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He said the Jewish prayer book known as the “Siddur” has dozens of references to Zion, or Israel “and the return of the Jewish people there.”

But the impending sale of Monroe’s personal prayer book — or siddur, as it’s called in Hebrew — has piqued interest in the role religion played in the star’s cinematic life story.

The elegant ArtScroll siddur, or prayer book, used for daily Sabbath and holiday prayers is so sought after that more than a million copies have been printed.

Rather than assume that every Jew knows the sometimes arcane procedures and rationales for prayer, the siddur lays them out in clear contemporary English and features explanatory footnotes, in the way that an annotated edition of Joyce’s “Ulysses” might ease that novel’s reading.

For example, the siddur tells those unfamiliar with the central Amidah prayer to “take three steps backward, then three steps forward” at the start, and urges a worshiper to “pray loudly enough to hear himself” but not so loudly that its recitation is audible to others.