Photo Credit: Jewish Press
The cover of the veteran Tikkun Meir siddur – almost impossible to find in shuls today – does not tell the whole story. True, it does note prominently that the siddur was “edited, arranged, and proofread by Rabbi Meir, son of Rabbi Tzvi Aryeh Chinsky, who [died] on 11 Nissan 1933, this precious siddur was called Tikkun Meir for the ascension of his soul.” But the editor’s name is just the tip of the iceberg in the social and cultural world in which this siddur was created: first in New York, and fifty years later in Eretz Yisrael.
The Meir Chinsky bookstore operated on New York City’s Ludlow Street in the early twentieth century, known at the time for its high-quality pickles for purchase for Shabbat and during the week. The beloved bookstore served the residents of the largest and densest Jewish neighborhood in the world at the time – the Lower East Side – where one could find books to read in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish, as well as a wide variety of siddurim and books for learning at home and in shul.
In an effort to beat his competitors – both in the print and book sales business – Chinsky joined others in 1901 to found the Hebrew Publishing Company, the largest and oldest Jewish New York-based publishing house. In the fictional but highly amusing book by Matan Hermoni of the same name, these publishing companies faithfully reflected the difficulties New York Jews faced in living and making a living, and they provided them with products which were poor in quality but equally cheap in price. The Tikkun Meir siddur, the private project of one of the company’s founders, was very much in this mold, and was both useful and cheap.
The siddur was first printed in 1933, around the time of Chinsky’s death, by one of the rival publishers. Two years later, the siddur was reprinted, this time by the company Chinsky helped found, and its repeat printings would grace New York bookstores and bookshelves for decades to come. The siddur was originally published in nusach Ashkenaz – perhaps due to the editor’s own preferences – and its page structure is very much reminiscent of other siddurim published at the time in both Eastern Europe and the United States. The siddur was almost 400 pages, a considerable size, and to keep its price down, Chinsky used common solutions such as printing Mincha and Ma’ariv on the same page, with a line dividing and distinguishing between the two.
In 1978, the siddur appeared in Jerusalem for the first time, though without any mention of the publisher responsible. Two years later, another Jerusalem addition appeared, and the siddur was also published a number of times in Tel Aviv in the early 1980s, at the initiative of Hamefitzim or The Distributors publishing.
In its Israeli version, which also appeared with nusach Sfard and in a number of formats, did declare itself to include all the necessary additions for student prayers. However, it was in fact an almost perfect copy of the original siddur, including prayers said only outside Eretz Yisrael. Despite this, the siddur was in fact quite popular in Israeli shuls, even though few knew of the man it was named after or the significance of the company that published it.
Today, it’s hard to find those remaining copies of the Tikkun Meir siddur in shuls today. But when I happen to find one, I cannot but think – perhaps because of the history of my own family – on the hardworking Jews for whom the book was printed, providing them with cheap and affordable resources of prayer and consolation.
Originally published on JFeed.com.