Reform Rites

When America's liberal Reform Jews last revised their prayer book in 1940, the Nazi Holocaust had barely begun and the nation of Israel was only a dream--a dream opposed by many Reform Jews at that. Both realities are vigorously acknowledged. in the 799-page Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook, described as the first wholesale revision of Reform liturgy in 80 years (the 1940 version made only modest changes). One new service, "In Remembrance of Jewish Suffering," calls on the rabbi to say: "Exile and oppression, expulsion and ghettos, pogroms and death camps: the agony of our people numbs the mind and turns the heart to stone." Another service includes the words: "May your favor rest upon Israel, her land, her people. Protect her against hatred and war."

In addition the book, edited by Rabbi Chaim Stern of Chappaqua, N.Y., drops "thee" and "thou" in addressing the Deity (only "you" is now used) and downplays expressions like "our fathers," which are now deemed to be sexist. It also incorporates the words of moderns like Alfred North Whitehead and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and these lines from William Blake: "It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,/ To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;/ To see a god on every wind & a blessing on every blast."

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