The Reform movement’s rabbinic association unveiled its new High Holidays prayer book — one that continues the movement’s trend toward inclusive liturgy — at the group’s 126th annual convention this past spring.
And it will make its Wisconsin debut this fall at three of the state’s Reform synagogues.
“Mishkan HaNefesh,” the movement’s first High Holidays prayer book, or makhzor, since 1978, was a major focus of the Central Conference American Rabbis conference that concluded here on March 18.
The book features female writers and language more reflective of the LGBT experience.
But the volume also signals a return to gendered language for God in Reform liturgy, including a version of the iconic High Holidays prayer “Avinu Malkeinu” that refers to God as both “Loving Father” and “Compassionate Mother.”
Its title, roughly translated as “sanctuary of the soul,” also refers to the portable sanctuary, or mishkan, that the ancient Israelites carried with them during their desert wanderings.
“It is spiritual, it weaves the voices of both men and women and contemporary language along with the traditional prayers,” Rabbi Denise Eger, the CCAR’s newly installed president, told JTA. “But it also gives voice and framework to our anxieties and our deep questions about God and meaning and the world in language that the contemporary ear and heart and mind understand.”
At Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha, Rabbi Dena Feingold told The Chronicle that she, the soloist and the ritual committee have been preparing the change to the new book since April, and she will be using parts of it at Sabbath services during the month before Rosh HaShanah to introduce the congregation to it.
“It’s a big change,” she said, but “I think our congregation has always greeted new liturgy with enthusiasm.” Moreover, Beth Hillel has seen pilot versions of parts of the book “over several years” and “people liked it,” she said.
Mount Sinai Congregation in Wausau will be using “Mishkan HaNefesh” beginning this Yom Kippur. It will use the previous Reform makhzor, “Gates of Repentance,” for Rosh HaShanah, said Rabbi E. Daniel Danson.
Danson told The Chronicle that he and his congregation like the wider range of English readings in the new book, and that it “builds on the strengths” of the movement’s daily prayer book, “Mishkan T’filah,” which has been “an easier prayer book for Reform Jews to understand.”
Congregation Emnau-El B’ne Jeshurun is the only Milwaukee-area Reform synagogue that will be using “Mishkan HaNefesh” this year.
Rabbi Marc Berkson is the senior rabbi at CEEBJ. He said that the movement has produced new prayer books “every generation or so” and that many members of the movement have felt “it is long past time” for the makhzor to change because “our use of language changes.” He said the new book contains “far more inclusive language for God and different words for God.”
Published by the CCAR Press, “Mishkan HaNefesh” has been in the works since the 2007 publication of “Mishkan T’filah,” for which the new makhzor is intended as a companion.
Both books feature the idea of “integrated theology,” according to Rabbi Edwin Goldberg of Temple Sholom in Chicago, the coordinating editor of “Mishkan HaNefesh.”
“Integrated theology simply means that there’s many views of God that are normative in Judaism,” Goldberg told JTA. “Some are better known than others. Everything from very theistic, God-controls-everything to human adequacy, which doesn’t mean there’s no God, but just that so much is up to us. And I think there’s room for a spectrum in a prayer book worship experience.”
This plurality of theologies and perspectives is achieved by including everything from contemporary Israeli poetry to texts for private study and reflection to newly composed prayers that the editors hope will speak to today’s Reform worshippers.
Rabbi Hara Person, the publisher of CCAR Press and executive editor of the new makhzor, said worshippers should feel free to explore the new volume to find what speaks to them.
“We’re saying, yes, absolutely you don’t need to be on the same page as everyone else,” she said. “You don’t need to be on the same page as the rabbi and the cantor. If you find something that inspires you, that moves you, that speaks to you, go for it. That’s fine, especially on the High Holidays, when we’re supposed to be reflecting, meditating.”
The previous Reform makhzor, “Gates of Repentance,” was published in 1978. By the time the process of creating the new prayer book began in 2008, Person said, there was a feeling that the older text was no longer relevant.
“Today we live with different fears and anxieties than we lived with in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” she said. “There are references in ‘Gates of Repentance’ to the post-Vietnam era or the fears of nuclear holocaust. Our fears are different… I think the Jewish family is understood differently today, who the people in our pews are is understood differently.”
Another impetus for the project was the success of “Mishkan T’filah.” A survey of movement clergy and congregants found that many wanted “a fitting companion” to the new siddur.
The new makhzor is a high-stakes endeavor for the movement. Not only is the editorial and publishing process for such works long and costly, but the CCAR relies on prayer books for about 40 percent of its income, according to Person.
And since the book is in use only during the handful of days when synagogue attendance is at its peak, it’s a chance for the movement to make a case for its relevance to large numbers of people.
“This is our shot to open their eyes to Reform Judaism,” Goldberg said. “In other words, to show that Reform Judaism isn’t the problem, it’s the solution to the challenges of life.”
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