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Fixed Prayers but Flexible Services - Page 2

Written by Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet Saturday, 01 May 2004

A Prayer Book in the Making

The proposed structure of the new prayer book offers a kind of middle position, but makes more demands on the service leader and the congregant. We indicatge more clearly than in the previous volume the two sections that precede the ‘Bar’chu’, the formal call to collective worship. The birkhot ha-shachar , ‘morning blessings’, were originally private sayings and blessings often said at home, as a personal preparation for the day, and only later transported to the synagogue and the morning service. The second section, p’sukei d’zimra, ‘verses of song’, were also private choices, selected from the Psalms and new compositions, aimed at preparing the individual and the congregation as a whole for the formal prayers ahead. Praises addressed to God move the centre of our attention away from ourselves and our individual ego, the subject of the previous section. It is in these two sections that flexibility, choice and freedom of expression exist and are to be encouraged. Our tradition distinguishes between keva, the fixed elements of the service, and kavvanah, the intention, concentration or personal engagement that is required in prayer. It is therefore in these two sections here that a selection of passages is to be made, whereas the sections of the formal service that follow the ‘Bar’chu’ remain fairly fixed.

Congregations are invited to take advantage of this flexibility in designing the service for any given Shabbat. The advantage of this is that it allows different options to be designed for different congregational needs on different occasions. For example when time is an important consideration because of a Barmitzvah or other occasion when a relatively formal service is required, it would be sufficient at take only one or two passages each from the birkhot hashachar and p’sukei d’zimra, perhaps giving thereby more time to think about the individual passages, before going almost directly to the Bar’khu. With a smaller congregation, or an alternative minyan that some communities are developing, the richness of these sections could be explored more fully, using more silence, or different melodies, or chanting passages, so as to enhance the experience.

The other place where choice is offered in terms of an entire section, is something new in the prayer book, the three options for the Torah service. The first is the ‘traditional’ one in use in our congregations. The second is an attempt to offer a formal alternative, with a greater emphasis on the theme of Torah itself. The third is a radical departure, where the ceremonial component is almost completely left out, providing time for a longer Torah reading, or for an extended study opportunity on the Torah portion itself or a related theme.