A siddur is not read so much as it is worn — carried to synagogue morning after morning, its pages softened by daily use rather than by age. Siddur Sim Shalom for Weekdays is exactly that kind of book: the prayer book that shapes the ordinary, recurring rhythm of Conservative Jewish worship, containing the morning, afternoon, and evening services recited not on the high occasions of the calendar but on the days in between, when prayer is habit rather than event.

Its name — Sim Shalom, "grant peace" — is drawn from the closing words of the Amidah, the central standing prayer of Jewish liturgy, and it signals the book's guiding aim: an ancient liturgy, largely unchanged in its essential structure for well over a thousand years, rendered here with attentive, literary English translation built to be prayed in either language without losing its integrity in either. Like every siddur, this one does not originate its prayers so much as gather and present them — the Shema, the Amidah, the Psalms of the daily service — texts whose authorship stretches back through rabbinic and biblical antiquity, long before any modern editor set them into this particular volume.

Within Conservative Judaism, Siddur Sim Shalom is not a historical artifact but a living, working text — reprinted, revised, and placed in the hands of congregants every single day it is used. Its place in Kamboozal sits differently from the ancient texts around it: this is a prayer book still being written into, quite literally, generation by generation, standing at the living edge of a much older tradition of Jewish liturgy.

Historical Context

The prayers gathered in Siddur Sim Shalom for Weekdays are, in their essential content, far older than the book itself. The Shema, the Amidah, and much of the surrounding liturgy trace back through rabbinic Judaism to the first centuries of the Common Era, with roots reaching further still into the Hebrew Bible. What changes from generation to generation is not the core prayers themselves but how they are arranged, translated, and presented — and Siddur Sim Shalom represents Conservative Judaism's most recent major effort to do so.

Its immediate lineage begins with the Weekday Prayer Book of 1961, which served Conservative congregations until 1985, when Rabbi Jules Harlow, then Director of Publications for the Rabbinical Assembly, released the original Siddur Sim Shalom: A Prayerbook for Shabbat, Festivals, and Weekdays — a single combined volume that became the standard siddur across Conservative congregations in North America for the better part of a generation.

In 1998, the Rabbinical Assembly undertook a full revision of Harlow's work, dividing the single combined volume into two separate books so that each service context could be developed more fully on its own terms: a slimmer Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals, and a companion weekday volume. That weekday volume, edited by Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner and published in 2003, preserved much of Harlow's original translation while introducing the movement's newer liturgical developments — including optional gender-sensitive translations of divine names and the option to include the matriarchs, alongside the patriarchs, within the Amidah.

The two digital editions linked below share a further, more recent chapter in the book's history. Both were prepared and released by the Rabbinical Assembly as part of an emergency "E-Siddurim" program during the COVID-19 pandemic, when congregations turned to remote and socially distanced prayer and needed digital access to their usual liturgy. Each carries the Rabbinical Assembly's own explicit permission for free, non-commercial reproduction and distribution, and both remain accessible today — one hosted directly by the publisher, the other preserved and shared by a congregation under that same standing permission.