Mishkan T'fillah (4)

[cellio]

Assorted notes from another morning with the new siddur:

I really like the overall layout when they stick to the format. The group seems to be finding it intuitive. I hope they fix the few places where they've deviated.

This week the books had two new inserts: transliteration of Ashrei, and psalm 92 (mizmor shir l'yom ha-shabbat). I haven't checked a different siddur to know whether the psalm is an omission in the new siddur or an acretion to the service by our group. That is, it's certainly part of the Shabbat liturgy, but it could be evening and not morning for all I know. Right now I'm too lazy to walk upstairs and look. I'll try to remember to update this entry later.

The Torah service is a little strange. There's more there than before (as I mentioned last week), but the ordering is a little odd and this week I noticed that one common line was missing (baruch shenatan torah...). I wonder what's up with that.

Hebrew is a nearly-regular language, in terms of pronunciation. There is one case where, I'm told, you just memorize the special cases, though I'va also heard that there is a rule (though no one can tell me what it is, at least so far). That is the case of the vowel called "kametz", which is usually pronounced "ah" but is occasionally "o" instead. (We do Sephardi pronunciation, not Ashkenazi.) The current siddur, Gates of Prayer, uses a very minor (but visible) typesetting difference in the Hebrew to convey this, which I find really helps. Mishkan T'fillah does not, at least in the draft edition. I really hope they do it in the final edition.

While looking at the transliteration (to disentangle the above), I noticed a bigger problem. There are two vowels, "segol" and "tsere", that are pronounced "eh" and "ey" (like in "they") respectively. They are both transliterated, every place I looked, as "e". Bad move! There are already many people who do not know the difference between these two letters; do not make it worse! Usually the latter is transliterated as "ei" (my preference), though I have also seen "ay" and "ey".

Here's an example of annoying mis-translation: "...malbish arumim" came out as "...who clothes with awareness". It is really "...who clothes the naked". What the heck is "for awareness" doing there? It has nothing to do with the content; the editors made it up! And it's in the place on the page where you expect the translation. I am going to complain about mis-representation of anything as translation that is not in fact a translation; I think that does actual harm. The vast majority of the users of this siddur are not fluent in Hebrew and will believe what they're told about translations.

previous, next

Comments

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Another warning about Chassidic shuls for shacharit - they tend to go long, so prepare accordingly (often they start later than other shuls, so they get out later, and depending on the "flavor" of Chassidim they are, they might even extend shacharit longer with additional singing). They're lovely, but if you're one who needs to eat by noon, for instance, you might be wise to bring along a snack.