report from the pews: Mishkan T'filah
Friday night I arrived to find copies of Mishkan T'filah, the
new siddur published by the Reform movement, in the racks. There
have been some services with photocopied subsets of this book (probably
copied from earlier drafts), but this was our first chance to use
the real thing.
The service went remarkably smoothly, and especially so given that the two rabbis and one cantorial soloist had not had substantial planning time. (The books just came, people were just getting back from various trips, etc.) When the leaders stuck to the intended usage pattern and when the book stuck to its own format, things were smooth. When someone decided to insert an English reading for something we'd just done in Hebrew, or the book broke from the two-page spread, things were a little rougher but still ok.
The intention is that for each passage there is a two-page spread: Hebrew, transliteration, and translation on the right page, and alternate English readings (usually two) on the left page. The English readings usually end with the Hebrew chatimah (concluding line), so if you follow the editors' intent, every time you say (or hear) a chatimah you turn the page. That works. A few times someone on the bimah decided to do an extra reading, which (1) repeated the chatimah (I'm one of a small set of congregants who care) and (2) added ambiguity (do we turn now or not?). We will work this out over time, I'm sure. (We also need to be careful not to interrupt the flow in order to explain things about the book. Do that up front or just don't do it; congregants are smart and can follow a clear lead. IMO.)
For reasons unknown to me (but I can guess), the editors sometimes chose to break with their own format, having the service simply proceed from right page to left page and on again. They do this, for example, during kabbalat shabbat. And it gets weird around Aleinu, where they have multiple versions of the prayer and don't follow the format. (I'm liturgically fluent and I have trouble finding my way around their Aleinu.) I had to read the introduction to the book to pick up on the subtle cue they introduced to signal "we're breaking the two-page format here". I don't expect most people, or anyone with vision problems, to pick it up without having it pointed out.
I imagine that they did this to reduce the amount of paper, but it's a false economy: it seems to me it would have been better to cut out some of the extra content -- and reduce the amount of gratuitious white-space, for that matter. They could have easily either trimmed the books an inch smaller or bumped up font sizes a point without damaging the aesthetic of the book. (I would have liked the Hebrew to be a bit bigger. It is crisp and clear, just a tad small.) Rolling out a new format (with new usage pattern) and then being inconsistent about it seems the worst of both worlds. The new format is good -- I wish they'd been more dilligent in using it.
By the way, we also used the book for mincha on Thursday, which has its own set of problems with regard to flow. The biggest problem is that the left-side readings in the weekly Amidah were Hebrew passages with English translations (things from Pirke Avot and the like), which means they look just like the right-side pages, which makes people think this is one of the "read every page" sections, but it's not. Most Jews don't know their way around a weekday service to begin with, so I would have preferred that the editors not add that particular stumbling-block.
As for content: the translations I looked at were faithful, and it looks like they fixed the systematic problems in the transliteration that I noticed in our evaluation back in 2002-2003. The English readings we used were evocative and not grating; I obviously haven't had a chance to review all of them. The Hebrew text mostly represents a gradual progression from Gates of Prayer; the drafts had tried some innovative things that didn't make it to the end, which is fair, but some did (all the psalms in kabbalat shabbat), and except for the Aleinu mess I have no complaints so far. There is some sort of short commentary or annotation at the bottom of more pages than not, and it's usually useful. And let me call out how refreshing it is to actually have more complete prayers with faithful translations in this siddur. Coming on the heels of Gates of Prayer, which played fast and loose with both, this is both welcome and overdue.
I had been assuming that I would buy my own copy of Mishkan T'filah. I'm a bit of a prayerbook junkie, and it's a natural thing to join my copies of GoP (both blue and gray) and a draft MT (2005). Now that I've seen the final edition, though, I'm not sure. I want to use it in my congregation for a while longer before deciding. It might turn out that the draft meets my home needs, and for travel I am more likely to take Eit Ratzon (which I just purchased, and which I had not heard of two weeks ago) because it's more complete, it's not as big, and it still has the niceties (commentary, meditations/kavanot, etc) that make either a better choice for me than Sim Shalom or Artscroll if I've got the room for a larger book. So, would I actually use MT if I bought it, or would I just be being a completist? I don't know yet. There's no rush.
The service went remarkably smoothly, and especially so given that the two rabbis and one cantorial soloist had not had substantial planning time. (The books just came, people were just getting back from various trips, etc.) When the leaders stuck to the intended usage pattern and when the book stuck to its own format, things were smooth. When someone decided to insert an English reading for something we'd just done in Hebrew, or the book broke from the two-page spread, things were a little rougher but still ok.
The intention is that for each passage there is a two-page spread: Hebrew, transliteration, and translation on the right page, and alternate English readings (usually two) on the left page. The English readings usually end with the Hebrew chatimah (concluding line), so if you follow the editors' intent, every time you say (or hear) a chatimah you turn the page. That works. A few times someone on the bimah decided to do an extra reading, which (1) repeated the chatimah (I'm one of a small set of congregants who care) and (2) added ambiguity (do we turn now or not?). We will work this out over time, I'm sure. (We also need to be careful not to interrupt the flow in order to explain things about the book. Do that up front or just don't do it; congregants are smart and can follow a clear lead. IMO.)
For reasons unknown to me (but I can guess), the editors sometimes chose to break with their own format, having the service simply proceed from right page to left page and on again. They do this, for example, during kabbalat shabbat. And it gets weird around Aleinu, where they have multiple versions of the prayer and don't follow the format. (I'm liturgically fluent and I have trouble finding my way around their Aleinu.) I had to read the introduction to the book to pick up on the subtle cue they introduced to signal "we're breaking the two-page format here". I don't expect most people, or anyone with vision problems, to pick it up without having it pointed out.
I imagine that they did this to reduce the amount of paper, but it's a false economy: it seems to me it would have been better to cut out some of the extra content -- and reduce the amount of gratuitious white-space, for that matter. They could have easily either trimmed the books an inch smaller or bumped up font sizes a point without damaging the aesthetic of the book. (I would have liked the Hebrew to be a bit bigger. It is crisp and clear, just a tad small.) Rolling out a new format (with new usage pattern) and then being inconsistent about it seems the worst of both worlds. The new format is good -- I wish they'd been more dilligent in using it.
By the way, we also used the book for mincha on Thursday, which has its own set of problems with regard to flow. The biggest problem is that the left-side readings in the weekly Amidah were Hebrew passages with English translations (things from Pirke Avot and the like), which means they look just like the right-side pages, which makes people think this is one of the "read every page" sections, but it's not. Most Jews don't know their way around a weekday service to begin with, so I would have preferred that the editors not add that particular stumbling-block.
As for content: the translations I looked at were faithful, and it looks like they fixed the systematic problems in the transliteration that I noticed in our evaluation back in 2002-2003. The English readings we used were evocative and not grating; I obviously haven't had a chance to review all of them. The Hebrew text mostly represents a gradual progression from Gates of Prayer; the drafts had tried some innovative things that didn't make it to the end, which is fair, but some did (all the psalms in kabbalat shabbat), and except for the Aleinu mess I have no complaints so far. There is some sort of short commentary or annotation at the bottom of more pages than not, and it's usually useful. And let me call out how refreshing it is to actually have more complete prayers with faithful translations in this siddur. Coming on the heels of Gates of Prayer, which played fast and loose with both, this is both welcome and overdue.
I had been assuming that I would buy my own copy of Mishkan T'filah. I'm a bit of a prayerbook junkie, and it's a natural thing to join my copies of GoP (both blue and gray) and a draft MT (2005). Now that I've seen the final edition, though, I'm not sure. I want to use it in my congregation for a while longer before deciding. It might turn out that the draft meets my home needs, and for travel I am more likely to take Eit Ratzon (which I just purchased, and which I had not heard of two weeks ago) because it's more complete, it's not as big, and it still has the niceties (commentary, meditations/kavanot, etc) that make either a better choice for me than Sim Shalom or Artscroll if I've got the room for a larger book. So, would I actually use MT if I bought it, or would I just be being a completist? I don't know yet. There's no rush.