By Larry Kaufman
As part of introducing Mishkan T'filah at Beth Emet several months ago, Rabbi Peter Knobel gave us "permission" to wander away from whatever  the congregation was reading or singing, and to go anywhere else on the two-page spread that felt more comfortable, or for that matter, wherever our individual thoughts and prayers might lead us. In doing so, he reminded us that in a world where multi-tasking has become commonplace, we might very well be able to join our voices with the community, while our minds were somewhere else.

I thought about this at Shabbat services, less than a year into our use of the new, yet by now taken-for-granted, siddur.  We know when and how to follow the liturgy on the printed page; and we know (since we are a worship group of regulars) when we will deviate from the text and follow from memory the lashon (language) and minhag (custom) of our former home-made prayer book.

But my own thoughts yesterday went even further afield - guided in part by our discussion here at RJ.org of the progress in Reform worship, and especially by BZ's reminder that the service doesn't happen only on the bimah. The shlichey tzibur, the messengers of the community, are charged with guiding the keva, leading us through the fixed liturgy.  In a departure unparalleled by predecessor siddurim, Mishkan T'filah facilitates the kavanah, the inner meaning and personal understanding the worshipper is expected to bring to the prayer experience, by suggesting alternate interpretations or different understandings, or even by stimulating new pathways to conversation with the Divine.

My own reveries, when my mind drifts away from the printed text, tend to be inchoate and transitory, and I rarely find myself in prayerful mode when I am not in a prayer group setting.  (I purposely use the term prayer group rather than minyan, because I am insufficiently halachic to invoke quorum requirements - and I do not consider myself in "prayerful mode" just because the occasion calls for motzi or shehechayanu.) While I cheerfully and somewhat casually compose blog posts, and more carefully but less frequently prepare divrei Torah, the creation of liturgy would not be my thing.

This does not lessen my admiration for folks whose kavanah leads to keva - who write down to preserve and share the meditations of their hearts.  I'm not talking here about clergy, where the composition of liturgy may be considered part of the job description, but of laymen, or more accurately, laywomen, since the three practitioners of the art whose names come to mind are female.

As it happens, two of those women are from my congregation.  (The third is Ruth Brin, whose work can be found on Page 126 of Mishkan T'filah.)  Might it be something in the Beth Emet water?  Or the influence of a liturgically-focused rabbi?

Debbie Perlman z"l, whom I did not have the privilege of knowing, was called our Resident Psalmist.  Betsy Fuchs, who sits in front of me at services each Shabbat, is the eloquent author of Betsy's Prayers. I differentiate their work from that of people whose writings found their way into siddurim (like poets Katya Molodowsky and Adrienne Rich in MT) but who, when they wrote, were thinking poetry, not liturgy.

I have only once or twice since we began using Mishkan T'filah read the left-hand pages during the silent section of the T'filah.  It's not that I don't like what's there; it's that I miss the resonance of the Hebrew prayers on the right-hand pages if I leave them by the wayside.  (Side note for bringing kavanah into the keva: lose the sight-reading, and sound out the Hebrew words. It really makes a difference; and I am eternally grateful to Jerry Kaye for this teaching.  And yes, I am well aware that this is precisely the kind of disgraceful indecorum that precipitated the birth of German Reform.)

I can hardly wait to read the comments on this blog post from our resident liturgy wonk, David A.M. Wilensky.  Without having his scholarship or analytic skills at my disposal, I can only share that I am left-handed, and politically left-wing, but when it comes to Mishkan T'filah, and in fact to liturgy in general, I veer to the right.

COMMENTS PRIOR TO TECH ISSUES

David A.M. Wilensky said:
I wasn't familiar with the word "wonk" until last week. Since learning the word, it has been applied to me multiple times on this very blog!
I'm afraid that I'll have to give a little thought to any sort of interesting response before I post. Hm.
Okay. I've got it.
I, like you, Larry, am right-handed when it comes to Mishkan. In all honesty, while I've been at home in Austin this summer where the congregation I grew up at is using M"T, I haven't been using it at all. I've been playing with a new sidur I just got, Seder haT'filot, the UK Reform sidur. Their liturgy tends to be somewhat more conervative than that M"T, but they do still have a variety of readings.
The readings, however, are in an index in the back of the sidur. In the sidur, next to most prayers, there's a little number printed in blue ink. The number refers to a page in the index where a reading appropriate to the prayer it hand can be found.
I'm quite enjoying Seder haT'filot, or Forms of Prayer as they translate it, and I would recommend it to any liturgically-right wing Reform Jew.
August 25, 2008 4:49 PM

M. B. said:
David:
In the United Kingdom, the more Reform denomination is called Liberal Judaism. Reform congregations there have been more Conservative in many ways which is reflected in the prayer books.
August 25, 2008 10:46 PM

BZ said:
And the Israeli Reform prayerbook is entirely in Hebrew, so by your logic, it's not Reform at all!
August 26, 2008 8:55 PM

Larry Kaufman said:
When we attended our nephew's bar mitzvah at HUC in Jerusalem some 25 years ago, Rabbi Shaul Feinberg pointed out to us that we had just attended the most Reform service anywhere -- because the whole thing was in the vernacular!
Lost in the prattle about about those wonderful Reform services in nineteenth century America, before all that corrupt Hebrew snuck in, is that many of those services were not in English but in German.
August 26, 2008 10:29 PM

David A.M. Wilensky said:
@ M.B.: Thanks. I'm well aware of that fact. Both, however, are under the umbrella of the WUPJ and both represent a level of variance that we tolerate under our singular Reform umbrella here in North America.
@ Larry and BZ: Actually, Haavodah Shebalev is totally up M.B.'s alley, being entirely in the vernacular. Or is it? Much of it is in a very archaic form of Hebrew that is hard for a secualr Israeli to pick up and get immediately. Or maybe, M.B. is all for archaic language. You know, like the Union Prayer Book.
August 27, 2008 3:49 PM

BZ said:
Actually, Haavodah Shebalev is totally up M.B.'s alley, being entirely in the vernacular.
Except the parts in Aramaic (the original vernacular)... for which there is a translation!
August 27, 2008 4:30 PM

M. B. said:
BZ said:
"And the Israeli Reform prayerbook is entirely in Hebrew, so by your logic, it's not Reform at all!"
Just the opposite, BZ. Understanding the prayer is the test. Progressive Reform uses the language of the congregation for prayer, whatever it may be. That means Spanish in Buenos Aires, Portuguese in Rio, French in Paris, and Hebrew in Tel Aviv. Montreal may be either French or English depending on whether the particular congregation is Francophone or Anglophone. When there was a flood of immigrants into the U.S. who couldn't speak good English, they used prayers in the language they understood which is why there were Dutch services, German services, etc. In Germany today, most of the Jews are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union who may speak Russian or some German, but there is a terrible shortage of rabbis who can minister to them due to the language problem. Israel had early Reform congregations which spoke English and so used an English based prayer book.
My understanding is that during the Reformation, even the traditionalists were unable to find anything in the Bible which prohibited prayer in the vernacular of the congregation. Maybe not even in the Talmud.
The Classical Reform theology presumes an extremely intelligent and knowledgeable God who can understand the prayers of each Jew in their own language. So each person is able to pray directly to the Lord in his or her own language.

August 27, 2008 7:43 PM

David A.M. Wilensky said:
@M.B.: An influx of immigrants to America is not to be blamed for the existence of German language Reform t'filah. The reason for that is that the Reform movement began in pre-WWI Germany where the vernacular was, you guessed it, German.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say Reformation? Are you referring to Martin Luther!?
Okay, obviously I know that you're referring to the creation of the Reform movement, but given that there was no monolithic organization to break away from as there was with the Protestant Reformation, we do not refer to the formation of the Reform movement as the Reformation. There was no single event. Rather, our genesis was a more organic series of different events and small changes over decades across several different synagogues.
August 28, 2008 8:33 PM

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