This Summer at the Open Siddur Project
Aharon Varady
I hope this message finds you all healthy and well this golden summer. Our last update was mid-April, and so I've been meaning to share with everyone on this list the work that's been posted at opensiddur.org over the last three months.
We're grateful to all the folks who have shared their work: Shmueli Gonzales, Andrew Meit, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, the Adamah Fellowship, Teva Learning Center, Rachel Katz, Effron Esseiva, Avi Dolgin, Trisha Arlin, Rabbi Rallis Wiesenthal, and Reven Brauner. See below for links to their work, work that you can adopt, adapt, and redistribute under the terms of free/libre licenses.
Looking forward, I need everyone's help getting the word out that we are looking to share any liturgy (historic or contemporary celebrating two upcoming days in the Jewish calendar:
1) Tu B'Av -- the 15th day of the summer month of Av celebrating love and romance
and
2) Rosh Hodesh Elul, the Rosh Hashanah for Animals
-- the first day of the month of Elul set aside as the day for tithing animals. Just as Tu BiShvat, the historic day for tithing fruit bearing trees, was re-established by Jewish mystics as a day for repair for our relationship with trees and by extension, a life nurturing Earth, so too the Rosh Hashanah for Animals offers a similar opportunity for revisiting and correcting our relationship with animals in our charge and care (domestic and farm animals) at the beginning of the month of Elul.
If you're a creative Jew, please share work intentionally created for communal use with free/libre licenses. It's a wise strategy for getting your insights widely disseminated and incorporated into the living mesorah of Jewish culture. For folk recording print or audio resources to digital formats, sharing is a kind choice for freeing up the time, energy, and money of others who will likely need to duplicate your effort.
You can contribute by uploading (liturgy, translations, transcriptions, research, commentaries, art, recordings, etc.) here: http://opensiddur.org/contribute/upload/
Efraim Feinstein's work on the Open Siddur web application has passed milestone 0.4.3 on our development roadmap. Preparing database-ready texts is our other great challenge. Besides digitizing and transcribing Jewish liturgy and related content, we need to prepare these works so that the semantic data in the texts is preserved. What is "semantic data"? It's the difference between poetry and prose, a divine name from a personal name, a transliterated word from a non-transliterated word. Parsing texts for their semantic content is a crucial part of our project because so long as we can tag text with semantic meaning, users will ultimately be able to design and layout text specific to its semantic content. To say this differently, users will be able to easily change the way poetry and prose, divine names, transliterated words, etc. are shown by making single changes to their siddur layouts.
Many thanks to Efraim Feinstein, our lead developer, and Ze'ev Clementson and Marc Stober for their help testing code. Many thanks to John Isett and Russell Allen on their work helping us to prepare a new digital edition of the 1917JPS (and much thanks to JPS for contributing an authoritative digital edition of the JPS1917 which resides in the Public Domain).
There are other ways you can help grow a database of free for creative reuse content. Interested? Look here: http://opensiddur.org/contribute/ . If you don't have time or creative work to share, we also accept tax deductible donations through the Center for Jewish Culture & Creativity, a registered 501(3)c non-profit, by way of http://www.razoo.com/story/opensiddurproject.
Please share this email widely.
Wishing everyone a golden and healthful summer,
Aharon
Aharon Varady
Founder, Hierophant
the Open Siddur Project
sharing the ingredients of Jewish spiritual practice for the design and craft of new siddurim
http://opensiddur.org
We are grateful to Andrew Meit for restoring a Shiviti from the Royal Library of Denmark’s Simonsen Manuscripts Collection. The image was slightly adjusted by Aharon Varady. All files including the vector art are shared with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Public Domain dedication. . . . → Read More: Shiviti (restored by Andrew Meit, from the David Simonsen Manuscripts Collection)
Given that the Torah forbids impressing our imaginations with illustrations of the divine, some other method is necessary to perceive divine Oneness. One method is found in the verse in Psalms 16:8, “I have set YHVH before me at all times.” . . . → Read More: Shiviti: perceiving the world as an expression of divine Oneness
We are grateful to the Adamah Fellowship at Isabella Freedman for sharing the morning prayers for their Avodat Lev (Heart Work). The arrangement of prayers is organized on a one page songsheet, with translations shared with a Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 3.0 Unported license. . . . → Read More: Seder Avodat Lev: early morning prayers of the farmers of Adamah
Beginning late last year, I began a project to translate the Birkhat Hamazon using Rabbi Simeon Singer’s English translation and the Nusaḥ ha-Ari as the basis for publishing birkhonim (or in Yiddish, benchers). The original work was sponsored by the Teva Learning Center and its executive director, Nili Simhai, to be used in birkhonim specifically designed for use during weekdays during Teva’s Fall season. . . . → Read More: An illustration of Borei Nefashot by Rachel Katz and a translation of the Birkhat Hamazon by Aharon Varady
We are grateful to Effron Esseiva of the Shirat Hayam on Bowen Island havurah and Or Shalom Synagogue in Vancouver for sharing his recording and abbreviated translation (below) of El Malei Raḥamim (lit. “God, full of Compassion”), the prayer for the departed traditionally read at the unveiling of the headstone. Effron is studying davvening leadership . . . → Read More: El Maleh Raḥamim (Prayer for the Departed) translated and sung by Effron Esseiva
We are grateful to Reuven Brauner for contributing his translation of the rules for public prayer explained by Dr. Seligman Baer in his Seder Avodat Yisroel (1868), a critical edition of a prayerbook witnessing the Nusaḥ Ashkenaz (liturgical tradition of the Jews of Ashkenaz). As Reuven Brauner explains,
The impetus for writing this monograph . . . → Read More: Rules of Etiquette for Public Prayer (Dr. Seligman Baer, translated by Reuven Brauner)
Trisha Arlin shares “Motzi”, a kavanah (intention) for the blessing, Hamotzi Lehem Min Ha’aretz, over challah. Describing the kavanah she writes that it’s, “based on Rabbi Ellen Lippmann’s tradition on having us create a chain of touch around room that leads to and from the challah, which she then explains as both exemplifying the connection created when people eat together and the chain of work that went to creating the challah itself.” . . . → Read More: Motzi — a kavanah before eating challah by Trisha Arlin
Avi Dolgin’s translation of תהילים כט (Psalm 29) interweaves between the original Hebrew (הָב֣וּ לַֽ֭יהוָה בְּנֵ֣י אֵלִ֑ים | havu l’YHVH b’nei eilim) and an English language interpretation. The interpretation, while faithful to the original, leans heavily on environmental concerns, especially as seen from a North American West Coast perspective. . . . → Read More: תהילים כט | Psalms 29, an interpretive translation
What the Rabbis taught about teaching and learning was that all Torah study should begin and end with blessings, just as eating does. Often, in liberal Jewish circles today, these blessings are not done. But without them, it is easier for Torah study to feel like a mere academic discussion, devoid of spirit. And where the blessings are said but only by rote, it is easier for Torah study to feel merely antiquarian and automatic. In Jewish-renewal style, how can we bring new kavvanah — spiritual meaning, intention, focus, intensity — to these blessings — and therefore to the process of Torah study itself? . . . → Read More: Blessing Group Torah Study with Brakhot, Kaddish, and Kavvanah
Jews use the Kaddish to mourn the dead, though it has in it only one word — “nechamata,” consolations – which hints at mourning. And this word itself is used in a puzzling way, once we look at it with care. As we will see below, it may be especially appropriate in time of war. The interpretive English translation below may also be appropriate for prayers of mourning and hope in wartime by other spiritual and religious communities. In this version, changes in the traditional last line of the Hebrew text specifically include not only peace for the people Israel (as in the traditional version) but also for the children of Abraham and Hagar through Ishmael (Arabs and Muslims) and for all the life-forms who dwell upon this planet. . . . → Read More: Mourners Kaddish in Time of War and Violence