For many Jews, reli­gious ser­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly the High Hol­i­days, can be alien and intim­i­dat­ing. Lack of famil­iar­i­ty with prayer (both for­mal and infor­mal), lack of famil­iar­i­ty with Hebrew and with the order of the ser­vices, and even dis­com­fort with the notions of God and of sin only com­pound the bore­dom and dis­com­fort that the long ser­vices may cause even those who have the knowl­edge and skills to appre­ci­ate them. These three books tack­le dif­fer­ent aspects of the High Hol­i­days expe­ri­ence and the reli­gious expe­ri­ence in gen­er­al.

Mak­ing Prayer Real: Lead­ing Jew­ish Spir­i­tu­al Voic­es on Why Prayer is Dif­fi­cult and What to Do About It by Reform Rab­bi Mike Comins and with 53 oth­er con­tribut­ing Rab­bis and leaders/​thinkers, most­ly from the lib­er­al Jew­ish sects, is a won­der­ful intro­duc­tion to the world of prayer, giv­ing the skep­ti­cal and the unfa­mil­iar a broad out­line of under­stand­ing and a sen­si­tive and gen­er­ous per­mis­sion from which to begin to exper­i­ment and explore. 

Rab­bi Comins and his con­trib­u­tors offer strate­gies for approach­ing both pri­vate and com­mu­nal prayer that take into con­sid­er­a­tion many of the obsta­cles that mod­erns strug­gle with in terms of under­stand­ing prayer’s pur­pose, and in embrac­ing its process. Even more com­pelling, the rab­bis share their per­son­al expe­ri­ences and thoughts about prayer with a refresh­ing sin­cer­i­ty that I con­fess, sur­prised me, as I recall the (as least to me) dry, very unspir­i­tu­al Reform Hebrew school and syn­a­gogue of my youth. Rab­bi Comins writes that his expe­ri­ence as a child was sim­i­lar. I don’t know if the pre­pon­der­ance of con­gre­gants in the lib­er­al Jew­ish world have become as earnest­ly spir­i­tu­al as many of their lead­ers cur­rent­ly clear­ly are, but Jews of any back­ground — from the unaf­fil­i­at­ed to even the Ortho­dox — who are seek­ing to con­nect more deeply with God and with their her­itage, and who wish to expe­ri­ence the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of prayer will find a lot of wis­dom and inspi­ra­tion in this book. 

******* 

All of us have done (or omit­ted to do) things we regret, and fall­en short of what would be moral­ly ide­al; for many of us, these may be ongo­ing pat­terns of behav­ior. Some may sti­fle their con­scious­ness of wrong-doing and bury it deep with­in, while oth­ers may be well aware and over­whelmed with guilt and despair. Judaism has long pro­vid­ed a process by which we can atone for our sins and start afresh in the eyes of God and our­selves. In Repen­tance: The Mean­ing and Prac­tice of Teshu­va, Dr. Louis E. New­man, a pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at Car­leton Col­lege, begins by iden­ti­fy­ing teshu­vah (repen­tance) as one of the ​“cen­tral reli­gious-moral” teach­ings of Judaism, and takes a rig­or­ous ana­lyt­i­cal approach to under­stand­ing what teshu­vah is and how it is done. 

In 49 short chap­ters, (none more than a few pages in length and thus per­fect for read­ing in dai­ly dos­es,) New­man elo­quent­ly exam­ines the var­i­ous ways that Judaism has his­tor­i­cal­ly looked at sin, freewill, respon­si­bil­i­ty, fate, and atone­ment, before explain­ing the com­po­nents of the teshu­vah process, and explor­ing some of the sub­jec­tive fac­tors that peo­ple encounter and strug­gle with in the process. Fol­low­ing the clas­sic Jew­ish philoso­phers, he breaks down the process of true atone­ment into com­po­nents, which he iden­ti­fies as: accept­ing cul­pa­bil­i­ty, feel­ing remorse, con­fes­sion, apol­o­giz­ing, mak­ing resti­tu­tion, mak­ing an account­ing of one’s soul, and trans­for­ma­tion: com­mit­ting to for­go the same behav­ior in the future. 

Although he does speak of God, Dr. Newman’s think­ing is ground­ed in psy­cho­log­i­cal real­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty, and thus, even those not so com­fort­able with the God­con­cept could derive real val­ue from the book. How­ev­er, Dr. New­man only briefly alludes to (and then essen­tial­ly dis­miss­es) the tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish under­stand­ing that there is a world-to-come to which this world is just a pas­sage­way, and that reward and pun­ish­ment for earth­ly deeds is met­ed out not just in life, but, more cru­cial­ly, after­wards as well. This is some­thing which vir­tu­al­ly all, if not all, the clas­sic sources he cites (as well as con­tem­po­rary Ortho­dox lead­ers) took/​take as axiomat­ic and as cen­tral to under­stand­ing the full con­se­quence and moral weight of our deeds, and thus of the potent cor­rec­tive pow­er of teshu­vah as well. To put the omis­sion in con­text, Dr. New­man devot­ed a chap­ter (a reward­ing one) to philo­soph­i­cal­ly tan­gling with the idea of ani­mal sac­ri­fice as teshu­vah​’s his­tor­i­cal antecedent, while brush­ing aside this still-vital belief in a world-to-come in just a few para­graphs (he only refers to it in the past tense), and with­out clear­ly indi­cat­ing that his dis­missal is nei­ther uni­ver­sal nor author­i­ta­tive. This is a seri­ous omis­sion from a his­tor­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, and ulti­mate­ly, a dis­ser­vice to read­ers, espe­cial­ly those who won’t notice the sleight-of-hand. That said, I reit­er­ate that I found the book an oth­er­wise wor­thy intro­duc­tion to the sub­ject. 

******* 

One of the great dis­com­forts of pray­ing from a sid­dur (Jew­ish prayer book) or Mach­zor (prayer book for a spe­cif­ic hol­i­day) is not under­stand­ing Hebrew, but an even greater one can be actu­al­ly under­stand­ing it. For lib­er­al-reli­gious Jew­ry in par­tic­u­lar, this has long posed a prob­lem. As Reform Rab­bi Lawrence A. Hoff­man, PhD. can­did­ly describes in the insight­ful intro­duc­tion to Who by Fire, Who by Water: Un’taneh Tokef, when prayer books began appear­ing in trans­la­tion, many Jews, both lead­ers and laity, were dis­tressed by the con­tent and mean­ing of the prayers. So edi­tors, “…changed the Hebrew, so that the Eng­lish would come out ​“decent­ly”; they pur­pose­ful­ly mis­trans­lat­ed the orig­i­nals to avoid ideas that ancient authors had no trou­ble with but that mod­ern wor­shipers found hor­ri­fy­ing; they com­posed alter­na­tive prayers in the ver­nac­u­lar — prayers on the same theme as the orig­i­nal, but say­ing what mod­ern peo­ple were like­ly to appre­ci­ate; they called for the prayer to be sung, so no one would pay much atten­tion to the words; or they omit­ted the trou­ble­some prayers alto­geth­er.” Rab­bi Hoff­man neglects to men­tion one nec­es­sar­i­ly com­ple­men­tary strat­e­gy, which may or may not have been sim­i­lar­ly delib­er­ate: that of not ade­quate­ly edu­cat­ing the lib­er­al Jew­ish laity to be able to read and com­pre­hend Hebrew, leav­ing it for the Rab­binate alone to unde­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly medi­ate and inter­pret the clas­sic texts for the laity, much as the Catholic Church pre­ferred for its cler­gy to do pri­or to the Ref­or­ma­tion. (At the sec­ond Reform rab­binic con­fer­ence in Frank­furt in 1845, accord­ing to Con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment Jew­ish his­to­ri­an Neil Gill­man, fif­teen con­fer­ence mem­bers ​“vot­ed that Hebrew should not be ​‘objec­tive­ly nec­es­sary,’ thir­teen vot­ed that it should be, and three abstained.” One, Rab­bi Zechari­ah Frankel, walked out over this issue even com­ing to a vote, and went on to become a fore­fa­ther of the Con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment.) 

Un’taneh Tokef, is one of the most pow­er­ful prayers in the Hebrew litur­gy, and has long been cen­tral to both the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kip­pur ser­vices. This book, like Mak­ing Prayer Real, fea­tures essays by an array of rab­bis and oth­er (most­ly) lib­er­al- Jew­ish thinkers, who here, rather than deal­ing with prayer in gen­er­al, are earnest­ly tan­gling with the mean­ing of this par­tic­u­lar prayer, the core sub­stance of which is that of God’s pow­er of judg­ment over human beings. The prayer address­es the idea that every­thing we think and do is observed and record­ed by God; that we are judged on Rosh Hashana, and that on Yom Kip­pur, depend­ing on the sever­i­ty of our sins and whether we’ve ful­ly repent­ed in the inter­ven­ing sev­en days, God decides who will live through the next year, who will die, when, and how, ​“Who at their end and who not at their end, Who by fire and who by water, Who by war­fare and who by thirst, Who by earth­quake, and who by plague…” and it asserts that ​“repen­tance, prayer, and char­i­ty” can avert the judg­ment of death. Heavy, trou­bling stuff, no doubt. 

The essays with­in the book encom­pass his­to­ry, the­ol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, auto­bi­og­ra­phy, lit­er­ary analy­sis and more. The range of very strong feel­ing about this prayer amongst the col­lect­ed authors is wide. One con­trib­u­tor, Rab­bi Tony Blay­field, DD says that for him the con­cept of God judg­ing and deter­min­ing when and how we’ll die is ​“loath­some” and even ​“blas­phe­mous” (!) while for Rab­bi Ruth Langer, PhD the prayer is mean­ing­ful on mul­ti­ple lev­els. She writes that ​“ratio­nal under­stand­ings of its the­ol­o­gy should not be the only legit­i­mate cri­te­ri­on. Ele­ments of its per­for­mance, our mem­o­ries and asso­ci­a­tions with past per­for­mances, its music, and the beau­ty of its poet­ry all play into our rela­tion­ship with a prayer text.” Oth­ers are less trou­bled and engage more direct­ly with the text. 

As some­one who has long strug­gled intel­lec­tu­al­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and even eth­i­cal­ly with the con­tent and mean­ing of many for­mal Jew­ish prayers (this one, not so much), I found read­ing the many raw, reveal­ing, hon­est, and even pro­found essays in this book reward­ing. Per­haps my great­est ​“take-away” from the book is the impor­tance of not dilut­ing the Jew­ish litur­gy from on high so as to make it more com­fort­able and pleas­ing to mod­ern ears. Even the con­trib­u­tors who felt the great­est dis­com­fort with Un’taneh Tokef and who wish it would be cen­sored must engage with the con­cepts year after year, mean­ing that their moral radar must get re-engaged year after year. I remem­ber with fond­ness and admi­ra­tion my grandfather’s refusal to read parts of the Passover ser­vice that offend­ed his sense of jus­tice, but what I admired most was his re-mak­ing the deci­sion each year, as each year he was re-out­raged. He would have been a less­er man for not hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Every­one, not just an elite core of rab­bis and aca­d­e­mics, should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be reg­u­lar­ly dis­com­fit­ed in a way that makes them more cog­nizant of their con­science, the fragili­ty of life, and the endur­ing moral import of their deeds. A reli­gion that is always com­fort­ing, that flat­ters and appeas­es and tells us we’re com­plete­ly okay as we are, and that makes repen­tance an easy thing with­out great con­se­quence if it isn’t sin­cere or com­plete isn’t one worth hav­ing. Bet­ter we should strug­gle and wres­tle with God.

Addi­tion­al books fea­tured in this review: