Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The New Bentcher is Here!

As I discussed in my post here, my Rebbetzin and I decided to compose a new bentcher (birkon, if you prefer) in honour of our son's Bar Mitzvah, almost a year ago.

Our goals with that bentcher included:

* Presenting the Hebrew text in the poetic form it was intended to have, instead of the paragraphs which make appreciation of its beauty difficult;

* To offer a legible text;

* To build on the existing English translations, and offer commentary on the songs as well as birkat hamazon;

* To present background on some of the practices of the Shabbat table.


We published that edition at the time, and received some helpful feedback.

Over the past several months, in honour of my daughter's Bat Mitzvah this week, we made some changes to that addition. We added components like al hamichyah and Havdalah, and added many songs. We also edited some of the commentary and translations we had used in the original edition.

The experience, again, was an enlightening one; I hope you will enjoy the result, the second edition of Z'morta T'hei, which is now available for free download, in pdf, here. It is meant to be printed on paper which is 7 inches tall, and 6.7 inches wide. Please send feedback!

8 comments:

  1. Thank you for giving us this wonderful work! Mazel tov!

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  2. Mazel tov!

    (And congrats on finding a nice-sounding scriptural snippet in a rather depressing parsha.)

    What fonts are these? Did you re-type the entire text yourselves with vowels, or is there a free text available someplace as a starting point?

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  3. Mazal Tov!
    This is really great, 70 pages is a bit long yet I especially enjoyed reading the notes.
    Kol HaKavod.

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  4. This is a thing of beauty! I'd gladly buy some if printed on wine-proof paper and sturdily bound.

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  5. David-
    Thanks!

    Shalom-
    The English is AJenson, the Hebrew is David. Don't ask re: the re-typing; everything that I had to type myself in the Hebrew was absurdly difficult, due to issues with David in MS Publisher. [Some was from a free text; see my note on the first inner page.]

    Katz613- Thanks!

    Bob - Feel free to print it as you choose; we did print on good stock with a good binding, but we aren't selling...

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  6. If you don't mind -- what type of ceremony did you have for your daughter's bat mitzvah? (Shul/home, speech, etc.?)

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  7. Shalom-
    Kiddush in our house on Shabbos, so that my daughter could give a dvar torah on the learning she has done this past year. [Have you ever tried to give a dvar torah during a kiddush at shul?!]

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