machzor pre-review
The Reform movement is publishing a new machzor (prayerbook for the high holy days) after several decades. The format is similar to Mishkan T'filah, the new rest-of-year prayerbook that was published a few years ago. Just as MT was intended to replace Gates of Prayer (its predecessor), the new machzor is intended to replace Gates of Repentance (GoR). I am one of the people in my congregation who was asked to evaluate it for possible purchase. (Actually, what we're evaluating is draft editions of certain services. My comments are based on the morning services for Rosh Hashsna and Yom Kippur.)
Now that I've shared my comments with my rabbi and the head of the committee, I'll go ahead and share them here. I'd love to hear opinions from people in other congregations who have also taken a look at the drafts.
A brief note on context: Gates of Repentance, like Gates of Prayer, took what I consider to be a somewhat haphazard and often dishonest approach to the liturgy. It mixed Hebrew and English, but sometimes the English was a translation and sometimes it was a "creative reading". Most of these creative readings were pretty horrible. And by omitting some translations, the book failed to serve people who wanted to actually know what the Hebrew prayers said.
Mishkan T'filah takes a better approach. For each prayer you get: the Hebrew, the transliteration (often missing in the prior books, and that deterred some), a good translation (~98% of the time), and one or two alternative ("creative") readings (which might be poetry).
And now, with that as background, here's the feedback I sent: I've spent time studying the drafts from the new machzor, looking at them from the perspective of the infrequent worshipper, the regular worshipper, and the service leader. My recommendation is that we not buy this machzor for the congregation, though there might be merit in buying a smaller quantity for special services. Details below.
Infrequent worshippers:
Most of our congregants come infrequently. They will not notice the many inconsistencies between Mishkan T'filah (our rest-of-year siddur) and this machzor, and thus won't be bothered by them. They will benefit slightly from having everything transliterated. They will be of mixed opinions on the new translations and creative readings; in some cases they will appreciate a fresh text and in others they will be unhappy about the loss of their favorite readings (whichever they are). The innovation, therefore, is neutral (except for shofar blowers; see below). For our infrequent attendees I see no benefit in a $30,000 expenditure to change from one book that they use infrequently to another. There's nothing really wrong with GoR from their perspective, and they may even find it comfortable and familiar because it's what they've used for decades.
Regulars:
For people who come fairly regularly (let's say, at least once or twice a month) for Shabbat and yom tov, the new machzor should be attractive. It's "like Mishkan T'filah", which they're used to. But the new machzor makes gratuitious, disconcerting changes, throwing away that benefit. Specifically:
The shofar service:
[Contextual note: this part of the service, unique to Rosh Hashana and pretty important, is traditionally done in one clump. The editors of this book have split it up into three sections and distributed them throughout the service. This is, frankly, bizarre.]
Whatever benefit the editors might have seen in breaking the shofar service up into three parts scattered throughout the morning, there is one major negative consequence: it's hard on the shofar blowers. In many congregations there's one shofar blower and he's on the bimah, so this doesn't matter -- but in a congregation where we try to get groups of people to participate in this, and especially with young children, this is a logistical nightmare. It seems our choices are to either have the disruption of moving people around three times instead of once, or to plot a different path through the service and re-assemble the shofar service (which means jumping around in the book). Both of those are disruptive, and both add some time and a little stress/confusion to what is already the longest service of the year.
A possible use:
While I do not think this machzor is suitable for the whole congregation, it can be put to use for the Ruach services, which attract our most-dedicated, most-liturgically-fluent, members. (We're already using it in that service, despite the book's flaws.) These are the people who are comfortable enough with the service in general to not be thrown off by some page-jumping, and who also stand the best chance of adapting to the re-arrangements because they already know the prayers (in a different order). The people in this group (what Rabbi [Name] calls the "chassidim") are dedicated enough to make it work and might enjoy the benefits that the book does offer. Not everybody who comes to the Ruach service is such a person, but there's enough of a friendly core that these books could work specifically for that service.
We could either buy 100 or so books for this purpose or just buy enough more copies of the draft edition to bring us up to the right number. We've already bought some, after all, and I don't think anybody in the congregation would fault us for getting the less-expensive paperbacks containing only the morning services that we use.
Final notes:
I really wanted to like this machzor. I wish it had followed in more of the footsteps of Mishkan T'filah. I assume that the decisions they've made are a done deal at this point, that there's no chance that they will restore the missing prayers, fix the shofar service, or change the layout to match MT. That's a pity, because it's nice to have honest translations and some of the left-side readings are nice. But that doesn't make up for the damage they've done elsewhere.
I was really hoping we could improve on Gates of Repentance, which has many issues of its own. I think a better outcome for our congregation would be to choose a different machzor to replace GoR with, but I understand why that does not work politically. Since we can't do that, it's better to stick with the less-than-appealing machzor we already have than to replace it with one that is differently less-than-appealing, especially when budgets are tight.
Now that I've shared my comments with my rabbi and the head of the committee, I'll go ahead and share them here. I'd love to hear opinions from people in other congregations who have also taken a look at the drafts.
A brief note on context: Gates of Repentance, like Gates of Prayer, took what I consider to be a somewhat haphazard and often dishonest approach to the liturgy. It mixed Hebrew and English, but sometimes the English was a translation and sometimes it was a "creative reading". Most of these creative readings were pretty horrible. And by omitting some translations, the book failed to serve people who wanted to actually know what the Hebrew prayers said.
Mishkan T'filah takes a better approach. For each prayer you get: the Hebrew, the transliteration (often missing in the prior books, and that deterred some), a good translation (~98% of the time), and one or two alternative ("creative") readings (which might be poetry).
And now, with that as background, here's the feedback I sent: I've spent time studying the drafts from the new machzor, looking at them from the perspective of the infrequent worshipper, the regular worshipper, and the service leader. My recommendation is that we not buy this machzor for the congregation, though there might be merit in buying a smaller quantity for special services. Details below.
Infrequent worshippers:
Most of our congregants come infrequently. They will not notice the many inconsistencies between Mishkan T'filah (our rest-of-year siddur) and this machzor, and thus won't be bothered by them. They will benefit slightly from having everything transliterated. They will be of mixed opinions on the new translations and creative readings; in some cases they will appreciate a fresh text and in others they will be unhappy about the loss of their favorite readings (whichever they are). The innovation, therefore, is neutral (except for shofar blowers; see below). For our infrequent attendees I see no benefit in a $30,000 expenditure to change from one book that they use infrequently to another. There's nothing really wrong with GoR from their perspective, and they may even find it comfortable and familiar because it's what they've used for decades.
Regulars:
For people who come fairly regularly (let's say, at least once or twice a month) for Shabbat and yom tov, the new machzor should be attractive. It's "like Mishkan T'filah", which they're used to. But the new machzor makes gratuitious, disconcerting changes, throwing away that benefit. Specifically:
- The machzor rearranges parts of the liturgy that are common to most/all year-round services for no apparent reason. For example, the torah-study part of the morning service now comes before the blessings for body and soul and the birkat ha-shachar section. Even if they had a sound reason for doing this (and if so I'd love to know what it was), for a book that's used only a few times a year, consistency with the book that's used the rest of the year is important.
- The machzor makes some significant departures, from both GoR and Jewish tradition, in the HHD-specific parts of the services, again for no apparent reason. The result is that it feels random, like they're making changes for the sake of change. What was wrong with keeping the shofar service together, the way every other Jewish community in the world does? (I'll have more to say about the shofar service later.) The machzor downplays Shabbat when that coincides with Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur; while preparing for the YK Ruach service [a service in our minyan's style that I'll be leading this year] I found that the psalm for Shabbat has been reduced to tzadik katamar. I wonder what kabbalat shabbat has been reduced to in the evening services (which we don't have). This net effect is that this machzor feels like "Judaism Lite", like it threw out some HHD liturgy to make room for... I'm not sure what; more creative readings maybe?
- Just as we've gotten people used to reading, in MT, from Hebrew and/or translitaration, sometimes switching between the two within a single prayer, the machzor changes the layout to make that more difficult. The gap between Hebrew and translit now widens as you read a line instead of narrowing, so someone who just needs to check the occasional word will struggle. Also, reading Hebrew, a different alphabet, is challenging enough for some without throwing in the wrinkle of having the text run into the gulley, as it will do on all right-side pages (where almost all the Hebrew is). I am not just whining about page layout; this is a noticable drop in usability. I've heard this from many people, with and without vision issues.
- In a similar vein, italicizing the transliteration makes it much harder to read.
The shofar service:
[Contextual note: this part of the service, unique to Rosh Hashana and pretty important, is traditionally done in one clump. The editors of this book have split it up into three sections and distributed them throughout the service. This is, frankly, bizarre.]
Whatever benefit the editors might have seen in breaking the shofar service up into three parts scattered throughout the morning, there is one major negative consequence: it's hard on the shofar blowers. In many congregations there's one shofar blower and he's on the bimah, so this doesn't matter -- but in a congregation where we try to get groups of people to participate in this, and especially with young children, this is a logistical nightmare. It seems our choices are to either have the disruption of moving people around three times instead of once, or to plot a different path through the service and re-assemble the shofar service (which means jumping around in the book). Both of those are disruptive, and both add some time and a little stress/confusion to what is already the longest service of the year.
A possible use:
While I do not think this machzor is suitable for the whole congregation, it can be put to use for the Ruach services, which attract our most-dedicated, most-liturgically-fluent, members. (We're already using it in that service, despite the book's flaws.) These are the people who are comfortable enough with the service in general to not be thrown off by some page-jumping, and who also stand the best chance of adapting to the re-arrangements because they already know the prayers (in a different order). The people in this group (what Rabbi [Name] calls the "chassidim") are dedicated enough to make it work and might enjoy the benefits that the book does offer. Not everybody who comes to the Ruach service is such a person, but there's enough of a friendly core that these books could work specifically for that service.
We could either buy 100 or so books for this purpose or just buy enough more copies of the draft edition to bring us up to the right number. We've already bought some, after all, and I don't think anybody in the congregation would fault us for getting the less-expensive paperbacks containing only the morning services that we use.
Final notes:
I really wanted to like this machzor. I wish it had followed in more of the footsteps of Mishkan T'filah. I assume that the decisions they've made are a done deal at this point, that there's no chance that they will restore the missing prayers, fix the shofar service, or change the layout to match MT. That's a pity, because it's nice to have honest translations and some of the left-side readings are nice. But that doesn't make up for the damage they've done elsewhere.
I was really hoping we could improve on Gates of Repentance, which has many issues of its own. I think a better outcome for our congregation would be to choose a different machzor to replace GoR with, but I understand why that does not work politically. Since we can't do that, it's better to stick with the less-than-appealing machzor we already have than to replace it with one that is differently less-than-appealing, especially when budgets are tight.