmud as the New Year for the Trees. It was tax time for HaShem, a time of tithing for the poor. This tithing has its origin in the following Torah verse: “Every year, you shall set aside a tenth part of the yield, so that you may learn to revere your God forever.” The Kabbalists of 17th century Safed developed the model of tikkun olam that we embrace today — healing the world by gathering the scattered holy sparks. To encourage the Divine flow — shefa — and to effect Tikkun Olam, the Kabbalists of Safed (16th century) created a Tu biShvat seder loosely modeled after the Passover seder. In recent decades we have learned how the well being of trees is intimately connected to the well being of all creation. This relationship is clearly stated in the following Midrash: “If not for the trees, human life could not exist.” (Midrsh Sifre to Deut. 20:19) Today the stakes of environmental stewardship have become very high. Tu biShvat calls upon us to cry out against the enormity of destruction and degradation being inflicted upon God’s world. This degradation includes global warming, massive deforestation, the extinction of species, poisonous deposits of toxic chemicals and nuclear wastes, and exponential population growth. We are also deeply concerned that the poor suffer disproportionately from environmental degradation. Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote: “[Human beings have] indeed become primarily tool-making animal[s], and the world is now a gigantic tool box for the satisfaction of [their] needs…” . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): The unabridged edition of the Tu biShvat seder haggadah, The Trees are Davvening. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): The day after humankind’s first landing on the Lunar surface July 20, 1969, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on a poetic and topical innovation to the Ḳiddush Levanah, the Sanctification of the Moon, by the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, Shlomo Goren. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): Thank you to Nili Simhai and Yosh Schulman for sharing the Farsi (Persian) Nusaḥ of this punful minhag — the order of reciting kavvanot (intentions) for the New Year. Profound thanks are also due to Rabbi Simcha Daniel Burstyn of Kibbutz Lotan for his translation. Please help the Open Siddur Project by helping to translate and transcribe all of the Hebrew and Farsi in this seder. Sol’e nu Mobarak! سال نو مبارک — L’shanah Tova! . . . Categories: Tags: festive meals, Needing Transcription, Nusaḥ Farsi, punning, סגולות segulot, סעודות seudot, סימנים simanim, symbolic foods, teḥinot during meals, teḥinot over foods Contributor(s): A prayer for the government offered by a first generation immigrant to the United States. . . . When works are printed bearing shemot, any one of the ten divine names sacred to Judaism, they are cared for with love. If a page or bound work bearing shemot falls to the ground it’s a Jewish custom to draw up the page or book and kiss it. Just as loved ones are cared for after they’ve fallen and passed away, when the binding fails and leaves fall from siddurim and other seforim they are collected in boxes and bins and brought for burial, where their holy words can decompose back into the earth from which their constituent elements once grew, and were once harvested to become paper and books, and ink, string, glue. While teaching at the Teva Learning Center last Fall 2010, I collected all our shemot that we had intentionally or unintentionally made on our copy machine, or which we had collected from the itinerant teachers who pass through the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center on so many beautiful weekend shabbatonim. While leafing through the pages, I found one and kept it from the darkness of the genizah. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): A digital reproduction of a Shiviti held in the Royal Library of Denmark’s Simonsen Manuscripts Collection. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): The impetus for writing this monograph came from a long-time observation that most worshipers and, by extension Shalechei Tzibur [prayer leaders], are either generally unaware of certain basic Laws regarding Public Prayer and Conduct in the Synagogue or simply lax in their proper observance. As such, I felt that there is a need to refresh in the minds of the general public certain fundamental regulations in these areas. I have chosen to translate the prefatory pages relating to these matters from the classic Siddur Avodas Yisroel by Dr. Seligmann Baer, published in Rödelheim in 1868. His summary is terse, yet comprehensive, and very closely aligned with the accepted Halochoh. Although, in those instances where there is a difference from commonly accepted practice and custom, I have tried to augment his text with instructions found in the popular Siddur Tefilas Kol Peh (TKP, Shaliach Tzibur edition, published by Eshkol, Jerusalem, and which was prepared in accordance with the Mishne Berura) and other sources. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): A collection of Jewish women’s prayers compiled by Rabbi Moritz Mayer, including twenty-four original English translations of prayers by Fanny Neuda from her collection, Stunden der Andacht 1855. . . . For aspiring ba’al qoreh (readers) of Megillat Esther studying its various styles of cantillation (Hebrew, ta’amei hamiqra or in Yiddish, טראָפּ trōp), a fair number of recordings are popping up online, but only one so far is being shared with a free/libre, copyleft license thanks to Gabriel Seed, lead developer of zemirotdatabase.org. The audio file is free to redistribute and remix under the CC BY-SA license. We’re honored to share Gabriel’s recording of a zarqa table for Megillat Esther read in the Nusaḥ Ashkenaz style. . . . Categories: Tags: Contributor(s): | ||
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