Only a few know of the Sephardic community which operated in Vienna for some two hundred years. Even less know that the Jewish printing center in the Austrian capital serviced many Sephardic communities around the world: from India and southeast Asia through the Middle East and North Africa to the communities living in the New World across the Atlantic. Some of the most widespread Sephardic siddurim of the modern era were printed and distributed by the veteran Jewish print shops in the city. One of these belonged to Joseph Schlesinger, founded in 1860, and whose Sephardic siddur – Tefilat Bnei Tziyon – continues to be sold in Israel to this day, over 120 years after its first appearance.
The year of the siddur’s first printing is not known with accuracy, and the oldest copy extant in libraries is from the 1930s. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the siddur was already widespread among communities throughout the world. This is attested to by the publisher’s earlier catalogues, as well as its earlier editions containing a blessing for the Turkish Sultan (as part of the “Hanosen Teshu’ah Lemlachim” prayer for Gentile rulers).
The siddur had a number of versions from the outset – one of which was meant for schoolchildren – and at least one of which appears to have had an attached translation into Ladino, all sold in New York stores during WWI. The siddur’s prayer nusach, as its inner cover attests, is “in accordance with the custom of Sefarad, according to the nusach of our brothers dwelling in the lands of Turkey, [as well as]: Serbia, Romania, Bosn[i]a, Italy, Holland and France, Arabia and India, Egypt, internal and external west, Africa, and Asia.” The siddur’s wide distribution relied primarily on the publisher’s annual catalogues, which reached Sephardi communities throughout the whole area, including relatively small ones such as those in Aden at the time.
The siddur’s design was fairly simple. It relied on a clear font of differing sizes and very brief prayer instructions printed in tiny Rashi script. The power of Vienna, as one of the centers of Jewish printing in the modern era – as well as the impressive and unique distribution capabilities of the Schlesinger Press – led to the siddur becoming one of the most widespread siddurim in the Jewish world (especially in the Balkans and the Middle East) within a few decades. Communities became almost halachically attached to it when it came to nusach and custom.
The siddur also enjoyed some success in Eretz Yisrael, even before WWII. This was thanks to it being printed in a local edition by two North African Jewish scholars – Rabbi Amram Aburbeh and Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Chelouche – in their store near Jerusalem’s Machaneh Yehudah market. When the Schlesinger Press moved to Tel Aviv in 1939 and became the Sinai Press, the siddur continued to be printed in large numbers and in several editions over the following decades.
The siddur’s original design was carefully maintained carefully over the years, with all subsequent editions relying almost entirely on the siddur’s early print versions and including very few additions, including the Torah readings for the weekdays. The Israeli prayers for the Day of Independence were not included, while even the prayer for local rulers being retained intact, with the Sultan being replaced with other rulers and then a laconic “prayer for the governor of the country” rather than explicitly mentioning Israel. The prayer for IDF soldiers is also not included.
Like many other Sephardi siddurim, Tefilat Bnei Tziyon started to decline from the 1980s on. This was likely due to both the design, frozen in place since the nineteenth century, as well as the halachic and ideological changes brought about in the Sephardi world by Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef. To this can be added a polemic over the siddur’s omission of the passage in Aleinu, “shehem mishtachavim lehevel varik imitpalelim el el lo yoshia – as they bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god who will not save,” an omission which was seen as influenced by the non-Orthodox and was therefore stridently opposed.
The siddur is now sold in very small numbers – primarily by Sinai Press in Tel Aviv and their online website – and in special editions which include an artistic metallic cover. Yet despite this dramatic decline, there is now doubt that the siddur reflects a fascinating and unique chapter in modern Jewish history, in a number of respects: the Sephardic Jewish Diaspora in Central Europe and its relationships with the rest of the Sephardi world, the Jewish print world in Central Europe and its extensive influence on the adoption of prayer customs and halachos in various fields, and the move of the siddur from the exile to the Land of Israel – where, after initial success, it found itself dealing with a historic, halachic, and ideological reality which pushed it to the margins after close to a century on center stage.
My deep thanks to Avishai Elboim, Dr. David Hacohen, and Yitzhak “Tchiko” Gilo for their aid and advice.
Originally published on JFeed.com.
