Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, Rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin, has published a new siddur (prayer book) with German translation.

The prayerbook, whose production spanned four years, features close to 1,400 pages of clear print and attractive design.

According to Teichtal, this is the first time in over a century that a one-volume complete Orthodox prayer book has been printed in Germany that encompasses all daily and holiday prayers with contemporary German translation, along with instructions and explanations regarding the prayers.

"This prayer book has all the prayers that a person needs for the entire year, including the holidays, except from Rosh HaShana and Yom Kipur" says Rabbi Teichtal.

The project was completed by a team of five, including a main editor, translators, and proofreaders, all of whom are members of the Jewish community in Berlin.

While in the process of compiling the prayer book, Rabbi Teichtal determined to found a Jewish publishing house in Berlin which he named "Juedisches". The prayer book is its first publication. “Publishing this prayer book is also our way of announcing the opening of a new Jewish publishing house in Germany,” says Rabbi Teichtal.

The next stage is for Juedisches to print other foundational Jewish works.

“For hundreds of years, one of the main ways of commemorating the tribulations in Jewish history was through prayer. This year, I’m certain that reciting the prayer ‘Almight-y, Filled with Compassion,’ in memory of the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust, will evoke great emotion in me, because I will be reciting it along with the contemporary German translation as appears in the new prayerbook,’’ says Rabbi Teichtal.

‘’The fact that specifically here, in a place where they attempted to exterminate European Jewry, there is now a vibrant, active Jewish community, as manifest by the publication of one of the most prominent and basic Jewish works in the German language, attests to the spiritual force and power of humanity, and of the Jewish nation in particular,’’ Rabbi Teichtal stresses.

Several copies of the prayerbook arrived in Germany this past week from Israel, where it was printed. It will also be available for purchase in German Jewish communities, on the Swiss Jewish website Books & Bagels, and on Amazon.

One of the first prayer books with German translation appeared in 1895. It was published by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Frankfurt and one of the leading Orthodox Rabbis in nineteenth century Europe. In the twentieth century, several other prayer books were printed in German, as well, but few encompassed all the prayers, and others were divided into several volumes.