Worship  |  Introduction

Mishkan T'Filah

Though it is always tricky to start off a column with the words “By the time you read this…,” I will do so nonetheless.  By the time you read this column, we will be holding in our hands at Congregation Beth Or the final version of the new Reform siddur (prayerbook), Mishkan T’filah.  Last year, Rabbi Marx and I held a number of sessions with the Board of the congregation, the Rituals & Practices committee and the full congregation aimed at introducing and studying this new prayerbook – the first new siddur for the Reform movement since 1975, when our current volume, Gates of Prayer, was introduced.

The world has changed in significant ways since 1975, as has Reform Judaism and this congregation.  Though many of us take significant comfort in the familiar words and feel of Gates of Prayer (it is the ONLY prayerbook I have ever considered “my own”), there are ways in which it has become outmoded.  Among the updates you can expect to see in Mishkan T’filah are:

• A non-gendered language of God.  That is, we will no longer fumble for improvised ways to avoid calling God “He/Him.”  This change also allows for a greatly expanded God language that tries to address the multitude of ways in which Jews today (and in every age) connect to God.
• The presence of Hebrew transliteration on the prayer-page.  When Gates of Prayer was first published, the strong feeling was that transliteration was some sort of cop-out, and so the limited transliterations that appeared in that volume were found only in the back of the book (and were difficult to find or use).  We recognize today that transliteration is a bridge to making prayer accessible to greater numbers within the congregation, and that the presence of transliteration often leads to greater participation and increased ability to use the Hebrew of the service.
• A new two-page format that allows for the siddur to include voices of many generations within the Jewish people reflecting on the themes of prayer.  These include traditional sources such as the Talmud and the Midrash, and modern voices of poets, theologians and great leaders of our people.  They also reflect a wider range of thought than any previous prayerbook, including the impact of Jewish women and Jews by choice.  At the same time, the two-page format maintains the integrity of the liturgy, with Hebrew prayers in their full format and literal translations in addition to the commentary.
• The imprint of the events of the last fifty years of Jewish history, including the central role of the State of Israel, the complex theological response to the Shoah (Holocaust), and the greater diversity that has come to characterize the American Jewish community.

Mishkan T’filah has been lauded as a tremendous moment in the history of the Reform movement and the Jewish people.  The reviews across the spectrum in the Jewish and secular press indicate that this book is indeed “worth the wait.”  One criticism that has been leveled against the book is that it represents a turn toward “tradition” in a way that is inconsistent with Reform Judaism.  As one who has spent a considerable amount of time with this book over the past few years, I can assure you that this is not the case.  Though there are prayer-phrases that had formerly been abandoned by earlier generations of Reform Jews that reappear in Mishkan T’filah, this siddur is as current, creative, spiritually progressive and unmistakably Reform as any of its predecessors.

The Board of the congregation approved last year the purchase and implementation of Mishkan T’filah pending our holding and inspecting the final product, which (as noted above) should be in our hands as you read this.  As this represents a significant change for the worship of the congregation, we want to assure you that this transition will be made in a deliberate and conscious way – it will be a journey for all of us!  We look forward to studying and experimenting with this new siddur as we make our way into the future of meaningful worship and spiritual experiences at Congregation Beth Or.

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