 |
|
|
|
|
I had quite a few strong opinons (though not a majority of my responses). I strongly disagreed with "transliteration should only be provided for some passages"; while I don't use it myself, much of the movement does. I also strongly disagreed with including worship cues ("stand", "sit", etc) in the text, because Gates of Prayer put them in places where I disagreed with them. Better to let the service leader control that. I also strongly disagreed with a suggestion to include more "modern poetry or prose" inspirational readings; we have quite a bit of that already.
I am surprised that they asked whether we think the book should be Hebrew-opening or English-opening (that is, whether you start from the "back", from standard POV, or the "front").
Demographics included the usual stuff, plus asking if we have ever been a board member, officer, or committee chair for a congregation or for Hillel. I'm not sure why that matters; I have seen no correlations between board membership and familiarity/comfort with liturgy, after all. They did not ask about education, ironically. They asked how many times a year we attend Shabbat services, counting Friday night and Saturday morning separately; options were: fewer than 10, 10-20, and more than 20. Umm... max possible is over 100; I thought they would set the scale differently.
1. Please name your congregation's current prayer book and discuss your reaction to the liturgical changes as compared to your current prayer book.
Gates of Prayer (gray), and a home-brew siddur with some extra content. I very much like the fact that Mishkan T'fillah has a complete service (Hebrew and English) in one place; each service in GoP omits different parts of the core liturgy. I also like having complete translations; GoP replaces some with creative readings, so you don't actually know what you're saying in the Hebrew. I like the extra support for transliteration, though I do not use it myself.
2. What additional comments do you have about page design and the organization of the material?
The rubrics are helpful, but you need to add headings to all pages identifying current section. (You do in a few places.) Please use the intended format everywhere, even if it increases page count; it should be possible to do a complete Hebrew service using right-side pages only and a complete English service using translations only or left-hand pages only. (Examples where broken: Aleinu, page 83, Torah service.) Some parts are missing transliterations; please add everywhere.
The gray Hebrew is hard to read at the sizes used; try indentation or horizontal lines to offset seasonal text instead of graying. Rosh Chodesh insertions are especially confusing; use a bulleted list? Smaller Hebrew fonts are harder to read even when not gray.
3. Please comment on your reactions to any specific lioturgies in the following sections, being sure to identify the section about which you are commenting.
a. Opening material to Barchu:
I like the expanded nissim b'chol yom, particularly the progression from "b'tzelem Elohim" to "she-asani ben chorin" to "she-asani Yisrael". I do not like changing body-Torah-soul to body-soul-Torah. The first English reading on page 7 is especially nice. The first English reading on page 13 is especially unappealing.
Please mark the transition into p'sukei d'zimra better. Most psalms here and Nishmat need transliteration.
b. Barchu through the Mi Chamocha and up to the Tefila portion of the service:
I like having the extra paragraphs of the Sh'ma available, and they are easy to skip if people want to. Though some object, this is no different from having creative English readings that some people skip -- so if that's ok, so is this.
c. Tefila through Tefilat Ha Lev:
I like "doroteinu" (p. 83) and "yotzreinu" (Kedusha). "Racheil v'Elohei Leah" is hard to sing with the traditional melody. I like "meitim" in G'vurot. I like having "amcha" back in Sim Shalom (instead of "kol ha-amim"). Why two versions of R'tzei?
Page 80: same chatima of Kedusha appears twice. Typo?
d. Torah ritual:
The section is hard to follow because of the layout. Baruch shenatan is missing; was that an oversight?
e. Aleinu through conclusion of the service:
Why three versions of Aleinu? Keep the first, which is the most thorough, and drop the rest. Almost nothing else in this siddur gets multiple versions; why does Aleinu even rate two, let alone three, versions?
4. What material in this draft service would you exclude from this book?
Extra R'tzei, two extra Aleinus, extra mishaberach (Friedman version), "alphabet" page (25), Ashrei creative reading, two pages of commentary on the Sh'ma (move it to an intro, condense and put in margins, or drop -- it breaks the flow as is). Many of the creative readings seem weak to me.
5. What additional material would you suggest for inclusion in this book? Where should it go?
Psalm 92 in p'sukei d'zima. Translations and transliterations everywhere.
6. Will this new prayer book meet your needs as a worshipper? Why or why not?
Yes. It is (mostly) more complete than GoP, it is much more logically organized, and it gives me all the parts of the service I want in one place. There are some layout/font issues that make it more difficult for me, however.
7. What was the experience for any non-clergy worship leader (adult or youth) who led the service?
I like the format a lot. I would like you to use it everywhere, including Torah service, Aleinu, p'sukei d'zimra, others.
The commentary in the bottom margins is great! But I do not care for the kavanot, which seem too "creative" and non-traditional to me.
Please do not project your assumptions, through font size and lack of transliteration, about which parts of the service we are likely to skip. If something is in there it deserves to be fully supported so we can include it; if it's not worth fully supporting, leave it out entirely. (I would prefer that you do the former.) Smaller Hebrew fonts should be reserved for seasonal changes, not parts of the liturgy that are proper every week. (That said, I can't read your smallest Hebrew font without a magnifying glass, and even your middle one (e.g. Nishmat) is a challenge.)
Every part of the service should have Hebrew, transliteration, and an accurate translation. Creative English readings and/or a desire to keep each piece on one page (or spread) should never displace any of these, as they do in some of p'sukei d'zimra, Nishmat to Chatzei Kaddish, Chanukah/Purim insertions, etc. Ashrei lacks both transliteration and translation.
Accurate translations are very, very important to me. Some texts in the "translation" portion of the page are not accurate translations, such as "malbish arumim" ("who clothes with awareness") and the first blessing of that section ("who gives the mind..."). Suggest alternate interpretions in commentary, but don't alter the actual translations. A book that is 95% accurate is especially dangerous, because is misleads people who are marginally proficient in Hebrew into thinking that it's 100% accurate.
There are transliteration errors with tzere, which should always be "ei" and often shows up as just "e". Please proof for this. Many people rely on the transliteration; let's not teach them mispronunciations.
GoP (gray) introduced a typesetting convention for kametz vs kametz katan so you could tell whether to pronounce it "ah" or "oh". I found that very helpful and missed it in this siddur. My Hebrew isn't yet good enough to have memorized all the special cases.
Thank you for your efforts in producing this siddur. I look forward to its publication. While I know you have thousands of responses to dig through and would not presume to push myself on you further, I would be happy to discuss any of these points further with you if you like. You can reach me at cellio@pobox.com. You may also see more extensive comments at http://www.pobox.com/~cellio/mishkan.html.
