open siddur project Archives • Aharon's Omphalos

Locating James Alan Montgomery and Richard Gotheil’s lost Amulet No. 42

I located an apotropaic amulet containing a prophylactic historiola of Eliyahu vs. Lilith, long lost whose transcription by Richard Gottheil was first published by James Montgomery in 1913, Now, finally, the transcription can be corrected against the actual manuscript held in the collection of Columbia University library. . . . → Continue reading: Locating James Alan Montgomery and Richard Gotheil’s lost Amulet No. 42

Approbations

I received a very nice compliment, so I’m parking it here for just those times I might need to read it. . . . → Continue reading: Approbations

The Masoretic Text of the Pentateuch, color-coded according to its narrative layers as delineated by the Supplementary Hypothesis of Tzemaḥ Yoreh

Last night, I finished a year long project begun after Simḥat Torah in 2018, presenting the Masoretic Hebrew text of the parashot (weekly Torah readings) with English translation in a range of colors according to the way the narrative layers are parsed through the Supplementary hypothesis as read by Dr. Tzemah Yoreh, published in his Kernel to Canon series of books (2013-2017) and on his website, the Sources of Biblical Narrative. The version of the Masoretic text used is Dr. Seth Avi Kadish’s Miqra al pi ha-mesorah published at Hebrew Wikisource. . . . → Continue reading: The Masoretic Text of the Pentateuch, color-coded according to its narrative layers as delineated by the Supplementary Hypothesis of Tzemaḥ Yoreh

Open-source Judaism and Charting the Course of the American Future, an essay for Kenissa: Community of Meaning Network

Rabbi Schwartz asked prospective participants in his “Kenissa: Community of Meaning Network” to respond to his chapter, and in particular how our initiatives are aligned with one (or more) of the four propositions he offers to heading off the crises facing the American Jewish community, and in what ways they advance an area of Jewish life or practice outside of those propositions. Here was my response as founding director of the Open Siddur Project and co-founder of Open-source Judaism. . . . → Continue reading: Open-source Judaism and Charting the Course of the American Future, an essay for Kenissa: Community of Meaning Network

Hacking the Atahualpa Theme for Showing Multiple Author Bylines and Bios with the Co-Authors Plus Plug-In in WordPress

For posts with multiple contributors in Wordpress, showing multiple names in the byline requires some hacking. One must install the Co-Authors Plus plug-in and then edit the code for their particular Wordpress theme. Documentation written by Daniel Bachuber, the author of the Co-Authors Plus plugin is located here. For those using the Atahualpa theme in Wordpress, documentation is uneven, incomplete, and hard to come by. Hopefully, this post will provide more comprehensive guidance and save someone the time I spent I trying to figure this out. You can see an example of my solution in effect at the Open Siddur Project — check out the byline and multiple-author bios in this post. (Please share with me any improvements you might have to what I’ve written below.) . . . → Continue reading: Hacking the Atahualpa Theme for Showing Multiple Author Bylines and Bios with the Co-Authors Plus Plug-In in WordPress

GNU General Public License + Font Exception

Lately, for the Open Siddur Project, I’ve been putting together a font package for more easily distributing extant free/libre licensed Unicode Hebrew fonts. These fonts tend to be licensed with SIL’s Open Font License (e.g., EzraSIL and Cardo), or the GNU General Public License (GPL, e.g., Maxim Iorsh’s Culmus Project fonts). Because of the differences between fonts and other software code in their usage, there arose some conflicts which necessitated an exception to the GPL specifically for fonts. Unfortunately, the GPL font exception statement is somewhat buried in the Free Software Foundations GPL FAQ. Because important information on the GPL+FE is nowhere on the Internet included in one single post, I’ve reformatted it and shared it below. . . . → Continue reading: GNU General Public License + Font Exception

update 2002-08-08

I’m working on a proposal for a project that I’m calling the “Open Siddur”. The goal of the project is to bring back the creative power of t’fillah to the individual while encouraging the feeling of solidarity with and awareness of the larger Jewish community and their diversity. The draft proposal is located here. Growing . . . → Continue reading: update 2002-08-08

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