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Mishkan T'fillah (5)
- 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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* Translations need to be translations, not vague adaptations. My patience for this sort of thing is basically non-existent.
Debbie tells me this is a Reform siddur. If so, that has long been standard practice in heterodox siddurim. Retain the Hebrew text with minimal changes, for tradition's sake, while softening the ideologically uncomfortable expressions, and changing the message of the text, in the English, which is what most people read anyway. Hebrew School does not usually teach enough Hebrew to understand the prayers, so most people are cast upon the English.
Bokser's Conservative siddur is an example of this - his translation is awful, consciously so. Even Birnbaum has his conscious mistranslation moments - his version of the shorter confession Ashamnu on Yom Kippur is abhominable. The original has 24 verbs expressing how we have sinned, while Birnbaum has 12 in the English.
* 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.
My parents' summer C-nagogue has been going through this. It's mostly an older congregation, but their High Holidays rabbi (they have interns during the summer, since they can't really afford a full-time rabbi) pushed them to get new Harlow machzorim, replacing the relatively new (10-15 years old) Birnbaums. Harlow has modern English, fitting Conservative ideology (while the congregation is fairly traditional - mostly German refugees) and reduces the Hebrew to almost unreadably small print. My mother has visual problems, there are lots of other older people in the congregation who can't deal with the small type, but most of the service is in Hebrew. Mom pushed them to get a few large-type copies, but large-type copies are heavier, again a problem for older people.
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.
Well, yeah. Redundancy is bad. If it includes a blessing, it can be halachically bad as well, but in a Reform shul, odds are that weighs less heavily with the leadership.
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(Just FYI, Ellisif has gone by the wayside. It was too hard for Monica to do Jewish things (like food brachot, or kiddush) at SCA events while trying to do the persona of a non-Jew. So I changed the persona.)
On the translation thing, it's long been the practice, but with an important difference. Gates of Prayer, for all that it is annoying in many ways, at least labels when they're substituting something that isn't really a translation. This new siddur goes one step rather, by having a layout that supports both translations and the more "creative" readings. (In GoP, you get one or the other -- one blob of English for each blob of Hebrew. So if you actually wanted a translation and they chose to do a different reading there, you're out of luck.)
The new siddur gives Hebrew, translation, and alternate readings. Most of the translations are, broadly, accurate. (I'm not fluent, so I'm not qualified to evaluate finer points, but the translations are pretty close to what I'm used to from other siddurim I use, mainly Silverman and Sim Shalom.) The problem is that in a few cases, they've altered the text that appears in the "translation" position on the page, without indicating that they've done so. I think this is misguided. Given that most of the translations are accurate, I want them to rectify the places where they aren't. They can change the English to be a translation, move the English so it's not in the "translation" spot, or change the Hebrew (if there's something ideological going on). I prefer the first, but would accept the other two.
I suspect that I am the most pedantic member of my minyan, perhaps save one.
reduces the Hebrew to almost unreadably small print
I don't like that. If they have to reduce something, they should reduce English first, because all the letters are the same size (broadly speaking) in the English. The first thing to get lost in the Hebrew is the vowels, and many of us need those. I also have vision problems, and there are parts of the new siddur that I can't read without a magnifying glass. (We have an eiruv, so at least a pocket magnifier doesn't pose halachic issues.)
I used a large-print machzor one year. Never again. Way too heavy!
If it includes a blessing, it can be halachically bad as well, but in a Reform shul, odds are that weighs less heavily with the leadership.
We don't repeat the blessing when we read a translation after doing the Hebrew, for just that reason.
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I have a whole collection of them. Artscroll I've found to be the best. I also have an Israeli one (Debbie uses their regular-size version) and a 1920's Vilna Kol-Bo, which many synagogues have hiding under the Bima. I used them for leading services, as my glasses don't focus that well close up. So I put the large-type machzor on the reading desk, and stand back a bit, and it's clear.
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I imagine that a large-print machzor would get used more than a large-print regular siddur; you end up semi-memorizing the latter anyway because you use it every week, so you can make do with texts that are a bit harder to read. A machzor is once a year, though, so while it becomes less unfamiliar, it probably never achieves "familiar" in that way.
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I think that everyone does it, to a certain extent. Take my favorite example, Psalm 29, verse 9. Below we have the New JPS translation of verses 8-10:
First of all, JPS footnotes the line I marked with [1] noting that it could mean "brings ewes to early birth". (???)
The First Edition of Sim Shalom translates this bit as:
Hmm... what happened to those deer giving birth?
But this isn't just a wacky conservative thing; I don't think I've seen a literal translation in any siddur I've looked at, even ones which have linear translations of the hebrew. (I think that the Metsudah linear translation uses Rashi's drash on the line which is something along the lines of "frightens the deer")
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I'll try to remember to check when I get home tonight.
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Huh. Maybe they dropped the mention of Rashi in a later edition? Or perhaps I'm thinking of a different Siddur...
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