Shabbat notes, 7/23/11: My Foot in Mouth is cured; More on last week’s Kaddish situation; Daf Yomi on the 7:51 to Penn Station

First, the good news: It seems I have rid myself of my Beth El-induced flareup of Foot in Mouth Disease. I haven’t done it in like two weeks.

More on last week’s Kaddish Yatom quandry: Pesukei and Shacharit were led this morning by a fellow who uses Koren Sacks when he isn’t leading. We had a great chat after services about our mutual love of Koren.

Anyway, I was surprised that he did Ps. 92 during Pesukei. Of course, as we discussed last week, we did it again after the Amidah when we did that whole Kaddish Yatom thing.

I was also amused this morning when I noticed that in the Koren Talpiot siddur, Ps. 92 actually follows the Kaddish Yatom at the end of the service. Which isn’t confusing–it’s just funny.

More from “Orthodox By Design”: I’m still reading “Orthodox By Design: Judaism, Print Politics and The ArtScroll Revolution.” Today, I was reading a bit in which it explains the popularity of Daf Yomi, the practice of studying on page of Talmud every day to complete the entire thing in seven years. And this passage struck me as a description of a wonderful textural element of reality:

One rather famous study circle, led by Rabbi Pesach Lerner, consists of a group of lawyers, accountants, and other professionals who have been meeting daily since the early 1990s on the 7:51 a.m. commuter train from Far Rockaway [outer Queens] to Penn Station in New York City.

That’s all for now. Shabbat Shalom

In memory of manned American spacecraft: How Apollo 11 changed Kiddush Levana

There was a terrific post at JTA’s Archive Blog yesterday summing up JTA’s coverage of Apollo 11-related news from 1969. It’s all fascinating stuff, but the article that caught my eye was this:

Prayer on Advent of New Moon is Altered to Take into Account Apollo 11 Achievement

[...]

The word came from Israel where Gen. Shlomo Goren, the Armed Forces’ Chief Chaplain, issued instructions about a change in the prayer for the blessing of the new moon which is said each month. The old blessing was worded: “As I dance before you and cannot touch you, so my enemies will not be able to touch me.” It now reads: “As I dance against you and do not touch you, so others, if they dance against me to harm me, they will not touch me.” The new version of the prayer is actually an old one found in the Talmud in Masechet Soffrim, chapter 20.

[...]

The entire article is just tremendous and I recommend reading the whole thing. The complete post from JTA’s Archive Blog is here.

And, yes, I will be looking through a few siddurim to see if I can find any examples later.

Minhag Chavurat Lamdeinu

The Chavurat Lamdeinu Aron

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for some time. A perfect storm at Chavurat Lamdeinu of me leading two weeks ago, our usual shatz leading last week, a conversation with him and our rabbi about our minhag this week; a minyan last week, no minyan last week and then Hallel for Rosh Chodesh this week finally convinced me it’s time to do it. The info in the post is culled from almost four years of notes in my copy of Siddur Eit Ratzon and from my memory.

I’m going to attempt, in this post, to catalog the minhagim and nuschot of Chavurat Lamdeinu, the chavurah I spend Shabbat mornings with when I’m here at Drew. I won’t explain too much about the group. Mostly, I think our minhagim will speak for themselves. I think it’s enough to say that the group defies classification in almost every way. It meets in a Masonic lodge. We have a chazan and a rabbi, but, more than anything else, they’re the most knowledgeable among equals. Demographically, it skews post-parenthood, mostly grandparenthood, but we had a Bar Mitzvah last year.

Background reading for details, if you want them: C”L’s website (mute your speakers before following this link!); my post about Erev Rosh Hashanah at C”L from 2009; a bit about Yom Kippur at C”L the year before that, a bit about our unique and beautiful Aron; the post I wrote after my first ever visit to C”L.

I’m gonna attempt to identify the origin of as much of what we do musically as I can, but I know I’ll get some of it wrong or leave some to speculation. If any other chaverim read this post and have correction, I encourage them to leave comments at the bottom correcting or elucidating.

So here we go:

Biblical Hebrew, Tanakh tabs, etc.

Aside from the Biblical Hebrew independent study, I'm also taking Digital Photography, so let's hope the quality of these photos starts improving.

I’m doing an independent study this semester in Biblical Hebrew with an adjunct from the Theological School, our United Methodist seminary here at Drew. Her name is Suzanne Horn. She’s a Christian, so I think we’ll end up learning plenty from each other.

Anyway, for the independent study, I ordered a Koren Tanakh–the Hebrew-only variety. Above, you can see it on the left. Next to it is my JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. I bought that trusty little volume before I went to Israel for the fall semester of my senior year of high school, which means I’ve been toting it around in my bag for four and half years now. It’s looking, as you can see, a little worse for the wear.

When it was about a year old, I bought the Bible tabs you can see lolling about on the edges of the pages. They’re one of the most useful little investments I’ve ever made. At the Chavurah (hit mute on your computer if you click on this link!), when we’re all flipping about trying to find the Haftarah, I’m always the first one there.

But I’d really like to get Hebrew tabs for my new Koren Tanakh. As far as I can tell, no one makes them. It seems like JPS should, but they don’t. And it seems like Koren could, but they don’t either.

I could make my own by buying some binder tab things from an office supply store and then printing them out on my computer, but they wouldn’t be small or durable enough.

So, does anyone know if someone makes them? And does anyone have any thoughts on fabricating them nicely?

PS–That’s my Moshe Rabbeinu non-piggy bank to the right of the monitor in the picture above. He has a slot in his back where you can put coins. And on the base it says INVESTS, but Jesus may save, but Moses… well, you know.

Limmud NY Notes: Lost versions of Havdalah

I went to Limmud NY 2011 and wrote a lot of posts about it. Here’s a guide to them.

Elie Kaunfer, whose sessions I have successfully enjoyed at all of the four Limmud NYs I’ve been to, taught a session called “Lost Versions of Havdalah.” So here’s the usual one, from Pesachim 103a-b:

Hamavdil bein kodesh lechol, bein or lechoshech, bein Yisrael le’amim, bein yom hashevi’i leshshet yamei hamaaseh.

Who separates between holy and mundane, between light and dark, between Israel and the nations, between the seventh day and the six days of creation.

The lost one Elie was teaching, preserved in Pesachim 104a and also in a litrugical text from the Cairo Genizah begins the same way but continues with:

…bein tamei letahor, bein hayam lecharavah, bein mayim ha’elyonim lemayim hatachtonim, bein Cohanim leLevi’im veYisraelim.

…between impure and pure, between the sea and dry land, between the upper waters and the lower waters. between Priests, Levites and Israelites.

There were a bunch of other source texts and discussion of cool things. It was fun.

New Koren, future Korens

My new personal size, softcover Koren Talpiot, with some girl’s Blackberry for size

I just got my new Koren Talpiot Siddur. This edition is new to me, though it was originally published last year. I’ll start by talking about this edition in particular, and continue with some speculations about where Koren’s English offerings seem to be headed.

Baruch She'amar is always my favorite page in a Koren Siddur. Of course, KTS preserves the usual elegant Koren fonts and layout from the original Israeli editions. KTS, however adds English instructions, as you can see at the top right.

The Koren Talpiot Siddur varies from the more common Koren Sacks Siddur (more on KSS from me) in that it provides no commentary and no translation, though the content of the prayers is the same as KSS. The familiar Koren fonts and layout are, of course, intact. Though it doesn’t have commentary or translation, KTS has English introductions, halachic guides to the year and to visiting Israel and so forth–in short, the same appendixes Koren Sacks has. It’s meant for an English-speaking Diaspora audience that is comfortable enough with liturgical Hebrew that it doesn’t need translation, but still wants minimal English instructions. I’m not sure if I quite fall in that camp, but I’m planning a road test of KTS for Friday night, so we’ll see how that goes.

Oh, hey, Koren. You've lost weight.

Because it doesn’t have translations or commentary, it is noticeably slimmer than most American siddurim. The page size of the personal size edition I got is the same as my Koren Sacks, but KTS ends up about twice as slim, making it a perfect size, as far as I’m concerned. It also reminds me of the most notoriously small of the pocket size Israeli Korens. (I mean, it’s not as skinny as those Israelis are, but… this joke is going nowhere.)

However, as you can see in the photo of the spine to the right and in the photo of the cover below, the gold printing has been offset–and not because it looks cool. This is a little disappointing coming Koren, from whom we usually expect excellence in design. I don’t mind it on my copy because it adds character, but it was pretty surprising to see such a production error from Koren.

You can see the sturdy, but flexible cover as well as the mistake with the offset gold printing

KTS has a couple of nice features with the cover that my Koresn Sacks doesn’t have, though I think the more resent copies of Sacks have had these features added. Like a hardcover book, KTS’ cover is slightly taller and wider than the pages themselves. This not only looks nice, but it will add some protection to the pages in a cluttered backpack like mine. The cover is also thicker and feels sturdier. I’m not sure how obvious this is in the picture above, but the cover is flexible, but slightly stiffer than the cover on my Sacks. This is also gonna help this siddur out in my backpack. KTS also has a dark blue ribbon bookmark built in, which is great. (I recently bought some ribbon and went on a rampage making these for some of the my other often-used siddurim so I appreciated that.)

An example of the innovative newspaper-style line that refers you to the appropriate next page

There’s also one more feature that I’ve never seen before. When you read English sections of siddurim that are printed right-to-left, Hebrew-style, you (and by you, I mean me) can get confused about which page is the next page. KTS has, at the bottom of each English introduction page, a little indicator of what the first words are on the page that is meant to be read next. Has anyone seen examples of this before?

Koren is my favorite publisher of Orthodox siddurim–and my favorite of all in terms of visual elegance. It is the outgrowth of Eliyahu Koren’s classic 20th century Hebrew typefaces. The fonts are elegant, and from them, Koren created an elegant line of siddurim, probably the most popular in Israel.

The full line of Koren Sacks Siddur editions. That red one is the Canadian one. Mine is the smallest size.

In the summer of 2009, the Koren Sacks Siddur arrived. (Mine, which you can see around the middle of the banner image I’m currently using at the top of the blog, is looking a little worse for the wear–point is, I like it a lot and it gets a lot of use.) It was a major challenger to the ArtScroll monopoly on Orthodox publishing in America, featuring Koren’s elegant design, and translation and commentary by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of England (or of Great Britain or of the United Kingdom… or whatever his position actually is).

Man, this ad really got my hopes up. Needless to say, it did not come out this spring. It's now slated for March of 2011.

Next year–I hope, but the date keeps getting pushed back–they’re coming out with the Koren Mesorat HaRav Siddur, which will include the commentary of “The Rav” himself, Joseph Soloveitchik. I’m very excited about this. They already have the Kinot HaRav, a Tisha Be’Av siddur with his commentary, though I don’t have it and I haven’t had the chance to flip through one yet.

What’s interesting is how consciously they seem to be positioning themselves to overtake ArtScroll. People–including me–keep saying that they will overtake ArtScroll, but they haven’t yet. ArtScroll has a broad appeal to many streams of Orthodoxy, while Koren is targetting only Modern Orthodox Jews. This much is clear from their special attention paid to luminaries of the center or center-left Modern Orthodox communitie like Sacks and Soloveitchik–especially Soloveitchik.

The plainer cover of the standard Israeli Koren siddur

They’ve also changed their visual style to compete with ArtScroll. In Israel, Koren’s siddurim have remarkably plain covers. Yet, here they’ve settled on a more ornate cover, usually grey-blue with an embossed design, gold details (which they share with some of the Israeli editions) and the block of red in the middle. Though this is the standard, there are variations now, like white with gold (some ArtScroll titles are also available in this style) and leatherbound editions. And the prominently displayed Orthodox Union logo on the spine is no sublte reminder of the official endorsement that ArtScroll either never sought, or never got, despite being common in many, if not most OU shuls. [UPDATE: Apparently, all of the new copies being printed in Israel these days have the fancy cover style too. So never mind that...]

The full English instructions Koren Talpiot Siddur series--now in more colors!

Koren’s English offerings are being billed so far as useful in both Israel and America (and Canda–yes, there’s a Canadian version of the Koren Sacks). They have complete guides to the minute differences in prayer in Israel and in the Diaspora.

ArtScroll, however, has been at it longer and has a wider variety of siddurim and styles. They have siddurim with translation and commentary and transliterations, as well as linear and interlinear versions of everything. Meanwhile, Koren has two different versions of the same linear Hebrew-English siddur with different commentaries, and now the Talpiot, which is Hebrew-only, but includes English instructions and guides. ArtScroll has machzorim, of course, but Koren doesn’t have that yet in English. ArtScroll also offers Sephardi versions of some titles, but Koren is all Ashkenazi in their English titles so far.

But, if the fact that they identify themselves as Ashkenazi on the spine is any indication, Koren has plans to publish other nuschot in English as well. They do have Hebrew editions on nuschot Sephardi, Sefard and Moroccan. (Don’t know about Edot haMizrah, though.) I know that they’re working on adapting Sacks for a Sephardi edition, I’d guess that most of this is farther out on the horizon. They’ll want to gain more penetration in the larger Ashkenazi market in America first.

So we’ll see what happens.

Shir Chadash–liturgical minutiae (13 siddurim present, Nushach Achid, the five ballpoint pen rating system and my first experience with Metsudah)

On Friday night, I was at the first meeting of Shir Chadash, a new egal minyan in Crown Heights. This post is a list of related liturgical minutiae and blog business. If you’re a regular Reform Shuckler, you may enjoy this post. If not, you may just wanna stick to the main post about Shir Chadash.

PEOPLE KNOW ME: For the second time, I was spotted not by name, but by face. A Reform rabbinical student (identify yourself in the comments, if you wish to be identified, new friend) outed himself to me as a fan of The Shuckle. So, hey there. Alex, you may have some competition for number one fan.

FIVE PENS: I’ve decided to institute a rating system for services here at The Shuckle. This is based partially on Jesse Paikin‘s suggestion to me last year that this blog is like a Zagat for minyans and shuls and partially on all that brouhaha from Yom Kippur about my use of pens to take notes during services. So, when I review a service, shul or minyan, I will now use a scale of one to five ballpoint pens to rate the service. The first meeting of Shir Chadash, by the way, got five ballpoint pens!

 

SIDDURIM: Yeah, you knew this was coming. In the main post, I wrote:

Siddurim present are a combination of what the leader has on hand and what a few others brought with them. I count 13 different editions of 11 different siddurim in use.

Without further ado, here’s the full list:

• Koren; microscopic black edition (Modern Orthodox Israeli)
• Koren Sacks; compact American edition (Modern Orthodox Heb-Eng Israeli-American w British commentary)
• Mishkan T’filah; full-size, hardcover (new mainstream American Reform, the only fully-transliterated siddur presnt, along with the next one on this list)
• Mishkan T’filah for Travelers (a compact edition of the previous one in this list)
• Ha’avodah Shebalev; the compact, brown, all-Hebrew edition (Israeli Reform)
• Hadesh Yameinu (Montreal Reconstructionist, but reads like Conservative with lots of English readings)
• Rinat Yisrael; full-size, Ashkenazi (Orthodox, Israeli government-sponsored)
• Sim Shalom; one copy each of the big one and the little one (American Conservative)
• Metsudah Linear Siddur (Modern Orthodox American–see below for more on this siddur)
• Siddur Tefilah Lechayalei Tzahal; the tiniest edition of a siddur ever (Israel army-issued Nusach Achid–see below for more on that!)
• ArtScroll; little brown edition (semi-fascist Orthodox American)
• ArtScroll; big black Rabbinical Council of America edition (Orthodox American, but approved by the RCA[!])
• At least one Koren Tanach that was briefly mistaken for a siddur

NUSACH ACHID?: I learned this at Shir Chadash for the first time. Apparently, in the early days of the State of Israel (or right before, the guy who told me wasn’t sure), there was so much excitement about having Jews from all over back in the same place that some people created a new nusach–Nusach Achid. Nusach Achid–as the word achid suggests–was created a unified nusach that took from many different nuschot to create what some hoped would be a single Israel nusach. Needless to say, this didn’t catch on.

However, the army siddur I saw at Shir Chadash siddur–published recently from the looks of it–was printed in Nusach Achid. Our guess was that the army rabbinate believes it’s sometimes the easiest thing to do when you need a minyan on an army base or in the field. It’s also a great example of something that’s a compromise for so many people that no one will use it.

METSUDAH: I brought my Koren Sacks with me to use at Shir Chadash, but ended up using the Metsudah Linear for most of the service. I’ve flipped through one before, but never had the chance to use one. It’s not a particularly pretty siddur, but it’s commentary is great.

Most siddurim with commentary have one or both of two goals–they either want to make the service comprehensible to an unfamiliar or novice reader or they want to provide an exhaustive guide to the laws of prayer. Metsudah does a bit of that, but that doesn’t seem to be its aim. The aim of the commentary appeared to be to give classical sources and commentary throughout. Radak, Rambam, Rashi and all the other usual suspects made appearances.

The layout of the page and the translation, however, is clearly mean to aid novice readers. Rather than going for a graceful translation, Metsudah goes for a translation that matched the Hebrew line-for-line so that one can go back and forth between a direct translation and the Hebrew.

I may have to get one.

ArtScroll’s borderline idolatry

I had a discussion a few days ago with someone from the iWorship listserve about how I think ArtScroll is pretty far to the right of most Modern Orthodox Jews. I told him that I think Koren is a much more moderate siddur and that it’s catching on because it is more in line with how more MO Jews think.

I just got the new Expanded ArtScroll Siddur Wasserman Edition. They go on and on about how the typesetting is more modern that old one. I find it just as obnoxious and crammed as the original. I got it because it has some new material in it to supplement the good ol’ stuff and it’s got a new introduction and overview section–and I go nuts for those things.

Anyway, I was just starting to digest it today when I discovered a case in point about the rightward lean of ArtScroll: pages and pages of prayer for holy places in Israel. I know that no one is with me on the Western Wall as idolatry issue, but this includes special prayers to be said at the Wall, Rachel’s tomb, the Cave of the Machpelah and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s tomb.

I don’t think prayer at the graves of the holy dead is mainstream. Unless I’m just fooling myself here. Which is possible. But seriously. Idolatry. I’m just saying.

More on the ancient liturgical rite of the Land of Israel

In a review of “On Changes in Jewish Liturgy: Options and Limitations” by Daniel Sperber, Aryeh Tepper writes:

[Sperber] traces [the] position [of people who are very opposed to liturgical change] to a super-conservative attitude that first appeared among the classical scholars of Babylon.  As against them, he appeals to their contemporaries in the land of Israel, who “allowed and practiced greater flexibility.” In this sense, Sperber’s position is restorative, an effort to revive the freer spirit of the Judaism of the land of Israel.

I really want to read this. And I’ll reiterate what I said in this post last week: Somebody ought to take what we now about the old rite of Eretz Yisrael and make a siddur with commentary out of it.

You say Shabbat. I say Shabbos. Let’s call the whole thing off.

It is fashionable in the Reform Movement world that I grew up in to adhere to Israeli/Sephardic pronunciations of Hebrew. So on Shabbat morning, we would wear a talit, rather than wearing a talis on Shabbos. We put the emphasis in the last syllable, not the first. We prayed to Adonai, not Adonoy. Etc.

The first time I can recall noticing a difference was at my cousins’ conservative shul in St. Louis, where I noticed that Kadish suddenly sounded wildly different. It sounded like a pit of hissing snakes, as scores of T sounds became S sounds.

Eventually, I came to hold two things be true: One, that the Ashkenazi way that my grandparents pronounced everything sounded silly, and two, that there was an ideological reason to go for the T’s. I became convinced during my four month stay in Israel during high school that the existence of Israel was a sign that the main stage of Jewish history was once again the land of Israel. I thought that Jewish history now only happened in Israel and the rest of us out here in the Diaspora were just a sideshow. Not that I wanted to make Aliyah, but I had some persuasive teachers while I was abroad.

And then came college. And New York. I became disenchanted with Israel and my Zionist fervor became Zionist frustration and defeatism. And after spending a considerable amount of time around New York Jews from non-Reform backgrounds, I found a foreign and distasteful couple of words in my mouth. I found myself recently saying wishing people “Good Shabbos” and complaining when I got to shul, rather than synagogue or temple, that I had left my talis at home.

But I guess that’s all in line with who I am in relation to Israel and the Diaspora these days. I don’t buy that Jewish history has returned exclusively to Israel. Rather, it has stagnated and become an inbred clot in Israel.

I’m more free to be the Jew I want to be in Texas or New Jersey than I will ever be in Israel.

So. Good Shabbos.