The Koren Siddur refers to a family of siddurim published by Koren Publishers Jerusalem beginning in 1981.[1]
Eliyahu Koren began work on a new prayerbook in the 1970s. Koren created Koren Book Type for the project, and an innovative design for which the siddur would become famous.[2] Rather than allow the text to run continuously across page turns, Koren maintained lines and paragraphs within individual pages. He set individual sentences line by line, according to their meaning. The result was a prayerbook, published in 1981, that facilitated uninterrupted prayer and elucidated the underlying meaning of the text. The siddur became one of the most widely used Hebrew-only prayerbooks. In 2009, Koren Publishers Jerusalem introduced a new Hebrew/English edition of the Koren Siddur, the Koren Sacks Siddur (below), with an introduction, translation, and commentary by the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Lord Jonathan Sacks.
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Eliyahu Koren's philosophy regarding the siddur can be summed up in his statement that, "The prayers are presented in a style that does not encourage habit and hurry, but rather inspires the worshipper to engage both mind and heart in prayer." The Koren Siddur thus employs a subdued, elegant layout throughout,[3] and uses a poetry-line format in many of the included prayers.[4]
The Koren Sacks Siddur is the Hebrew-English edition of the popular Koren Siddur, edited and annotated by Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth Jonathan Sacks. It was first published in 2009,[1] signaling Koren's entry into the English-language siddur market, long dominated by ArtScroll. The Koren Sacks aims to fill a niche by becoming the main prayer text in Modern Orthodox congregations.[5][6] The siddur has also been well received by non-Orthodox Jews.[7]
While on a speaking tour in the United States to promote the siddur in May 2009,[8] Sacks told The Baltimore Sun that he aimed for a "new, simple, straightforward, . . . reasonably lucid translation—one that captured a little of the rhythms of the Hebrew itself and gave a little of the poetry of the more poetic prayers". He said that his commentary is intended to "shed some light on the inner logic of the prayers",[9]
Koren Publishers Jerusalem followed up on The Koren Sacks Siddur with the publication of The Koren Sacks Rosh HaShana Machzor in 2011. Other joint Koren-Sacks works are currently in process.