physical aspects of siddurim

[cellio]

It looks like Mishkan T'filah, the new siddur from the Reform movement, might actually come out before the moshiach comes. Someone asked on the worship mailing list how people feel about physical aspects of prayer books, such as hard-cover versus soft-cover. This made me think explicitly about things I implicitly react to.

My reply:

My criteria for a siddur are, roughly in order:

• content (but that's a separate discussion)
• legibility (crispness matters at least as much as font size)
• holdable in one hand
• paper not too thin (the "old Plaut chumash" problem)

Gates of Prayer (both blue and gray editions), Sim Shalom, and our home-grown Shabbat morning service in a three-ring binder all fulfill "holdabiltiy". The paperback Mishkan T'filah does; I'm a little concerned about a hardcover edition with the larger page size and all that extra content (almost 700 pages), but we'll see. I'll use the book anyway, as its content is miles ahead of GOP in my opinion, so this is just a question about how much hassle it will be.

Why is being able to hold it in one hand important? Because I want to have a hand free to turn pages and to hold stuff (like tzitzit during Kri'at Sh'ma, a lulav and etrog in their season, or a magnifying glass when a siddur violates the legibility goal), and I don't see well enough to just rest the siddur on the top of the pew in front of me when I need a free hand.

I don't care about outside factors like cover color/art beyond "would this embarrass me in a non-denominational minyan?". I don't particularly care about hardcover versus softcover, but the latter tend to get beat up as people fold pages back and that's not so good. But I don't feel that I'm having a lesser prayer experience if my siddur is softbound, spiral-bound, or in a binder. First and foremost for me are content and usability.

Comments

[cellio]

I don't like the trend toward smaller glasses either. I had to work hard to find big-enough frames for my last new pair. (My glasses are "too big" per current fashions, but usability trumps that and I never had much use for "fashion" anyway. :-) )

I'm jealous, though -- even with larger lenses, I've never been able to have a whole page in focus at once. I move my head and/or the book a lot when I read.

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

I'm jealous, though -- even with larger lenses, I've never been able to have a whole page in focus at once. I move my head and/or the book a lot when I read.

I "cheat" by using smaller books: the siddur I usually use is a Rinat Yisrael "softcover" (plastic rather than stiff paper) - Hebrew only, about 5.25" x 3.5" x 0.8". Since the print doesn't go all the way to the edge of the page, and the pages don't go all the way to the edge of the cover (which is what I measured), keeping an entire page in focus isn't too hard (and/or moving the entire book slightly is so easy that I don't notice it). I also like it because it's "complete": it's got everything for weekdays, shabbat, rosh chodesh, major & minor holidays, and even the basics for rosh hashana & yom kippur, although it doesn't have all the add-ins so for those holidays I got the Artscroll softcover "pocket" editions with English as well as Hebrew. Each of those (one book for rosh hashana and one for yom kippur) is larger than the Rinat Yisrael but still okay for one-handed holding. The Rinat Yisrael has Monday/Thursday/shabbat afternoon readings but not torah/haftorah for shabbat mornings, so for that I usually use my student-size Mikra'ot G'dolot - separate books for bereshit, shmot, etc, (each with haftorot) so they're easy to carry to shul and can be held comfortably even if I'm standing (although I usually sit for torah reading). They're Hebrew only, but they've got lots of commentaries and I specifically got the Hami'or edition because they reset the type for both the main text and all the commentaries so even the smallest print size is clear for reading - my chevrusa and I could share one student-size, or 3 of use could share one standard-size, and none of us had to strain to read.