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With kavod (honor) to “all whose hearts were stirred to share” (kol asher nasa libam, cf. Exodus 36:2-3), this is a searchable index of all liturgists, translators, transcribers, etc. whose work on Jewish prayer, on prayer books, and on public readings is being shared through the Open Siddur Project. After ten years, the total number of project contributors is nearly 800. A little over half have shared their work either directly with the project with an Open Content license, or indirectly by contributing their work into the Public Domain as a contributor to a government publication. Nearly fifty are institutional copyright stewards (operating or defunct for-profit and non-profit entities). The remaining contributors have had their works transcribed from material that has passed into the Public Domain after their deaths. Some transcribed works shared through the Open Siddur project remain unattributed due to unknown authorship. If you find an uncredited or improperly attributed work, please contact us.
To join this community of contributors, please share your work. Making prayers and related religious works available for creative reuse and republication through Open Content licenses is crucial for keeping Jewish culture cross-pollinating, vital, and relevant under the current climate of denominationally identified silos and proprietary-by-default copyright strictures. Prospective contributors should read our Mission Statement, Terms of Use, and Copyleft Policy. The Open Siddur is a non-prescriptive, non-denominational project and invites participation without prejudice towards ethnic heritage, skin color, nationality, belief or non-belief, sex, gender, sexuality or any other consideration.
Barry Tabachnikoff (1942-2003) was an American Reform rabbi and founder of the congregation Bet Breira in Miami, Florida. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he was ordained at HUC-JIR Cincinnati in 1968, and served at Congregation Shaare Emeth, St. Louis, Missouri and Temple Israel, Miami, Florida until he founded Bet Breira in 1975. He led the congregation for years at temporary sites, until the south Miami-Dade county synagogue could be constructed. Tabachnikoff was a past president of the Rabbinic Association of Greater Miami and founding president of the South Dade Rabbinic Association. He was a delegate to the World Zionist Convention twice and was chair of Israel Bonds Rabbinic Conference in 1989. Tabachnikoff was also deeply involved in interfaith, ecumenical, and cross-cultural dialogue. Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati awarded him an honorary degree of doctor of divinity in 1993.
Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941, and also known by his sobriquets Gurudev, Kabiguru, and Biswakabi) was a Bengali polymath, poet, musician, and artist from the Indian subcontinent. He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse" of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He is sometimes referred to as "the Bard of Bengal".
Michal Talya (מיכל טל-יה) is a musical artist, psychologist, and liturgist living in Jerusalem.
Moshe Tanenbaum, from Toronto, Canada, is the original front-man for Uncle Moishy and the Mitzvah Men (1975-present).
Lise Tarlau (also known as L'Ysaye/Isaye/Ysaye/Ysale, Lisa, Lize, Elizabeth, Luise, and Louise Tarleau; 1879-1952), was a writer born to a prominent Viennese Bohemian Jewish family, the daughter of Rabbi Dr. Joseph Samuel Bloch and Laura Lachmann. In an essay published in 1906, "The Religious Problem," she expressed enthusiasm for Zionism and a deep sympathy for East European, Yiddish speaking Jewry, praising them for having retained their own distinctive cultural identity and their own language. This posture was accompanied by harsh criticism of Western European Jewish cultural assimilation, writing that they have “lived as parasites on the creative possibilities of the dreams of beauty of other peoples” (as quoted in Peter Singer's Pushing Time Away, 2003). Before emigrating to the United States in 1908, nearly two dozen prayers she wrote were published in Beruria (1907), an anthology of teḥinot in German compiled by her sister's husband Rabbi Dr. Max Grunwald. A decade later in the US, Houghton Mifflin Company and Riverside Press published The Inn of Disenchantment (1917), a collection of her prose and several short stories. Tarlau's fiction also appeared in major magazines of the day, including The Nation (105:2725, September 20, 1917), The Atlantic Monthly (in 1919), and Harper's Magazine. In 1924, her short story "Loutré" was awarded second place in Harper's first ever short story contest. During World War II, she wrote a number of scripts for radio and film and worked as a translator for the US military. Several of her works were included in The Fireside Book of Romance (ed. C. Edward Wagenknecht, 1948). She died on October 9, 1952 in Kew Gardens, Queens, Long Island, New York.
Rabbi Norman Tarnor, translator and author, was principal of the Hebrew High School of New Haven, Connecticut and taught at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.
Rabbi Dr. Sidney Tedesche (1890-1962), born in Elmwood Place (a town inside Cincinnati), Ohio, was a Reform movement rabbi in the United States. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he was ordained at HUC in 1913. He served pulpits at Brith Sholom (Springfield, Illinois), Beth El (Providence, Rhode Island), Beth El (San Antonio, Texas), and Mishkan Israel (New Haven, Connecticut), before beginning at Union Temple in Brooklyn, New York in 1929. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 1928 and an LL.B. from St. John's University in 1938. He later received an honorary D.D. from HUC in 1954, the year he retired from serving Union Temple. He wrote, Jewish Champions of Religious Liberty (1926) and specialized in translating works of Jewish apocrypha, The Book of Wisdom (Thesis, 1913), Prayers of the Apocrypha and their importance in the study of Jewish liturgy (1916), A Critical Edition of I Esdras (Dissertation, 1929), Ⅰ Maccabees (1950), and Ⅱ Maccabees (1954). He spoke 14 languages. A leader in Brooklyn interfaith activities, he was a former trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library and former grand chaplain of the New York Masonic Lodge. He was also a former president of the Association of Reform Rabbis and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Miriam Teichner (1887-1963), from Detroit, was a journalist and poet. In 1915, she served as a a correspondent for the Detroit Evening News on the peace ship Oscar II that took Henry Ford to Europe on his ill-fated peace mission before World War I. Afterward she went on to work for the New York Globe.
Moshe Teitelbaum (1759 – 17 July 1841) (Hebrew: משה טייטלבוים), also known as the Yismach Moshe, was the Rebbe of Ujhely (Sátoraljaújhely) in Hungary. An adherent of the Polish Ḥasidic Rebbe, Yaakov Yitzchak of Lublin (as well as of Sholom Rokeach of Belz), Teitelbaum was instrumental in bringing Ḥasidic Judaism to Hungary.
Organized by Noam Lerman, Der Tekhines Proyekt reclaims traditional tekhines written and prayed by women, trans, and gender-non-conforming people, and makes them accessible. It includes workshops, where people engage with original Yiddish tekhines liturgy with English translations, learn new melodies paired with small sections of tekhines, and discuss the Feminist practice of spontaneously praying in the vernacular. Multiple individuals locate interesting tekhines, partake in translation work, create new melodies, and collect contemporary heart-prayers in the vernacular, so that tekhines can be brought back into our prayer spaces.
Temple Emanu-El (now Congregation Emanu-El) of New York is the pre-eminent Reform Jewish congregation in New York City. Because of its size and prominence, it has served as a flagship congregation in the Reform branch of Judaism since its founding in 1845. The congregation uses Temple Emanu-El of New York, one of the largest synagogues in the world.
Zachary Teutsch is Managing Partner of Values Added Financial, an investment management and financial planning consulting firm.
Baruch (B.J.) Thaler received his B.R.S. from United Lubavitch Yeshivah Tomchei Temimim (Morristown); Smichah (Rabbinical Ordination) from Central Yeshivah Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch (770); B.A. (Eng. Lit./Creative Writing) & M.F.A. (Film) from Columbia University. Baruch grew up Chabad in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, speaking Yiddish. Later, he worked for the Folkbeine Yiddish Theater and the New Yiddish Repertory, translating and acting in stage classics. He also worked on Yiddish translation for the Milken American Jewish Music Archives and others, and was a writer-editor for the Yiddish “Algemeiner Journal” and film-editor for "The Forward." His Hebrew translation projects include “The New American Haggadah,” the works of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, and of other Hasidic-Kabbalistic masters. Film credits include: “Projecting Freedom,” “Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish,” “Punk Jews”; he also filmed Yiddish legends Mine Bern and Mike Burstyn. He has spent some time organic farming. Still a Shliach (outreach “rabbi”) in heart - Baruch coordinated a troubadouring tribe of kindred spirits, first called “Home of HoWL” (Holy Wow Love) and more recently as Nitzotzot, who are creating new exciting ways to reexperience the traditions and rituals of yore, bridging heimish hasidism with homie hipsterdom. When the spirit is right, Baruch comes up with a niggun or two -- especially if it will help enhance davvening with kavvanah...
Baruch (B.J.) Thaler received his B.R.S. from United Lubavitch Yeshivah Tomchei Temimim (Morristown); Smichah (Rabbinical Ordination) from Central Yeshivah Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch (770); B.A. (Eng. Lit./Creative Writing) & M.F.A. (Film) from Columbia University. Baruch grew up Chabad in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, speaking Yiddish. Later, he worked for the Folkbeine Yiddish Theater and the New Yiddish Repertory, translating and acting in stage classics. He also worked on Yiddish translation for the Milken American Jewish Music Archives and others, and was a writer-editor for the Yiddish “Algemeiner Journal” and film-editor for "The Forward." His Hebrew translation projects include “The New American Haggadah,” the works of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, and of other Hasidic-Kabbalistic masters. Film credits include: “Projecting Freedom,” “Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish,” “Punk Jews”; he also filmed Yiddish legends Mine Bern and Mike Burstyn. He has spent some time organic farming. Still a Shliach (outreach “rabbi”) in heart - Baruch coordinated a troubadouring tribe of kindred spirits, first called “Home of HoWL” (Holy Wow Love) and more recently as Nitzotzot, who are creating new exciting ways to reexperience the traditions and rituals of yore, bridging heimish hasidism with homie hipsterdom. When the spirit is right, Baruch comes up with a niggun or two -- especially if it will help enhance davvening with kavvanah...
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Printing Office and issued when Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks. At the end of a session of Congress, the daily editions are compiled in bound volumes constituting the permanent edition. Statutory authorization for the Congressional Record is found in Chapter 9 of Title 44 of the United States Code. (wikipedia)
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Tanakh for Karaite and Rabbinic Judaism. It was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries CE. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the Masorah.
Founded 2002, T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, (formerly Rabbis for Human Rights - North America) is a multi-denominational rabbinical organization dedicated to giving voice to the tradition of human rights in Judaism.
Epictetus (Greek: Ἐπίκτητος, Epíktētos; ca. 50 – 135 C.E.) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present day Pamukkale, Turkey) and lived in Rome until his banishment, when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece for the rest of his life. His teachings were written down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses and Enchiridion. Epictetus taught that philosophy is a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline. To Epictetus, all external events are beyond our control; we should accept calmly and dispassionately whatever happens. However, individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline.
Theodotion (/ˌθiːəˈdoʊʃən/; Greek: Θεοδοτίων, gen.: Θεοδοτίωνος; died ca. 200) was a Hellenistic Jewish scholar, perhaps working in Ephesus, who in ca. 150 CE translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Whether he was revising the Septuagint, or was working from Hebrew manuscripts that represented a parallel tradition that has not survived, is debated. His finished version, which filled some lacunae in the Septuagint version of the Book of Jeremiah and Book of Job, formed one column in Origen of Alexandria's Hexapla, c. 240 CE. Theodotion's translation was so widely copied in the Early Christian church that its version of the Book of Daniel virtually superseded the Septuagint's.
Born in Russia, Rabbi Samuel Thurman came to America as a child and grew up in Boston. There he attended Boston Latin Grammar School and then Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude. From there he enrolled in Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati to prepare for the rabbinate. After serving in Lexington, Kentucky (ca.1908), Kalamazoo, Michigan (ca.1908-1912, and Trenton, New Jersey (ca.1912-1914, he came to United Hebrew in St. Louis, Missouri in 1914, where he served the congregation until he died in 1963 at the age of eighty. An exceptionally dynamic orator, he spoke frequently before other congregations, including many Christian churches. Thurman was instrumental in bringing together rabbis of fellow Jewish congregations through his role in the creation of the St. Louis Rabbinical Association. A Thirty-Third Degree Mason, he was a longtime fiend of Harry S. Truman. Thurman was singularly honored when he was invited to deliver the invocation at President Truman's inauguration in January 1949, the first rabbi in American history to participate in a presidential inauguration.
Ira Tick is a Jewish educator.
Rabbi Raphael Barukh Toledano (1890-1971), rabbi of Meknes, Morocco, immigrated to Israel in 1963. He worked to strengthen the tradition and identity of Moroccan Jews who immigrated to Israel.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE FRSL (/ˈtɒlkiːn/;[a] 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972. Tolkien also translated the Book of Jonah for the Jerusalem Bible, which was published in 1966.
The Jewish English Torah (JET) is a project to translate the TaNaKh. The project uses the World English Bible (WEB) as the base while making appropriate corrections where the WEB presents non-Jewish readings of scripture.
Rabbi Torczyner is the Rosh Beit Midrash of Yeshivat Or Chaim and Ulpanat Orot in Toronto. Since 1995, his website, WebShas, has provided a topic-driven index to the Talmud. Another website, HaMakor, offers bibliographies on a range of Torah topics. More than 500 recordings of Rabbi Torczyner’s shiurim delivered in Toronto are featured on yutorah.com. He holds rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Elchanan Theological Seminary. Rabbi Torczyner maintains a popular blog, The Rebbetzin’s Husband, and lives in Thornhill with his wife, Caren, and their four children.
Pablo A. Torijano, Ph.D. (2000), New York University, is Associate Professor in the Department of Hebrew and Aramaic Studies at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is co-editor of 1–2 Kings in Septuaginta Vetus Testamentum Graecum. His research focuses on Septuagint and Second Temple Judaism. He is the author of Solomon the Esoteric King (Brill 2002) and the co-editor of The Text of the Hebrew Bible and Its Editions, Studies in Celebration of the Fifth Centennial of the Complutensian Polyglot (Brill 2016), and Textual Criticism and Dead Sea Scrolls Studies in Honour of Julio Trebolle Barrera: Florilegium Complutense Project.
Reverend Isaac Touro (1738–1783), born in Amsterdam, was an unordained rabbinic authority and community leader in colonial America. In 1758 he left the Netherlands for Jamaica. In 1760, he arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, to serve as ḥazzan and spiritual leader of Jeshuath Israel, a Portuguese Sephardic congregation. Soon after his arrival, the congregation built the Touro Synagogue (the oldest synagogue in the United States). When the American Revolution broke out, Touro was a Loyalist, and when the British captured Newport in 1776, he remained in the city with his wife Reyna and their children, while many of his Whig congregants fled. In 1779, he moved with the British to New York, but he had no means of supporting himself there, and was dependent on British charity, so in 1782 he moved to Kingston, Jamaica, where he died in 1783.
Emanuel Tov (Hebrew: עמנואל טוב; born September 15, 1941, Amsterdam, Netherlands) is emeritus Professor in the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Ed Towbin grew up in Denver, CO in a conservative congregation. As an adult he learned of Reconstructionist Judaism, which was a comfortable place for his developing theological awakening. Ed has been writing "variants" to Reconstructionist liturgy for the past 40 years, emphasizing his understanding of principles of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. His work stresses values such as considering the divine as a process not a human-type entity; the importance of Jewish peoplehood; recognizing the human authorship of Scripture, with consequent questioning of miracles, revelations, and commandments; and rejecting ideas such as Divine Kingship and the Chosenness of the Jewish people.
The Yehoyesh Project was an effort to transcribe the entirety of Torah, Neviʼim, u-Khetuvim (New York: Yehoʼash Farlag Gezelshaft, 1941), the Yiddish translation of the TaNaKh by Yehoyesh Shloyme Blumgarten (1870-1927). Leonard Prager z"l (1925-2008), founded the Yehoyesh Project (1998-2006). Robert "Itsik" Goldenberg, Craig Abernethy, Robert Berkovitz, Martin Doering, Matthew Fisher, Jack P. Freer, David Herskovic, Allen Mayberry, Elisheva Schonfeld, Marjorie Schonhaut-Hirshan, and Meyer Wolf all contributed to the success of the project.
Isaac Treuherz is co-editor of Siddur Masorti.
Boaz Tsaban (born February 1973) is an Israeli mathematician on the faculty of Bar-Ilan University. His research interests include selection principles within set theory and nonabelian cryptology, within mathematical cryptology.
Abba Tsabrah (also, Abba Sabra, fl. ca. 1450) was an Ethiopian Orthodox monk and the teacher of the children of Emperor Zara Yaqob of Ethiopia who became a prominent and influential Jewish convert. Abba Tsabrah tried to convert the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) to Christianity, but was instead converted by them to Judaism. He then later converted the son of king Zara Yaqob, Saga-Amlak, who adopted the religious name Abba Saga. Later Abba Tsabrah and Abba Saga established a separate kingdom in modern day Ethiopia in which Jews were not persecuted. Tsabrah is also known for introducing monasticism to the Beta Israel, and the tradition of Jewish monks continued down the centuries until the Great Famine of the 1890s decimated their monasteries in Lay Armachiho.
Little is known of Rabbi Nisim haLevi Tsatsir of the Crimean Tatar rabbinic Jewish community at the turn of the 19th century. If you know more, please contact us.
Rabbi Yihya Tsalah (alternative spellings: Yichya Tzalach; Yehiya Saleh), known by the acronym of Maharitz (מוהר"ר יחיא צאלח, Moreinu HaRav Yichya Tzalach), (1713 – 1805), was one of the greatest exponents of Jewish law known to Yemen. He is the author of a liturgical commentary entitled Ets Ḥayyim (The Tree of Life), in which he follows closely the legal dicta of Maimonides. Rabbi Yiḥya Ṣāleḥ is widely remembered for his ardent work in preserving Yemenite Jewish customs and traditions, which he articulated so well in his many writings, but also for his adopting certain Spanish rites and liturgies that had already become popular in Yemen. In this regard, he was strongly influenced by the Rabbis of his previous generation, Rabbi Yehudah Sa'adi and Rabbi Yihya al-Bashiri. Initially, Rabbi Yiḥya Ṣāleḥ worked as a blacksmith until the age of thirty, after which he worked as a sofer, before becoming chief jurist of the rabbinical court in Sana'a.
Benyamim (Benny) Tsedaka is one of the elders of his people. As an historian, he has published over 100 books and over 2000 articles in Hebrew and English on Israelite Samaritan life, collated by the Internal University Computer in Israel under ‘Samaritans’. Benyamim Tsedaka is Head of the Israelite Samaritan Information Centre. Benny is the author of the ‘Samaritans’ entries in Encyclopedia Judaica; Encyclopedia of Zionism (in English); The Hebrew Encyclopedia, Jerusalem; and Encyclopedia Britannica for Youth (in Hebrew). Benny’s Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah was published in May 2013. For the first time ever, English translations of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic (Jewish) text are laid out in parallel columns with important differences noted.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; Hebrew: צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל Tsva ha-Haganah l'Yisrael, lit. 'The Army of Defense for Israel'), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym Tsahal (צה״ל), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and the Israeli Navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security apparatus, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel. The IDF is headed by the Chief of the General Staff, who is subordinate to the Israeli Defense Minister.
Rabbi Louis M. Tuchman (1924-2012), born in the Bronx, New York, was an Orthodox movement rabbi in the United States. He received his semikhah at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, where he was also a magna cum laude graduate. He was the assistant editor of Tradition (Rabbinical Council of America) and associate editor of the Rabbinical Council Manual as well as editor of the Rabbinical Council’s Proceedings. He served a rabbi for Agudas Achim Congregation (Peoria, Illinois). In 1960, 1964, 1973, and 1977 he was chaplain and kashruth supervisor at the National Boy Scout Jamboree. He was the recipient of the Shofar Award, the highest national award, in recognition of outstanding service in behalf of Jewish youth in the Boy Scouts of America. He served as president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. Notably among Orthodox rabbis, Rabbi Tuchman advocated for integration and civil rights in the 1950s. (If you can add more details to this bio, please contact us.)
Rabbi Ethan Tucker is co-founder and rosh yeshiva at Mechon Hadar and chair in Jewish Law. Ethan was a faculty member at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education, where he taught Talmud and Halakhah in the Scholars' Circle. Ethan was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and earned a PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a B.A. from Harvard College. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, he was a co-founder of Kehilat Hadar and a winner of the first Grinspoon Foundation Social Entrepreneur Fellowship. He was named one of America’s Top 50 Rabbis by Newsweek in 2011 and 2012.
Chava Turniansky is a leading scholar of Old Yiddish. Born in Mexico, Turniansky attended the Yidishe Shul, took private Hebrew lessons, and joined the Socialist Zionist Youth Movement. In 1957 she emigrated to Israel, where she first studied education and went on to study Yiddish with some of the most prominent scholars of the time. Her publications shed light on the manifold aspects of Ashkenazi life, literature, and culture, including its internal bilingualism, the way literacy and knowledge are transmitted, how men and women are educated, book production and reception, and women readers and writers. Turniansky views not just as the vernacular of fourteenth to eighteenth century Jewish society but as a vehicle for understanding the literary, philological, historical and sociological mores of the period. (via her entry in the Jewish Women's Archive)
Founded in 2015, Tzedek Chicago is an intentional Jewish congregation based on core values of justice, equity and solidarity. The congregation's core values emphasize the Torah’s central narrative of liberation, the prophetic imperative to speak truth to power, and an expansive diasporic vision that views the entire world as a Jewish homeland with open borders for all.
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