Service/Song Archive

About this Archive

Writing a service or songsheet? I've done a bunch of them, and got tired of constantly typing the English parts, then photocopying the Hebrew from Gates of Prayer or a previous service, then spacing the English so that the Hebrew fit, then cut-and-pasting it all together. Time-consuming, irregular-looking, nth-generation compies? There had to be a better way. For some reason, Matt Harvey typed up a complete (with Hebrew) Friday night service. (The silly boy used a commercial font, so I couldn't include this file. Most prayers, however, are here.) The Brown-RISD Reform Jewish Chavurah wanted to redo its service binder, and thus the inspiration for a semi-standard template was born, with the goal of easily having all Hebrew passages accompanied by a transliteration and translation.

Back when I had free time, I volunteered to update our Shira! songsheets. Wanting to make a nice-looking product and in keeping with the Hebrew/translit/translate goal, I dutifully retyped the transliterations and translations of all the songs with Hebrew. I then spent a couple of hours cozied up with a Xerox machine finding all the texts, and then a few more hours copy-fitting and pasting all the stuff together. Then I gulped some coffee and wondered if I had put too much effort into a one-time project. Then I gulped some more coffee and said, "I wonder if someone else out there could use this stuff?"

Probably not, since [he|she|it|they]'d have to copy-fit and paste up everything anyway. So in a fit of major procrastination, I typed in all the Hebrew portions, and set up a standard layout. As the next pot brewed, I set out to put the song file on my webpage. And now I have created a project with a life of its own, rather than just procrastination.

As this project is an on-going one, I'm open to suggestions for improvements. Is your favorite song not here? Is there some way to better organize this archive? Can you think of a catchy name for this project? I want to know.

Last update: 06 May 2003
This page maintained by Daniel Macks.
Please mail me with any concerns or suggestions.