For the last several years, my prayer book of choice has been The Koren Siddur, edited by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who was formerly the chief rabbi of Great Britain. What I like most about it is the layout. Rather than large blocks of text, the Hebrew is set as the poetry it truly is. And the English on the facing page mirrors the Hebrew. I occasionally look at the translations just to see how Rabbi Sacks has treated a particular word or phrase. But for the most part, when I pray alone, I pray exclusively in Hebrew.
Praying in Hebrew is different from praying in English. Under Jewish law, prayer is acceptable in any language that one understands. The important thing is to pray with כונה, which is the Hebrew word for intention. For the longest time, I have taken these two requirements together to mean that praying with intention calls for absolute concentration on the meaning of the words one utters. Now I am not so sure. My own מטביע תפילה - my own formula of prayer - seeks to avoid undo repetition, yet words like redemption, rescue, sovereignty, holiness and every possible synonym for praise appear repeatedly. When one says these same words multiple times a day, most every day of the week, concentration on their meaning becomes well nigh on impossible.
But in Hebrew, the actual words matter less. Its the experience of saying them that matters. Hebrew prayer has a trance-like quality to it. Once you have trained your tongue to say the words, they fall from your lips in a natural cadence that can remove you - at least a little bit - from the place where you are physically standing. And it is this sense of removal - this sense of being transported - that I now associate with the requirement of כונה.
Prayer in English is different. Being in our native language, our sensitivity to its nuance is far greater. And this sensitivity is heightened because the prayers are translated not just from a foreign language, but also from a foreign time - one far removed from our own and possessing its own nuance of thought. The translator faces the double challenge of not only capturing the nuanced meaning of the original, but then deciding whether that meaning can even be captured in another language. A simple example is one of my favorite prayers, the one that acknowledges the wondrous nature of the human body which can be found in our מחזורים on pages 82 and 83. It praises God as the One who fashioned האדם with wisdom, creating נקבים נקבים חלולים חלולים. That last phrase literally means “holes that are holes and hollows that are hollow.” Such a phrase would be disconcerting if not outright confusing to most modern worshippers. So instead, our translation renders it “an intricate network of veins, arteries, structures and organs.” Is that what the phrase נקבים נקבים חלולים חלולים really means? Possibly, but it is one of the only translations that can make sense of it. The bigger problem is the word האדם which literally means “the man.” Instead, our translation renders it as “the human body.” No one is going to translate this phrase literally lest one be accused of misogyny. So a text that literally praises God "who fashioned the man with holes that are holes and hollows that are hollow,” becomes “who has fashioned the human body … creating an intricate network of veins, arteries, structures and organs…” And this is a non-controversial example of problematic translation.
The problems inherent in translation mean that translation itself becomes an ongoing process. As the culture into which you are translating a text changes, the translations themselves have to change in order to keep up. This is very different from the experience of Hebrew prayer where texts have changed very little over huge stretches of time. Two years ago, I attended my rabbinical school’s annual retreat. One morning for our prayer service, we used the siddur or Rav Sa’adia Gaon who died 1075 years ago. Virtually everything in that siddur is recognizable to a knowledgeable Jew. While there were differences in phrasing and in word order, what amazes about that prayer book is how little has changed over the course of a millenium.
That is not the case with translations. Just in the course of my lifetime the language of translation has changed dramatically - and I am not referring solely to every “Thou” that has become a “You” and every “Thine” that has become a “Yours.” Starting in the early 1990’s and in response to evolving sensitivities, prayer books have sought to become what is called “gender inclusive.” Ancient texts that referred to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have been rewritten to include the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah as well. Other texts that rely heavily on masculine pronouns now get the nouns “God” and “Adonai” in translation. Or they change the translation from third to second person in order to use the neutral pronoun “You” rather than “He.”
For some time I opposed these changes as I felt they corrupted an ancient text. Nevertheless, just raising the issue altered my consciousness of the language of our translations. Now every “He,” “Him,” and “His” evokes in me the fear that someone in the congregation is feeling excluded. So when the closing of Beth El Synagogue in Torrington gave us the opportunity to acquire the newer version of our prayer book - the one with the more gender inclusive language - I grabbed them up. I am not sure how much of a difference these changes make to our congregants, but I do know that they are in line with the direction in which all prayer translation is moving. Indeed, if you look at the title page of the מחזור you are holding in your hand right now, you will see that it is styled the Enhanced Edition. Turn the page and you will learn that the enhancement is the “Expanded Use of Egalitarian English Terminology.”
More revealing of the complications of translation is the מחזור we will be using here on Second Day Rosh Hashanah and the afternoon of Yom Kippur. A word of explanation is in order here. שערי תשובה, Gates of Repentance, is the Reform Movement’s High Holiday מחזור published in 1978. It is produced in the format of the movement’s regular prayer book at that time, שערי תפלה, Gates of Prayer. That prayer book’s most notable feature is that it offers ten separate and distinct Friday night services, ranging from almost traditional to virtually humanistic. I never liked Gates of Prayer which struck me as too scripted. But I did like Gates of Repentance which to me, supplemented the core of the traditional liturgy with meaningful contemporary readings and reflections. In particular, I remember being moved by its Yom Kippur afternoon service - a service which has the potential for great emotional power, which I have long felt has been lacking here. When Temple Beth Tikvah in Madison decided to switch to the Reform movement’s new מחזור, I asked Rabbi Offner if I could have some copies of the older book. She was only too happy to know they might yet be used in worship.
When I sat down this summer to outline our services using that מחזור, it had been twelve years since last I picked it up. I was amazed at how dated it had become. Of course, at nearly forty years old, it predated the move toward egalitarian language by more than a decade. I expected that. But what struck me was the tone of many of the readings. They seemed to be aimed at taking certain messages in our liturgy that were particular to the Jewish people and broadening them to a larger audience. This strikes me as a concern of the Reform movement four decades ago, but not one we share today. Indeed, given how loosely Judaism’s bonds fall on many of our contemporaries, I think we would be more likely today to emphasize the particular over the universal.
Another thing that struck me about this מחזור was how it handled the Holocaust in the martyrology section of the Yom Kippur afternoon service. Written a bit more than 30 years after that time, the readings speak to a generation for whom the Holocaust would be a living memory. That, for the most part, is no longer the case. As formative an experience as that massive tragedy may have been a generation or more ago, it needs to be remembered differently today.
Whether or not Gates of Repentance will enhance our prayer experience here in 5778 is something we will discover over the next ten days. As one of my favorite readings in that מחזור says, “Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence.” So too may it be that all the work of our hands - whether synagogues or sermons or translated prayers - can but serve us a very short while. If there is still life in these forty-year-old translations and interpretations, we will find it together. And if not, we will, hopefully, be none the worse for the experience.
The bigger question I ask myself is what is the value of translated prayer, given how transient they are? Is praying in translation a fools errand - providing only the form of prayer without the כונה that makes it soar? Three things keep me from coming to that conclusion. First, it was through translation was I introduced to prayer. And while I will not - even today - hold myself up as a model to anyone for how to pray, at least I am trying. Second, given my own limitations and flaws, who am I to say what moves and inspires others to the level of intention, introspection and beseeching that prayer requires? And finally, I have learned that, while prayer might be the only path to communicating with God, there are many paths to prayer itself. Study or great triumph may implant in us the desire to pray. Introspection or great tragedy may stir within us the need to pray. And then we will learn for ourselves.
And finally there is this: the belief that, in truth, the language of prayer is neither Hebrew nor English nor, for that matter any spoken language. I believe that the language of prayer is that of the heart. זִבְחֵי אֱלֹהִים רוּחַ נִשְׁבָּרָה לֵב־נִשְׁבָּר וְנִדְכֶּה says the Psalmist - the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a heart that is broken and contrite. Not, I think, broken in the sense of despairing, but rather in the sense of being broken open - stripped of all its pride and arrogance. Such a heart will reach beyond what it can understand and seek that which it can only sense is there. Whatever can open such a heart - a joy, a pain, a sense of awe, a spoken poem, a wordless song - that is the stuff on which prayer is built. As we enter these days of נוראים - may that sense of awe, of fear, of wonder - open each of our hearts to that truth that stands before us - unseen, but real.
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