tagged: Early Reconstructionist • the Open Siddur Project ✍ פְּרוֺיֶּקט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ

ספר תפילות לשבת | Sabbath Prayer Book, by the Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation (1945)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (digital imaging and document preparation), Mordecai Kaplan, Eugene Kohn, Ira Eisenstein, Milton Steinberg and Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation

Categories:

Shabbat Siddurim

Tags:

58th century A.M., Siddurim for Shabbat, North American Jewry, Early Reconstructionist, Reconstructionist Jewry, Burnt Books, 20th century C.E., North America, Needing Transcription, Needing Decompilation, Nusḥaot l'Yahadut Mitkhadeshet

Arranged and translated by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the Sabbath Prayer Book is the first Reconstructionist prayerbook we know of to have entered the Public Domain. . . .

Needed Prophets for Our Day, a prayer-poem by Mordecai Kaplan (1942) adapted from “The Divinity School Address” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1838)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Mordecai Kaplan

Categories:

Lincoln's Birthday (February 12th), Musaf l'Shabbat

Tags:

English vernacular prayer, Early Reconstructionist, prophetic revelation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendentalism, 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., Prayers as poems

This prayer by Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, first penned in his diary for 23 August 1942, was first published in The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan, by Mel Scult (1990). Although the prayer was not included in Kaplan’s Sabbath Prayer Book (New York: The Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation, 1945), it was added to the loose-leaf prayerbook he kept at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism synagogue. . . .

תפלות ושירים | Prayers & Readings, selected and arranged by Rabbi Solomon Goldman (1938)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (digital imaging and document preparation) and Solomon Goldman

Categories:

Shabbat Siddurim

Tags:

20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., North American Jewry, Conservative Jewry, Early Reconstructionist, Chicago

The experimental siddur, Prayers & Readings Selected and Arranged by Rabbi Solomon Goldman can be found appended to Harry Coopersmith’s songbook, Songs of My People (1938). The work, I believe, is an excellent reflection of the creative spirit of the nascent Reconstructionist movement. Goldman’s prayerbook is both traditional and expansive, seeking to bring into its pages both familiar liturgy along with additional works from all over Jewish literary history. The work represents what Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan would call a “Binder Siddur” — the siddur as a container of inspired works for collective reading and reflection in the synagogue. Perhaps even for personal use. With its good number of authors and translators expressing different voices appealing to Goldman, Prayers & Readings is also a kind of proto-Open Siddur. However, unlike the Open Siddur, Goldman only provides acknowledgement of the various authors and translators in his preface, and we are left uncertain as to which works should actually be attributed to each contributor. If you can tell which of the listed authors and translators contributed what, please leave a comment or contact us. . . .