September 3rd, 2025, 7:00 pm - 8:15 pm
The Recording of this class is at https://youtu.be/es55uffzPh4.
Publicly launched by Aharon Varady in 5769 (2009), the Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, and non-prescriptive community project growing a vast collection of digitized Jewish prayers, liturgies, and related works (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure), composed in every era, region, and language that Jews, adjacent communities, and fellow travelers have ever prayed. For those working with the content of Jewish devotional practice, (e.g., on סִדּוּרִים, siddurim — prayerbooks), the goal is to provide text, tools, and resources shared under open/libre terms for adaptive reuse. This is an effort to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, cross-pollinate wisdom, and foster openness and vitality in religious culture. For more details visit www.OpenSiddur.org.
Aharon Varady, b. 1974, is the founding director of the Open Siddur Project, an online community project actively growing a library of Jewish liturgy and prayer literature with a goal of helping individuals and groups craft and share their own prayerbooks. A community planner (M.C.P, DAAP/University of Cincinnati.) and Jewish educator (M.A.J.Ed., Jewish Theological Seminar’s William Davidson School of Education), he works to improve stewardship of the Public Domain, be it the physical and natural commons of urban park systems or the creative and cultural commons of libraries and museums. His work in open-source Judaism has been written about in the Yiddish Forverts, the Atlantic Magazine, and Haaretz. After stints in Washington DC, New York, Philadelphia, Baton Rouge, and Jerusalem, he currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his three cats, Henry, Effie, and Bob. For more about Aharon and his various projects, visit www.AharonVarady.net.
Copyright © 2025 Jewish Study Center. All rights reserved. Website designed by Addicott Web.