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‘Holy Compromise’ - Page 2

Written by Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet Tuesday, 01 November 2005

A Prayer Book in the Making

The need to resolve this and other issues points to a much deeper concern, and to a process that is beginning to emerge as the various versions of the new Siddur do the rounds for evaluation, criticisms, proposals and improvements. This is about the nature of the debate that takes place and how people respond to the inclusion or omission of things that they particularly approve or, more often disapprove, of. It is self-evident that in a movement as large and broad-based as ours not everything will be acceptable to everyone. Such disagreements exist within the Editorial Board, the Assembly of Rabbis, the individual congregations themselves – and as often as not within the head of the Editor! The question is how we deal with the inevitable fact that there will be things in it that we are unhappy with alongside those that really reflect our personal understanding and commitment.

There are still occasional voices that say: ‘If X is in (or not in) the prayerbook our congregation will never take it!’ Obviously this is an extreme position, and not particularly helpful, but it has cropped up. On the whole whenever we have tested out such views within the congregation in question, we have tended to find as mixed a bag of opinions as anywhere else. Nevertheless we have to respect strongly held convictions yet still try to negotiate a more helpful approach. This problem actually goes to the heart of the nature of the democratic process itself and the necessary give and take for any kind of society or community to hold together. The art of ‘holy compromise’, the willingness to give up some particular strongly held view for the sake of the whole, is actually an important religious value for us to be demonstrating – particularly in a time of widespread religious intolerance. In this respect these debates about the prayerbook, and the way we resolve such genuine differences of opinion, are an important religious exercise, long before we use the book for our regular worship.