The Workman's Siddur Project

This project was inspired by my own journey with Jewish practice, and my life as a working class Jew that struggles with mental health. Some time before I began working on this project, I began working somewhere that permmitted employees to step away from work for daily praye times. This was a first, and made me want to make use of this understanding- except the way I'd been taught to pray so far took around two hours, maybe one without a Torah service. I doubt my employer would understand that, regardless of the fact that I semi-frequently pull 12 and even 16 hour long shifts.

But as a hobby historian and religious studies nerd, I knew that the way Jews had prayed had changed between the beginning of the Rabbinic institution and now. The siddur that the main synagogue I go to uses even had a few small tantilizing asides about the changes to certain prayers. Odds were that the length of our prayers was not eternal, and that somewhere in our tradition were prayer liturgies for people with time constraints.

This gave me a new goal: research the history and rulings behind prayers, and see if there was a way to build a flexible prayerbook that accomadated working people who only had 15-20 minutes to pray.

- Cat Ipsum -

Rub my belly hiss swipe at owner's legs sniff catnip and act crazy growl at dogs in my sleep sit on the laptop for hiss at vacuum cleaner i like to spend my days sleeping and eating fishes that my human fished for me.

Head nudges eat my own ears. Hey! you there, with the hands why can't i catch that stupid red dot, shed everywhere shed everywhere stretching attack your ankles chase the red dot, hairball run catnip eat the grass sniff, or roll over and sun my belly curl up and sleep on the freshly laundered towels.