Favorite Siddur

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  • #2060371
    rightwriter
    Participant

    What is your favorite Siddur and why? Font, Page Type, Organization of text, Nusach, Cover, Design, Color…

    #2060399
    sensibleyid
    Participant

    There’s a new siddur that came out recently by rabbi Feigenbaum. It’s an amazing siddur made for teenagers that has translation, notes, and appendices. what is unique about is that it fills a void that is felt strongly by today’s youth. It addresses topics that most don’t such as why guys thank hashem for not creating them women and were men not created in His will.
    from as much as I’ve seen it so far it is an incredible work

    #2060435
    ☕️coffee addict
    Participant

    Anything I can daven from (as long as it’s sfard)

    #2060445
    Gadolhadorah
    Participant

    CAA: Agreed….a sidur is really not a sidur unless it includes a periodic v’yatzmach purkanei v’karev moishichei….
    P.S. As the years go by, even the most geshmach sephardeshe siddur is useless with anything smaller than 8 pt font.

    #2060459
    rightwriter
    Participant

    Not all siddurim publishers offer larger print. They probably should

    #2060480

    I used to be annoyed by people scrolling through their prayers. But now I also found phone siddur useful for outside minyanim… looking for shabbos edition, though.

    My favorite mahzorim are two pre-WW1 from different sides of the family, one Vilna, one Wien … good feeling that you follow your predecessors in davening. Wien one is much thinner – less piyutim and much better, thinner, paper.

    #2060491
    ☕️coffee addict
    Participant

    Aaq,

    I have a pocket siddur, it comes in handy for those situations

    #2060502
    AviraDeArah
    Participant

    AAQ, the klilas yofi siddur on smartphones has the same layout as a standard siddur… It doesn’t feel like an app. I’ll use it for anything except shemoneh esrei; it’s not assur, but it doesn’t feel right

    #2060507
    CTLAWYER
    Participant

    Tikun Meir

    #2060544
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    Yitzchak Yair, Ashkenaz from Artscroll in Hebrew.

    #2060676
    rightwriter
    Participant

    Reb eliezer don’t you find the artscroll siddur a little robotic? When you compare it to Tefillas Kol Peh where every paragraph is in a different font either different letter size, or bold to differentiate the paragraphs. It makes it very interesting and less monotonous. Also the Koren siddur has a really nice typeset and beautiful premium cream colored paper.

    Artscroll does have very clear print and bright white pages with a solid cover but I just feel like it has no character.

    #2060817
    GotAGoodPoint
    Participant

    You cay say waht you enjoy about a particular siddur, but to point out waht you dont like is probably loshon Hora, even if it is not fundamentally bad or wrong, since you are mentioning it in a derogatory way, i believe it’s LH.
    Again, don’t trust me, as your own O.R.

    Can’t imagine anybosy should care about what somebody else likes (in Ivrit they say – על טעם וריח אין להתווכח) but personally i prefer the Aliyos Eliyohu Siddur bby far. Also the Mosuk midvash (very different style to choice #1)

    #2060880

    coffee, avira, I also did not like it when seeing other people doing it for years.
    But really works for outside – self-lightning, allows for gloves without need to turn tiny pages; if it gets damaged by drops of rain, it is a broken phone, rather than a torn siddur, maybe should move the text according to where I look or even better, where the chazan is mumbling. For shabbos, probably can be automated to a certain speed like a shabbos elevator… some joke that some people wake up by shir shel yom to ask what day is it diay, but phone siddur shows the right shir. I am not really advocating phone, just found it surprising that I changed my opinion 180 when I am using it rather than others 😉 talking about bias!

    #2061089
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    Otzar Hatefilos (2 volumes) explains everything in great detail.

    #2061130
    rightwriter
    Participant

    Is it all about explanations that make a siddur?

    #2061170
    takahmamash
    Participant

    My favorite siddur is “Minchas Yerushalayim.” For those of you that don’t know it, it’s small and very thick, about 1500 pages. As far as I know, it’s been out of publication for several years now. I love it because it has everything – calendars, times, pictures and diagrams, Avodim Hayeenu for Shabbat Hagadol, you name it, it’s in there.
    I’ve had 3 or 4 copies over the years, and wore each one out. It’s almost impossible to find them anymore, which brings me to a nice story.
    One of my daughters was reading my posts in the CR, as she knows my screen name. She saw the post where I asked if anyone had any info about this particular siddur, like if new copies were still being published. The answer I received to my post was that the family that owned the rights was no longer going to publish it.
    So, my daughter poked around in various Yerushalayim based FB and email groups, asking if anyone had a copy of this particular siddur to sell or give away. Someone did have one, gave it to my daughter; all my kids chipped in, had it rebound, and gave it to me for my birthday a few years ago. It was quite meaningful.

    #2061172
    🍫Syag Lchochma
    Participant

    That is such a great story! Thanks for sharing.

    #2062110
    Avram in MD
    Participant

    Artscroll is crisp, clear, and easy to follow, and the siddurs are well made with strong paper and a binding that can take years of use yet allows you to lay the siddur open flat on a table and keep your page. I davened from the Yitzchak Yair until several years ago when I switched to…

    Siddur Tefillas Shai. It matches Artscroll’s crisp clearness, and uses a beautiful, unassuming font that’s my favorite I’ve seen. Unlike my argument here, I have completely come around to having vehi noam tucked right into the weekday maariv before aleinu. The binding is strong, but unfortunately it doesn’t lay flat so well, so I lose my page when gathering the tzitzis for Shema. Also, only the tiny 5″ size is seemingly still in print. I managed to get a larger version a year ago, and hopefully over time it will start to lie flat on the table or shtender. This is my favorite siddur at the moment. Other than not lying flat, my only quibble is that some of the text is very small, which is difficult to read in poor lighting.

    Aliyos Eliyahu – I grab this siddur in shul when I don’t have my own on hand. It has large, readable text, and stretches letters rather than spacing to achieve column uniformity, similar to a sefer Torah, which is a fun touch. It uses a different, neat looking font for pesukim, which clearly identifies them. It also lies perfectly flat on the table or shtender. It follows the nusach of the Gra, so there are some differences from how I daven nusach Ashkenaz.

    Tefillas Kol Peh – I have a pocket sized version. It has an old fashioned feel to it which is nice, and I like the font, though sometimes words run together with no spacing. Rightwriter mentioned how the font size changes from paragraph to paragraph, and this feature is really nice in some places such as enlarging the 4th brachos in each of the Shabbos tefillos, but on the downside there are a lot of important tefillos that get squeezed in with tiny, hard to read font sizes, even paragraphs of krias Shema. Also, while I understand space saving, I personally don’t like when mincha and maariv are squished together with the ashrei of mincha spread out over like 10 pages with 2 lines on each page, with maariv underneath. Others may prefer this.

    For someone new to davening, I would recommend Artscroll’s “Kol Yaakov” English/Hebrew siddur. It’s a lot of page turning, but it includes a bunch of helpful instructions (where/how to bow, when to say amein or not, etc.) and it marks out the points in each paragraph where the shaliach tzibbur usually picks up. It also marks where the shva na’s are (so do the Yitzchak Yair, Tefillas Shai, and Aliyos Eliyahu).

    #2062167
    rightwriter
    Participant

    Avram I agree Kol Peh is a bit inconsistent with font size ( which I still like because it makes it interesting and kind gives the small font a feel of importance), however there are newer versions with a modern clear and revised font which come in the medium size siddur. The thing is they changed some or one of the birchos hashachar to a different version from the previous. I think there is some machlokes in the Ashkenaz birchos hashachar.

    Also I’m the classic Kol Peh al hamichya, the al hagefen is listed before al hamichya. Is there a source for that version or simply a mistake of the order.

    #2062186
    ubiquitin
    Participant

    “When you compare it to Tefillas Kol Peh where every paragraph is in a different font either different letter size, or bold to differentiate the paragraphs.”

    Interesting.
    I like the Artscroll siddur for the exact reason that it doesn’t randomly change fonts. It makes me nervous that one Halleluka is bigger than the next. or Berachos during shemoneh esrei randomly change size.

    To each their own

    #2062357
    huju
    Participant

    Irish. So silky, friendly, trainable.

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