A Wikipedia-style siddur is revolutionizing the world of prayerbooks
| 7:00 AM Dec 3, 2009
In his 1954 book Man’s Quest for God, theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, bemoaning what he saw as a post-Holocaust religious malaise, took aim at those who chose to blame the prayerbook for Judaism’s woes. “The crisis of prayer is not a problem of the text,” he wrote. “It is a problem of the soul. The ...
The Israel Museum unveils a restored mahzor from 1331
| 7:00 AM Sep 17, 2009
Central to the Days of Awe in modern times is the experience of walking into the synagogue to find tall stacks of High Holiday prayer books, or mahzorim.
Things were not always thus. For centuries, Jewish prayer was an oral tradition, said from memory. Even as authoritative liturgies were codified, most didn’t have access to texts. ...
How Eliyahu Koren used typography to encourage a new way to pray
| 7:00 AM Jun 30, 2009
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.
Two gay congregations publish non-traditional prayer books
| 7:00 AM Jun 26, 2009
For Gay Pride Shabbat, which begins this evening at sundown, two of the most influential gay synagogues in the country will be using new prayer books, each of which, the congregations’ rabbis believe, will revolutionize the liturgical landscape.
A haftorah of remorse and return
Though only a tiny fraction of what it was in the 18th century, Barbados’s Jewish community—and its 1750 synagogue—still stand proud
In early 20th-century Poland, poet Shmuel Nadler took off his yarmulke and took up with the Communists
After a painstaking survey, Tablet Magazine awards title for nation's tastiest triangular treat
Making Palestinian chicken and Moroccan challah for a Shabbat dinner with Alice Waters
The national infatuation with pork has reached Jewish cuisine, prohibitions notwithstanding
When we were kids, I wanted to follow in my brother’s footsteps. Now, as adults, I’m reminded why.
Passover is about freedom, so let’s not encourage our kids to be slaves to their allergies
My children are becoming German citizens, and I’m going nuts
Playing the defiant Vashti in a day school Purim play awakened my inner feminist
On Valentine’s Day, reflecting on the limits and boundlessness of a father’s love
Plus-size retail queen Deb Malkin insists that fashion isn’t only for the skinny
Amid financial shortfalls and a Conservative crisis, the Jewish Theological Seminary will shutter its cantorial school
As Chabad opens preschools across the country, secular parents try to reconcile the movement with the classroom
The recession has hit the rabbinate, too. How are the newly ordained—and laid-off veterans—handling the rabbi glut?
How to reconcile religious prohibitions on autopsies with the need to determine a cause of death
From the archives: The neverending fetishistic fascination with Jews and intelligence
Immunization fears lead to another outbreak among New York’s ultra-Orthodox
For an Orthodox preteen, Tonya Harding was a hero—and a Purim inspiration
A crossword puzzle celebrating Judaism’s denominations
The Coney Island attraction who made wrestling history
