When I was a kid the Shiloh Siddur was king, that blue large printed siddur was all I used. I remember how the siddurs cover would become tattred and then the little threads would all start coming loose until you had to tear them off because it was too addicting. The Shiloh Siddur came in one color and one style, yet its popularity was because you knew exactly where to go when you busted it out. The older ones were rare, you know, the ones with the pink covers from 1930 or something. They were usually tucked away in the far reaches of the book shelf next to those yellow covered Tikun Mayer siddurs that were printed in 1935. The Shiloh Siddur was and still is like the McDonalds of Siddurs- you know exactly what you are getting, no surprises.
When I was graduated 8th grade my school gave me one of those compact beige Artscroll siddurs, the hard to read small lettering and bulky feel of it was nothing to compare to the very ergonomically shaped Shiloh siddur, yet everywhere I went people used Artscrolls- which led me to believe that Artscroll had a monopoly on the siddur market and was exploiting it for all it was worth, by forcing folks to use extra bulky siddurs with poor translations and without the old school print of the Torah.
Then all of the sudden there were multiple Artscroll siddurs that were all exactly the same except for their packaging. I felt as if Artscroll were pulling the Beatles and Aerowsmith moves of repackaging their famous works and greatest hit multiple times just so they could keep coming out with albums long after the band members were dead or off doing other projects. Even Tupac and Biggie still have albums released even though they were both gunned down over 10 years ago.
With Artscroll you have 3 of the exact same siddurs in different packaging. The black cover, beige cover and the beige and white cover. Then you have the compact yet bulky siddur in beige. The skinny no English included in maroon, the transliterated maroon, and the transliterated in Russian and that is also maroon- which sucks because you rush to get the transliterated for yom tov or something only to discover that since you escaped from Russia before you learned to read, the siddur has no use for you.
Its funny because as many times as they have re-released the same siddurim that are just repackaged, the ever present Stone Chumash has been around for quite some time without them busting out a new one. Even Gutnick has released another chumash, they of course had only single sedras and then busted out the big mama chamisha chumshey torah.
If I could convey any sort of thing to Artscroll I would say this. How about a translation to keep your progressiveness of the times. Maybe something that is void of thee, thou and sages. How about normal words instead of the biblical “thee will smite you” crap. Also how about a siddur with normal old school lettering, and maybe a Spanish translated siddur.
I call ArtScroll the MicroSoft of Jewish publicaton. I remember the Shilo siddur, too.
I’ve been working on a Hebrew-Klingon translinear siddur for some time now.
Don’t worry, they’re making interlinear chumashim now.
which sucks because you rush to get the transliterated for yom tov or something only to discover that since you escaped from Russia before you learned to read, the siddur has no use for you.
LOL!!!
I have many Artscroll siddurim but since I learned to daven only in Hebrew without any translation, I find the translinear or the “translation on the page across” pretty annoying” cause when I am davening I want to concentrate on my prayer and not constantly turn pages cause the next page is all translation or the next line is in English or something. I am a happy camper in my shul, all the young people go grab the Artscrolls, and I go grab the old school siddurim. 🙂
Notice how Artscroll hasn’t put out anything interesting in the last year or so..
No new siddurim, exciting new translation.
Hesh, good one. We all started out with the Shilo. Then we graduated to the Tikun Meir, as Shilo was only for school children because it had line numbers! Then there was the Tiferes Yakov era. Now we are in the ARTSCROLL era, which has seen many evolutions.
lakewoodshmuck.blogspot.com
Awww, Shiloh siddurs!
That brings back such cute memories of Kabbalat Shabbat in elementary school. We’d do it very Friday afternoon; a girl would be the ima and a boy would be the abba and they’d lead the songs/prayers and we’d all eat challah and drink from those tiny bottles of grape juice. I loved being the ima, cuz I always loved Shabbat 😀
Ah, gotta love secular Jewish elementary schools…
The Chabad shul I sometimes go to still uses the old Shiloh Siddurim, but my normal shul uses the damn Artscrolls with the interlineal translation with is pretty confusing for someone who doesn’t read Hebrew because the English is all printed backwards in the way you would read Hebrew. So when it says “Shema Israel” in Hebrew it says under that “Israel, O.” Which is incredibly annoying and confusing to say the least.
I forgot to also mention that along with the backwards English it has these little arrows pointing the opposite way of the way that you are supposed to be reading the English:
“Israel, O”
>>>>>>
which adds to the confusion.
“the siddurs cover would become tattred and then the little threads would all start coming loose until you had to tear them off because it was too addicting”. Hello so true!…i was laughing so hard wen i read this…i used to always pick the pieces till there was like no cover left!
Btw I love artscroll (not the interlinear) because it always tells me when to stand, when to bow, when to say something out loud etc…I need the instructions.
I like the classic Artscroll siddurim, but I can’t stand the interlinear one.
Here is the real skinny. The information industry is a trillion dollar industry. Publishing has always been the best way to make money. Shilo siddurim are awesome, but as someone else mentioned, they were intended for children, kinda like reading rainbow, and the oregon trail. I remember reading about a siddur shilo with Art Garfunkel’s name penciled in was sold on ebay 6 or 7 years ago.
If you wanna rag on the Jewish publishing industry, try picking a fight with what I like to call the “Plagiarism Era” where people compile other peoples stories and rush them to print. almost a dozen maggid books, visions of greatness, stories for the soul, and whoever knows whatelse is out there.
Personally, I am quite happy with my Storyteller and back of Olumeinu’s!
That was the life, stop telling us about chaim yankel who tied his shoe properly and missed his train which blew up in an esrog plant, so he names his kid lulava.
I would much rather hear about Rebbi Nachmun, or mendel the mouse, or even on a rainy day some good old Detective B.na .
Amen!
I never used the Shilo siddur and was taught from the Green/Brown Ktav siddur. I also remember only people using the blue Birnbaum siddur as well. People started to use the Artscroll because it was the only siddur that had english as well as instructions for the different things you should do during davening. Once the Artscroll became popular tthey started doing other things. I use the Metsudah now since i like the way they do the interlinear. When the Metsudah started to get popular, Arstcroll copied them and put the transliteration under the words instead of next to it. Metsudah also has the interlinear chumash which artscroll will probably copy. Soncino, Ktav and Steinsalz also had Gemaras in English but Artscroll came out with their own. I dont have a problem with Artscroll but they are not innovators but copiers. The only thing they did innovate was an English Siddur with instructions.
The Shpy rules!
Heshy – one again you crack me up! Thanks!
“How about normal words instead of the biblical “thee will smite you” crap. Also how about a siddur with normal old school lettering, and maybe a Spanish translated siddur. “
Mel, How about K’tonton!
Psychotoddler had a pot on this once. I like the interlinear since I know most of what the words mean. If I forget one I simply look below and behold the translation is right there. Also as a musician I’m uised to reading two things at once.
i just don’t like turning pages, so for me the best is when they cram the most words on one page. Artscroll does not do well in this, especially with any kind of translation. The best i have found is the siddurim they put in the back of the small chumashim. they have about 5-10 regular pages for one page turn’s worth.
More importantly, i avoid artscroll because i don’t want anyone to think i am a baal tshuva chas veshalom.
I have not been on the net since I published this article- so thats why response is late.
So I davened in the White Shull yesterday in Far Rockaway and lo and behold I cam across an interesting oddity. There were normal weekday artscroll siddurs that were a tad smaller then the wide and flat maroon ones- yet these were bright blue covers. Everything was the same besides the covers and the maybe 1/2 inch of so of smallness. Once again I was going to cal up Eichlers’ lobbying department so they can push ahead with the Jewish Anti-trust legislation that broke apart the Hadar, Unger and Seasons conglomerate that dominate the crappy heimishe mayo and ketchup market for years.
There actually is a Spanish siddur out there – I saw it here in Israel recently.
It’s from South America, but I can’t remember which nusach.
At home, I still use my Birnbaum edition, printed in 1952. Most of the pages are still in excellent condition. In my shul, most siddurim are blue Birnbaum, and most chumashim are Hertz edition.
The shul shelf also has a dozen Hebrew-only Artscroll siddurim for visitors and Hebrew purists.
Thats because your shull is old school. I am actually working on a post about judging folks based on siddur choice.
I like my artscroll siddur, but it’s not even in my nusach! lol, it was a present from someone when I started becoming religious. I ue it in school when we’re learning bout tefillot.
Now I use one for Sefardim for davening, like I’m supposed to, and I love it 🙂
“Maybe something that is void of thee, thou and sages. How about normal words instead of the biblical “thee will smite you” crap.”
Artscroll may have its problems, but one of their main points is the elimination of archaic language from the translation, compared to birnbaum/soncino or whatever.
Indeed, my shul is mostly elderly, with a few young families, and a sizable Talmud Torah that davens separately in a classroom.
Our Hertz chumash includes not only chazal, but also the comments of historians, and non-Jewish writers. For many haredim, that’s a no-no.
Between seudat shlishit and maariv motzae Shabbos, the shul loudly recites Psalm 144 and 67. Our Havdalah ends with loudly reciting Psalm 128, also a German tradition.
I hope you don’t judge me to be an elderly yekkie. I happen to be younger than you!
Artscroll has a spanish siddur its the Edicion Fischmann “el sidur Artscroll completo”.
I still have my shiloh from 1st grade, and it was used so much (three times a day, four on shabbos and yomtov {As a kid I davened shachris shabbos and yomtov, ate breakfast, learned a shtikel, then davened musaf}) but now I, as a nusach s’fardnik (I’m chassidische/yekkishe {don’t ask} in a litvishe shul/yeshiva) I, during the voch use the breslov “Eis Rotzon” siddur, Its got a great peirush and is the perfect size (Cant stand shul size artscroll, mini year-round artscroll or big artscroll all hebrew (I use that on shabbos, nusach sfard, because it was the only shabbos siddur I could find in nusach s’fard when I got my new siddurim.) I, when davening in a nusach ashkenaz shul (for the kehilloh) use birnbaum or whatever the shul provides.
I’m old fashioned, I guess – I will always love the Birnbaum siddur. I say that even though I am Sephardic (and thus use – can you guess? – the deSola Pool siddur). Both have a nice balance in their typography and both attempt to translate according to the overall meaning rather than literally word for word.
The problem with the birnbaum is that the translation is so old school. I just cannot stand the “and he will smite you” kind of lingo.
De Sola Pool sounds like a resort in Spain.
“With Artscroll you have 3 of the exact same siddurs in different packaging. The black cover, beige cover and the beige and white cover.”
Not true. Black is the RCA edition: it contains the Prayer for the State of Israel. Beige is the standard edition and doesn’t have it (someone called it the antizionist siddur at my shul). I don’t know anything about the third one
So basically its kind of like when the Beatles re-release an album throw some outtakes on the extra cd and call it the new edition.
as long as noone puts up some real competition to artscroll, were doomed to having them around for a long time to come
Go, Birnbaum! That’s the one that they gave me at my Bat Mitzvah at Monsey Jewish Center in 1989 — and I still use it.
I like the siddur vilna. It’s more yeshivish, and it has all the geshmak halachos from the mishna brura no one knows about!
Looks like Artscroll might have some competition: http://www.ou.org/index.php/news/article/39691/
>Also how about a siddur with normal old school lettering
There you go! I actually have no major complaints about Artscroll, unlike those MO Professors and blogs that nag all year long about how they are so right-wing and anti-MO etc. Yes, Artscroll is chareidi. Deal with it and get a life.
The one thing I can’t stand though is their Hebrew font. They need to try out some other types.
They need to do the shiloh siddur font- maybe they could do a special edition pink siddur for all the gay folks amongst us.
Nadav, that is SO INTERESTING, thank you for pointing that out.
I can’t be separated from my Metsudah Shabbos/Yom Tov siddur. It’s put together so that the phrasing is right, the translations aren’t too corny (ala Birnbaum), and most of all, it’s a perfect fit in my hand. Highly recommended for davening with an infant on your shoulder.
The Artscroll Interlinear gets me dizzy, i don’t know which way my eyes are supposed to be going!
Dude, the Chabad siddur is everywhere too!
of course if you want a really awesome translation then you might want to pre-order the new Koren Sacks Siddur: http://www.amazon.com/Koren-Sacks-Siddur-Prayerbook-Standard/dp/9653010670/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234169800&sr=8-1
I tried asking Artscroll which of their many siddurim has the davening for Yom Haatsmaout. That was 2 years ago. They’re still working on their reply.
Why would a charedi publishing house have the davenening for Yom HaAtzmaut? It’s not really their hashkafa. If you want a siddur with the tefilla for this chag, then order the new Koren Sacks Siddur.
Nice – I love clever advertising – I only let celver spam people comment, the other get taken down
My favorite siddur on my shelf is my Artscroll Shabbos-Rosh Chodesh-Chanukah siddur. Actually, it is the only book on that shelf.
Next time you’re in Queens, check out the Bukharian siddurim. They have one of Hashem’s names written inside the other.
Help us make the first open source and free culture siddur at the Open Siddur Project. The project aims to be an online database of all the variations of the siddur and a collaborative publishing tool for folks to craft their own personally customized siddur with an on-demand printer or book artist.
Aharon,
How exactly are you going to do that. You can’t put the nusach of any Siddur that is still around so what’s the point?
I love the shameless self promotion keep it up
@Raphael: I don’t understand your question. Are you saying that the nusach in the Koren Siddur cannot be found in siddurim that are in the Public Domain? All of the nuschaot are our people’s cultural heritage. No publishing house can “own” the historic nuschaot: not nusach Ashkenaz, not nusach Sefardi, not nusach Temani nor Mizrachi nor Roman. There is certainly material in siddurim since the introduction of copyright law that is copyright, namely, translations, commentary, typefaces, and some recently authored prayers or songs that might appear in the siddurim of certain denominations and congregations. The Open Siddur is a free and open source software project of translators, transcribers, scholars, and artists, creating an archive of all the diverse nuschaot of the many geographically dispersed Jewsih communities and making all of their ingredients and arrangements available as free XML encoded texts. With the website we’re developing, one should be able to combine and share translations, commentary, and source text together to generate a pdf they can then bind and publish with an on-demand printer.
@Heshy: This seemed like the right post to mention the Open Siddur Project… no?
Correct. The nusach in each siddur is unique to that Siddur and is a result of many years of research. For example the Singer’s Siddur is a 120-yr-old nusach which cannot be copied. Koren put in 10 years into the original siddur and a further 3 years were put in to the creation of the USA edition. Artscroll also will have put in thousands of thousands of hours of research into the nusach.
So yes, if you copy any of the modern siddurim, you would be in serious infrigement of intellectual copyright.
A publisher of siddurim don’t simply type up text from another siddur and typeset it. That would be easy. You need a team of scholars, Rabbanim, experts in medieval litature, grammarians (of 3 different time periods), etc to analyse and work out the best nusach and then you have to make decisions of which texts to use, eg Yedid Nefesh — the popular text which doesn’t really make sense, or the original text etc. These decisions are often commercial decisions (will people want the “incorrect” text) for example.
I looked at your project for some time and just don’t understand what you are trying to achieve. If you want to put together a simply mincha siddur or whatever, then buy DavkaWriter. There you have the text, the typefaces and the software to do a great job for the purpose that you seem to be aiming for.
By the way, the same is true of the Tanakh. If you copy an Artscroll/Koren/Breuer etc Tanakh, again you are in breach of copyright. And no, not each Tanakh is exactly the same. There are many opinions. So what are you going to do? Use the Leningrad Codex? But we know that is a good basis, but what next? Who are your scholars that are going to produce a perfect Tanakh for free? And what are their qualifications? The Koren Tanakh took 10 years just to proofread! (Of course that’s why it has such a good reputation, but that’s beside the point).
I’m all for free stuff. I think that the project is a wonderful idea, but as a person that has produced a few siddurim, I’m completely lost as to how you are going to do this.
Rapheal I don’t think you understand – these people want to take the siddur and make it into a “Jew-ish” book/compilation of all sorts of “prayers” the prayer for sex changes to the poem you said at your bubbies funereal.
Basically anything goes and you can just print it out and make your own siddur.
The open siddur sounds really cool, but its just another way to make Judaism more progressive and less about mesorah and tradition and more about “do whatever feels right” or so it seems
Hmmm. I looked at their website. They are taking this quite seriously and I think that they think that they can create a serious source of texts. I’m just not convinced that this can work. For example in the Amida, are they going to write mashiv haruach umorid hagashem or hageshem? Both are right. Just different opinions. Which opinion are they going to follow and most importantly, what will this be based on.
@Raphael:
For example in the Amida, are they going to write mashiv haruach umorid hagashem or hageshem
Both! The beauty of an Internet resource is that you are not limited to representing a single opinion per print edition. It’s up to the user to decide which to use in his/her edition. You may consider that a good or a bad thing.
As for the basis, there are many well-respected texts that were published before 1923 (the effective cutoff year for copyright protection in the US). One of the examples you cite is the Singer siddur (“The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregation”), which is I haven’t looked at specifically, but, which was first published in 1890. The first(!) basis for the nusah Ashkenaz siddur we’re using is Seligmann Baer’s Seder Avodat Yisrael, originally published in 1868, and republished many times since (including the 1901 edition whose text we’re reproducing). In the United States (and, I believe everywhere else in the world), the copyright on both of these editions has long-since expired and their texts can be copied legally. It is (as you well know) impossible to create a traditional siddur 100% from scratch. Every contemporary publisher is
fundamentally basing its work on some pre-existing source, and I doubt that any is passing royalties to (for example) R. Jacob Emden’s great-great-great… grandchildren. Nor do they have to. For that matter, it’s unusual enough for siddur publishers to include a bibliography!
In addition, new, original works will be accepted into the project’s archives. In those, the copyright will be owned by the author and licensed to the project for free modification and redistribution (for a model, think Wikipedia).
The commercial interest of which textual choice will move the book in the market is irrelevant to what is in essence an archival resource.
@Heshy:
The open siddur sounds really cool, but its just another way to make Judaism more progressive and less about mesorah and tradition and more about “do whatever feels right” or so it seems
Ironically, it also presents the opportunity to increase the connection to tradition — in opposition to adopting whatever tradition a publisher decided would move the market or decided was the “frum” thing to do in exclusion of other equally valid choices. If you want a “traditional nusach Y siddur” without any progressive frills, you could simply select the appropriate choices and make one.
(Disclaimer: self-promoting.)
@Raphael: First of all, thanks for your interest in our project. For those reading this, Raphael Freedman is the Managing Editor / Production Director at Koren Publishers Jerusalem, and it is an honor to be having this public conversation with Koren.
I am a huge fan of Koren Publishing, the Koren TaNaKh and the new Koren Siddur. The markets that Koren and Open Siddur are serving, however, are different. On-demand printing (e.g. lulu.com or lupa.co.il) provides an excellent opportunity to print siddurim for underserved communities that do not have a translation or transliteration in their language for their preferred nusach. There are also many individuals and communities who are not served in their practice of the t’fillah by the siddurim designed by Artscroll, Birnbaum, and yes, Koren. Instead of designing the siddur, we’re creating a collaborative publishing platform for individuals and communities to craft their own siddur relevant to their practice.
There is also a need for an academic site that can trace the evolution of the siddur in all of its many interesting variations. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if scholars of the siddur had a common place for sharing and collaborating on their scholarship? If Koren shares this vision, let’s work on making it happen!
We are also inspired by the unfinished work of Jacob Freedman and his Polychrome Jewish Historical Prayer Book (1969). The text of his siddur was color coded indicating which period of authorship the text of any particular section or line was composed. Nowadays we call that metadata. Unfortunately, Freedman died before he was able to complete his text. It’s up to us to complete the beautiful work he started.
Many of the questions you are asking are answered at the site that we are documenting our process and procedures: http://wiki.jewishliturgy.org
From there you can see that we’re busy transcribing Seligman Baer’s Seder Avodat Yisrael (1868, 1901).
You wrote, “The nusach in each siddur is unique to that Siddur and is a result of many years of research. For example the Singer’s Siddur is a 120-yr-old nusach which cannot be copied. Koren put in 10 years into the original siddur and a further 3 years were put in to the creation of the USA edition. Artscroll also will have put in thousands of thousands of hours of research into the nusach.”
We believe we can achieve high quality results with an open source model for research and development, and by releasing all of our work into the Creative Commons so that other projects (commercial, academic, and non-commercial) will not have to reinvent the wheel after us, and can simply work to improve on our efforts. We are not interested in copying either the Artscroll or Koren Siddur, when there are many high quality siddurim that are available to us in the Public Domain.
“So yes, if you copy any of the modern siddurim, you would be in serious infrigement of intellectual copyright.”
The text of the siddurim we are transcribing are in the Public Domain. As you yourself explained, siddurim in the public domain were also the source for Koren’s siddur. We are NOT transcribing (i.e., copying) any siddurim the content of which is copyrighted. It is not in our interest to since one of our goals is to create an archive of historical siddurim tracing the evolution of the textual variations of the siddur.
@Heshy: I hope this helps you understand our project a little better as well. This is also explained here: http://opensiddur.net/2009/06/the-pirate-siddur/
Raphael wrote: “A publisher of siddurim don’t simply type up text from another siddur and typeset it. That would be easy. You need a team of scholars, Rabbanim, experts in medieval litature, grammarians (of 3 different time periods), etc to analyse and work out the best nusach and then you have to make decisions of which texts to use, eg Yedid Nefesh — the popular text which doesn’t really make sense, or the original text etc. These decisions are often commercial decisions (will people want the ‘incorrect’ text) for example.”
We are more interested in creating an academically relevant resource showing the original variations of siddur texts than providing a prescriptive document that presents a “correct” version. As you said, such prescriptive decisions are often commercial ones made in order to reach a certain market. In contrast, we are very interested in showing variations in early manuscripts.
Raphael wrote, “I looked at your project for some time and just don’t understand what you are trying to achieve. If you want to put together a simply mincha siddur or whatever, then buy DavkaWriter. There you have the text, the typefaces and the software to do a great job for the purpose that you seem to be aiming for.”
If only we could achieve our vision with a project currently available! But unfortunately, we cannot do so with Davkawriter or with Davka’s Transliterated Siddur. The best model that exists for creating this important community resource is free and open source software, to develop a community of user-contributors.
You wrote: “By the way, the same is true of the Tanakh. If you copy an Artscroll/Koren/Breuer etc Tanakh, again you are in breach of copyright. And no, not each Tanakh is exactly the same. There are many opinions. So what are you going to do? Use the Leningrad Codex? But we know that is a good basis, but what next? Who are your scholars that are going to produce a perfect Tanakh for free? And what are their qualifications? The Koren Tanakh took 10 years just to proofread! (Of course that’s why it has such a good reputation, but that’s beside the point).”
We would love your input and advice on these issues. As explained above we are interested in being transparent in showing the variations in original source texts. The Leningrad Codex is a good basis as you say, and we are indeed using it as one of our sources.
You wrote, “I’m all for free stuff. I think that the project is a wonderful idea, but as a person that has produced a few siddurim, I’m completely lost as to how you are going to do this.”
Join our project! No, seriously. We welcome your involvement and hope this email has helped you understand the Open Siddur better and that you’ll want to help us out so that projects building on top of the Open Siddur have the best texts available to them. There is certainly nothing preventing anyone from using the texts from our core archives (licensed under permissive copyright, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, and in some cases CC0) to use our material.
Even Koren and Artscroll could use material being contributed to the Open Siddur Project and thereby print beautifully bound editions of siddurim featuring nuschaot such as the nusach Roman. We hope that you’ll support it.
I love Birnbaum. Love it! I think it just went back into print after being out of print for years.
I also used the Shiloh in school (3rd through 6th grade). Everything you said about it is true. I learned to daven out of the Lubavitch Nusach Ari siddur in 1st grade, though, because that’s the school I was at at the time.
The white and beige Artscroll siddur was replaced by the beige only one. Except I would call it brown, not beige. Sorry if someone pointed that out already–haven’t had time to read all the comments.
Okay, let me ask you a more basic question. How is the user of this fantastic resource know how to use it? I mean if the person has the choice of geshem or gashem, how do they know which is consistent with other choices being made. Or are you saying that the extent of this resource is to have ALL options available and let the person decide based on, well, whatever they want?
I can ask further questions as to dikduk, how are you going to handle that? Are you going to put in kamatz katan and shva na? and according to which system?
What about prayers with taamey mikra, like the Shema? Are you going to have one version with taamim and one without? and then how are you going to let the user actually typeset that?
Which brings me to a plethora of technical questions, for example, let’s say you put in kamatz katan (we’ll ignore at this stage which system you use), how are you going to encode that into your text? I, for example, use typefaces that automatically convert two kamatzes typed in succession to a kamatz katan, but not everyone uses those typefaces. How are you going to handle that?
Again, please don’t let my comments discourage you, it’s just that I’m fascinated by this approach and incredibly curious. We have to make many decisions like this on a daily basis, and I’m wondering how you are making these decisions.
P.S. Sorry to interrupt the conversation about Open Siddur, which I support wholeheartedly. Carry on!
@Raphael: Those are all excellent questions, and highly technical in nature. Probably, the Frum Satire blog’s comments section is the wrong place to address them. May I suggest the jewishliturgy-discuss mailing list or private email?
With the consent of Raphael Freeman, we’ve moved our discussion re: the Open Siddur to thejewishliturgy-discuss discussion list.
Good idea. You were getting a bit serious for Frumsatire.
Haha…..at the end, you mean Gutnick had single “chumashim”, not “sedras”. A sedra is what is commonly and incorrectly called a parsha. A chumash is one fifth of the Torah, thus “Chamisha Chumshei Torah”.