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Leo Baeck College .1 08 _._.. u THE LITURGY OF LIBERAL JUDAISM John D. Rayner Introduction Next to the Bible, the Jewish prayerbook is the most important book of Jewish literature. It is owned and used more widely than any other, including even the Bible itself. It contains much of the Bible, especially the Psalms, and much else besides. Its contents come from many lands and many times, spanning about three millennia. It is a kind of anthology of the accumulated memories, beliefs and hopes of the Jewish people. And it regulates the people's religious life. For a prayerbook is also a code. Indeed, the medieval prayerbooks were commonly prayerbook and code rolled into one. That is to say, they contained not only the prayer texts but also the rules and regulations governing the recitation of the prayers. Even when the rules are not set out as such, they are still implicit in the ' contents and the rubrics. But if all that is true of the traditional prayerbook, a Progressive one, while doing all that, serves still another function. It defines the ideology of the movement by and for which it has been compiled. It shows where the movement stands, or at least where the compilers think that its membership stands, or should stand, on a whole range of issues. These issues include: the nature of God; the authority of tradition; the historicity of biblical narratives such as the Creation of the World and the Exodus from Egypt; the role of the Jewish people in human history; the status of non-Jews in the divine scheme; the destiny of the individual beyond death; the destiny of the Jewish people, and of humanity as a whole, ’in the end of days’; the restoration of the Davidic monarchy under a Messiah-king,- the rebuilding of the Temple; the re—insu'tution of the sacrificial cult; the status of the Kohanim; and the role of women in religious life. To the extent to which a Progressive prayerbook reflects the outlook of its constituency, it therefore shows us also where it stands within the spectrum of the various Liberal, Reform and similar movements represented in the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It locates it on that map. But at the same time it also helps to mould the outlook of those who use it, and to that extent it serves as an ideological cement that binds the members together. In short, it is both a defining and a unifying agent. The Liturgy of the JRU-ULPS The liturgy of the JRU—ULPS has gone through several phases, and though the programme for this day speaks of four, it would on reflection be better to count them as five. Each one of these phases produced more than a single volume. Sometimes a volume was re-issued within a short time in a revised edition. Sometimes it cbnsisted of two or more companion volumes for different occasions or purposes. In other words, each of the five phases consists of a cluster of ideologically more or less uniform liturgical publications: a ’family’ of prayerbooks. LEO BAECK COLLEGE \ LIBRARY At the same time each phase represents a movement from the preceding one in one direction or another and sometimes in more than one direction at 'once. Therefore the total picture is inevitably more complex than any generalisation can do justice to. Nevertheless one generalisation can be stated safely enough. It is that, by and large, the liturgy of our Movement has travelled from a position on the left, or radical periphery, of the Progressive Jewish spectrum towards the centre and now occupies a slightly-left-of—centre position. Concomitantly with this ideological shift, the history of our liturgy also shows a marked tendency to grow in voluminousness from phase to phase. ' Phase One: The IRU Liturgy When the IRU was founded in 1902 it quickly produced a ’provisional edition’ of what it called A Selection of Prayers, Psalms, and Other Scriptural Passages, and Hymns for Use at the Services of the Iewish Religious Union. This must be one of the longest titles ever for such a publication, especially considering that it runs to only 42 pages, but has the V merit of being accurately descriptive of its contents. Who compiled it, is nowhere stated, but it is to be assumed that Claude Montefiore played a leading part in the process. We also know from a later pamphlet by Lily Montagu (The Iewish Religious Union and its Beginnings, 1927, p.7) that Israel Abrahams acted as an adviser, as one would expect since he was Britain’s foremost authority on Jewish liturgy as well as a friend of Montefiore’s and a leader of the J'RU. In addition, a man called A. Lindo Henry, who was an Hon. Officer of the IRU for many years, played a key role. Probably he was the chief editor. Within a year the IRU produced a second, revised and considerably enlarged edition; and it is this, the 1903 edition, which we should now inspect more closely, since it continued to be used for about ten years. As its title implies, it is really an anthology and in that respect different from all other prayerbooks. It also means that it could kept fairly small, since no prayer needed to be printed more than once, whereas in a normal prayerbook many prayers appear repeatedly in different contexts. It involves a lot of turning of pages, but paper— wise it is an economic way of making a prayerbook. The whole volume runs to only about 120 pages. It comprises 39 prayers; the Ten Commandments and 42 other Scripture passages, arranged in four sequences; a selection of Psalms, about 60 in number out of the 150; and finally 36 hymns. The book opens from left to right. In this it follows previous Progressive prayerbooks of Germany, such as the seminal one of the Hamburg Temple of 1819, and of the United States, including all the prayerbooks of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Most of the passages are given in English only, including some of ‘the wéll known blessings of the Amidah such as the Avot, the G’vurot and the Hodayah. Those that are given in Hebrew (with English translation) could all be accommodated on ten pages. They include the Bur'chu; the Sh’ma; the key verse of the K’dushah, namely Isaiah’s Kadosh Kudosh Kadosh; the K'dushat ha-Yom about the Sabbath; the last of the seven benedictions of the Sabbath Amidah, beginning Sim Shalom; Kaddish; the Ten Commandments; five of the Psalms; bits of -the Hallel; Eyn Keloheynu; Adan Olam; and a_ few more. Clearly, therefore, the IRU services were conducted mainly in English, with only a few concessions to the traditional language of Jewish prayer. The hymns include a number of metrical versions of the Psalms, composed by Montefiore’s sister Alice Lucas, as well as a few of non-Jewish authorship such as O worship the King all glorious above. As for the structure of the services, that was evidently left to the discretion of the leader on each occasion. Here it must be emphasised that the IRU services were meant to be supplementary to those of the existing synagogues, and though they were for that reason held on Sabbath afternoons, they did not necessarily make any attempt to conform to the traditional pattern of the Sabbath afternoon serv1ce. As it happens, Lily Montagu, in an appendix to her pamphlet about the beginnings of the J'RU, gives by way of example the order of service used on 19'h January, 1907. It began with a short opening prayer embodying a verse from Mah Tavu and the Bar’chu; then Elohai N’shamah in English and Ribbon Kol Ha- Olamim in English; then Vihi Ratzon in Hebrew or English; then the Sh’ma in Hebrew or English. There followed a hymn, Father of mercies, God of love, then Psalm 147; then a responsive reading; then a very long prayer, followed by the Prayer for the Royal Family, and another hymn, Nau wonders of Thy mighty hand. There was then a ’Reading’, probably of Scripture verses but not from a Sefer Torah, followed by Psalm 67, described as an ’anthem’ and therefore possibly sung, then the address, given on this occasion by Mr M. Epstein, after which the service concluded with Adan Olam and the Priestly Benediction. If you bear in mind that the traditional Shabbat Minchah consists almost exclusively of the Reading of the Torah, which was not done, and the seven blessings of the Amidah, of which not even one was included, you can see how little attempt was made to replicate the tradition. But then the whole purpose of the IRU services was that they should serve as an experiment in modern Jewish womhip, using largely traditional prayers in English translation, with a few in Hebrew, but paying little or no attention to the traditional structure of Jewish worship. Phase Two: The Early LJS Liturgy The experiment came to an end when the IRU decided to establish its own congregation, the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, and brought over from America the young Rabbi Israel Mattuck to serve as its Minister. He was inducted by Claude Montefiore on 20"I January 1912 and immediately got down to the task of compiling for the congregation its own liturgy, for which the little IRU anthology was clearly not adequate. This undertaking produced in the course of the next few years several smallish publications. The first, which, though undated, is known to have come out already in 1912, is called Sabbath Afternoon Services.
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