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
This work is in the Public Domain due to the lack of a copyright renewal by the copyright holder listed in the copyright notice (a condition required for works published in the United States between January 1st 1924 and January 1st 1964).
This work was scanned by Aharon Varady for the Open Siddur Project from a volume held in the collection of the HUC Klau Library, Cincinnati, Ohio. (Thank you!) This work is cross-posted to the Internet Archive, as a repository for our transcription efforts.
Scanning this work (making digital images of each page) is the first step in a more comprehensive project of transcribing each prayer and associating it with its translation. You are invited to participate in this collaborative transcription effort!
PREFACE
This prayer-book contains the traditional prayers for week-days, as well as the benedictions which are recited at home, on all occasions.
The Evening Prayers were placed at the beginning of this volume, with the hope that it will serve the purpose of impressing the reader with the basic principle in Jewish life that the day begins with the preceding evening.
The English translation has been adopted from the best versions used in England and in America. Our thanks are due to the Jewish Publication Society of America for its kind permission to reprint in this volume its English version of all Biblical passages that form part of the regular prayers.
It has long been felt that the rendition of the word “Torah” by “Law” has been erroneous, since the word Torah is in most cases used for the entire body of sacred Hebrew literature. (See Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, p. 196c.) Hence the word “Torah” is used in the English translation; and the interested reader who is not acquainted with the Hebrew will find its definition in any standard dictionary.
JACOB BOSNIAK,
Brooklyn, N. Y.,
Tishre 5697-1936
“? תפלות ישראל לימי חול (אשכנז) | Tefilot Yisrael Limei Ḥol — Prayers of Israel vol.1: For Weekdays and Special Occasions, a bilingual Hebrew-English prayerbook edited by Rabbi Jacob Bosniak (1937)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.
Yitsḥaḳ Yaakov (Jacob) Bosniak (also Bosnyak, 1887–1963) was an American Conservative rabbi. Bosniak was born in Russia, immigrated to the U.S. in 1903, and completed his rabbinical studies at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Yeshivah, an Orthodox seminary, in 1907. In 1917, he was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he earned a Doctor of Hebrew Letters in 1933. In 1921, after having served Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas, Texas, he became rabbi of the Ocean Parkway Jewish Center in Brooklyn, n.y., a congregation he was to serve for 28 years. He was president of the Brooklyn Board of Rabbis (1938–40), chairman of the *Rabbinical Assembly's Rabbinic Ethics Committee (1945–48) and a judge (dayyan) and member of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Conciliation Board of America. Believing in the need for a uniform prayer book (siddur) with modern English translations, Bosniak published several prayer books that gained wide acceptance in Conservative synagogues. He edited Prayers of Israel (1925, 1937), Likutei Tefilot: Public and Pulpit Prayers (1927) and Anthology of Prayer (1958), prayer books that included English translations of Sabbath and Holiday prayers, English hymns, responsive readings, and instructions related to worship in English. In 1944, he published Interpreting Jewish Life: The Sermons and Addresses of Jacob Bosniak. Upon his retirement in 1949, Bosniak was elected rabbi emeritus and devoted his time to Jewish scholarship, publishing a critical edition of The Commentary of David Kimhi on the Fifth Book of Psalms (1954).
Aharon Varady, founding director of the Open Siddur Project, is a copyright researcher and amateur book scanner. He prepares digital images and new digital editions of prayer books and related works in the Public Domain in order to make their constituent parts (prayers, translations, annotations, etc.) publicly accessible for collaborative transcription by project volunteers. (In some cases, he finds existing digital editions prepared by others that require correction and reformatting.) If you appreciate his efforts, please send him a kind note or contribute to his patreon account.
Comments, Corrections, and Queries