Responding to Feedback - Page 3
Written by Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet
| Article Index |
|---|
| Responding to Feedback |
| Informed Choice |
| So, What's New? |
| A New Layout |
| Feedback and Responses |
| Traditional and Progressive |
| The Siddue as a Whole |
| What Remains to be Done |
| All Pages |
So, what’s new?
After the draft was tried for some months the feedback came in. Some liked the more traditional structure of the service though others felt it was more difficult to follow. To our surprise there were fewer issues about the inclusive language than expected, though a number of individual suggestions for improvement were accepted. The greatest complaint however was the ‘new’ Siddur seemed hardly ‘new’ enough to warrant abandoning the existing one!
So the Editorial Board took up two ideas that had come from the feedback. The first was the wish for notes on the page of the service itself so that people could learn more about the prayers, and this has proved a very popular feature of the current draft. The second wish has proved to be the most controversial issue of the proposed new edition. Already in the ‘blue floppy’ some passages were transliterated as a help for people whose Hebrew was weak or non-existent. It is uncomfortable for us to acknowledge this issue, though it is experienced throughout the Jewish world. Nevertheless from individual responses it became clear that may people have felt unable to participate in the service for this reason and transliteration made it possible to join in. (In previous decades more of the service was read in English which gave non-Hebrew readers a chance fully to take part. The gradual increase of Hebrew content, from perhaps 70% up to 95%, had unintentionally ‘disenfranchised’ at least some of our members.) In line with the movement’s recognition of the need to attract unaffiliated Jews, and to help them feel more at home in the service, the debate began about how far to extend transliteration. Should we do the ‘key’ passages only – provided we could agree which these were? But surely these, like the first line of the Sh’ma, were the ones people tended to learn by rote anyway. Or only the songs and less familiar passages? Or, for the sake of consistency (not always in evidence in our community life) should we transliterate everything? There was a long debate about this in the Editorial Board and Assembly of Rabbis, recognising both the advantages and pitfalls of this new direction. Finally it was decided to transliterate everything.
