“Relevant” Prayer
A Contemporary High Holiday Service.
by Sidney Greenberg and S. Allan Sugarman.
Prayer Book Press. 187 pp. $6.95.
Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
by Jules Harlow.
The Rabbinical Assembly of America. 790 pp. $9.00.
Rabbi Sidney Greenberg and S. Allan Sugarman have surely found a need, but they have not filled it. They have determined that many young people wish to participate in Jewish worship—at least on the High Holidays—but that these young people cannot “relate” to the “traditional” services of the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox persuasions. The prayer book that proceeds from this assessment of a very real problem rests, however, at the same time on a number of assumptions that are wholly unjustifiable. One is that a religious service ought to be a sort of “happening,” only more so; another is that the interest some young Jews have in certain ideas and activities serves to qualify or even to sanctify those ideas and activities as liturgy; still another is that traditional Hebrew prayers should be made to say (at least in English!) what some young people might like to have had them say.
Thus, since many young people seem to enjoy singing and listening to rock and folk music; since they seem to “identify” with anti-administration sentiments and pro-ecology ones; and since they like to see themselves as universalists rather than as particularists, the editors have raked together a collection of songs, photographs, line drawings, liberal political statements, and other benevolent pronouncements and put them between loose-leaf covers. And yet it seems that Messrs. Greenberg and Sugar-man intend the users of their book to pray, for along with this material they have retained the general structure and a great deal of the text of the traditional High Holiday liturgy. The result, as in so many newly-written liturgies, is a repeatedly jarring clash between the contemporary elements and the mood and pattern of thought of the traditional service; in this clash any possible or imagined aesthetic, intellectual, or spiritual unity simply vanishes.
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Consider two examples. The cantor's personal prayer (Hin'ni He'oni Mima'as), urging God's acceptance of his petition in the congregation's behalf despite his own admitted sins and failures, becomes here a proof text for the Beatles' “He's a Real Nowhere Man.” Again, the Hebrew text of the Torah portion (Leviticus 16) for Yom Kippur, which deals with the choosing of a goat to be sent to Azazel as an atonement for the sins of Israel, is accompanied by a set of four illustrations, showing first what appears to be a group of black and white Freedom Marchers on a country highway; next, a woman with a hand-lettered sign, “God Bless Our President,” affixed to a large pocketbook from which are projecting two small American flags; then, a caricature of George Wallace, arms crossed and head facing determinedly to the rear; and finally, a larger gathering of (young?) people with their hands raised in the familiar “V” sign.
The montage and the Beatles song, two of countless similar examples, give an idea of the underlying conception of this prayer book. Whenever the suspicion enters the editors' minds that a traditional prayer or Torah reading is saying something young people may not be interested in or might not like, they simply introduce some “relevant and meaningful” material or—worse—deliberately mistranslate or altogether fail to translate the Hebrew text in question. Perhaps the prime casualty of this practice is that jewel of the liturgy, the Kaddish, a series of praises to God's greatness, goodness, and exaltedness, which appears a number of times in various forms throughout the service—all untranslated. The loose paraphrase of Eil Adon, on the other hand, works well enough, but the editors choose deliberately to ignore the last line with its specific reference to the supernatural seraphim and ophanim. The Avot prayer, which recurs often in the service, is translated only once, and the statement in it that God revives the dead is fudged in favor of a more “digestible” idea (i.e., one whose meaning is obscure enough to pass): “You lovingly remember all Your creatures to life.” And the Alenu, a text emphasizing the differences between the Jewish people and other peoples, and underscoring the unique Jewish destiny, is not translated at all.
The pattern is clear: whatever in the prayers is particularistic, whatever mentions such ancient rituals as animal sacrifice, whatever emphasizes supernaturalism or God's holiness, whatever dwells elaborately on God or His acts as they affect our daily lives, is softpedaled, mistranslated, or omitted entirely. The specific theological or sociological stance adopted by Rabbi Greenberg and Mr. Sugar man is not at issue here. But if they doubt or reject the idea of Israel's uniqueness or of God's omnipotence, simple honesty should have required them to change the Hebrew text of the prayers to make it accord with the theology and sociology they espouse. As matters stand, Greenberg and Sugar man want both to retain the traditional prayers (perhaps fearing to be thought Reformers) and to have them mean something other than what they do mean. One wonders how the high-minded young people for whom this prayer book has been created would greet the news that they are getting something less than the truth from those who purport to be especially sensitive to their interests and aroused consciences.
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The Greenberg-Sugarman prayer book fails to answer the question that is its very reason for being—the question, indeed, that hovers over all the “new” liturgies being produced in our time. Just how does one, or can one, go about creating a “relevant and meaningful” new prayer book without destroying the sense of eternity and awe so necessary for prayer, and without turning religious services into socio-political forums or encounter groups? The Rabbinical Assembly's new Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, edited by Rabbi Jules Harlow, succeeds—in the main—by evading the question. On the whole a first-rate contribution to Jewish liturgical art, the Mahzor offers fresh and thoughtful translations and, in a fine innovation, provides alternate services for the variety of congregations within the Conservative movement. The extensive commentaries and readings are always interesting and informative; directions to the worshiper are helpful—as are the transliterations of those portions of the Hebrew text likely to be sung by the congregation. The book is beautifully printed (the Hebrew fonts are especially attractive) on fine paper and is attractively bound.
But the question of “relevance” continues to rankle, for it is the prime source of such significant defects as this prayer book does have. Even among those who are disposed to pray with some degree of regularity, there has been a growing insistence that some account be taken of matters that our forefathers' prayers could not possibly have comprehended. The Green-berg-Sugar man overkill approach yields something, but it is something other than prayer. Rabbi Harlow's efforts at introducing “relevance,” although much more temperate, are by and large not any more successful. An example is his rendering of the acrostic poem V'khol Ma'aminim that appears in the Rosh Hashanah service. In its traditional form, this is a collection of verses cataloguing certain of God's attributes or characteristic actions; each couplet concludes with a refrain proclaiming what “all Jews believe” about the action or attribute described. Rabbi Harlow allows the traditional Hebrew order to stand, but his translation—perhaps for rhetorical reasons—in part reverses that order. Thus a typical couplet as translated in the High Holiday prayer book (edited by Rabbi Morris Silverman) currently in use in most Conservative synagogues might be:
He redeemeth from death and
delivereth from the grave;
And all believe that He is the
mighty Redeemer.
Here is Rabbi Harlow's translation of the same lines:
We believe that he redeems life
from the grave.
Therefore we shall not fear
death.
The newer version demonstrates a movement away from the straightforward pronouncement of belief which is the fundamental thrust of the Hebrew text, in favor of a
statement describing how men will behave or react pursuant to God's action. The whole tenor of the prayer becomes more “humanistic” as a result of this more or less consistently followed pattern of change. Further on in the same prayer, Rabbi Harlow entirely abandons the Hebrew of the refrain portion of each couplet in order to introduce some real “relevance”:
We believe that He remembers
our frailty.
Therefore perfection is not
His demand.
We believe that He is in no way
limited.
Therefore our noblest dreams
are not absurd.
We believe that He abides in
mystery.
Therefore we need not solve
life's every problem.
We believe that He is eternal
King.
Therefore earthly rulers de-
serve no ultimate alle-
giance.
Faustian strivings and Freudian fumblings! Even putting aside the dubious value of such pronouncements, as well as the semi-sequiturs that some of them embody, it is plain that the mere intrusion of ideas so obviously foreign to the prayer—even as it is so drastically reorchestrated by Rabbi Harlow—is jarring and cacophonous.
In the martyrology section beginning Eileh Ezkerah (“These I will Remember”), Rabbi Harlow includes some relatively modern selections from the poetry of Chaim Nachman Bialik, Nelly Sachs, A. M. Klein, and others. These are immensely powerful and entirely in keeping with the tone of anguished outrage characteristic of the section as a whole. Not con-tent, however, with the charged atmosphere engendered by these selections, Rabbi Harlow goes on to disfigure the Kaddish by forcing into alternate lines of the text such place names as Auschwitz, Masada, and Babi Yar. Equally unsuccessful, though for a different reason, are the clumsy and ill-constructed rhymed versions of such familiar Hebrew metrical pieces as Shahar Avakeshkha and Adon Olam. Here are some lines from Adon Olam:
The Lord eternal reigned be-
fore the birth of every living
thing.
When all was made, as He
ordained, then only was He
known as King.
When all is ended He alone will
reign in awesome majesty.
He was, He is, and will be glori-
ous in eternity.
Peerless and unique is He, with
none at all to be compared.
Beginningless and endless, His
vast dominion is not shared.
One questions the need to provide a rhymed English version of Adon Olam at all. Surely no Conservative congregation would sing it or
(Heaven forfend) recite it in English. Rabbi Harlow does much better in his treatment of Yigdal, which receives a simple but quite adequate and accurate English paraphrase as well as a transliterated version for those requiring one.
Rabbi Harlow's decision to replace the Jacobean English of earlier prayer books with something approaching modern English usage (changing the form of direct address to God from Thou to You, among other things) will undoubtedly cause a gnashing of teeth in certain quarters, though clearly this is the wave of the future in translations of all liturgies and biblical texts. One of Rabbi Harlow's reasons for changing to modern English was surely to make his translations clear and accurate, but his desire for clarity leads him on occasion to write awkward or even incorrect English sentences, while the wish to make a faithful rendering of the Hebrew text sometimes conflicts with the need to uphold certain theological or sociological views currently in favor within Conservative Judaism. Thus in the Kiddush, we find a Hebrew passage stating that God chose Israel from among all peoples, exalted it above all tongues, and sanctified it with His commandments. Rabbi Harlow can bring himself to say no more than that the King of the universe has “chosen and distinguished us by sanctifying our lives with His commandments.” And in the Avot prayer Rabbi Harlow has theological difficulties equal to those of Greenberg and Sugar man. His translation, “Praised are You, Lord, Master of life and death,” clearly evades the Hebrew's direct statement that God revives the dead.
A prayer book is not the place surreptitiously to “resolve” complicated and long-standing doctrinal or rhetorical difficulties, and the word-mongering required of an editor who feels compelled to make the attempt inevitably takes its toll in linguistic awkwardness and even outright distortions of meaning. Nevertheless, and taken all together, the shortcomings in Rabbi Harlow's Mahzor constitute a relatively small blemish on what remains a first-rate and timely new prayer book for the Conservative movement—one, moreover, with lessons to offer to traditionalists and “with-it” reformers alike.