Everything in Order - What the New Siddurim Say, and Say About Us
Not all the passions stirred up by Jewish prayer books are directed toward God. The new “Koren Siddur” (Koren Publishers Jerusalem) is a good example.
By Benjamin Weiner - Jewish Daily Forward - Published August 19, 2009, issue of August 28, 2009 .
Not all the passions stirred up by Jewish prayer books are directed toward God. The new “Koren Siddur” (Koren Publishers Jerusalem) is a good example. Endorsed by the Orthodox Union and bearing the translations and commentary of Sir Jonathan Sacks, British Chief Rabbi, it has energized Modern Orthodox Jews seeking to assert their worldview, not just religious opinion. Overtly Zionist, relatively feminist and aesthetically elegant, Koren/Sacks is for them a welcome alternative to the more conservative ArtScroll Series, which has dominated for more than 20 years. “ArtScroll and their right-wing agenda have reigned far too long,” one vociferous blogger wrote, “and they are finally being called to the mat.”
This reception illustrates the claim of Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, the renowned professor of Jewish liturgy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, that “prayer is an index of Jewish identity.” Hoffman has long argued that “how we pray is who we are,” and suggested that prayer books be understood not simply as spiritual librettos, but as the “manifestos” and “self-portraits” of the Jews who create them — articulations of the moral and ideological space a specific community seeks to inhabit.
The current spate of new siddurim serves, therefore, especially in our era of liturgical proliferation, as a barometer of the trends and self-definitions at play in the Jewish world.
Siddur “B’chol L’vav’cha” (“With All Your Heart”), the Friday night prayer book published last year by Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in New York, is another exemplification of Hoffman’s thesis. CBST, founded in 1973 by gay Jews who felt marginalized elsewhere, has since grown into the largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jewish community in the world. A high degree of Jewish literacy, coupled with the mission of staking out queer Jewish identity, has given rise to a unique tradition of prayerful self-expression. “We have a lot of Jewish depth,” said CBST’s Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, “and also a lot of very radical creative energy.”
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