What it is
The Contemplative Siddur is a way to pray the morning service slowly, as chant. Each prayer is laid out breath by breath, with the Hebrew, a transliteration, and several translations side by side, and many come with a recording you can sing along with.
It grew out of decades of leading davvenen, retreats, and silent meditation weeks, where a single line, sung many times, does more than a page read once.
It is a prototype, still being written: prayers, melodies, and recordings are added and corrected as I go.
What you’ll find inside
Trails through the Four Worlds
Choose a route through the service by how much time you have and how deep you want to go. The trail moves through Assiyah, Yetzirah, B’riah, and Atzilut.
Sing along, breath by breath
Press play and the words follow the recording. Loop a single breath to learn a melody before moving on.
Many translations
Read several translations next to the Hebrew, and choose the one you see first.
Transliteration your way
Pick how sounds are spelled (ḫ, ch, kh, or Ashkenazi), and whether stressed syllables are marked.
Ways of naming the Holy
Show God-language as traditionally written, in the Kohenet form (Shekhinah), or in a nonbinary form (Havayah).
Lead mode
A full-screen view for leading a group: tap the left third of the screen to go back, anywhere else to go on.
The recordings archive
About two hundred recordings live inside the siddur: albums, retreats, and community davvenen, sorted by prayer. It includes the Musical Midrash Project (2004), a song for every parashah. See Recordings archive.
How to begin
- Open the siddur and choose a trail.
- Tap a prayer to open it, and press play.
- Let a breath loop until the melody is yours, then go on.
Behind it
The content lives in a shared spreadsheet, so new prayers and recordings appear without rebuilding the site. The siddur is an offering of Kol Hai, a 501(c)(3). If it serves your practice, you can support this work.