The Movement for Reform Judaism

From time to time we have used bold type or enlarged letters in the Siddur for particular emphasis. The practice is familiar from the 1977 edition where the ‘ayyin’ of ‘Sh’ma’ and the ‘dalet’ of ‘echad’ were enlarged as they appear in the Torah scroll.

Similarly the headings of some of the songs are enlarged and the first letters of certain of the verses are emphasised where an acrostic spells the name of the author.

We have continued the practice in the new Siddur where it seemed helpful to draw attention to some unusual feature of the text. For example, the end of the lines of the song Adon Olam alternate between the letters ‘alef’ and ‘hey’. As Jeremy Schonfield notes in the Siddur, page 517, this may be intended to point to the two names of God, ‘elohim’and ‘adonai’ (the latter often written with the letter ‘hey’ and an apostrophe to avoid writing the divine name in full).   The author may have used this device since the two names traditionally reflect respectively the ‘transcendence’, otherness, and ‘immanence’, nearness, of God, the central theme of Adon Olam itself.   

In the second paragraph of the ´Sh´ma´ the Hebrew text changes in two places from the plural to the singular as the passage moves between addressing the people as a whole to each individual household. We have used bold text to draw attention to this feature and change the emphasis from collective to individual responsibility.   

We refrained from including ourselves in any acrostic, but some unexpected names may be found by those who look carefully.

 
'Forms of Prayer' is available now. 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 email Siddur2008@reformjudaism.org.uk