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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.
Adam Zagoria-Moffet is the rabbi of St Albans Masorti Synagogue. He was ordained from the Jewish Theological Seminary where he also received an MA in Jewish Thought. He grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Minnesota, New York, and Israel before moving to the UK. His interests are primarily in mysticism, ethics, and Sephardic Judaism and culture. He lives in St Albans with his family.
Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman (Hebrew: ר' אליהו בן שלמה זלמן) known as the Vilna Gaon or by his Hebrew acronym HaGra ("HaGaon Rabbenu Eliyahu": "The sage, our teacher, Elijah") (Sialiec, April 23, 1720 – Vilnius October 9, 1797), was a Talmudist, halakhist, kabbalist, and the foremost leader of misnagdic (non-hasidic) Jewry of the past few centuries. He is commonly referred to in Hebrew as ha-Gaon he-Chasid mi-Vilna, "the pious genius from Vilnius".
Israel Zangwill (14 February 1864 – 1 August 1926) was a British author at the forefront of cultural Zionism during the 19th century, and was a close associate of Theodor Herzl. He later rejected the search for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and became the prime thinker behind the territorial movement.
Rabbi David Zaslow (b. Brooklyn, New York, 1947) serves Ḥavurah Shir Ḥadash in Ashland, Oregon. He was ordained in 1995 by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi under the supervision and mentorship of Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfeld. In 2003 he completed his term as a Spiritual Advisor to ALEPH, the umbrella organization of the Jewish Renewal movement. Before his ordination he served as a rabbinic intern for the Jewish communities Crescent City, CA, Bend, OR, and Redding, CA. During his years as a poet-in-the-schools for the southern Oregon region, David Zaslow wrote and edited more than a dozen of books of poetry as well as two albums of children’s music for publishers like Good Apple; Harcourt Brace Javanovich; and Scott Foresman. In the late 1970s David, along with partner Steve Sacks, co-created what became the Peter Britt Jazz Festival by bringing jazz legends like Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, Dizzie Gillespie, Woodie Herman, and dozens of other jazz greats to southern Oregon for the first time. Along with poet Lawson Inada, in 1988 he was awarded an American Book Award for educational materials for a project he co-produced featuring Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows to music composed by Patti McCoy.
Rabbi Norman Zdanowitz served Congregation Beth Abraham, Auburn, Maine until 1966 after which he led Kings Park Jewish Center until 1972. We know very little more about Rabbi Zdanowitz. Please add to this short bio by contacting us.
Hillel Zeitlin (הלל צייטלין 1871-1942) was the leading figure of what may be called “philosophical neo-Hasidism” among Eastern European Jews in the pre-Holocaust era. A tireless author, journalist, and polemicist, he published constantly in both the Yiddish and Hebrew presses, offering a bold new vision of contemporary spiritual life grounded in his reading of Hasidic sources. But Zeitlin sought to become an activist as well as a literary figure. He was especially concerned with the situation of the rootless Jewish youth. Throughout his career as a public figure, beginning shortly after World War I, he issued calls for a new organization of Jewish life. In a series of articles published in the 1920s, he sought to form an elite Jewish spiritual fraternity to be called Yavneh, which was the most fully elaborated of his attempts at intentional community. (via his introduction by Arthur Green at In Geveb)
Joseph Georg Ziegler (1902-1988) was a Roman Catholic clergyman and biblical scholar. He was rector of the University of Würzburg (1961-1962). Ziegler was a Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and, from 1959, a Full Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He published numerous works, his major work being the Göttingen Septuagint.
Yitzchok Zilberstein (Hebrew: יצחק זילברשטיין, also spelled Silberstein) (born 1934) is a prominent Orthodox rabbi, posek (Jewish legal authority) and expert in medical ethics. He is the av beis din of the Ramat Elchanan neighborhood of Bnei Brak, the Rosh Kollel of Kollel Bais David in Ḥolon, and the Rav of Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak. His opinion is frequently sought and quoted on all matters of halakhah for the Israeli Lithuanian yeshiva community.
Aharon Zisling (אהרון ציזלינג, 26 February 1901 – 16 January 1964) was an Israeli politician and minister and a signatory of Israel's declaration of independence.
Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is the Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Born in 1945 in Chu, Kazakhstan (USSR) to Polish Holocaust survivors who had met in Siberia, Rabbi Zoberman spent his early childhood in Poland, Austria and from 1947 to 1949 at Germany’s Wetzlar Displaced Persons Camp, American Zone. He grew up in Haifa, Israel and served in the IDF in the 1960s before emigrating to the United States in 1966. Rabbi Zoberman is the only rabbi to earn a doctorate in Pastoral Care and Counseling from Chicago’s McCormick Theological Seminary, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. A resident of Virginia since 1981, he served one year as Associate Rabbi at Ohef Sholom Temple in Norfolk before founding Congregation Beth Chaverim, the first Reform synagogue in Virginia Beach. In 1999, his alma mater, Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, awarded him the honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree.
Gary Phillip Zola is the Executive Director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA) and the Edward M. Ackerman Family Distinguished Professor of the American Jewish Experience & Reform Jewish History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati. Since 1998, he has served as the second Executive Director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA), succeeding his teacher and mentor, Jacob Rader Marcus (1896–1995). He is also editor of The Marcus Center’s award-winning semi-annual publication, The American Jewish Archives Journal. Zola served as the organizer and chair of the congressionally-recognized Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History, a consortium of leading research institutions established to promote the study of American Jewish history during the 350th anniversary Jewish life in America (2004–2005). In 2006, Zola became the first American Jewish historian to receive appointment to the Academic Advisory Council of the congressionally-recognized Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. In addition to these national activities, Zola has been actively involved in community relations in Cincinnati, Ohio. In May 2009, the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission conferred the Bishop Herbert Thompson, Jr. Outstanding Humanitarian Award on Zola in recognition of his service to the people of the greater Cincinnati metropolitan area. The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati recognized Zola’s service to Cincinnati’s Jewish community in 2004 by awarding him its Distinguished Leadership Award. In 2011, President Barack Obama appointed Zola to serve as a member of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. Although HUC-JIR presidents have received such distinctions over the years, Zola is the first regular member of the College-Institute’s faculty to serve on a standing commission of the United States Government in the history of the school.
Rabbi Nathan Zolondek (1921-1993) served as rabbi for Temple Tifereth Jacob, Hialeah, Florida. We know very little else about save that earlier in his career, he served as cantor and principal of the religious school for Ahavath Shalom Sunday School in Rhode Island. If you know more, please contact us.
Rabbi Shlomoh Zrihen (שלמה זריהן; b?,1939 - d.2017), was a son of Rabbi Mosheh Zrihen, chief rabbi of Marrakesh, Morocco, and the composer of the well-loved piyyut, "Elekha Ekra Yah El Nora."
Shoshana Michael Zucker was first fascinated by the boundaries and history of Jewish liturgy as a teenager in NFTY in the early 1970s, the waning days of the Union Prayer Book. Since then, she has moved to Israel, raised a family and launched them into adulthood, while praying from varied siddurim with countless notes in the margin and extra notes stuck between the pages. A translator and editor by profession, she would rather study and teach Torah.
Shlomo Zuckier, a founder of the Lehrhaus, is the Flegg Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at McGill University. He recently completed a PhD in Religious Studies at Yale University as well as studies in Yeshiva University's Kollel Elyon. Shlomo was formerly Director of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus at Yale University. An alumnus of Yeshivat Har Etzion and Yeshiva University (BA, MA, Semikhah), he has lectured widely across North America, and is excited to share Torah and Jewish scholarship on a broad range of issues. He has taught at Yale Divinity School, Yeshiva University, the Drisha Institute, Bnot Sinai, and Tikvah programs, and has held the Wexner and Tikvah Fellowships. Shlomo serves on the Editorial Committee of Tradition, is co-editor of Torah and Western Thought: Intellectual Portraits of Orthodoxy and Modernity, and is editing the forthcoming Contemporary Uses and Forms of Ḥasidut. (via the Lehrhaus)
Simon Zuker (also, Shimon Zucker, 1911-1980) a Gerer ḥassid from Łódź, was a businessman, activist and orator for the trade union and Jewish political party in Poland Po’alei Agudath Israel in Poland. He was a death camp survivor and according to the memoir of his brother-in-law, Michael Lubliner, "became especially known for his successful rescue work after the war; he saved hundreds and hundreds of children who had survived in Poland and neighboring countries by hiding in various places." With Rabbi Leibel Cywiak, he founded the Zachor Institute for the Perpetuation of the Memory of European Jewry and published The Unconquerable Spirit: Vignettes of the Jewish Religious Spirit that the Nazis Could Not Destroy (translated by Gertrude Hirschler, 1980). Zuker was the subject of a short article by Elie Wiesel published in The Daily Forward on 5 August 1965. The article identified Zuker as the ḥazzan of a Rosh Hashanah service in the Siegmar-Shoenau concentration camp. (Please contact us to correct or add to this short profile.)
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