Fixed Prayers but Flexible Services
Written by Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet Saturday, 01 May 2004
A Prayer Book in the Making
| Article Index |
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| Fixed Prayers but Flexible Services |
| A Middle Position |
| Options and Flexibility |
| All Pages |
Now that the draft Shabbat morning service has had some trials and the Editorial Board has received feedback, some interesting questions have arisen. This seems a good opportunity to express our gratitude to all those who have gone to considerable lengths to ensure an effective use of the experimental edition as this has required a lot of preparation and different approaches for different occasions.
As I suggested in an early ‘diary’ piece, the new structure poses a fundamental challenge to us, the need to make choices and selections of prayers to include for a given service. In the existing volume, with the alternative options for opening the service, whoever is leading has simply to follow the pages, with the occasional need to insert something new, for example the study passage. This gives the congregation a degree of security in knowing what is coming next. By distributing selected passages from the early part of the traditional service between the different options, most classical texts would be encountered by someone who attended regularly over a period of time.
This is a very different experience to that of someone worshipping regularly in an Orthodox shul, who, in theory, feels duty bound to read the entire text. This is only possible because the Chazan or whoever leads the service, speeds through many of the passages, or only cites the opening and closing words aloud, continuing in silence. Only at certain key passages are all the congregation required to join in. These two different strategies, Reform and Orthodox, effectively achieve something like the same end, a selective emphasis on particular parts of the traditional service, with other parts glossed over or omitted.
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