The Rabbinical Assembly has finally come out with the weekday edition of Siddur Lev Shalem.  Following the Machzor in 2010, and the Shabbat/Festival Siddur in 2016, this means that the Lev Shalem series now constitutes a complete set.  Many of the features noted are true of the other Lev Shalem volumes, as the weekday volume does not deviate substantially from the existing volumes of the series.

As with the other volumes of Lev Shalem, the layout has the text on the right side of the page and the translation on the left, with notes and commentary on the margins and bottom.  The commentary and English readings sometimes take up significant space, but because the text uses extensive linebreaks to indicate phrasing, there is abundant whitespace.

Despite extensive notes and commentary, the text often doesn’t fill the page.  For example, Mizmor LeTodah (Psalm 100) is a complete page, and despite featuring extensive commentary, nearly half the page is empty.

While the weight and amount of page-flipping make it somewhat frustrating to use, that frustration is lessened when the siddur is roughly 15% lighter than the other volumes.

One design feature I quite liked is the text justification for weekday Torah readings.  The text is justified using “stretched” forms of certain letters, a printing practice common in older printed texts (and used in sifrei torah).  It’s a nice callout to both older printing conventions and scribal practices, one which I find quite aesthetically pleasing.

The actual liturgical content is patterned similarly to the other editions of Lev Shalem.  Imahot in the Amidah are presented as one option alongside the traditional text, the word “imoteinu” is in brackets following references to “avoteinu” for our ancestors.

References to the sacrifices are treated similarly to the Shabbat volume.  While the machzor restores the phrase “fire-offerings of Israel” in the “retzei” berakha, this is absent in both siddur volumes.  One oddity is that following the Beraita of R’ Yishmael in the morning service, the siddur offers both the concluding prayer from older Conservative siddurim, as well as the original text, which prays for the restoration of the Temple.  Presumably this was “kosher” because it only references the rebuilding of the Temple (which Conservative siddurim tend to retain) but not sacrifices.  However, contextually the original text makes sense because it follows the Korbanot, when the sacrificial service is recounted.  In Conservative siddurim this is omitted, so the prayer for the rebuilding of the temple seems random and out of context.

As with the other volumes, there are some choices that are somewhat perplexing.  The order of Birchot HaShachar matches the Chassidic Nusach Sefard, by putting she’asa li kol tzorki after hameikhin mitz’adei gaver, without any explanation for why this choice is made.  There are suggested lines to sing at the end of weekday services, and a greeting for the time of day is inserted as well.  It is difficult to understand what spiritual or liturgical need is satisfied by putting “tzohorayim tovim” at the end of mincha (especially since the vast majority of Conservative shuls with weekday mincha will be following it immediately with maariv).

Oddest is the inclusion of a lengthy Yiddish poem (by Jacob Glatstein) extending over multiple pages for Yom HaShoah.  It is unlikely that many attendees at Conservative synagogues are able to read this text, or that it would be read in Yiddish at a Yom HaShoah event.  Yom HaShoah (and Yom Haatzmaut) programs are often standalone programs that are before/after a weekday minyan, and much of the text seems more appropriate for an event-specific handout.  It is hard to imagine any plausible use case for this text.

Some of these additions are welcome suggestions.  Putting Birkot HaTorah after Birkot HaShachar (like some Ashkenazic rites) means these berakhot will be recited in shul, and people are more likely to actually say them.  Psalm 134........

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