Choosing a siddur – a Jewish prayer book – often feels harder than it should.
With so many options, translations, and traditions, many beginners and conversion candidates worry about buying the “wrong” one or committing too soon. But a siddur isn’t a test of Jewishness or knowledge. It’s a tool meant to support prayer and learning.
This guide walks through how to choose a siddur with confidence, focusing on what actually matters and how to find one that works for you right now.
Here’s the link mentioned in the video: How to choose a Jewish prayer book/siddur/machzor (with links)
If you appreciate calm, practical guidance like this, you may also enjoy my membership Bayit Builders – a supportive space for people building Jewish life step by step, especially during conversion. Bayit Builders is opening to new members January 11–15, 2026. Learn more or join the waitlist here.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
Choosing a Jewish prayer book, a Siddur, shouldn’t be harder than the prayers themselves.
But boy is there a lot of them. What’s the differences? What do you pick? And they’re not cheap, so you don’t wanna be buying five of them.
But you’re really scared of buying the wrong one.
Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert who’s been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, Building a Jewish Life.com.
I was once in your shoes and it was hard.
I want you to have the information that I wish I had had back then.
First and foremost, there is no single correct Siddur. There is only the Siddur that is best for you.
But we’re gonna go through some general principles and look at some prayer books But if you want the full listing of prayer books and the links to go with it, click the link down in the description below.
Fundamentally, a Siddur is a tool, not a test.
It’s meant to support your prayer and learning, not be a source of stress.
But let’s face it, it often ends up being a source of stress anyway, and the very first stress is which one to pick.
The most basic question with Siddurim is that each movement, each denomination, uses its own Siddur.
There are Orthodox Siddurs, conservative Siddurs, reform Siddurs, reconstructionist Siddurs.
And buying a Siddur doesn’t commit you to a particular movement.
You can always change your mind later.
So you could start there. Start with whatever your synagogue is using. That is my basic advice: buy whatever your synagogue uses. But not all of you have synagogues yet.
So my alternative best advice is to buy an Orthodox prayer book.
And quite frankly, I think everyone should do both. If you are purchasing a non-Orthodox prayer book for what you use in synagogue, I think you should also have a traditional Orthodox one just as a good reference or to find practices that maybe you would like to take on. It’s good to kind of have like an original around, you know.
But if you start with an orthodox Siddur and then later use a non-Orthodox one, you’re not gonna be missing anything.
The non-Orthodox Siddur may omit certain parts, and the Orthodox one will generally be the most complete Siddur you can find.
In the Orthodox world, there are two major companies for Siddurs. First one is Artscroll, and the Artscroll is what you’re gonna find in the majority of Orthodox synagogues.
It’s just a very basic English and Hebrew text. So you have Hebrew on one page and English translation on the other.
And of course I can’t find my Koren Siddur right now. So I’m gonna show you from a Machzor, which is a holiday prayer book, but it’s very similar.
The Hebrew font on this side, the English font on this side.
If you notice the two pages are flipped from the Artscroll. So this would have the English in the Artscroll, and this would have the Hebrew.
The Artscroll is the standard that you’re gonna find in most synagogues, but you will often find some Koren in there.
So it’s hard to choose between the Artscroll and the Koren. I think there’s two major arguments here. The Artscroll is what you’re most likely to find in any random synagogue, and if you’re praying in English, davening in English, you’re going to eventually memorize that English translation.
So it matters which prayer book you use because each prayer book has a different English translation. And believe me, if you have memorized it one way and then you try to daven from a different English translation, it can really throw you off. On the other hand, the Koren has a a nicer, cleaner layout.
There’s more white space, which makes it easier on your eyes, and it’s just a nicer look. And it also has, in my opinion, but also in many other people’s opinion, a nicer English translation.
There are two other options that you might want in a Siddur. The Artscroll, at least. I don’t believe in the Koren, but the Artscroll has, um, a version that is transliterated. Transliteration is when you take Hebrew words and you write them with English letters. So to make it easier for an English speaker to read out loud. I don’t have a Siddur like that, but I do have a Bentcher, which is the prayer book for grace after meals.
So if you see here. The Hebrew is on one side and the transliteration is on the other.
So in an Artscroll like that, I’m not exactly sure how it would be laid out. Maybe it’s probably underneath.
And it would also have an English translation as well. The other alternative, and this is something that not everyone wants to choose. I personally could not do it. But for some reason I do have one. Uh, this is the interlinear translation. So you have the translation, but it’s underneath the individual words of the prayer.
So you don’t have an English translation you can just read because you would have to be reading the words backwards. The idea is, as you read the Hebrew, your eyes also see the translation, and over time it helps train your brain into what those words mean. It’s a really cool idea. It’s just I have ADHD and that’s way too distracting for me.
So there you have it.
You have everything you need now to choose your first Siddur.
If you wanna know the type of Siddur that the different movements use, if you go down to the link down in the description, you’ll find a list of all of them. That’s no guarantee that your specific synagogue will use that one, but it’s a good general guide.
If you like this kind of calm, practical advice, you’d probably like my membership, Bayit Builders. Doors are opening to new members January 11th through the 15th. You can find out more, or join the wait list at Building a Jewish Life.com/membership.
