Entering Mishkan T'filah

Rabbi Elyse D. Frishman

[Reprinted from CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly, Fall 2004]

When did the winter of our discontent begin with Gates of Prayer? Why do we need a new prayer book? Is it just a matter of seeking newness?

The work of the new siddur began truly with a survey, not of theology and clergy, but of laity. In 1994, Rabbi Peter Knobel and Dan Schechter received a grant from the Lilly Foundation to survey worshippers in Reform congregations throughout the United States to determine what they sought from a new prayer book. What were the results? Strongly articulated were the desires for transliteration, meaningful God language, expanded God language, relevant and compelling English prayer, faithful translation, and a response to the feminist critique. Based on this project, a proposal was set before the CCAR Board, describing a prayer book with four different services, à la Gates of Prayer. The time to select an editor arrived, and a critical awareness emerged. It would be important for the editor(s) to focus less on personal style and instead be able to respond to the diversity of the Movement’s expectations. Those expectations? Anecdotally: A prayer book that would help us re-engage our Jews in meaningful worship. How? Offering a balance of creativity and beauty, theology and purpose.

The survey described lay expectations of worship as participat­ing in community and seeking renewal of spirit through ritual, music, and intellectual engagement with the Torah. Many felt a strong sense of community; many also found theological issues vexing. They sought community that observed their personal crises and celebrations, a “healing” environment, and an ethical integrity. They wanted more than a surface brush with tradition. Almost half could not read Hebrew, yet they wanted Hebrew prayers, with transliteration. They wanted to hear Torah and have it translated into English. They loved to sing aloud and to pray in unison; they articulated that responsive readings worked the least well for them. They sought greater terminology for God, less masculine and less hierarchical. And they described a conflict over the language of prayer and the role of God: Though there may be less belief in a personal God, the desire to call upon God in prayer remained central.

Yet, although prayer invites us to beseech God, we must also be open to what God wants from us. Samuel Karff wrote, “Each gener­ation must struggle to hear the call, ‘Where art thou?’ Each must choose to answer, ‘Here I am, send me.’” (The Theological Founda­tions of Prayer, 1967, UAHC Biennial). Each generation—not merely each individual. A siddur must challenge narcissism; that challenge begins by saying to a worshipper: Your voice is here amidst others. To hear the call: To realize that prayer is not merely an outpouring of self; it is the opening of our senses to what is beyond our selves. Send me: Prayer must motivate us to give selflessly.

Rabbinic liturgy offers this opportunity; the Reform challenge to rabbinic theology, though, equally challenged our receptiveness to that liturgy. Although some metaphorically reinterpret difficult material, such as the middle paragraphs of the Sh’ma, for many the literal sense of the text is an insurmountable roadblock. For gener­ations, Reform liturgy offered alternatives to the traditional. Creative response is inherent in Reform liturgy.

By the mid-1980s, with Gates of Prayer only ten years old, it was confronted with gender and cultural complaints. But Reform worship was also in conflict. It is possible that Gates of Prayer was being challenged not just because of its content, but because of prob­lems in the worship culture.¹

Classical Reform’s rational, decorous worship style encountered new age, American spiritualism. The gulf between formal sanctuary worship and informal, relaxed worship was widening. Desktop publishing enabled congregations to produce their own prayer books—a wonderful exercise in teaching liturgy and investing congregants in their own siddur, but devastating for the Movement in terms of a unifying Reform minhag. And while creative services elevated kavanahh, the keva of worship radically diminished. Personal expression mattered more than fixed liturgy.²

It used to be argued that such a siddur served two primary purposes: It unified Reform congregations in worship (“one can attend any Reform synagogue and feel at home”) and articulated a clear Reform theology. The latter became untrue with the publica­tion of Gates of Prayer and its myriad theologies. The former became untrue as worship styles in Reform synagogues increasingly diverged. Today, it can seem unclear whether one is attending a Reform or Conservative service—the prayer book may or may not be a Movement prayer book, there may or may not be instrumen­tation, the length of the service may vary as much as its content, men and women have equal access to participation. It can take a fairly sophisticated worshipper to discern the particular distinctions of our prayers (whether or not there are the middle paragraphs of the Sh’ma, for example). Movement boundaries blur as personal clergy style prevails. One could argue that the autonomy of Reform has reached its fullest expression in worship; congregations pray their own way, because they can.

Worship is a transforming agent in Jewish life, critical in helping synagogue culture to evolve from corporate to caring. It is the setting in which worshippers find life’s critical issues taken seriously, yet also challenges us to live ethically and be socially responsible.

There is a fine balance in prayer between self-representation and loss-of-self. Not dissimilar from the most intimate physical act, one needs to be fully present for the other, and at the same time, lose oneself in the other—in spiritual terms, I-Thou. How does one accomplish this in prayer if the matter is always intellectual, if one is always evaluating the content of the new prayer? Intimacy in prayer escapes us.

In Beyond the Worship Wars, Thomas G. Long teaches, “Part of the joy of worship is to know the motions, know the words, know the song. The vital congregations knew their order of worship and moved through it with deep familiarity. What is more, the worship­pers had active roles—speaking, singing, moving—and many of these they could perform from memory” (p. 90).

In 1972, the now classic Lenn Report wrote (p. 102), “Classical Reform is being seriously questioned from within by a generation of rabbis who are themselves largely the products of Classical Reform.” A chart outlining results of the distinctive practices, beliefs and attitudes of the spectrum of then-Reform Rabbis showed a strong trend away from Classical Reform—including worship experimentation, increased emphasis on religious ritual, less reli­ance upon God. The following statement received resounding support in the survey, and revealed a new sense of direction: “I believe that Reform should pay less attention to décor (sic: decorum?) and more to emotion.”

We actually heard and understood this, but took a (perhaps necessary) double-decade detour. We thought ongoing innovation would refresh our worship. Not only was this exhausting for the worship leaders, it was impossible to sustain. The very idea of worship is that it should provide an ongoing familiarity and comfort, of inclusiveness amidst that constancy.

Lawrence Hoffman teaches, “The book is less text than pre-text for the staging of an experience. In a way, we are returning to the age of orality, where performance of prayer matters more than the fixed words. As long as books were the issue, all we needed was a good reader. Union Prayer Books were even labeled “reader”; and the Hebrew Union College, back then, taught students to read correctly. The question of worship leadership has expanded now, to include the theology and artistry of being a sh’liach tzibur—how to orches­trate seating, fill empty space, provide the right acoustics, and honor individualism within the group experience.”

Perhaps we must reframe the purpose of the sh’liach tzibur. The worship leader needs to apply the siddur’s script to a particular worshipping community. Even with the essential advance plan­ning, there also must be a spontaneous response to the people present. In any given worship experience, the tone of the community varies: Joyful, mournful, concerned, alert, exhausted… music and style need to respond. What, then, does it mean to plan ahead? To develop the flow of the service per se—evolving the keva of worship that adjusts each time to the needs of the particular worship commu­nity. What is flow? Developing a relationship between music and prayer that underlines the entire liturgy, its sense of build and climax. Inherent in liturgy is a sense of direction; the sh’liach tzibur, as true facilitator, communicates what should happen next through the use of music and voice.

Using Mishkan T’filah, the actual selection of prayer can wait for the moment. The point is that the sh’liach tzibbur must offer a recipe that works comfortably for the community, and be able to adapt each week to the particular needs of the community. Worship can never be business as usual.

And of our own opportunity to commune with the Divine? Prayer for the sh’liach tzibur begins in the community and grows outward. As the needs of the community are met, so we can lose ourselves in their midst. We are of the community, and if we have attended well to them, we have also attended to ourselves.

Early in the project, some wondered why “form” mattered; create compelling content, and all would pray meaningfully. It became clear how critical was the relationship between worship and the siddur, and that it went well beyond matters of content. The Lilly survey taught that Reform Jews wanted to participate actively in worship. The new siddur needed to balance tradition and inspira­tion, keva and kavanah. But ownership would be critical; over time, one could memorize the book, yet feel its freshness anew.

Mishkan T’filah invites familiarity, even as it allows for diversity. Over time, one can’t help but memorize the book. The content of each page spread, though varied, becomes known. Of course, the constancy of the keva text anchors every prayer. It is the cumulative effect of worshipping from this siddur that will deepen meaningful ritual.

There are two divergent worshipping communities in Reform sanctuaries.³ “Regulars,” according to the work of the Joint Commission on Religious Living, are those who come at least eight to twelve times a year on Shabbat; they will master the concept of the siddur readily, and be able to take advantage of its possibilities. The second community includes guests, yahrzeit observers, and the occasional worshipper. They will need guidance; but they already need that guidance in Gates of Prayer. (We assume strangers can follow Gates of Prayer—but we use Hebrew without transliteration, and don’t announce where we are on the page. We do not use Gates of Prayer linearly; we alternate Hebrew and English, or do both, read then sing the same passage or vice versa. We skip pages to find the candle blessing or Torah material or Aleinu. It is not obvious to the non-regular how to follow Gates of Prayer.) The new siddur—any new siddur—reminds us to attend to all our worshippers, and rethink our techniques.

Cumulative ritual builds over time. Even the High Holidays are cumulative; worshippers who attend only then nonetheless are attached to what they have learned over the years. Certain melodies resonate deeply because they are thoroughly associated with that season. Change happens slowly because of that cumulative mean­ing. On Shabbat, even with the challenge of balancing the needs of regulars against those of non-regulars, change can occur more rapidly. But always, one must ask: Why change? What does it mean to be bored in worship? What is boring? We have attempted to shore up our worship with newness, but “newness” diminishes familiar­ity. This does not refer to music repertoire; indeed, over time, the music can deepen prayer as it becomes familiar. One-shot worship experiences may spread fresh seeds, but they will not take root in the parched worship setting. The basic worship must be healthy, mean­ingful, and purposeful for inspiration to blossom. Cumulative ritual is tended over time; it requires ongoing attention and nurturing. The new siddur, by virtue of its being different, opens us anew to this task.

The true paradigm shift for Mishkan T’filah is the concept of an integrated theology.⁴ In any worship setting, people have diverse beliefs. The challenge of a single liturgy is to be not only multivocal, but polyvocal—to invite full participation at once, without conflict­ing with the keva text. (First, the keva text must be one that is accept­able; hence, the ongoing conversations about retribution, resurrection, and redemption.) Jewish prayer invites interpretation; the left-hand material was selected for both metaphor and theological diversity. The choices were informed by the themes of Reform Juda­ism and life: Social justice, feminism, Zionism, distinctiveness, human challenges. The heritage of Reform brings gems from the Union Prayer Book and the Gates of Prayer.

Theologically, the liturgy needed to include many perceptions of God: The transcendent, the naturalist, the mysterious, the partner, the evolving God…. In any given module of prayer, say Sh’ma Uvirchoteha, we should sense all these ways. This is the distinction of an integrated theology: Not that one looks to each page to find one’s particular voice, but that over the course of praying, many voices are heard, and ultimately come together as one. As a worship­per, I must be certain that I am not excluded; yet, it is not my partic­ular belief that needs to be stated each moment. As worshippers, we realize that our community, however diverse, includes me—but it is the community that matters most. The ethic of inclusivity meets awareness of and obligation to others rather than narcissism. Petu­chowski taught:

Tradition would never ask, “What kind of God does prayer need?” Rather, tradition would reverse the question: “God being what He is, what kind of prayer would be appropriate?” Prayer may be a basic human urge, but God, tradition would say, is not dependent for His nature or existence upon man’s basic urges. A god constructed to meet people’s urges and needs is the kind of god that the Bible calls “idol.” … Tradition also recognizes that God can also be approached through channels other than prayer—the philosopher may find Him at the end of his chain of reasoning, and the scientist may put down his test tube in a moment of radical wonder and amazement; the mystic may bathe in His light during moments of illumination, and the prophet may hear His voice urging him on to the improvement of society. Perhaps one of the reasons our most recent liturgical ventures have been so daunting is that we try in our prayers to include the voices of the philoso­pher, the scientist, the mystic and the prophet … We try to make our prayer be all things to all people.

An integrated theology communicates that the community is greater than the sum of its parts. Although individuals matter deeply, particularly in the sense of our emotional and spiritual needs, and in the certainty that we are not invisible, that security should provide a stepping stone to the higher value of community, privilege, and obligation. We join together in prayer because together we are stronger and more apt to commit to the values of our heritage. Abra­ham knew that ten people made a difference. In worship, all should be reminded of the social imperatives of community.

Prayer must move us beyond ourselves. Prayer should not reflect me; prayer should reflect our values and ideals. God is not in our image; we are in God’s. Our diversity is God. The integrated theol­ogy in Mishkan T’filah suggests that it is the blending of different voices that most accurately reflects God.

Contemporary Reform theology continues to wrestle with oppo­sitional beliefs. As work on the siddur intensified, the Pittsburgh Principles were being debated. The tug of war goes on between Reform heritage and Jewish tradition. Gates of Prayer, too, was theo­logically inconsistent. No one Reform theologian dictated the content of Gates of Prayer. It is no different today. The Editorial Commit­tee of Mishkan T’filah offered several conversations with the body of the CCAR about retribution, resurrection, and redemption. Noth­ing was concluded from those forums. Interestingly, this experience parallels a similar lack of consensus at a 1950 theological conference, as remembered by Eugene Borowitz (Renewing the Covenant, p. 237). In realms of controversial theology, we must include a variety of texts.

Is this an indictment of serious Reform thinking? No. Eugene Borowitz (Renewing the Covenant, p. 253) describes our dilemma well:

People often feel that our inner struggle over the contemporary meaning of Torah hinges essentially on our Jewish loyalty or will­ingness to sacrifice some measure of selfhood for our Judaism. Though that may be partially true, it overlooks the greater human spiritual/social development of which we have been a part. Our essential problem is not specifically Jewish but historical.… We … must decide on the mix of modernity and tradition we believe to be faithful to what God demands of us.

In our siddur, therefore, it is critical that Reform Jews understand what is expected of them. Yes, the theology of the new siddur reflects religious naturalism, and the theology of human adequacy, and process theology, and a balance of particularism and univer­salism. But the essence of Reform liturgy continues to be on what God demands of us, with heavy emphasis on ethical action and social justice. Borowitz again, (Renewing the Covenant, p. 252):

…the non-Orthodox reject a compartmentalized spirituality because they believe that the human soul, created in God’s image, ought to strive to be one even as God is one. And that means an ever-expanding whole, integrating one’s spiritual experience with that of one’s faith community and, reaching beyond that, with the experience of all God’s children.

Hence liberal spirituality ideally knows no barrier between what we learn from every other human discipline and from reli­gion’s teaching. Explicating that unified sense of human existence has turned out to be a more difficult task than early liberal religious thinkers estimated. Not the least reason for this has been the unex­pected shifts our modern worldview has taken as people have studied humankind and pondered its recent sorry behavior. None­theless, liberals know that their distinctive way of serving God centers on this pursuit of the integrated soul.

This dedication arises from a compelling sense of what the human spirit can achieve when empowered to use its gifts of intel­ligence and creativity freely in God’s service.

An excellent illustration of theological and social debate is the one over the middle paragraphs of the Sh’ma. One group argues that its literal meaning can never be divorced; since it is Deuteronomic, its context is absolutely retributional. There can be no reconciliation with a theology that justifies senseless suffering and death. Others contend that one must understand the material metaphorically; the “cause and effect” theology is absolutely applicable to today’s ecological crisis. In draft editions, the paragraphs were included, to assess the desire for their inclusion. Alternative material was considered (the Reconstructionists had chosen other Deuteronomic passages). Since Reform is a prophetic Movement and the idea was to deflect the retributional sense toward one of rational, social justice, passages from the prophets were selected as alternatives. In the end, because the paragraphs come from Torah, it was decided that in the context of prayer, this material continued to be too chal­lenging. Mishkan T’filah will uphold the pattern of Gates of Prayer.

A second debate was whether or not to include t’chiat hameitim.⁵ The argument is clear: Either physical resurrection defies reason—it doesn’t belong in our prayer book—or, the language is metaphor, even to the sages of the Talmud, and the prayer is testimony to God’s ability to overcome anything. Two irreconcilable camps. Some went so far as to say: If this is/isn’t included, we won’t buy the book. The work of the prayer book is a navigation of people’s wants: After much discussion about options, including rejecting a contraction or parenthetic form (e.g., hakol/meitim or hakol [meitim]), the first draft contained a compromise text that began with hakol, included “meitim” in the middle two references, then concluded with “hakol.” This meant to emphasize the metaphor rather than the literal sense of the prayer. Responding to completely mixed feedback, the second draft included two complete versions, the Gates of Prayer Reform version as the keva text, and the traditional as midrash on the left (a clever solution). But this eliminated the possibility of truly creative midrash, since there was no room remaining on the left page; so the third draft will consider a different, as yet undeter­mined, approach.

Since these debates reveal the diversity of our Movement, could the new siddur include the issues? This question led to a deeper appreciation for the teaching opportunities than Mishkan T’filah could offer. Its very format is a teaching tool. On the right side of the page is the Hebrew keva text with a faithful translation and trans­literation.⁶

On the left are two alternative prayers, reflecting varied theolo­gies. Not every theology is represented on a page-spread; over the breadth of the liturgy, all are included. Headings were explored; those in Gates of Prayer did not necessarily guide the uninformed worshipper—certainly those in stylized Hebrew without vowels were merely decorative for many. Mishkan T’filah puts full rubrics in the margins, in vocalized Hebrew and transliteration, and high­lights that page’s particular prayer. Commentary is new for a Reform siddur; ours emphasizes Reform history and thought, and the imperative for social justice.

The desert mishkan was a portable sanctuary. Its care was guarded by the Levites and the priests; yet, it invited all to bring their offer­ings. We clergy are the caretakers of Mishkan T’filah; we hope all who enter are welcomed. Our work is to build worship carefully and consistently, so that participants will know what is expected of them, and that their offerings will, indeed, be acceptable before God.

Notes

1. In the early 1980s, many congregations introduced language change in the Avot to include the Imahot; similarly, we shifted “He” references to God to second person. Both these shifts had to be memorized. There was no call yet to write a new siddur; but these changes marked a cultural evolution.
   
2. A number of URJ camps use a laminated prayer card that highlights this; the keva material is mere backdrop for the “true” prayer expres­sion, which includes personal writings, dance, art, Torah teaching and music.
   
3. Hoffman wrote: “Classical Reform prayer was a function of mass production, where everyone is the same. It used a mass-produced prayer book that everyone reads together.... Reform Jews rose to- gether, sat together, read together, turned pages together. This was a Model-T worship for an assembly-line population.”
   
   This homogeneity is long gone; indeed, the most apt illustration is the Bar Mitzvah service, which may truly be a community of strangers. With so many first-timers, do we conduct worship that is a cookie- cutter of the week before, regardless of who is in the room? Or do the participants impact on us? On the amount of Hebrew vs. English used? The level of explanation? Is this heavily interfaith crowd invited to worship also, to be transformed; do they matter? What is the role of the siddur in the uniquely American Shabbat community?
   
4. Elaine Zecher first coined the phrase “integrated theology” in refer­ence to MT.
   
   
5. Interestingly, laity seem not to care significantly; in the piloting, it was clear that the responses to this question were not personal but influ­enced by discussion with the Rabbi; if the Rabbi supported the inclu­sion, so did the bulk of responses from that congregation, etc. Clergy, though, care a great deal.
   
   
6. The option to purchase without transliteration exists. An ongoing debate exists about the merits of transliteration. Some argue that it is a crutch, preventing Hebrew learning. Others observe that most Hebrew students learn phonetically and not for content; translitera­tion is an absolute aid. Many are concerned that youth would be less motivated to learn with transliteration before their eyes; still others are sensitive to those with learning needs. The compromise of two editions meets all concerns.

____________

Elyse D. Frishman is rabbi of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, and editor of Mishkan T’filah.