Dojc, a commercial photographer who has lived in Canada since his family left Slovakia in 1968, returned to visit several towns, including his family’s onetime home, where he learned about the fate of its Jews during the Holocaust, a history his relatives refused to talk about. Dojc’s project shifted with the discovery, during a trip to Slovakia to interview survivors, of abandoned prayer books in long-empty synagogues and schoolhouses that had gone untouched since the Nazis deported Slovakia’s Jews to concentration camps.

The photography exhibit, which opened this week, moves from the hallway of portraits into a light-filled, six-sided room featuring breathtaking images of prayer books in various stages of physical decay and sustaining damage far greater than the wear and tear of everyday use. Katya Krausova, a London-based filmmaker, traveled with Dojc through Slovakia and her documentary plays in the exhibition space.

The layout of the exhibit reflects the genesis of the project and Dojc’s personal journey—the pair discovered a prayer book belonging to Dojc’s grandfather, whom he never met, among the unearthed volumes. The books star in the photographs, commanding attention while revealing layer after layer of abandonment by society and destruction by nature. Yet Dojc believes these books—and all books, for that matter—possess an enchanting, transcending quality. The photographs are about beauty and decay, he explained before the exhibit’s opening: “beauty in decay.”

Heschel would probably not approve of a recent trend in American Jewish life: niche siddurim, prayerbooks that reflect ideological differences on traditional ideas such as messianism (Lone Star Siddur ), homosexuality, and even the concept of serious prayer (Comic Book Siddur). But the most recent example may also be the most radical: a Wikipedia-like project called Open Siddur, which allows users to create their own individualized prayerbooks.

The aim of Open Siddur is to catalogue the vast breadth of Jewish liturgy and commentary, allowing all Jews access to all prayers, from the ancient to the new-age, in a sort of museum-cum-buffet. While still in the process of compiling a database of liturgy and in need of transcribers, translators, and programmers, Open Siddur’s creators hope it will allow individuals or groups to peruse a vast array of liturgical material culled from libraries, publishers, and individuals, and create prayerbooks that suit their specific needs and interests, which they can then print out as PDFs or have bound.

In a religion that places a high value on communal prayer, these developments are prompting a reevaluation of the very concept—if we all worship as Jews, but say different things, are we still praying “together”?

There are those who say no, or at least, not quite—from this perspective, a siddur that would be unrecognizable to any Jew is a siddur unworthy of its duties. But Aharon Varady, one of Open Siddur’s founders, says that the project promises to take what has become a modern mainstay—the synagogue prayerbook committee—and “expand it across the entire world.” Indeed, rather than looking at the recent influx of niche siddurim as emblematic of a “crisis of prayer,” Varady—along with co-founders Efraim Feinstein and Azriel Fasten—say they see a crisis only of logistics, and an opportunity to use the web to universalize the vast canon of Jewish liturgical ideas.

Not everyone is as hopeful. A number of critics argue that Open Siddur’s “choose your own adventure”-style of Judaism is in conflict with the communal essence of the tradition. “Even if you don’t feel bound by the law,” says Rabbi David Berger, head of the Jewish Studies department at Yeshiva University, “the siddur has emerged as a very important source of Jewish unity, in that its essentials are the same worldwide, so that I could go into a synagogue of Egyptian Jews and pray there in a way that is not entirely unfamiliar to me.”

But Feinstein argues that the idea of a “communal standard” of prayer is misleading. “The idea that there are really only three viable texts is relatively new,” he says. “I don’t see Open Siddur as anything divisive.” By “relatively new,” Feinstein means the era before the advent of Conservative and Reform movements in the 1800s. And while there may have been a wider range of accepted texts in this pre-modern past, the variety was mostly a result of organic changes that came about because of geographic and ethnic differences, while there remained remarkable consistency in the core of the prayer service. But with the advent of Web 2.0, our concepts of community and even the idea of “organic” change, are shifting enough that we may see an enormous degree of variety develop, in spirit much the same way that inconsistencies between, say, Mizrahi and Hasidic Jews did in the past.

Berger acknowledged that people feel disconnected from certain parts of the siddur but says he’s comfortable with the age-old practice of simply skipping over them. “There was a comment by [rabbi and scholar] Yitz Greenberg: ‘The difference between the Orthodox and Conservatives when it comes to some of morning prayers is that the Conservatives leave them out of the siddur and the Orthodox just don’t say them,’” Berger says.

But this is precisely the sort of thinking that frustrates Varady, who argues that it compromises one of the values of traditional Judaism, all the dearer in a rapidly changing landscape: kavanah, or intention, a deep spiritual connection to one’s prayer ritual. Varady argues that the siddur’s “symbology,” removed from spiritual and legal significance, has the tendency to alienate those who struggle with prayer—and there’s little comfort in knowing that you could experience that same alienation in any synagogue in the world.

But even some who are naturally sympathetic to Open Siddur’s mission, including Elie Kaunfer, executive director of Mechon Hadar, have reservations. “When people are not satisfied by traditional prayer service, is it the words or the performance of the prayers that’s tripping them up?” asks Kaunfer, who says that the independent minyanim he has seen “by and large use traditional prayers,” but experiment with the format of services. “What these guys are betting on is that the words are holding people back,” says Kaunfer.

In fact, though, it may be that words and performance are not as separate as one might think. While many of the new minyanim may pray with traditional texts, their radically altered service structures often involve unconventional inclusions, from moments of silence for the plight of Sri Lankan textile workers, to poems about atheism, to entreaties for the continuing safety of ultra-Orthodox settlers in Israel. The Open Siddur team welcomes the possibility that people will feel moved to upload their original work, or relevant passages from literature, along with little-known songs and melodies from disparate communities. More than being simply “post-denominational,” Open Siddur’s founders say it seeks to transcend numerous boundaries, from geographic to political to aesthetic, and promote “all the beautiful traditions that are inherent in the geographically disperse communities, and sometimes made very obscure by historical siddurim that many people don’t have access to.”

“Our own personal theology does not need to be reflected on each page of the prayer book,” argued Rabbi Leon A. Morris, executive director of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning in New York City, in a recent article tackling the subject. “Rather, our evolving theology can emerge from the encounter with the siddur and its words. ‘This I hope to be true but am skeptical.’ ‘This I have real problems with.’ ‘This I understand in my own way.’” But many Jews may be turning away from religion for the very reason that they don’t want to make room in their personal spiritual practice for ideas they find problematic, outdated, or incomprehensible.

And perhaps the best argument in favor of Open Siddur is the fact that, as Kaunfer points out, “You have people who weren’t connecting anyway. What American Jewish society needs is a dose of ‘let’s get invested in the fight.’ If you love the aleinu, then this site forces you to articulate what it is about the aleinu that’s important to you. That’s what people are thirsting for.”

Correction: This article originally stated that the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning was in Los Angeles. It has been changed to reflect the organization’s correct location, New York City.

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. Rather, manuscripts—by definition handwritten and unique—were created for communal use, with myriad variations according to local rites. Some of the wealthiest may have had smaller, private copies, but, for the most part, congregations either chanted prayers from memory or repeated after a cantor. Not until Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the early 1450s did books become accessible to a broader public, and for some time they remained a luxury.

But even within the unique realm of early prayer books, the Nuremberg Mahzor, which has just gone on public view for the first time in 52 years at the Israel Museum after a nearly year-long restoration, is exceptional. Completed in 1331 for the Jewish community of Nuremberg, the sumptuously decorated work is not only one of the most comprehensive illuminated Hebrew prayer books ever created, it is also among the largest medieval codices in the world.

Weighing more than 57 pounds, it is made up of 521 double-sided leaves. It includes holiday prayers for the entire Jewish calendar; the five books of the Bible known as the megillot, or scrolls; special prayers for lifecycle events like weddings and circumcisions; extensive commentaries; and—its main feature, accounting for roughly 90 percent of the text—over 700 piyutim, or liturgical poems. Moreover, the quality of the scribal work and elegantly embellished panels qualify the text as one of the region’s outstanding manuscripts. While communal mahzorim were also created in Spain, Italy, and other Jewish centers at that time, this monumental format was a phenomenon particular to the Franco-German Ashkenazi region.

Equally impressive is the work’s provenance. The colophon at the back indicates that it was commissioned by a Joshua the son of Isaac and completed on the fourth of Elul in the Hebrew year 5091. It remained in Nuremberg after the Jews were expelled from the city in 1499 and was preserved intact at the municipal library until the early 19th century, at which point, it is assumed, the Napoleonic army excised 11 of its original 528 leaves. More than a century later, the renowned publisher and Hebraica collector Salman Schocken embarked on a quest to reassemble the Nuremberg Mahzor and bring it to Israel. He recovered four of the missing leaves in the 1930s after fleeing Nazi Germany and acquired the rest in 1951 as restitution for assets that had been confiscated from him during the Holocaust. Descendants put it up for auction at Sotheby’s Tel Aviv in 2002, where it carried a $2-3 million estimate but failed to sell. At some point afterward, it was acquired privately by the Zurich-based collectors David and Jemima Jeselsohn, who have given it to the Israel Museum on extended loan. Through February 2010, it will be the centerpiece in the Shrine of the Book, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The restoration, conducted by Michael Maggen, head of the museum’s paper conservation laboratory, focused on rebinding the manuscript and incorporating the four recovered leaves. Overall, the mahzor was in excellent condition. “The decoration and writing looked like they were practically done yesterday,” according to assistant Judaica curator Anna Nizza, who adds that the colors and gold leaf “were amazingly preserved.” The highly skilled scribes who worked on the main text and commentary—identified as Mattanyah and Yaakov, respectively—made almost no errors despite the work’s considerable size. They also masterfully executed simple but sophisticated flourishes while leaving precise blanks around key words for, it is assumed, a Christian artist to subsequently decorate. (Jews were closed out of guilds at that time.)

Rather than iconographic subjects, human figures or narrative scenes that populate other significant 13th- and 14th-century mahzorim, the Nuremberg features 22 illuminated panels highlighting introductory words. These frames are adorned with gold and silver leaf and precious pigments, notably in rich hues of blue and red, and decorated with geometric patterns, as well as foliate motifs and exotic animals, typical of Gothic imagery. The scribes also alternated the size, type and color of the script—between black and red throughout. There is only a single text illustration, of a shofar, next to a line in a Rosh Hashana piyut about the sounding of the ram’s horn. “Unlike their contemporaries,” Nizza explains, “they chose ornamental and non-illustrative depictions, giving the manuscript an aesthetically pleasing and elegant look emphasizing its content while helping the chazan find appropriate prayers during the service.”

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.

Sha’ar Zahav, the siddur named for the San Francisco congregation that published it, and Siddur B’chol L’vavcha (“With All Your Heart”) from New York City’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah were released this month, after 10 years of work on each, and are intended for Jews from all denominational backgrounds. What sets the two apart from each other can crudely be signified by their coastal affiliations; Sha’ar Zahav, hailing from California, has a more all-embracing hippie philosophy, while the CBST siddur is more efficient and academic in approach.

Siddur Sha’ar Zahav begins with new prayers, written by Rabbi Camille Shira Angel and her congregants, marking milestones absent from traditional prayer books. There are meditations “For the Partner of Someone in Gender Transition,” “For Letting Go of Having a Biological Child,” “For Taking an HIV Test,” and “For Questioning Sexuality.” Traditional prayers are edited to include both “masculine” and “feminine” language, and a few offer “feminist” language (referring to God as the “Well of life,” rather than “Ruler of the Universe,” which some see as patriarchal). It provides refreshingly metaphorical interpretations of prayers with controversial literal meanings, such as the Shema, which, the siddur notes, “articulates a theology of divine reward and punishment that many Jews do not accept,” and which the siddur suggests might be an ecological warning.

Sha’ar Zahav’s prayer for those who don’t believe in a traditional idea of God declares, “I invent my own religion”—a religion that honors “bones of calcium phosphate,” Albert Einstein, and composting. “I’m a believer, but the ‘Contemplation for the Nonbeliever’ is gorgeous,” Rabbi Angel said in an interview. “If someone can access these words because it says ‘this is for you,’ it doesn’t profane the religion as we’ve inherited it.” The siddur’s “Queer Amidah,” which remarks to God, “How queer of You to have created anything at all,” is intended more as a preparatory group reading, rather than a replacement for the traditional silent meditation, Angel said.

For the blessing recited before aliyot (when individuals are called up to sanctify the chanting of a portion of the Torah reading) , Sha’ar Zahav offers both masculine, plural, and non-gendered language for the honorees. (Because the CBST siddur offers only a Friday night service, it does not include any of the prayers surrounding the Torah reading, which takes place on Saturday mornings.)

Sha’ar also focuses on sexuality in its prayers, a result, Rabbi Angel said, of feminism’s embrace of the physical. “Whoever was the original male editorial board missed the opportunity to lift up bodies and different shapes and different abilities,” she said. “To only refer to the body [in ways like] ‘the blind shall not stumble,’ it’s like, lets honor the ripening of our bodies,” she says, referring to a prayer for the onset of puberty in Sha’ar Zahav. Angel sees the creation of the siddur in terms of childbirth. “Whatever the struggles were during pregnancy and delivery,” she says, “I’m like, lets start working on a machzor [high holiday prayer book].”

CBST’s B’chol L’vavcha, on the other hand is peppered with poems by Tony Kushner, Muriel Rukeyser, and Adrienne Rich, few of which directly address gay issues. The prayers switch between masculine and feminine language for God, aiming for balance. Its margins offer interesting factoids and notes—the KKK forbade members from singing “God Bless America” because it was written by the Jewish Irving Berlin and there’s a connection between the gay-pride flag, the Stonewall Riots, and the story of Noah, for whom God created a rainbow as a way to say “I will never destroy you again, and it’s now up to you to create a universe you can be proud of,” according to the siddur.

Where Sha’ar Zahav offers a separate women’s Amidah, CBST has made a subtler change, adding to the list of matriarchs the names of Bilhah and Zilpah, concubines of Jacob who gave birth to several of the men that would go on to form the tribes of Israel. “In our community there are so many parents who don’t have legal protections, but are loving parents of children,” explained Ayelet Cohen, the congregation’s associate rabbi.

CBST has modified “Lecha Dodi,” a traditional song comparing God’s love to the love of a groom for his bride, to say instead “as a heart rejoices in love.” “It was very important to us that it fits the music,” said Cohen. Their siddur also modifies the prayer “Ma Tovu,” which celebrates the coming together of a community and traditionally only mentions brothers. “We already see versions that include women, but even that assumes a binary concept of gender,” Cohen said. “So we include a third line, that we are all gathered together.”

In addition to the Friday night service, B’chol L’vavcha also includes liturgy for the holiday cycle. There are also prayers for events like comings out, baby namings, and the formation of committed relationships. But the siddur is “conscious not to suggest a particular order that these things should happen in life,” Cohen said.

While both siddurim focus on inclusiveness, Sha’ar Zahav does so by including prayers to suit every variety of gender identity and every aspect of the gay experience. By contrast, B’chol L’vavcha by and large contains one version of each prayer, designed to suit as many people as possible. They both include sections honoring World AIDS Day and the Transgender Day of Remembrance, but while CBST marks these days with poems and readings by celebrated authors, Sha’ar Zahav creates traditionally formatted liturgy for the occasions.

Rabbis from both congregations reject the idea that there is anything divisive about having more than one gay-friendly siddur. “I don’t think that reflects anything new,” said Sharon Kleinbaum, the senior rabbi at CBST. “Synagogues throughout Jewish history have created siddurim that reflect their communities.”