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Responding to Feedback - Page 8

Written by Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet

What remains to be done?

We have had feedback from congregations and have begun making adjustments based on responses. A major concern has been to make it as easy as possible to follow the service, especially where there is page-turning following particular choices.

Still to be decided are the illustrations. We forget that including illustrations in the 1977 edition was a major innovation, and at the time was viewed as a considerable risk. Having followed it through with the other two volumes, it is intended to do so again. But what materials should we use? The initial view of retaining those from the current Siddur seemed more and more inappropriate as the new edition took on a clearer identity of its own. One suggestion arose following the controversy over transliteration, namely to use Hebrew calligraphy as a basis for some of them, so that more and more could be done to familiarise people with Hebrew and encourage them to learn it, and we have approached a number of artists with this in mind. The current Siddur used pictures of synagogues, many of them destroyed during the war, as a kind of indirect memorial to the victims of the Shoah. It is our hope that at least some of the artists we include will belong to congregations reborn after the Shoah, particularly from continental Europe and the Former Soviet Union, so that we can reflect this extraordinary renewal of Jewish life in our time.

There remains still the delicate phase of completing the process of editing and signing off with the movement. Beyond that lie a variety of technical negotiations about numbers of copies to print for congregational and private use. As I noted at the beginning there is always a creative tension between the aims of the movement and the values and concerns of the individual synagogues. When the 1977 Siddur was published there was no certainty that it would be accepted by all, particularly as people were so used to the existing one and had expressed doubts about at least one radical change – the replacing of ‘Thee’ and ‘Thou’ with ‘You’ when addressing God. In retrospect the extraordinary emotions evolved and the difficult arguments and debates seem puzzling. But we are seeing exactly the same levels of concern today, albeit about very different issues. Change is always difficult, and when it concerns a prayerbook that has accompanied people throughout their lives, it is even more complex. In time, if this new Siddur is found to address people’s needs and fits into the lives of congregations in a positive way, then the features we have introduced, and indeed the risks that we have taken this time round, will be justified. For now we can only seek to complete the task and discharge the great responsibility that has been given us. We commend Iyyun Tefillah, ‘Devotion in Prayer’, to you, to the wider Jewish society and to all those who value the Jewish contribution to contemporary religious life.