Publishers of prayer books—siddurim—have long struggled to engage American Jews, to heighten their alertness at synagogue, to encourage them to see prayers not as mere echoes of the past but as vital supplications whose meaning is renewed daily. One way of doing this is to flood the page with commentaries, explications, instructions, and supplementary readings; this approach, exemplified by the ArtScroll siddur, has been the dominant mode for the past 25 years. Yet too much additional reading risks turning a prayer book into a tutorial rather than a conduit to sustained reflection.

There is another way: to sweep the page clean and then reconstitute it using only the poetry of prayer and the tacit language of design. This is the quiet revolution being mounted by Koren Publishers Jerusalem, which has outfitted its popular all-Hebrew Israeli siddur with a new English translation and pared-down commentary by Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (adapted from his new British authorized siddur) and brought it to America. Indeed, when you open the siddur, you may feel a kind of liberation. Prayers that have traditionally been printed as long undifferentiated paragraphs, margin to margin, are parceled out like poetry. Different type sizes and indentations create a visual rhythm that signals structural shifts in the liturgy. The design itself instructs the reader in the shape of the service, without distracting from the words on the page.

The Koren Bible aleph on the left, and the siddur aleph on the right.

Book design’s building block is the letter. The Hebrew letters of the Koren siddur were designed specially for the original Israeli edition. If you look closely, you will find a second Hebrew typeface, designed years earlier for the Koren Bible and used here for setting longer biblical quotations. Look at the alephs to distinguish the two. The Koren Bible aleph is majestic, with three bold diagonal strokes. The Koren siddur aleph is playful, with a central bold stroke framed by two small flags, waving from thin stems. Both typefaces are beautiful without calling attention to themselves, like a well-crafted chair.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the creator of these letters is also the founder of Koren Publishers. Eliyahu Koren, who was in his 70s when he published the original all-Hebrew siddur, in 1981, described his design philosophy in its preface: “From a visual standpoint, the contents of the prayers are presented in a style that does not spur habit and hurry, but rather encourages the worshiper to engross his mind and heart in prayer.” The care and deliberation that Koren hoped to enable in others were values that defined his artistic practice and shaped his career. They would lead him to found his company and to craft both the Koren siddur and the Koren Bible, one of the all-time icons of Hebrew design.

Decades before any of these accomplishments, Eliyahu Koren was already one of the most influential designers in Israel. Born Eliyahu Korngold in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1907, he immigrated to Palestine in 1933 and set about looking for work. Koren had excelled in art school, but in Palestine he found an underdeveloped graphic-design industry that largely amounted to sign-painting. His break came when the Jewish National Fund hired him to lead its first graphics department. In this position, which he kept for 21 years, Koren oversaw the creation of many of Israel’s most prominent symbols, including its first postage stamp and, in his own design, the seal of the city of Jerusalem—a lion rampant in front of the Wailing Wall, framed by olive branches—still in use today.

His greatest project got underway in the early 1940s, when Judah Magnes, the president of Hebrew University, asked Koren to create a new typeface for the first original edition of the Hebrew Bible to be published in Israel. Koren’s art would complement the ambitious scholarly effort of Umberto Cassuto, a rabbi and Hebrew University professor who was searching for the most accurate ancient source manuscripts. But unexpectedly, and within a few years of each other, Magnes and Cassuto both died, leaving the project to founder. The Hebrew University Press, having already waited 10 years for its new Bible, simply reprinted a 19th-century edition with a few of Cassuto’s emendations.

Eliyahu Koren, working on the Koren Bible typeface

Koren decided to carry out the original effort on his own. He formed his own small publishing house and immersed himself in Hebrew manuscripts and early typefaces, looking for inspiration. He based his letter on medieval Sephardi script, while giving it a modern touch. He consulted an ophthalmologist and learned about early research into the legibility of Latin types. In every aspect of his work Koren was meticulous. When he received the cast metal type from the illustrious Deberny and Peignot foundry in France, Koren immediately spotted imperfections and sent it back. The foundry calculated the imprecision at three hundredths of a millimeter and recast the letter at its own expense. “In the final Koren design,” writes the late Israeli book historian Leila Avrin, “the letters are sharp, almost never rounded, with balanced contrasts, faintly serifed, with its few diagonals always parallel to one another. The beauty of the letter never detracts from its readability.”

Koren was as diligent as Cassuto in striving for textual accuracy. He took great care with vowels and cantillation marks, which were drawn by hand and added to the typeset page. When the Bible was finally published, in 1962, it was celebrated in public ceremonies. “Israel is redeemed from shame,” wrote Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. “This is the first Jewish Bible in the last 400 years.” Presidents of Israel would be sworn into office on it. A commemorative book published years later includes photos of the celebrations, plus two of Koren inspecting manuscripts and proofs at the start of the project, with his sleeves rolled up and his expression grave. His hair is dark. By the time the Koren Bible was published, 20 years later, it was mostly silver.

It would take until the 1970s for Koren to begin work on his siddur. His central task was the same: to create beautiful, legible letters and pages to accentuate a sacred text. But unlike the Bible, the siddur is an anthology, pieced together from Torah verses and rabbinic writings. Koren therefore set out to design a new page layout that would differentiate the text, highlighting its source material and keeping the reader alert. Koren also developed a distinct but related siddur typeface, since he felt that the one he had developed for the Bible was too sacred to reuse, except for biblical quotations. This typeface was even more legible than the first, with similar letter pairs distinguished by their shape: dalet, for instance, extends its arm horizontally, while resh angles its arm upward.

“Eliyahu Koren was a perfectionist,” Esther Be’er wrote in an email. She went to work for him as a typographer 30 years ago and remains at his company today. “He didn’t care if a project took a long time (he wasn’t business-minded) as long as he was satisfied with the outcome.” Koren died in 2001, but his methods and philosophy are still alive. To produce the Hebrew-English Koren siddur, the editor, Raphael Freeman, would lay out a section of the book—30 or 40 two-page spreads—and then sit down with Be’er, who would review them to ensure that each had the authentic Koren feel. “Nothing in Koren goes without Esther first making sure that the layout is ‘Koren-y,’” says Freeman. The font chosen for the English, Arno Pro, is contemporary but distinguished, much like the siddur’s English translation. Unlike virtually every other Hebrew-English siddur, the Koren siddur prints the Hebrew on the left-hand pages and the English on the right. This strategy, which Koren advocated during his lifetime, is both aesthetic and practical: it means that no matter which language you are reading, you start from the center and read outward.

Conservative and Reform Jews are used to coming to synagogue and seeing shelves filled with copies of Siddur Sim Shalom or Gates of Prayer—siddurim published respectively by those movements. The shelves of an Orthodox synagogue have long held a variety of prayer books, reflecting the movement’s divergent streams. But since the 1980s, the ArtScroll siddur has dominated the market, and even extended itself beyond the Orthodox world, with its commentary, glosses, and instructions; it is an ideal introductory text for the newly religious and a reference for those without access to knowledgable Jewish leaders. But scholars and rabbis have long criticized its publisher, Brooklyn-based Mesorah, for its permeating ideology: its exclusion of modern scholarship and rabbinics, its incorporation of interpretation into “translations,” its silence on the existence of the modern state of Israel, its approach toward women, its archaisms. For years some members of the Modern Orthodox community have been using the ArtScroll siddur while wishing it could be more modern.

Is the Koren siddur the answer? It does feel modern, without straying from tradition. Jonathan Sacks’s substantial introductory essay quotes Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, not to mention Auden and Blake. In his translation, Sacks dusts off the familiar prayer-book language and spurs the passive Jew to action. “Listen, Israel,” he translates the opening words of the Shema. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, an influential Modern Orthodox rabbi on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, has bought 500 copies of the Koren siddur for his synagogue. “I love it. I love the translation. This is English at its best,” Lookstein says. It may be years before Koren’s success can be gauged, since buying new siddurim is an expensive decision that synagogues put off as long as possible.

Everyone has an opinion about translations, but the language of design is more obscure. Does design really matter? Last October, Koren sent out 1,800 advance proofs to American rabbis and lay leaders for feedback. “The most common e-mail,” says Raphael Freeman, “was that of people telling us how for the first time in 30 years they had actually read the translation and it had transformed their davening experience. Their eyes couldn’t help but glance over to the English and they found themselves, whilst davening in Hebrew and scanning the lines of English, having a deeper understanding of their prayers.”

Joshua J. Friedman, a former editor of The Atlantic and Boston Review, is a writer in New York City.

It was, but as Leora Tanenbaum outlines in her spirited new book, Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality, women in any number of religions have been waiting much longer than that. The book announces its seriousness with an austere white cover and gothic lettering, contrasting with the defiantly girly designs of her two earlier books, Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation and Catfight: Rivalries Among Women—from Diets to Dating, from the Boardroom to the Delivery Room (now mainstays of Women’s Studies bookshelves). Having become recognized as an authority on these thorny feminist issues, Tanenbaum has moved on to a subject that’s even more personally rooted.

Tanenbaum considers herself an observant Jew (Modern Orthodox, to be precise), an identity she divulges right off the bat, in a preface that feels equal parts honest and defensive. Her exploration of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions is guided by a rigorous respect for each of them, but it’s a respect built on the belief that being faithful means challenging your religion when it veers off track. A non-religious person could have written this book persuasively, too, but Tanenbaum’s faith enriches it in some unexpected ways, raising questions about what it means to view any of these religions as an outsider, and what (if any) potential for unity exists among religious women from different backgrounds.

The book is a catalog of familiar, if astoundingly retro, attitudes—the Catholic Church’s hysterical refusal to ordain women in the face of a dire priest shortage, shoddy conditions in the women’s sections of mosques, the Artscroll Women’s Siddur‘s approving commentary that “even a silent recitation [of the Kaddish] by a woman is frowned upon”—threaded with “We Can Do It”-style affirmations. “We do not have to abandon our faith communities,” Tanenbaum writes. “We can stay and make them stronger. And for this to happen, we cannot be polite.” Ultimately, “the issue is not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’” Her case for equality is pretty basic—after all, the idea at the heart of this and similar struggles is heartbreakingly straightforward—even if the path to achieving it is a predictable minefield.

It’s worthwhile to read about restrictions in different religions side by side, as Tanenbaum positions them here; while there have been books about individual faiths dealing with gender issues (many directed at their respective lay populations), revealing parallels come through when they’re examined in relation to one another. Though Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women all bump up against their own unique obstacles, they experience many of the same limitations: women are second-class citizens, barred or actively discouraged from taking part in significant rituals, and physically separated from men in various ways. All are reckoning with texts that suggest—or say outright—that they’re unworthy.

So why should women continue to practice religions that seem intent on keeping them down? Women in some of the faiths Tanenbaum explores (namely, Judaism and Protestantism) have the option of moving between denominations if one is wildly out of step with their lives. Others don’t have that flexibility. Still others don’t want it: despite being profoundly angered and wounded by institutionalized sexism, many remain committed to traditional sects, which they see as the most authentic version of their religion. Tanenbaum, generally a fan of the Hebrew-heavy Orthodox service, counts herself among them, and explains, “It would be easier to withdraw from observant Judaism by aligning with a liberal denomination, but these women love their Orthodox tradition too much.” In order to stay within their religion, women like Tanenbaum choose to believe that patriarchal ideas about women’s roles are not what their traditions are really about; they come from a time and place that is outdated, and human fallibility (and willful misinterpretation) is responsible, not God.

Fair enough, but things get sticky when she and other religious activists urge women to work to transform sexist attitudes within their religions, while also assuring them (and anyone who might be listening in) that once this happens, those religions will be able to stay essentially the same. It’s a pragmatic line of reasoning, but doesn’t hold up. Tanenbaum maintains that sexism is not in fact integral to Jewish tradition, but other members of her devout community would say that by pushing for inclusivity, she’s asking for the kinds of reforms that would effectively transform Orthodoxy into a different (and by implication lesser) denomination. Even if we accept that these religions have no real basis for the restrictions they place on women, the leadership (and male members of the community, who “stand in the center of their world” while women “are told to move to the periphery”) have self-interested reasons to resist equality. If they don’t budge, religious women are basically left with two unappealing options: seek refuge in a community that aims for gender equality but offers less rigorous observance, or stay in one that’s spiritually fulfilling but stifling.

Tanenbaum quotes one Catholic woman explaining, “I don’t want another church. I just want to get this one right.” It’s sort of a semantic game: wouldn’t that in some ways mean making it another church? Despite the many bold efforts described in these pages, religious women are caught in a cycle of contradictions and multiple allegiances that are hard to resolve in any satisfying way. If you refuse to have blind faith when it comes to gender, for example, why should you have it about anything else? If your chosen religion silences and invalidates you in ways you can’t condone, what’s the point of following it?

The underlying impression is that religion is so worthwhile and enriching that damaging views about women—no matter how extreme—are less persuasive than the community and tradition it offers. On a gut level, these priorities feel appalling: if a fundamental denial of women as complete people isn’t compelling enough, what is the bottom line? On the other hand, as Tanenbaum poignantly quotes a middle-aged Catholic woman saying, “If I leave the church, I will crumble.” So much of her community and identity are bound up with it that she can’t conceive of cutting herself off.

For all its force and intelligence, it’s not always clear who Tanenbaum has written this book for: some explanations seem aimed at the unlikely readers who’ve never even heard of the concept of religious equality. At the same time, she’s uninterested in tempering her outrage. She airs some dirty laundry that people outside specific religious communities might otherwise never know about, and includes some distressing anecdotes: one Modern Orthodox woman’s rabbi forbade her from taking part in her son’s bar mitzvah, and when she objected, barred her from teaching at the synagogue school; a national organization of Presbyterian college women was intimidated by a hardline Christian publication for daring to discuss sexuality. Irshad Manji‘s calls for reform within Islam have been met with death threats. Some of Tanenbaum’s findings and observations are expressed with sarcastic disbelief, butting up—at times awkwardly, at others elegantly—against her attempts to justify her own adherence to particular traditions.

As so many recent books on and against religion have shown, it may be impossible to be truly balanced when it comes to writing about something so inherently personal. Either way, Tanenbaum will stay focused on this area for some time—her website notes that for her next book she’s looking into the discrimination faced by devout gay people. In Taking Back God, her optimism buoys what is in many ways a depressing survey, but it’s hard not to wonder if it can survive this next inquiry.

Eryn Loeb is a contributing editor for Tablet Magazine.