The Open Siddur is a volunteer driven project to create a free resource for folks crafting their own siddur (Jewish prayer book). We intend to collaboratively build an archive of material that makes up the siddur — texts, translations, instructional material, commentaries, essays, and other associated media.  Along with the archive, we are building the software that can be used to put together the building blocks to customize and personalize the siddur. Ultimately, siddurim prepared from this content will be printed with either an on-demand printer or else in cooperation with a book artist.

By “open,” we mean that our code and our texts are free to take under permissive copyright licenses. We are creating a community of folks passionate about the siddur and who express their passion by contributing material that can be used by others in the preparation of their own siddurim. This material could be historic or new, familiar or obscure. We seek to design a tool that will provide a resource to help those who take Jewish spirituality seriously engage in their own spiritual practice.

If you’d like to help us, take a look at the following opportunities to contribute (below), fill out our questionnaire, or just straight out contact us. (Donations, if you like, can be made to this project via our fiscal sponsor the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity. )

For more details on our development and to get status updates, fill out our questionnaire and you’ll be added to our mailing list. If you’d like to follow our developments closely and participate, then please join our discussion list, friend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and check out our development wiki (our current storehouse for documentation and texts).

Update 12/3/09: Broken links in the table have been corrected.