Weekday Shacharis Siddur All Hebrew, Deluxe Flex Ashkenaz Navy with English Instructions (ArtScroll)

ArtScroll calls this "The Perfect Siddur For Your Tefillin Bag, Purse, or on the Go!" and the measurements bear it out. At 4.00 x 6.00 inches in a Deluxe Flex cover, it slides in alongside the tefillin, into a handbag, into a suit pocket or into the side pouch of a carry-on without adding a brick of weight.

What makes it work is the narrow scope. This is a weekday Shacharis siddur and nothing else, so all 360 pages go to the morning service instead of being crowded in among Minchah, Maariv, Shabbos and Yom Tov. The text is entirely Hebrew, which keeps the page uncluttered, while the instructions are set in English: when to rise, when to bow, what is said aloud, what is omitted on a day with Tachanun. That pairing suits the person who reads Hebrew comfortably but still wants to be told exactly where he is.

The nusach is Ashkenaz and the cover is navy. A flex binding bends rather than cracks along the spine, which is the whole point in a siddur that gets shoved into a bag and pulled out again three hundred mornings a year.

It makes a sensible gift for a bar mitzvah bachur to keep with his new tefillin, and an easy second siddur for anyone who davens Shacharis away from his regular seat - a commuter, a traveling salesman, a bachur heading back to yeshivah after bein hazmanim.

Specifications