33¢, INTRODUCING LEV CHADASH Charles H Middleburgh on behalf of John D Rayner

On this momentous day in our movement’s history I stand here to perform a function that all of us would have liked John Rayner to have been able to carry out. John is recovering well from his heart surgery and we send him our sincere good wishes for a refitah sh ’lemah, a speedy return to full health and vigour.

In his unavoidable absence, and based almost totally on the text he would have delivered to you all, it therefore gives me great pleasure(although the phrase has rarely seemed less adequate) to present to this conference, and to the Union of Liberal and Progressive

Synagogues, the long-awaited Siddur Lev Chadash. I do so on behalf of the Editorial Committee and all who have been involved in the compilation and production of the book.

It has been said that objectivity is a fine quality that each of us should develop, and I dare say that there are many who would approach the presentation of Siddur Lev Chadash with far greater objectivity than do

I; my excuse then for being here, in spite of my irrcdeemably subjective approach to my present task is that I do, at least, have the advantage of

- knowing the new book rather well just as a parent knows its child; r‘ if. except, of course, that this particular child is biologically unusual in that its gestation has taken several years, and that it has a plurality of COLLEG mothers and fathers, otherwise known as the Editorial Committee. ‘ g

V‘AuEEI‘j‘Zi‘I

I want now to pay tribute to our Co-Editors; first, Rabbi Chaim Stem BAECK 7 who joined the production process after it had commenced and who has not only played a very large part in shaping the book but performed LEO miracles in computerising it, and expended unimaginable quantities of time and energy in doing so. Second, to John Rayner, Co-editor with Chaim Stern of Service of the Heart and Gate of Repentance, without whom Siddur Lev Chadash would never have happened at all, and without whom it would certainly not be the text that it is. John has brought to his work on the Siddur the diligence, devotion and determination that are his hallmarks, as well as intellectual rigour, theological clarity, a sense of poetry and style, and a commitment to excellence that is withOut parallel Siddur Lev Chadash is his greatest gift to our movement, but it is only one of the many from which we all benefit.

Next I turn to the other members of our Committee; abundant thanks are due to Rabbi Andrew Goldstein, who, as Chairperson of the

Committee, in addition to his significant contribution to the text itself, has also chivvied us all along with just the right mixture of urgency and good humour; to Ann Kirk, who, as Technical Editor has raised to a new level of meaning the words professionalism, meticulousness and dedication, and to the other members of the team, Rabbi Dr Albert Friedlander, Rabbi David Goldberg, Rabbi Pete Tobias and Rabbi Alexandra Wright.

In addition to mothers and fathers the new baby has a number of uncles and aunts. They include Rabbi Julia Neuberger and her Anthology Committee; the Consultancy Panel, drawn from the memberships of most of our congregations; and the Production Committee, chaired by Louise Freedman, whose combination of computer wizardry and unflappability at one particularly frustrating stage saved at least two of us from committing suicide.

To all of them, as well as Jeremy 165561 and his Marketing Committee, and all members of congregations who made helpful criticisms and suggestions in response to the Experimental Edition, our thanks are due.

My task, which, as I have already indicated, I shall perform with the objectivity of a Jewish parent talking about a child, falls into two parts:

first, to place the new Siddur in its historical context, and secondly, to explain some of its principal features.

9952 The history of the Jewish liturgy goes back some 3,000 years to the biblical age, from which we have the Shema, the Priestly Benediction, and the Psalms.

The history of the Synagogue liturgy goes back some 2,100 years to the age of the Pharisees, who composed the benedictions of the Shema and of the Tefillah as well as Kiddush, Havdalah, and Birkat ha—Mazon.

The history of books goes back a little over 1,100 years to Amram ben Sheshna, Gaon of the academy of Sura in Babylonia, whose reply to an inquiry from Spain became Judaism’s first manuscript prayer book.

The history of Jewish printed prayer books goes back about 500 years to the city of Soncino in Italy where Machzor Roma was published in 1485.

The history of Progressive prayer books goes back rather less than 200 years to the Hamburg Temple, which issued the first edition of its liturgy in 1819.

It was the first of two or three hundred Progressive prayer books produced in Germany, America, England and other countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. About these two points need to be made. The first is that they are broadly classifiable into two types: conservative and radical. The conservative ones are essentially abridgements of the traditional liturgy with little change or addition; the radical ones both modify and supplement the traditional liturgy substantially. And the second point is that most of these prayer books were produced by individual rabbis for their own communities; only a few were compiled for, or adopted by, national synagogue federations.

Of these few, the first was the Union Prayer Book, adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1894 and representing the radical tendency. The third was the Einheitsgebetbuch, adopted by the Liberal communities of Germany in 1929, representing the conservative tendency. Chronologically sandwiched between these two, but ideologically even more radical than the Union Prayer Book, was the early liturgy of our own Movement. It began with an anthology, put out by the Jewish

Religious Union in 1902 under the title A Selection of Prayers, Psalms and Other Scriptural Passages, and Hymns. That was eventually replaced by the liturgy which Rabbi Israel Mattuck compiled for the

Liberal Jewish Synagogue. It comprised a volume of Services and Prayers for Jewish Homes, dating from 1918, and the three Volumes of the Liberal Jewish Prayer Book, dating from 1923 and 1926, revised in 1937.

That is the liturgy with which many of us grew up. In retrospect, I think we may describe it as bold, universalistic, spiritual - and idiosyncratic. It satisfied the generation for which it was written. But after the Second World War, the Shoah and the establishment of the

State of Israel, many of our members wanted to identify themselves more deeply with their people, past and present, and therefore felt a need for a more traditional liturgy.

It was this situation which prompted Rabbi Rayner, in 1957, to submit a plan for a revised prayer book to what was then the Ministers’ Conference, and in 1961 he startpd the work which, with the collaboration of Rabbi Chaim Stern and an editorial committee chaired at first by Rabbi Bernard Hooker and later by Rabbi Sidney Brichto, ultimately led to the publication of Avodat ha-Lev or Service of the

Heart in 1967.

The aim then was to combine tradition with modernity in a way which we hoped would satisfy the conservatives without alienating the radicals, and so re-unite the two wings of our constituency, which were in danger of drifting apart; and to a large extent this aim was achieved. There was indeed strong opposition from some quarters to a feature of Avodat ha-Lev which was quite incidental to our main purpose, namely the switch from Victorian to contemporary English, so that God was no longer addressed as ’Thou’ but as ’You’; but this stylistic change soon came to be accepted as either positively desirable or at least tolerable. It is interesting, by the way, that in this respect our example was soon followed by the British Reform and American Conservative movements, as it has been more recently by the Orthodox and even the ultra- Orthodox as well.

In general, Avodat ha-Lev was well received. It even won approval from the late Professor of Jewish Liturgy at the Hebrew Union College,

Jakob Petuchowski, who, in a review-article about it, wrote: ’While

American is talking about prayer book revision, engaging in market-research to determine what sort of liturgy people would like to have, and pondering the theological foundations of prayer, our English colleagues have quietly gone ahead and produced a revised prayer book which - with all the reservations one might have about details - must be pronounced the best liturgy currently in use among the world’s Liberal and Reform J ews’(CCAR Journal, June 1968, p.94).

Whether future historians will concur with that view, I don’t know; but

as we prepare to bury Avodat ha-Lev, metaphorically if not literally, I

think we may permit ourselves to reflect that, on the whole, it has

served us well for the last twenty-nine years.

However, as the years passed, and the pages got tattered, we became

aware that the text, too, was flawed. It included much that proved ephemeral, and lacked much that was to be desired. By the 19805 we

knew that we must try again. An anthology committee was established, plans were submitted and discussed, and towards the end of the ’eighties

the work of compilation began. The rest is recent history, which we do

not need to rehearse. What I want to do in the next few minutes is to highlight the principle features of our new prayer‘book.

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First and foremost, Lev Chadash continues - and in a sense completes - the process we began with Avodat Ha-Lev, of re-instating as much as

possible of the traditional Jewish liturgy in our Movement. Then we

carried the process as far as we felt we could, given our antecedents. This time round we have taken the view that we have a positive obligation not to deprive ourselves or future generations of any traditional prayer that has abiding value. Of course there are provisos.

The ideas expressed must be intellectually acceptable; the manner of expression must be felicitous, and not too repetitious; and no one service must be made excessively long. So there are constraints, and there will always be room for different opinions as to where precisely the line should be drawn between that which does, and that which does not, deserve to be perpetuated. But this time, we hope and believe, we have got the balance pretty well right. We have gone about as far towards traditionalism as it is possible to go while remaining unequivocally liberal. We have omitted little, if anything, that the conservatives among us could legitimately wish to have included, and we have included little, if anything, that the radicals among us could legitimately wish to have omitted.

What then have we restored in the way of traditional liturgy? The benedictions Baruch she-amar and Yishtabbach before and after the

Pesukey d’Zimra or ’Songs of Praise'(pp.37 and 48); the twelfth benediction of the Teflllah, reinterpreted as a petition for the conquest of evil(p.23); a service for Tish’ah b’Av, including extracts from the book of Lamentations(pp.377-381); readings from the Song of Songs, Ruth and Kohelet for Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot(pp.438f., 444-447; 447-450); the concluding prayer beginning Baruch Adonai l’Olam, ’Let God be praised for ever’(p.519); Half-Kaddish and Kaddish d’Rabbanan

(pp.542f.); twenty-seven ’Benedictions for Various Occasions', for instance, on hearing thunder and on seeing a rainbow(pp.545-550);

Kiddush for Sabbath and Festival Mornings(pp.566 and 575f.); the Counting of the Omer(p.578); and a number of other prayers and songs as well as individual phrases.

So, greater traditionalism on the one hand. But on the other hand we have also innovated more extensively than before. Therefore, while Lev

Chadash is more traditional than Avodat ha-Lev, it is not therefore less liberal. In many ways it is more liberal. For one thing - partly because we have become more aware of the

fluidity of the ancient liturgical traditions and the profusion of textual variations between the medieval prayer books - we have felt freer than

I before to modify the wording of traditional prayers where it seemed desirable to do so in order to make them more acceptable. So, for instance, in one prayer, where the Patriarchs are mentioned, we mention the Matriarchs as well(p.18). In another, where Moses is mentioned, we add a reference to Miriam(p.51). Where the Ashkenazim acknowledge, but in the winter gnly, that God causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall, and the Sefardim give thanks, but in {he summer o_nly, that God causes the dew to descend, we mention all three, and for good measure, the sun as well, throughout the year(p.19). (If, as a result, our new prayer book becomes nicknamed ’The Sunshine Siddur’,

I shall not object!)

In the Thanksgiving after Meals, by changing a single word, we make reference to the Covenant which God has ’sealed into our hearts’, rather than ’into our flesh’, and so make the prayer equally applicable to men and women(p.554). And in the song Eliyyahu ha-Navi, traditionally sung at the conclusion of the Sabbath, we omit an explicit reference to the Messiah, son of David, and substitute a phrase from the

Thanksgiving after Meals, also associated with Elijah, which expresses the more general hope that the prophet will come ’with tidings of good, tidings of salvation and consolation’(p.579).

But these emendations account only for a small fraction of the innovative aspects of our new Siddur. Much more significant is the introduction of many hundreds of passages which are innovative in the sense that they have not featured in any Jewish prayer book, traditional or Progressive. That doesn’t mean that they are all modern. Of course, many of them are. Over two hundred are taken from modern Jewish writings and from previous Progressive prayer books, including much material that has been written since 1967 which therefore could not have been included in Avodat ha-Lev. Also, as mandated by a previous Bournemouth Conference, we have included some forty passages of non-Jewish authorship but consistent with Jewish thought. And in addition many prayers and narratives have been newly written by the Nevertheless, the bulk of the innovative material - about 500 passages, in fact - has been taken, quite deliberately, from what one might call classical Jewish sources: Bible, Apocrypha, Mishnah, Talmud,

Midrash, Medieval and Chasidic literature. Thus users of our new prayer book will in the course of time become familiar with a whole host of classical Jewish texts to which users of other prayer books, Orthodox or Progressive, would not normally have any exposure.

Siddur Lev Chadash, we might therefore say, refreshes parts of our collective Jewish psyche which other Siddurim do not reach!

But where, you might ask, is all this innovative material accommodated? The answer is: in many places, but chiefly in one part of the book which runs to over 200 pages and is perhaps its most distinctive feature. The idea of it goes back to Rabbi Israel Mattuck’s

Liberal Jewish Prayer Book. As some of you will recall, the 1937 edition of volume 1 contained twenty five different services. It was not immediately obvious how they differed from one another, except that they tended to become less traditional and more innovative as you went along. But on closer inspection it turned out that several of them focused on a particular subject, such as the Sabbath, or prayer, or social justice, or peace. When we compiled Avodat ha-Lev, we thought it might be better to separate out these thematic elements and accomodate them, instead, in another section of the book which we called ’Prayers and Readings on Special Themes’, so that they would be available for use with any service as the occasion might indicate. There were twelve such sequences, but they were of uneven length and uneven quality, and after a few years most congregations ceased to use them, or used them only rarely.

This time round, Rabbi Rayner suggested 53 sequences, so that there would be a different one for every week of the Jewish liturgical year. He felt that this would give every Sabbath service a topical focus, which would add interest to it,’ but because the use of these sequences would be spaced over a whole year, they would not quickly grow stale. Some of our colleagues were quite sceptical about the idea at first, but eventually agreed to support it, and we hope that the implementation of it will become a liturgically and educationally valuable part of our worship.

Of course, Lev Chadash has many other novel features which I can’t even mention here but which it is perhaps best for members of our congregations to discover gradually for themselves. One which I must nevertheless refer to is the switch to gender-inclusive language. I know that there are some members of our movement who are not yet fully persuaded of the need for it, and who may debate the matter for some time to come; but I can say that the members of the Editorial Committee, together with many others within the ULPS, have no doubt that it was right to make the change.

On the human level, it seems to us a matter of courtesy as well as equity that we should discontinue the bad habit of subsuming women under men by speaking of our brothers when we mean our brothers and sisters, or of our forefathers when we mean our ancestors, and of ignoring the vital part played by women, from the Matriarchs onwards,

‘ in the history of our people.

On the divine level, it seems to us that to speak of God constantly and exclusively in masculine nouns and pronouns is inevitably to foster a male image of God. And the trouble with that is threefold. First, if taken literally, it is grossly anthropomorphic. Secondly, if taken metaphorically, it can lead to an emphasis on those attributes, like judgement and authority, which we stereotypically associate with masculinity, and a corresponding under—emphasis on those attributes, like understanding and compassion, which we stereotypically associate with femininity. And the third point, which brings us back to the human level, is that, whether taken literally or metaphorically, to associate divinity with masculinity is a sure-fire way of diminishing the feminine in humanity. We hope that all those who use Siddur Lev Chadash will not find the transition to gender-inclusive language too painful, and that the style of the new translations, which we further feel realises much more of the true meaning of the Hebrew that it translates than may have been the case heretofore, will achieve general favour.

One other change that may cause some minor discomfort, but hopefully not too much, is the switch to the Hebrew opening format. That is a point which can certainly be argued either way; but we do know that most of our members prefer the right—to-left format, and I suspect that they do so because emotionally they feel a desire to identify themselves with, rather than to distance themselves from, the majority of their fellow Jews of the past as well as the present. That seems to us to be an honourable sentiment, and the concession to it that is asked of us is one which I think we should make willingly and magnanimously.

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When a new child is born we traditionally express the hope that he or she will in due course enter la-torah, l ’chuppah u-l ’ma’asim tovim, into the study of Torah, the blessing of marriage, and the practice of goodness. We hope that Siddur Lev Chadash will help those who use it to discover or rediscover the beauty of their religious heritage; that before too long it will find a worthy companion in a revised prayer book for the High Holy Days; and that it will inspire many worshippers to show their love of God by loving their fellow men and women.

Delivered at the ULPS Biennial Conference Boumemouth

April 30th 1995

Original text by Rabbi John D Rayner with slight additions and modifications by Rabbi Dr Charles H

Middleburgh