Mishkan T'fillah (5)

[cellio]

This Shabbat was day 6 with Mishkan T'fillah, the new (draft) siddur. I don't have a lot of new observations this week; mostly more re-inforcement of previous observations (and one new experiment we tried).

Specifically:

• Translations need to be translations, not vague adaptations. My patience for this sort of thing is basically non-existent.
• Some of the (properly-labelled) adaptations and interpretive readings are very nice.
• I really like the layout (modulo some nits).
• They break the formatting conventions in a few places, and it's confusing.
• I'd rather that they use more pages than shrink things down to hard-to-read sizes. Some of the older members of our group are having problems with some of the small print.

Some people have complained that with this layout, the person leading the service has to be more of a leader and guide people to the right places. I think this is a good thing; I want the person leading the service to have that kind of flexibility, and anyone in that position ought to be qualified to do it. If we're releasing into the wild rabbis who can't follow a service without an extremely-blatant guide, we're doing something wrong. (Note that I don't believe the premise of that last sentence.)

Our group experimented with having the entire group read (in unison) some of the English stuff. We already did that for certain key parts (most prominently, the translation of the Shema); for the rest of the service, our custom is to go around the circle taking turns. I don't like group reading; people have to spend effort staying "in sync", so they pay less attention to the actual words. I hope we don't continue that experiment -- but we had to try it once, for the sake of completeness.

The service also ran long enough this week that we lost the rabbi's talk (which is usually about 10 minutes, not long); we had to finish in time for the rabbi to go to the bar-mitzvah service after ours. This was disappointing. I think the solution is to reduce the number (or length) of English readings that are basically translations; there are a number of places where we read the Hebrew and then read the translation, and I'd rather we didn't do that so much. (This comment pre-dates the new siddur, actually.) I said something like that to the rabbi, but we didn't really have time to discuss it. Maybe we can discuss it next time we get together to learn talmud.

I hope that I'll be able to borrow a copy of this siddur while writing up my formal evaluation. It would be handy to be able to refer to specific texts, page numbers, etc. I hope they'll welcome that level of feedback.

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Comments

[cellio]

I also prefer to have some time "to myself" during a service, even if it's only the silent Amidah. (Reform doesn't do silent + chazan's Amidah, just once, usually together. So I don't get that there, though our congregation at least inserts some silent time at the end to compensate.)

Theoretically, one does not need a hint of the page numbers in an Orthodox service if one comes late... that is to say, you start at the beginning no matter when you walked in.

I thought there were certain times where you pretty much had to be with the group (e.g. kedusha), and as a result there was a priority list for what to do and what to skip if you're in a hurry, which would mean you'd need a hint of how much time you have. Or am I conflating two things? Maybe that priority list doesn't apply to shul but only if you're on your own and in a hurry for some reason (e.g. I have to leave for work in 10 minutes; what can I pull off?).

Or maybe having to be together at certain points only applies to the ten men who make up the minyan (and hence, never to either of us)?