מגלת המתיקות Megillat HaMetiḳut (Scroll of the Sweetness), written and sealed by the hand of Noraa Neither Kaplan, upon the deliverance of the Jews from confectionary catastrophe on the 17th of Tishre...

I found the story in the [Russian State Library] Guenzburg ms. 82…in a commentary on the Pentateuch by Rabbi Judah the Pious of Regensburg that was written from memory after Rabbi Judah’s death (1217) by his son. The story, therefore, was known as early as the first years of the thirteenth century, and possibly at […]

An original Aramaic-language seder ushpizata, as a parallel to the patriarchal ushpizin, to invite matriarchal figures from history. While other "ushpizot" or "ushpizata" texts have been written befor...

The essential idea of the liturgy of Ushpizin is to invoke the energies of the seven lower Sefirot in the proper order, so that Shefa, blessing and sustenance, can be drawn down into the world. This i...

This is an archive of digital scans of maḥzorim (festival prayer books) for the pilgrimage festival of Sukkot. Most have entered the Public Domain due to the expiration of their term of copyright. Som...

This is an archive of prayers, prayer-poems, and songs for the pilgrimage festival of סֻכּוֹת Sukkot. (In some older English translations, Sukkot is referred to as the Festival of “Tabernacles.”) The ...

In the communities of Morocco and Mumbai, the day after Yom Kippur was a holiday for priests known as Yom Simḥat Kohen. The origins of this practice can be found in Mishnah Yoma 7:4, where the high priest makes a festival for his loved ones after successfully completing the Yom Kippur rituals. Looking for something else? For prayers for Yom Kippur, go here. For prayers on Tsom Gedalyah, the day after Rosh haShanah, go here.

Traditional Ashkenazi practice entailed the recitation of a large number of seliḥot piyyutim in every single one of the Yom Kippur 'amidot. In many Ashkenazi communities today, these are (excepting Ma'ariv and Ne'ilah) skipped on account of time. But this has always felt like a great shame to me, because seliḥot are, in a sense, the theological and liturgical core of the Yom Kippur practice. So a while back I made a bunch of spreadsheets to compare all the attested Yom Kippur seliḥot rites as listed in Goldschmidt's maḥzor, and designed an abbreviated cycle of seliḥot for Shaḥarit, Musaf, and Minḥah. Each cycle features two regular seliḥot, one 'aqedah (a retelling of the binding of Isaac), and one pizmon (a final seliḥah with a repeated refrain, sung communally), for a total of four seliḥot and five repetitions of the thirteen attributes. This is the first result of this process, for Shaḥarit. Musaf and Minḥah selections will arrive eventually, albeit probably not this year.

This is an archive of digital scans of maḥzorim (festival prayer books) for Yom ha-Kippurim that have entered the Public Domain, and of maḥzorim under copyright that have been contributed with Open Co...

This is a prayer for Yom Kippur. It started out as a meditation on Yizkor, hence the אל מלא רחמים form at the beginning. It quickly changed to a prayer for insight and change and the possiblity of tsh...

The zulat piyyuṭ for Shabbat Shuva, minhag Polin, by the great payṭan Menaḥem ben Rabbi Makhir.

The ofan piyyuṭ for Shabbat Shuva, minhag Polin, by the great payṭan Menaḥem ben Rabbi Makhir. A half-acrostic, each stanza begins with a word from parashat Ha'azinu, usually read on Shabbat Shuva, an...

The yotser for Shabbat Shuva, minhag Polin, by the great payṭan Menaḥem ben Rabbi Makhir. Each line ends with a verse from either Hosea or Joel, the two books from which Ashkenazim read as the haftara...

The Secrets of Rebbi Shimōn ben Yoḥai is a pseudepigraphal record of the divine visions of the second-century rabbi, Shimon ben Yoḥai. Scholarly opinion about the date of its composition is divided. Adolf Jellinek thought it was likely authored during the time of the Crusades, while Heinrich Graetz thought it was likely composed in the mid-8th century. The visions described in the secrets portrays the Yishmaelites being led by a violent saviour of the Jews from the hegemony of the Byzantine Empire. It describes the events and rulers of the eighth-century Umayyad Empire, as well as eight-century battles between the Byzantines (known in the text as the Kenites or the Kingdom of Edom) and the Umayyads (known in it as the Kingdom of Yishmael).

This is an archive of public readings relevant to Constitution & Citizenship Day in the United States, a federal observance that recognizes the adoption of the United States Constitution and those who...

The Italian rite, unique among Jewish rites, has preserved up until very recently the custom recorded in the Talmud, Masekhet Tagnanith, for communally declared fast days. In this rite, sometimes refe...

A Declaration of Interdependence co-authored during WW II as part of an interfaith Jewish-Christian response to fascism and "to mitigate racial and religious animosity in America."

This is an archive of civic prayers composed for, or relevant to, the International Day of Democracy, commemorated by all UN member states for the sake of promoting and upholding democracy, a fundamental principle outlined under Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. First observed in 2008, the day was ratified through United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/62/7, “Support by the United Nations system of the efforts of Governments to promote and consolidate new or restored democracies.” The resolution was introduced after the sixth conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an international organization of national parliaments established in 1889. Its primary purpose is to promote democratic governance, accountability, and cooperation among its members; other initiatives include advancing gender parity among legislatures, empowering youth participation in politics, and sustainable development. Click here to contribute a prayer you have written for the International Day of Democracy. Looking for something else? For readings on Constitution & Citizenship Day (September 17), go here. For prayers composed for, or relevant to, International Human Rights Day, visit here. For prayers on Social Justice, Peace, and Liberty, go here.

Kaparot is a lovely Ashkenazi Jewish custom when it is aligned with the mitsvah of tsar baalei ḥayyim (not causing unnecessary harm to a living creature). Why invite extra harsh judgement during the A...

An original Aramaic-language “meturgeman piyyut” for Simḥat Torah. I’m working on creating a seder meturgeman liturgy, akin to those for day 7 of Pesaḥ and for Shavuot, to be recited on Simḥat Torah. ...

This is an archive of prayers composed for Tsom Gedalyahu (the Fast of Gedaliah), occurring on the day after Rosh haShanah, memorializing the tragedy of the assassination by fellow Jews of Gedalyah, t...

An archive of digital scans of maḥzorim for Rosh haShanah that have entered the Public Domain, and of maḥzorim under copyright that have been contributed with Open Content licenses by their creators.

This is an archive of prayers composed for, or relevant to, the September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance in the United States, a civic day on the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terro...

This memorial prayer by Dr. Moshe Sokolow was offered on the first anniversary of the 9/11 massacres on 10 September 2002.

The prayer for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and King Petar Ⅱ as found in Rabbi Salom Freiberger's Siddur Rinah u-Tefilah: Molitvenik (1938).

מחזור ליום שני של ראש השנה Prayerbook for the New Year (1965) is volume 2 in a set of maḥzorim reprinting Wolf Heidenheim's arrangement of liturgy according to the Ashkenazi custom, accompanied by an English translation by Jenny Marmorstein, z"l (1920-2020).

מחזור ליום ראשון של ראש השנה Prayerbook for the New Year (1965) is volume 1 in a set of maḥzorim reprinting Wolf Heidenheim's arrangement of liturgy according to the Ashkenazi custom, accompanied by a...

This is an archive of digital scans of resources for Seliḥōt services (from the month of Elul through Yom Kippur). These scans provide our contributing volunteers a digital source for collaborative transcription of individual seliḥot and qinot, in Hebrew or Aramaic with an accompanying translation. PDFs generated through our workflow are also available for your use. If you do make a transcription however, please share your work back through the project. A note on the Public Domain status of the resources listed here. Some have entered the Public Domain due to their age or due to their copyright renewal date having lapsed. Others resources may have been contributed under libre/Open Content licenses by their creators or copyright stewards. For more information, please take into regard the license under which any particular work is shared. Click here to contribute a digital transcription of a seliḥah or qinah you have transcribed. Looking for something else? For individual səliḥot, go here. For maḥzorim for Rosh ha-Shanah, go here. For prayers composed for Rosh haShanah la-Behemah, go here. For prayers and songs written for, or relevant to Rosh haShanah (l-ma’aseh bereshit), visit here. For prayers composed for Rosh Ḥodesh Tishrei, visit here.

The 18th of Iyyar on which the 33rd day of the Omer coincides is a day of historical significance. On that day in the year 363, the Byzantine Roman emperor Julian in collaboration with Atiochian Jewry attempted to lay the foundations of the Third Temple in Jerusalem. For centuries afterward, the day was commemorated as a fast day. One primary source in rabbinic Judaism that references the day is Sefer Zerubavel. Given the relative obscurity of Sefer Zerubavel today, we thought that we could help remedy that on just the day it currently references in the rabbinic Jewish calendar: Lag ba-Omer — a day which otherwise lacks any liturgical reading. Below is the text of Sefer Zerubavel as found in Divrei Yeraḥmiel (according to the text transcribed and published as Sefer ha-Zikronot hu’ Divrey ha-Yamim le-Yerahme’el (ed. Eli Yassif; Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2001), pp. 427-435, set side-by-side with the English translation by the scholar John Reeves.

This rəshut, or introductory piyyuṭ, is recited in the Italian rite before Nishmat Kol Ḥai on (the first day) of Rosh haShanah. It was written by the fourteenth-century payṭan R. Yoav ben Yeḥiel of Ro...

This is an archive of prayers and song composed for, or relevant to, Labour Day in Canada and Labor Day in the United States, celebrated on the first Monday of September. If you have composed a prayer...

The yotsrot cycle for the Shabbat before Rosh haShanah, according to Minhag Polin (as traditionally practiced in the Ashkenazi communities of northeastern Germany and Poland), all written by a Rabbi Yitzḥak ben Moshe haLevi according to the authorial acrostic. Zunz identifies the author as Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Mainz, who died in the Gzerot Tatno of 1096. Fraenkel disputes this and suggests Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna (a/k/a the Or Zarua), of the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, who died in around 1270. This zulat, citing Psalm 119 repeatedly, begs for divine justice, invoking martyrs' memories (and perhaps endorsing Fraenkel's suggestion that its authorship must postdate the Gzerot Tatno!).

The yotsrot cycle for the Shabbat before Rosh haShanah, according to Minhag Polin (as traditionally practiced in the Ashkenazi communities of northeastern Germany and Poland), all written by a Rabbi Y...

The yotsrot cycle for the Shabbat before Rosh haShanah, according to Minhag Polin (as traditionally practiced in the Ashkenazi communities of northeastern Germany and Poland), all written by a Rabbi Yitzḥak ben Moshe haLevi according to the authorial acrostic. Zunz identifies the author as Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Mainz, who died in the Gzerot Tatno of 1096. Fraenkel disputes this and suggests Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna (a/k/a the Or Zarua), of the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, who died in around 1270. The yotser is an exultant heikhalot-tinged description of the midrash of seven heavens befitting the Shabbat before creation. Also included is the German text of Isaac Seligman Baer's Avodat Yisrael translation, in modernized spelling.

A personal petition in rhymed prose from the introduction to Vat. Ross. 499, an Italian-rite maḥzor from the year 1446 with a lot of very cool liturgical content in it. Frankly, the title drew me in.

A Wordpress plugin that renders the Unicode character "Vulcan Salute" (U+1F596) together with its mirror image as inline, bidi-safe markup -- in order to display, via shortcode, the traditional nesíăt kapayim ("lifting of the hands") gesture used by Kohanim during the Birkat Kohanim (a/k/a dukhenen) service. The display defaults to showing both hands side by side (right hand before left hand, thumbs facing inward), however, either hand alone is also selectable. Supports full-color emoji vs. line-art ("vs15") rendering, and fluid display sizing via CSS clamp(), if desired. Skin tone is available from light to medium to dark with 'medium-light' and 'medium-dark' also available.

מחזור ליום כיפור Prayerbook for the Day of Atonement (1965) is volume 4 in a set of maḥzorim reprinting Wolf Heidenheim's arrangement of liturgy according to the Ashkenazi custom, accompanied by an English translation by Jenny Marmorstein, z"l (1920-2020).

מחזור לערבית יום כיפור Prayerbook for the Eve of Atonement (1965) is volume 3 in a set of maḥzorim reprinting Wolf Heidenheim's arrangement of liturgy according to the Ashkenazi custom, accompanied by...

"ben Adam Mah Lekha Nirdam," of unclear origin, is the opening piyyuṭ of the Sephardic seliḥot service every morning. Drawing a parallel between the literal slumber from which the petitioner has just ...

Download and install our large collection of open-source, Unicode Hebrew fonts.

ִתְּפִלָּתֵינוּ: סִדּוּר לְכׇל הַשָּׁנָה Tefilaténu: Siddur l'Khol haShanah (1932) a/k/a סִדּוּר שִׁילֹֹה is an everyday (kol-bo) nusaḥ Ashkenaz siddur by Ẓevi Scharfstein (1884-1972). The siddur has ...

Resources at the Open Siddur Project are mainly shared with one of three open content licenses maintained by the Creative Commons (CC0, CC BY, and CC BY-SA) unless otherwise indicated. Some exceptiona...

This is a portion of the tenth gate from ספר תחכמוני Sefer Taḥkemoni of Yehudah Al-Harizi (ca. 1179-1235), narrated by The Farmer. The transcription and English translation was made by Isaac Gantwerk ...

This is an archive of public readings selected for, or relevant to, Rosh haShanah la-Behemah, the Jewish New Year’s Day for Domesticated Animals (Behemot), celebrated on Alef b’Elul, the first day of ...

Im Afes Rova’ ha-Qen, an Aqedah (poetic retelling of the binding of Isaac) written by the 12th-century scholar R. Ephraim ben Isaac of Regensburg, is one of the few piyyuṭim of Ashkenazi origin to hav...

Barukh shèAmar for Shabbat and festivals, in the Old Persian rite, as recorded in MS Adler 23 ENA in the JTS Library. The Old Persian rite shows some fascinating unique linguistic features. The first ...

This is an archive of prayers and ritual activities prepared for, or relevant to, Rosh haShanah la-Behemah, the Jewish New Year’s Day for [primarily, Domesticated] Animals (Behemot), celebrated on Ale...

This is an archive of prayers and songs written for, or relevant to, Rosh Ḥodesh Elul, the sixth month in the Jewish calendar. Rosh Ḥodesh Elul also coincides with Rosh Hashanah la-Behemah, the New Ye...