A Quarter Century as the Book in the Pew

Rabbi Jules Harlow spent much of his career as Director of Publications for the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative movement's rabbinic organization, and Siddur Sim Shalom, which he edited, became the project he is remembered for above all others. Published in 1985 jointly by the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue, the movement's congregational arm, it replaced the 1961 Weekday Prayer Book and went on to serve as the primary prayer book in Conservative synagogues for a quarter century afterward.

That kind of longevity in a congregation's pew racks is not automatic. A siddur has to work as a physical object used week after week by people of every level of Hebrew fluency, and it has to carry the specific theological commitments of the movement that commissioned it rather than reading as a generic Jewish prayer book adapted from elsewhere. Sim Shalom managed both, and its influence did not stop when its own quarter century in active use ended. It became the direct prototype for an entire family of later Conservative siddurim, including separate editions built specifically for Shabbat and Yom Tov and for ordinary weekdays, each one working from the editorial foundation Harlow had laid in 1985.