The Movement for Reform Judaism

Now that the draft Shabbat morning service has had some trials and the Editorial Board has received feedback, some interesting questions have arisen. This seems a good opportunity to express our gratitude to all those who have gone to considerable lengths to ensure an effective use of the experimental edition as this has required a lot of preparation and different approaches for different occasions.   

As I suggested in an early ‘diary’ piece, the new structure poses a fundamental challenge to us, the need to make choices and selections of prayers to include for a given service. In the existing volume, with the alternative options for opening the service, whoever is leading has simply to follow the pages, with the occasional need to insert something new, for example the study passage. This gives the congregation a degree of security in knowing what is coming next. By distributing selected passages from the early part of the traditional service between the different options, most classical texts would be encountered by someone who attended regularly over a period of time.      

This is a very different experience to that of someone worshipping regularly in an Orthodox shul, who, in theory, feels duty bound to read the entire text. This is only possible because the Chazan or whoever leads the service, speeds through many of the passages, or only cites the opening and closing words aloud, continuing in silence. Only at certain key passages are all the congregation required to join in. These two different strategies, Reform and Orthodox, effectively achieve something like the same end, a selective emphasis on particular parts of the traditional service, with other parts glossed over or omitted.   

The proposed structure of the new prayer book offers a kind of middle position, but makes more demands on the service leader and the congregant. We indicate more clearly than in the previous volume the two sections that precede the ‘Bar’chu’, the formal call to collective worship. The birkhot ha-shachar, ‘morning blessings’, were originally private sayings and blessings often said at home, as a personal preparation for the day, and only later transported to the synagogue and the morning service. The second section, p’sukei d’zimra, ‘verses of song’, were also private choices, selected from the Psalms and new compositions, aimed at preparing the individual and the congregation as a whole for the formal prayers ahead. Praises addressed to God move the centre of our attention away from ourselves and our individual ego, the subject of the previous section. It is in these two sections that flexibility, choice and freedom of expression exist and are to be encouraged. Our tradition distinguishes between keva, the fixed elements of the service, and kavvanah, the intention, concentration or personal engagement that is required in prayer. It is therefore in these two sections here that a selection of passages is to be made, whereas the sections of the formal service that follow the ‘Bar’chu’ remain fairly fixed.   

Congregations are invited to take advantage of this flexibility in designing the service for any given Shabbat. The advantage of this is that it allows different options to be designed for different congregational needs on different occasions. For example when time is an important consideration because of a Barmitzvah or other occasion when a relatively formal service is required, it would be sufficient at take only one or two passages each from the birkhot hashachar and p’sukei d’zimra, perhaps giving thereby more time to think about the individual passages, before going almost directly to the Bar’khu. With a smaller congregation, or an alternative minyan that some communities are developing, the richness of these sections could be explored more fully, using more silence, or different melodies, or chanting passages, so as to enhance the experience.   

The other place where choice is offered in terms of an entire section, is something new in the prayer book, the three options for the Torah service. The first is the ‘traditional’ one in use in our congregations. The second is an attempt to offer a formal alternative, with a greater emphasis on the theme of Torah itself. The third is a radical departure, where the ceremonial component is almost completely left out, providing time for a longer Torah reading, or for an extended study opportunity on the Torah portion itself or a related theme.   

Clearly these options, and this flexibility, place a burden on whoever leads the service, which has to be constructed afresh each time, though the building elements remain the same. In this way the opening two sections provide an opportunity for providing something fresh and creative, while the sections from the Bar’chu through the Shema and Amidah, which are the formal core of the service, the ‘motor’ at the heart of it, are more constant, and provide the necessary feeling of familiarity and security that are also essential parts of regular worship.   

Clearly this shifts the responsibility for the actual service itself from the prayer book onto the congregation, always a Jewish priority. It allows also a deal of experimenting with ways of making the service more accessible, helped by the presence of transliterations, but also with the option of new melodies or ways of reading in the early sections. Interestingly, this final structure was not an ideological position with which we began our work as an editorial board. Rather it evolved out of the different views that emerged once the work was underway: to offer something that was familiar and ‘traditional reform’ for some, but also to offer something for different sizes and kinds of worshipping congregations, and particularly for a younger generation influenced by the 'dovenning' they had experienced in Israel, or at Limmud, or other places in a changing and to some extent more integrated Jewish community.   

All of which is not to say that there are elements that do not work or that need to be improved. The focus on more traditional forms and ensuring that the classical structure of the service is more clearly indicated, has meant that relatively little in the way of new prayers has been introduced. This is a real challenge because those composed for the existing book have largely stood the test of time.   But this is also a task that needs to be undertaken if the book is truly to address our realities as a Jewish community in the twenty-first century. The revised study anthology will provide a greater background to the prayers, but we welcome contributions that help us explore the world of today’s society and the role of religion and of prayer.

'Forms of Prayer' will be published in May 2008. If you haven't yet ordered your copy, please contact your synagogue office. The siddur is also available to people who are not members of synagogues. To place your order, please call 0208 349 9484 or click here to buy on-line.