A New Dialogue With The Divine

British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

by Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt
Special To The Jewish Week

Almost 20 years ago, at a gathering of rabbis from Israel and the diaspora in Jerusalem, Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks departed from the common themes of such conferences and, citing sociological studies, announced a crisis: “Jews don’t pray!”

In the years since that pronouncement, I have returned again and again to his cri de coeur to test it against experience. Among the more secular Jews whom I encountered at the bedside through my work in hospice spiritual care, that experience was startling. Whereas Christian, Muslim and Buddhist patients and families welcomed a proffered call to the Divine — even one from an Orthodox Jewish clergyman — Jewish patients would routinely squirm and find some excuse: “Not now,” “I’m tired,” “No thanks,” “I’m not

religious.”

Even in Orthodox circles, worship is a problem. Ask any day-school educator which curriculum component meets with greatest resistance and he or she will likely confess that it is tefillah, prayer. Even in mainstream Orthodox synagogues where hundreds flock to Shabbat services, “decorum” is the bête noir. But the issue is not the din of conversation; for most congregants it is the poverty of the experience of worship. I wonder if in the course of a year, most synagogues have even produced enough tears of emotion — joyous or broken-hearted — to water a pot of geraniums.

True, in some places melody, clapping and bits of dance have been used to great effect to jump-start the still heart of prayer, but they only serve to highlight the dysfunction of the prayers themselves as vehicles of transcendent communication and inspiration. One need only note the occasions when a Carlebach niggun, a wordless melody, continues after it has completed its service to the words it has carried. The rising decibel level and the rush of renewed energy from the congregation signals its preference for “la la la” over the crafted phrases of the liturgy.

Even in the circle of those most devoted to regular prayer — the devout who pray thrice daily, often dashing breathless into lunchtime minyanim in offices and boardrooms, or those who, before it is even light outside, participate in morning prayers in synagogue services timed to accommodate early commuter trains and buses — it is sometimes difficult to know if the timetable davening is still truly worship. Does it still constitute avodah she-be-lev (the service of the heart)?

Almost 25 years have passed since the Artscroll Siddur became the dominant prayerbook of English-speaking Orthodox Jewry. It has been a monumental success, proliferating in sizes and formats to address the spectrum of Orthodoxies: Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Zionists, non-Zionists. It even moved beyond Anglo-Jewry into other diasporas and into Israel. Its great innovation was the reintroduction of halachic precision into prayer. It was an enterprise guided and inspired by great Torah sages. The Artscroll Siddur made it possible for even a neophyte ba’al teshuvah (returnee to the faith) to function gracefully in the act of prayer, bowing at the correct junctures, standing, sitting and stepping back with seasoned veterans.

But the re-emergence of prayer as a precisely executed religious activity came at some price. The English that faces the Hebrew prayers in the Artscroll Siddur is a translation — wooden, perhaps accurate, but assiduously unlovely. It is not intended for worship but for consultation. The fear of competition from the vernacular was still a reality for the generation of sages who had inherited the mantle of leadership in the struggle against liberalizing forces. After a quarter of a century in the company of Artscroll, with more people davening than ever before in living memory, the words of the chief rabbi still have an eerie echo of truth: “Jews don’t pray!”

How fitting that the redress of this crisis — the breakdown in the Jewish dialogue with the Divine — is again being voiced by the chief rabbi.

The venerable Israeli publishing house, Koren, long associated with the fastidiously accurate and aesthetically sensitive presentation of the Hebrew Scriptures and the prayer book, is presenting a siddur with an English translation and explanatory notes by Chief Rabbi Sacks. An edition in the United Kingdom appeared several years ago. A new one is crafted for the American Orthodox community.

Readers may be disoriented, at first, by the reversal of the Hebrew and English pages, but lines reaching toward open margins instead of plunging into the center’s abyss, suggesting emerging possibilities, have, once experienced, a distinct charm. The pleasing Koren type and the intelligent division of poetic lines bring new pleasures to the experience of prayer and aid in savoring the prayers’ classic wording.

Why is this the moment for a new siddur? Much has changed since the appearance of the Artscroll Siddur. A rabbi named Shlomo Carlebach changed the expectations of the prayer experience from decorous and somber to uplifting and ecstatic as he captivated generations with elemental melodies and stories of miraculous human saintliness, modesty and unselfishness.

There was also the change wrought by the publishers of Artscroll themselves: the appearance of the Schottenstein Talmud, sanctioned by the same sages who had supported the siddur. A quiet revolution ensued. A new throng of students was welcomed into the Holy of Holies; the study of the Babylonian Talmud was now in English. The reality of authentic Talmud Torah taking place in the vernacular reopened the question of prayer. If God could accept the study of His sacred Oral Law in English, perhaps prayer, the Service of the Heart, might fare as well.

Enter the Koren Siddur. Its English component is not merely a resource for consultation. Its lovely poetic prose is a vehicle for worship. Chief Rabbi Sacks is a master of cadence, a student of the English language’s greatest craftsmen. He has the good taste to leave touchstones of the King James Bible untouched. He is also among the few voices of our time who, although thoroughly rooted in Jewish tradition, also understand the spiritual lexicon of English, its evocative words and phrases. One is reminded of Heschel and Wiesel. Rabbi Sacks manages in many passages to create what T.S. Eliot called an “objective correlative” for the original Hebrew texts, an English liturgy that sings in King David’s key instead of clumsily sagging under the weight of technical correctness and emotive impotence.

The chief rabbi’s introduction and notes address the modern worshipper’s crisis of communication.

Whereas the Artscroll’s introduction reflects the kindly guidance of a student of the sages, extended to an English-speaking laity, Rabbi Sacks speaks to the problems of worship common to every man — and woman. True to traditional sources, his comments nonetheless speak to universal spiritual concerns in the same tone that has made Rabbi Sacks one of the United Kingdom’s most beloved religious figures, transcending sect and denomination.

The Koren Siddur beckons not only toward worship but toward thoughtful study. This siddur has retained the practical halachic instructions innovated by Artscroll, and the chief rabbi never flags in his commitment to assist the worshipper in the experience of dialogue, providing strategies of engagement with the prayers.

The Koren Siddur re-centers the American Orthodox prayer book. Artscroll derives from the world of sages. Even in its Modern Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America edition, edited by Rabbi Saul Berman, with a masterful introduction, the shift is mere political cosmetology: the figure of Rabbi Soloveitchik replaces the Agudath Israel sages of the non-Zionist standard edition and the prayers for Israel and its soldiers are deftly slipped into Shabbat service. But the translation and system of prayer remain untouched. The prose of the translation is pictureless, a sequence of lexicon-derived nouns and verbs divorced from any living landscape. Its lions and leopards are wooden ark carvings, its mountains are metaphors for man struggling against his inclinations.

The Koren Siddur grows from a new center of nourishment: Israel, the state and the land. The reality of the modern state is not only reflected in the prayers for it soldiers, its governors and its heroes; it is religiously legitimized by the presence of a liturgy for Yom Ha’Atzmaut, offering American synagogues the chance to synch with their Israeli counterparts; and Yom Ha’Atzmaut takes its quiet among the days when the supplicatory Tachanun prayer is omitted. Beyond these details, the translation itself reflects the Land. Chief Rabbi Sacks coordinates the texts with the sights seen by his own eyes, the timeless grandeur of a modern Israel.

The new centering of the prayer book has several subtle ripples. First, Israel is the shared inheritance of all Jews, male and female, as opposed to the yeshiva, which is exclusively male in its world view. Rabbi Sacks, in many passages, has softened automatically male-gendered translation, without radically uprooting the biomorphic character of the Orthodox tradition. For example, he leaves the fourth morning blessing — “who has not made me a woman” — in place.

Further, although the Koren Siddur is certainly a halachic one, its centering in Israel makes it a less overtly denominational work. Sages of the yeshivot speak primarily to the spectrum of Orthodoxy. The ArtScroll’s use of “Hashem” for God, for example, functions as an encryption device warning non-Orthodox readers away. In the Koren version, “God” is back and the Israel orientation suggests the possibility of a prayer book for the people who call Israel “home.” There is halachic precision for the traditionally devout, thoughtful spirituality and exploration for the searcher, and a sensitive translation of the classical liturgy as a sourcebook for students of all perspectives.

If history has, for a time, been relatively gentle to the Jews, at least enough to allow us, across the spectrum of observance and creed, the time to reconsider the possibility of conversation with God, then this elegant, gentle, wise and sensitive prayer book may usher in a new age when Jews do pray.

Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt is spiritual leader of the Riverdale Jewish Center.

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