by Rabbi Judy Shanks
from the April 2008 Ruach
While prayer invites us to beseech God, we must also be open to what God wants from us. Rabbi Samuel Karff wrote, “Each generation must struggle to hear the call, ‘Where art thou?’ Each must choose to answer, ‘Here I am, send me.’” Each generation – not merely each individual. A siddur must challenge nar- cissism; that challenge begins by saying to a worship- per: your voice is here amidst others. To hear the call: to realize that prayer is not merely an outpouring of self; it is the opening of our senses to what is beyond our selves. Send me: prayer must motivate us to give selflessly.” (From the Introduction to Mishkan T’filah, A Reform Siddur.)
As Rabbi Elyse Frishman, Editor of Mishkan T’filah, states so clearly in this part of her introduction to our new Reform siddur (prayer book), Jewish prayer is meant to be the dialogue that creates and sustains sacred covenants: between the infdividual and God, between the individual and his/her generation, and between that generation and the Holy One of Israel. Prayer gives us words to speak to each other, to stretch toward the Holy, to speak back through the history of our people and into the future we cannot yet predict.
When in February, week by week, we as a congre- gation “walked through” the history of Reform prayer and prayer books, we understood how differently each generation heard the divine call and strived to answer it. As we take Mishkan T’filah into our hands for the first few months, we first will have to get used to its unique layout, the small changes to prayers we know by heart (Rachel now comes before Leah!), and the weight of the book in our hands.
But once the surface challenges of change are met, we will begin to explore the more significant theo- logical issues presented to us: What is the nature of God reflected in the interpretive prayers? How many “faces” of God are revealed and how many paths to approach the Holy One? Why does this siddur offer definitive statements of faith and words of ambiva- lence about faith on the very same page? How do these words bridge the distance between worship- pers and each other and between worshippers and God? We will ask these questions and more in the months and years to come. Each of us will have favor- ite prayers and ones we wish never to read again. We will rejoice, as a community, when our voices raised in song and prayer bring the words in this volume to life and to meaning because we are together – this generation praying, reaching out, longing, celebrating. May we hear the call and may we answer with full hearts and willing hands.
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