Connecticut Reform congregations among those adopting ‘progressive’ machzor

By Cindy Mindell

Three years after its publication, the Pew Research Center’s Portrait of American Jews is still reverberating throughout the Jewish community. From denominational movements to individual synagogues, from college-campus organizations to Jewish Federations, many new programs and initiatives have been launched in response to the nationwide survey, which identified a growing number of unaffiliated and disengaged Jews outside the Orthodox community.

One of the newest efforts to engage the unaffiliated and reenergize the straying comes from the Union for Reform Judaism and the Central Council of American Rabbis Press (CCAR). Published in time for the High Holidays last year, Machzor Mishkan HaNefesh (“Tabernacle of the Spirit” prayer book) will be in the pews next month in two additional Connecticut synagogues, replacing its predecessor, Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayer Book, in use since 1975. After three decades, it became evident that the prayer book was outdated: many users found the book inaccessible due to the lack of transliteration and the inclusion of theological and ideological concepts that seemed out of step with a contemporary sensibility.

Mishkan HaNefesh follows on the publication of Mishkan T’filah, an everyday siddur created by CCAR for use by Reform congregations in 2007. From 2011 to 2014, editors solicited feedback from more than 300 Reform congregations, chavurot (prayer groups), and day schools, as well as campus Hillel houses. The resulting High Holiday prayerbook incorporates updated translations, readings, and poetry, as well as transliteration and new liturgical texts.

“The Jewish religion was ripe for a new machzor before Mishkan HaNefesh was completed last year,” says Rabbi Ari Rosenberg of Temple Sholom in New Milford, one of the Connecticut congregations that will be introducing the machzor this fall. “From its inception, Judaism has been an evolving religion, transforming the worship of many gods into the worship of one God, adapting pagan sacrifices to Temple sacrifices, transforming sacrifice into prayer, and rebooting prayers to resonate better with the needs and concerns of each generation. After 30 years of using Gates of Repentance, the benefit of certain improvements became evident.”

For example, the new machzor provides transliterations for users who struggle with reading Hebrew. The dated and gendered English word, “Lord,” has replaced with non-gender-specific references to God. “Some of the readings which seemed refreshing 30 years ago now come across a bit banal, or at least overworked,” Rosenberg says. “Many of these readings have been replaced with progressive readings meant to speak to the breadth of the Jewish experience, our diversity of perspectives, and our need for new and creative inspiration.”

Mishkan HaNefesh also “has a strong sense of Jewish universalism, which the Reform movement has long championed,” says Rabbi Eric Polokoff of Congregation B’nai Israel in Southbury, another Connecticut congregation new to the prayer book. “One example is the translation of the Torah blessing. The traditional way of translating the Torah blessing is praising God who has chosen us from all peoples by giving us His Torah. The new translation praises God, ‘who has embraced us and gave us this teaching, having chosen us to embody Torah among the peoples of the earth.’ I think this very much reflects a Reform understanding that what makes us Jewish is doing Torah and what makes us distinct as Jews is that we have a mission to embody Torah.”

Polokoff and his congregational board debated about committing funds to purchase the new machzor. “At a time of tough budgets here and across the Jewish world, making the switch required a lot of thought of where very precious resources are going,” he says. “But our sense was that, on the High Holidays, when we’re gathering at our largest, for a sense of renewal and of a common agenda, we should also be at our most accessible. We were looking to the people who were coming and the experience which they would have, the opportunity to connect with Jewish ritual, and that was something we really wanted to do for this community.”

The machzor introduces some new rituals, for example, not only offering a blessing to worshipers following the tradition of wearing a tallit during Kol Nidre, but also including a blessing for those who choose to not don the prayer-shawl.

“It’s another sense of creating openness and inclusion and welcome, of taking people where they are and showing them a myriad of possibilities, and that’s what the Reform ideology tends to be about,” Polokoff says.

This type of revision is typical of Judaism.

“Although it may sound sacrilegious to advocate for emending or even improving upon the sacred traditional prayers, the rabbis have argued for 2,000 years that rayer must in fact be a combination of keva and kavannah – routine and intentionality,” Rosenberg says. “For over a thousand years before the first prayerbook was composed by Rav Amram Gaon in the ninth century, prayers were in flux. They varied from congregation to congregation, and sometimes service to service. Prayers have always been meant to be played with, reworked, revised, and, I dare say, improved. Through the process of wrestling with the prayers, we broaden our horizons, we reevaluate the purpose of the prayers, and we reconsider whom we are are meant to be, in relationship with the One to whom we are praying.”

According to Rosenberg, this kind of change is good for Jewish engagement.

“Nobody knows the words of the machzor better than the rabbi and, believe it or not, the rabbi gets tired of repeating the same words year after year,” he says. “If we don’t change the words from time to time, then we run the risk of merely reciting the words without taking the time to think about their meaning. The purpose of prayer is not merely to repeat the sounds of the words that God wants to hear; the purpose of prayer is to engage with God directly. In order to do that, we must adapt the prayers and sync them with our contemporary modes of thought, the concerns we’re facing in this generation right now, and the feelings we’re having about the world and our place in it.”

Polokoff finds in the new prayer book an innovative treatment of Jewish traditions.

“In some ways, this is the most traditional and Hebraic – in transliteration – machzor which we’ve seen,” he says. “For example, the shofar service has been totally changed. The Union Prayer Book from the early 1900s only says, ‘The shofar is sounded.’ In Mishkan HaNefesh, there are three full shofarot services spread throughout different sections of the Rosh Hashanah morning service, so the sound of the shofar is going to linger longer within the worship experience. In some ways, you’re going back to tradition in a very powerful way, but you’re doing so in a very modern and creative Reform context.”

The machzor is reflective of how the Reform movement has evolved over the last 30 years.

“There is a sensitivity to using non-gender-specific language, in better keeping with the Reform movement’s longstanding support of egalitarianism,” Rosenberg says. “Including the transliterations literally puts everyone on the same page, so that Jews who lack the ability to read the Hebrew directly can still keep up with the same prayers as anyone else, and spouses who are not Jewish can follow along with their Jewish family. We also see an intentional inclusion of a diversity of perspectives including prayers inclusive of our LGBTQ members and other prayers appealing to those of us who struggle with God. What the Reform movement has done here is nothing less than cast the net wide enough to include every Jew who holds faith with our core values.”