The Koren Sacks Siddur: A Hebrew/English Prayerbook, Standard Size (Hebrew Edition) [Hardcover]

Jonathan Sacks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2009

The Koren Sacks Siddur is an inspiring Hebrew/English Jewish prayerbook. The siddur marks the culmination of years of rabbinic scholarship, exemplifies the tradition of textual accuracy and innovative graphic design of the renowned Koren Publishers Jerusalem publishing house, and offers an illuminating translation, introduction and commentary by one of the world's leading Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks. Modern orthodox halakhic guides to daily, Shabbat, and holiday prayers supplement the traditional text. Prayers for the State of Israel, its soldiers, and national holidays, and for the American government and its military reinforce the siddur's contemporary relevance. Standard (Yehuda) size, Ashkenaz, with dark slate Skivertex hardcover binding. Ideal for synagogue use.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Every page is a pleasure to the eye. The layout conveys dignity and depth, and the subtleties of text and design will move us, sometimes unconsciously, to feelings and intuitions that are novel, pleasing, and uplifting. Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks offers us words of introduction and explanation, commentary, and an exquisite grasp of the poetry of prayer. --Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, Executive Vice President, Orthodox Union

About the Author

Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks is one of the most original thinkers and articulate writers in the Jewish world today. Educated at Cambridge University and Jews College London, he has been Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth since 1991. Rabbi Sacks is the author of many books of Jewish thought, and speaks regularly to both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1280 pages
• Publisher: Koren Publishers Jerusalem; Standard size edition (May 15, 2009)
• Language: Hebrew
• ISBN-10: 9653010670
• ISBN-13: 978-9653010673
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #155,420 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > Prayerbooks

More About the Author

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks

Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks has been Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth since September 1, 1991, the sixth incumbent since 1845.

In July 2009, appointed to the House of Lords as a cross-bencher.

Prior to becoming Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Sacks served as Principal of Jews' College, London, the world's oldest rabbinical seminary, as well as rabbi of the Golders Green and Marble Arch synagogues in London. He gained rabbinic ordination from Jews' College and London's Yeshiva Etz Chaim.

His secular academic career has also been a distinguished one. Educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he obtained first class honours in Philosophy, he pursued postgraduate studies at New College, Oxford, and King's College, London. Sir Jonathan has been Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex, Sherman Lecturer at Manchester University, Riddell Lecturer at Newcastle University, Cook Lecturer at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and St. Andrews and Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is currently Visiting Professor of Theology at Kings' College London. He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Bar Ilan, Cambridge, Glasgow, Haifa, Middlesex, Yeshiva University New York, University of Liverpool, St. Andrews University and Leeds Metropolitan University, and is an honorary fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and King's College London. In September 2001, the Archbishop of Canterbury conferred on him a Doctorate of Divinity in recognition of his first ten years in the Chief Rabbinate.

At his installation as Chief Rabbi in 1991, Dr Sacks set out his vision of a reinvigorated Anglo-Jewry and launched it with a Decade of Jewish Renewal, followed by a series of innovative communal projects. These included Jewish Continuity (a national foundation funding programmes in Jewish education and outreach), the Association of Jewish Business Ethics, the Chief Rabbinate Awards for Excellence, the Chief Rabbinate Bursaries, and Community Development, a national programme to enhance Jewish community life. In 1995, he received the Jerusalem Prize for his contribution to diaspora Jewish life. In September 2001 the Chief Rabbi began his second decade of office with a call to Jewish Responsibility and a renewed commitment to the ethical dimension of Judaism. He was awarded a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June 2005. A notably gifted communicator, the Chief Rabbi is a frequent contributor to radio, television and the national press. He frequently delivers BBC RADIO 4's THOUGHT FOR THE DAY, writes a monthly CREDO column for THE TIMES and delivers an annual Rosh Hashanah message on BBC 2. In 1990 he was invited by the BBC Board of Governors to deliver the annual Reith Lectures on the subject of THE PERSISTENCE OF FAITH.

The Dignity of Difference was awarded the 2004 Grawemeyer Prize for Religion, and A Letter in the Scroll a National Jewish Book Award 2002.

Born in 1948 in London, he has been married to Elaine since 1970. They have three children, Joshua, Dina and Gila and three grandchildren.

Publications:

Tradition in an Untraditional Age (1990)
Persistence of Faith (1991)
Arguments for the Sake of Heaven (1991)
Crisis and Covenant (1992)
One People? (1993)
Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren? (1994)
Community of Faith (1995)
Faith in the Future (1998)
The Politics of Hope (1997)
Morals and Markets (1999)
Celebrating Life (2000)
Radical Then, Radical Now (2001)
The Dignity of Difference (2002)
The Chief Rabbi's Haggadah (2003)
From Optimism to Hope (2004)
To Heal a Fractured World (2005)
The Authorised Daily Prayer Book: new translation and commentary (2006)
The Home We Build Together (2007)
Future Tense (2009)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This siddur should replace the existing siddurs in synagogoues, June 26, 2009

By 

Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Koren Sacks Siddur: A Hebrew/English Prayerbook, Standard Size (Hebrew Edition) (Hardcover)

Most Jews read the siddur, a Hebrew word meaning "order," implying the order of prayers, with little or no comprehension of what they are reading. They are no different than Christians and Muslim. All fail to fulfill the purpose of prayer. The Hebrew word for prayer is tefillah, which is based on a root that means "to judge oneself." Prayer in Judaism is more than a petition, the basic meaning of the Latin and Greek word upon which "prayer" is based. It is a time of reflection, of inner judgment, of considering change and improvement.

The siddur is an anthology of widely divergent ideas that were composed by Jews - and non-Jews in some instances, like the ma tovu ohalekha prayer that is at the beginning of the siddur - with different ideologies over a long period of time. The siddur contains pieces from the Bible, such as Psalms, and poems written in the sixteenth century by mystics, such as the prayer welcoming the Sabbath called in Hebrew lecha dodi. By incorporating such a wide spectrum of views, the rational and the mystical, old and relatively new, Jews are capable, if they understand the prayers, to reflect on what is being said, the history of their religion, the concerns of its adherents, see if and how the prayers relate to their lives, and ask themselves whether the prayer they are reading can help them develop themselves and improve society.

Does the new Koren Siddur improve upon these matters and aid Jews in better understanding what they are reading?

The answer is an emphatic "yes." Indeed this is one of the primary purposes of the new siddur. It aids Jews in acquiring all of the above-mentioned benefits by its manner of presentation, its translations and its commentaries. The following innovations of this new siddur are a small sample of how this siddur enhances its users' period of prayer and their understanding of Judaism.

* Both the Hebrew and English are written with a beautiful font especially designed to enhance the siddur.

* Both the Hebrew and English are generally written with poetic spacing that, unlike run-on sentences, prompts the reader to think and consider the meaning of each phrase, as in the mourner's kaddish:
Magnified and sanctified
may His great name be,
in the world He created by His will.

* There is a rational acceptance of the existence of the State of Israel and the United States, which is absent from the currently widely-used siddur. There are services for Yom Hazekaron, Israel's Memorial Day, Yom HaAtzma'ut, Israel's Independence Day, and for Yom Yerushalayim, the day commemorating the reunion of Israel's capital Jerusalem.

* Highly significant is the English translation and commentary of Sir Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of the British Empire. Rabbi Sacks introduces the siddur with an instructive thirty-two page Understanding Jewish Prayer. Rabbi Sacks' English is impeccable, unlike the yeshiva-type English contained in the currently popular siddur.

* Unlike this currently popular siddur that openly promotes a mystical ideology and a world-view where God is present in everyday affairs and manipulates individuals, groups and nations like puppets to do His will, Sacks' translation and commentary is open-minded and reasonable. For example, while discussing Israel's Independence Day, he mentions the mystic Nachmanides' view (in his commentary to Leviticus 18:25) that Jews only fully fulfils the divine commands (mitzvot) when they perform them in Israel. Sacks writes, among other things: "Interpreted non-mystically, this means that the Torah represents the architecture of a society, it is not just a code for the salvation of the soul. The Torah includes laws relating to welfare, the environment, the administration of justice, employer-employee relations, and many other matters not normally thought of as religious. It is less about the ascent to heaven, than about bringing heaven down to earth in the form of a just, gracious and compassionate social order." This world-view stands in stark contrast to that advocated in the currently popular siddur.

* The new siddur contains a Guide to the Reader section that is an excellent introduction to how Hebrew should be pronounced and explains how the editors of the siddur made pronunciation easy by inserting clues in the Hebrew text. An example is that the emphasis on all Hebrew words should be on the last symbol except where the editors placed a small line next to the vowel in words that are not so pronounced.

* There is a section explaining how the services differ in Israel.

* There are 66 pages of 490 instructions on the laws of prayers.

* The editors of the new siddur recognize, as they should, that there have been centuries of debate as to the wording of some prayers. Two pages delineate these differences.

* Many people do not know when and how to respond to certain prayers - for example, should one say "amen." This is addressed.

* There are charts indicating what prayers could be said for special occasions, such as the birth of a child, for an illness and for guidance.

* Many synagogue attendees cannot read Hebrew and do not know how to navigate through a siddur, so the editors placed an English transliteration of the two types of mourners' kaddish as the last pages of the siddur.

* It is refreshing and characteristic of the Koren Siddur to read on page 26 that Jews "believe that every human being is equally formed in the image of God," men and women, Jew and non-Jew.
These are just some of the many innovations introduced in the Koren Siddur. Synagogues should replace their current prayer books and give their parishioners this magnificent volume.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Koren-Sacks Siddur, August 12, 2009

By 

Tova H. Schreiber - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Koren Sacks Siddur: A Hebrew/English Prayerbook, Personal Size (Hebrew Edition) (Hardcover)

ArtScroll.

This word alone is enough to conjure up praise, disgust or tepid acceptance among my Orthodox readers. The publisher, which has been printing Jewish material since 1977, is edited by Rabbis Meir Zlotowitz and Nosson Scherman who spawned a revolution within the realm of Jewish publishing.

The enormously popular ArtScroll Siddur, available in a variety of translations and styles, can be found in any American Orthodox synagogue today. And the company's vast collection of translated gemaras, TaNaChs and hashkafa-centered books have made Jewish learning accessible to an unprecedented number of observant and non-observant Jews.

In my view, the Jewish world should be grateful for the establishment of ArtScroll. Before the company's vast library of prayer books and scriptural texts, there were few options in Jewish study available to those who were not fluent in Hebrew. Now, people actually have an idea of what they're saying and studying at shul/home/school/yeshiva, and this is a beautiful thing.

But there are some things about ArtScroll I do not care for. Their translations are sometimes vague and often non-literal (Shir HaShirim is one of the more notorious examples I can think of regarding this phenomenon), they are less open to non-Charedi ideas and their "novels" frankly suck.

This is where alternative publishing houses, such as Metsudah and Koren, come in.

Koren is a Jerusalem-based publisher who, like ArtScroll, has its own unique typeface and style. According to [...], Eliyahu Koren in 1961 "set out to publish the first Tanakh (Bible) edited, designed, printed and bound by Jews in nearly 500 years." Most people who own a Koren Tanach will notice that its "font" is old-yet-modern looking, and its cream-colored paper is thin to keep the sefer from becoming too heavy.

In 2009, Koren teamed up with Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom/British Commonwealth. Sacks is known worldwide for a Zionistic/Modern-Orthodox, scholarly approach to Judaism, and even those who don't agree with everything he says regard him as a "chashuv" man.

The result of the Koren-Sacks collaboration is a siddur which I honestly find quite delightful. Here are some things I'd like to say about it...

The first thing I noticed about this siddur is that it is very "Koren-esque". The thin, cream-colored Koren paper is used, and the famous Koren typeface appears here. At the same time, it will be immediately noticed by all who use this siddur that unlike ArtScroll, the Koren-Sacks siddur places the Hebrew text on the odd-numbered pages and their English translation on the even-numbered pages. This takes some getting used to, but I believe it makes tefila flow more smoothly.

[....]

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The New Siddur, June 21, 2009

By 

Debbie Lampert at www.eluna.com (Raanana Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Koren Sacks Siddur: A Hebrew/English Prayerbook, Standard Size (Hebrew Edition) (Hardcover)

Since the printing of the revolutionary Tanach in 1962, Eliyahu Koren and Koren Publishing have helped usher Jewish printing into a new era of artistry and spirituality. In 1981 they furthered the legacy with the first printing of the Koren Siddur, a prayer book that treated the prayers as poetry laying them out in an artistic way that made them easier to read and understand.

Now with the help of the Chief Rabbi of England Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, that wonderful siddur has been translated into English providing a beautiful and informative prayer book that appeals to the modern Zionist Jew. The font is the same beautifully designed font Eliyau used in 1981, and is printed in what Koren Publishing calls their "Bible" paper, which has added high cotton and linen fibers to increase strength yet maintain thinness.

Some of the innovative features of this new siddur include emphasizing the phrasing of the Tefilot with line breaks. Likewise, blessings are presented in two lines in order to emphasize the meaning. As a surprise, the Hebrew text of the prayers is on the left hand side of the page and the English is on the right. This, say the editors, allows the text to flow more freely. There are many additional prayers included, such as the Hallel which appears in the service for Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence day.

An annotated prayer book, the source for many of the texts of various prayers is located in the margins, as opposed to the body of the text in other Siddurim. Also included is a halachic guide for visitors to Israel that emphasizes the centrality of Jerusalem.

Most notably the translation conforms with the modern Israeli pronunciation of Hebrew. That means the hard taf sound not the soft ess which is a hallmark of Ashkenazi pronunciation. A Zionist Siddur, the Koren Sacks Siddur has been endorsed by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis.

All in all this is a special siddur that will only add to the legacy of Koren and bring a new way of thinking about prayers to a new generation of Jews.