Something I noticed several weeks ago, but keep forgetting to write down: they have restored "amcha" to its rightful place in Sim Shalom. Sim Shalom is a prayer for peace. It starts by asking for peace for "Israel, your people". ("Amcha" is "your people".) There has been a recent trend toward either replacing or augmenting "amcha" with "kol ha-amim", "all peoples". This is unnecessary, as the prayer later goes on to broader requests anyway, and it waters down the "amcha". It's our prayer; it's ok to start with us! (This is clearly not, by the way, about the state -- it's about the tribe.) As you can tell, I disagree with that change. So anyway, in the new siddur it's just "amcha", not augmented with "v'et kol ha-amim". I like this. I wonder if they made the corresponding change to "Shalom Rav", the prayer for peace said in the evening.

They use (at least) three different sizes of Hebrew font in the siddur. They seem to be guided, in large part, by a desire to make things fit on one page -- so long psalms in p'sukei d'zimra get small fonts (and no translit). I am finding this frustrating, not only because I need a magnifying glass to read the smallest font accurately but because I fear that they are sending a message of "this isn't important" for the shrunk parts. (No part of the liturgy that Reform considers to be "core" gets this treatment.)

Actually, there's a fourth (even-smaller) size, for the short seasonal insertions. They should make those a little bigger, but they don't need to be full-size. In fact they shouldn't be; something about the typesetting needs to convey "you might or might not need to include this today".

I just realized that I haven't noticed the insertion for Rosh Chodesh (first day of the month) in this siddur. That would be unfortunate. I'll have to remember to check next week. We haven't had a Rosh Chodesh on Shabbat during the trial period.

Comment from someone else this morning: "Some of the readings we thought were 'too California' are growing on me. They might be moving east a bit, say to Montana." My response: "Some of them are good, but some of them will never leave southern California." I include in this category a couple of the bogus, incorrect, misleading, should-not-see-the-light-of-day "translations". (Now Monica, tell us how you really feel. :-) )

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