New prayer book opens a welcoming door to the Jewish High Holidays

The Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross began to contemplate death and dying as she interviewed Jewish children at a liberated Nazi concentration camp in 1945.

More than 60 years later, her famous ruminations are among the surprises awaiting Rosh Hashanah worshippers who, on Wednesday evening, will open the dramatically revised Mahzor Lev Shalem.

It is Conservative Judaism's new, best-selling prayer book for the Jewish High Holidays, also known as the "Days of Awe," which culminate Sept. 18 with Yom Kippur. During that period, God is said to decide who will live and die in the year ahead.

Repentance and renewal lie at the heart of the holidays, so these themes loom large in the new mahzor, but with a difference.

"It's been said that a prayer book is really the creed of the Jewish people - even more than the Bible," said Rabbi Edward Feld, lead editor on the project. "It represents what people believe. So [the translators] saw our job as creating an anthology of Jewish belief through the centuries, presented in a 21st-century voice."

This mahzor is both traditional and contemporary, with a page-by-page guide to liturgies, a new translation of the Hebrew, and commentary and meditations from dozens of authors, including the Protestant-born Kubler-Ross.

"Each day you awaken could be the last you have," she observes on Page 253. When you accept that reality, "you take the time that day to grow, to become more who you really are, to reach out to other human beings."

Conservatism has long served as the middle way of Judaism - between Orthodoxy, which holds that the Torah and laws come from God and must be obeyed, and Reform Judaism, which views obedience to the law as a personal choice.

But Conservatism, to which 43 percent of American Jews belonged in 1990, now claims the allegiance of only about 30 percent. In the Philadelphia area, only 18 percent of Jewish adults under 40 are Conservative, according to a recent study.

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive director of the Rabbinical Assembly, the membership association of Conservative rabbis, called the new mahzor a "breakthrough" and an important part of Conservatism's effort to revitalize itself.

"I see it as a moment for our movement," she said. The Assembly is publisher of the Mahzor Lev Shalem.

Several local rabbis predicted this week that their congregations will embrace the new mahzor, which has already sold 120,000 copies.

"It's very, very exciting," said Rabbi Jay Stein, senior rabbi at Congregation Har Zion in Penn Valley. "My cantor and I have been preparing with it for the past two months" to get ready for Wednesday night.

Twelve years in the making, the 468-page Mahzor Lev Shalem (or "Mahzor of the Whole Heart") replaces the Conservative movement's previous mahzor (pronounced makh-zor or makh-zor), introduced in 1972.

That volume, which simply presented Hebrew text on the right page with an ornate English translation on the left, was innovative in its day, said Rabbi Edward Feld, senior editor of the new book.

But the old mahzor presumed the user was well-versed in Jewish tradition and worshiped regularly. "It's become clear that a large percentage of people who come to High Holiday services don't have a regular synagogue experience," Feld said.

The new mahzor features a four-column layout that, from right to left, includes:

Explanations of the texts and what is happening in the service.

A contemporary English translation of the Hebrew that includes gender-neutral references to God and people. It also offers prayers praising the patriarchs alongside alternative versions including matriarchs and other women from the Bible, such as Ruth and Esther.

Transliterations of certain Hebrew passages into anglicized Hebrew (e.g. Baruch Adonai ha-m'vorakh l'olam va-ed) so those who don't read Hebrew may pray and sing aloud with those who do.

A symbol for when to bow.

Commentaries and meditations relevant to each page from a broad array of ancient texts, medieval sages, and contemporary writers, designed to make the High Holidays and Conservative Judaism accessible and meaningful, according to Feld.

Among the surprises is a new yizkor, or prayer of remembrance recited for deceased family members. While it contains the traditional prayers, this mahzor also offers a prayer for an abusive or otherwise difficult parent.

It also includes a new prayer for those unable to fast on Yom Kippur.

Among the 10 translators on Feld's team was Rabbi Leonard Gordon, longtime head of the Germantown Jewish Centre, who this year relocated to a congregation near Boston. "It's really been stunning to finally hold it in my hands," Gordon remarked, "and say, 'So, this is what we were doing all that time.' "

The team met regularly to review one another's work, offer suggestions, and even read translations aloud to judge how they sounded.

"I can't see any reason for it not to be a smashing success," said Rabbi Ira Stone of Congregation Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Center City.

"Our congregation was starved for a new mahzor," Stone said. Until this year it had used a 1930s mahzor because it did not like the 1972 edition.

The new volume "will last a long time," he predicted.

Rabbi Aaron Krupnick of Congregation Beth-El in Voorhees agreed. "This is an exciting work," he said, one that "draws on sources from across the religious spectrum" to include not only Orthodox and Reform Jews but also Hasids and secular Jews. Among the latter is the provocative Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai, whose poem "I Believe" appears on page 148.

"I assert with absolute faith / that prayers preceded God," he writes. "Prayers created God."

The commentaries, which appear on the left side of each double-page, are purposely diverse, said Schonfeld of the Rabbinical Assembly.

"I think it's a brilliant articulation of who we are."