“Wow!  That was the most meaningful service I ever attended!”  This was my thought thirty-five years when I participated in my first creative service at a Temple youth retreat.  Instead of The Union Prayerbook which used, “Thee and Thou,” this was a service with modern readings which related to my life. 

As The Union Prayerbook offered inspiration for Reform Jews during from 1940-1980, and creative services spoke to my generation, this winter we will introduce the new Reform prayerbook called Mishkan T’filah at Temple Beth Jacob.  Welcoming a new prayerbook is both exciting and anxiety producing.  We look forward to creativity; at the same time at we worry about being comfortable with changes to our worship experiences.

For each of us services are a blending of traditions which move us with precious memories and a desire for inspiration from new insights for leading meaningful lives.  As human beings, well-known rituals provide us with spiritual strength by providing consistence in our religious lives.  There are memories, whether from joys of childhood or inspiring experiences as adults, which hold a special place in our hearts.  And like a great work of art which offers us something new each time we see it, our prayerbook offer us the opportunity to draw different meanings each time we repeat familiar words.

Each generation also seeks to express its own desire and vision through prayer.  In our age we have felt called to change the prayerbook by added the names of our mothers, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel to services.  So too, for the last 2,000 years of Jewish history, new poems and readings have been added to the prayerbook which expressed the experience of the Jewish people from medieval Spain to modern Israel.

Mishkan T’filah comes to speak to the spirit of this generation of Reform Jews.  It is a combination of the call to social justice of Classical Reform Judaism with the renewal of interest in ritual of many modern Reform Jews.  It is also a prayerbook for the entire Reform movement; those who are see ethical values as the core of Judaism, those who experience services as a time to draw close to God, and others who are searching for meaning.  This is the first time I have had the opportunity to work with Mishkan T’filah, and I have been inspired as I have studied our new prayerbook.

This January we will offer a series of programs to introduce our congregation to the new prayerbook.  In the same way that the Gates of Prayer of the 1970’s was a change in style and format from its predecessor The Union Prayerbook, so too is Mishkan T’filah different than previous prayerbooks.  The activities will include workshops which I will lead, a visit to our congregation by Rabbi Sue Ann Wasserman, the Director of the Department of Religious Living of the Union for Reform Judaism, and a visit to Barnert Temple, in New Jersey, the congregation of Rabbi Elyse Frishman, the editor of Mishkan T’filah. Please see the bulletin for details.

Mishkan T’filah, offers us the opportunity to affirm the blessings of our tradition and grow through the insights of modern Reform Judaism.  I hope you will join me for these special events as we affirm a exciting moment for the life of our congregation and the Jewish people.