Where Have All the Prophets Gone?

Writing in 1911, Martin Buber declared that "the nature of the prophets" lives within the Jewish people. A hundred years later, do any Jews still believe this?

Jakob’s Dream  Angela Levine,  Midnight East.  An outstanding exhibit at the Israel Museum illuminates Jakob Steinhardt's visionary interpretation of modern Jewish history.  SAVE

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Jeremiah, by Michelangelo.

Needing Jeremiah

One of the most significant accomplishments of the Zionist project was to re-vitalize the Bible as a Jewish national document. Or, if not the Bible as a whole, at least parts of the Bible. The early Zionists were attracted in particular to those books, like Joshua and Isaiah, which appealed to the dream of return and political restoration. One biblical book that most definitely didn't fire the Zionist imagination was the book of Jeremiah.

An Orthodox Evolutionary  Frances Kraft,  Canadian Jewish News.  Benjamin Lau explains why to be a religious Jew means to care about your community and your country.  SAVE

The Bible Club  Anshel Pfeffer,  Haaretz.  A determinedly secular study group formed under the aegis of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion has been revived, upgraded, and expanded by President Shimon Peres.  SAVE

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Lithograph, John August Swanson.

Jonah and Yom Kippur

Read in its entirety in the synagogue in the afternoon of Yom Kippur, Jonah is the only multi-chapter book of the Bible to be so honored. Indeed, one commentator, observing that the brief Torah reading that precedes Jonah has little to do with the day, but merely continues where the morning reading left off, has suggested that this may be precisely in order to emphasize that, in a departure from the usual priorities, the haftarah, or prophetic portion, is in fact the critical text for the occasion. But what makes it so significant, and what lesson does it really teach about Yom Kippur?

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Let Us Pray

"Rabbi Shimon said: make not your prayers a fixity, but a plea."  The inevitable tension in prayer between practice and passion, between communal structure and the lone voice, was certainly known to the biblical prophets and the rabbis of the Talmud. Yet today, the traditional prayers—profoundly communal and reflecting ancient ideas of monarchy, patriarchy, and retribution, sometimes in complicated Hebrew—seem alien to many. If the test of contemporary Judaism is whether it offers a compelling personal experience to "the Jew within," a common liturgy becomes more difficult to maintain than ever before.

And so, the project of renewing the Siddur—the Hebrew prayer book—beckons, if in different ways. Last year, Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the UK, published an affecting new edition and translation of the traditional Siddur. Just a few weeks ago, Israel's Masorti movement published a Siddur with a number of distinctly Israeli touches. The Internet's blend of the personal and the public has presented still another platform for new liturgies.

Paradoxically, today's liturgists might profit by taking a leaf from the medieval composers of liturgical verse (piyyut) who brought traditional prayer into dialogue with the poetics, and the events, of their time, honoring the ancient texts even as they re-imagined them.

Prayer has always come in many forms. The Talmud suggests at least three different ways of picturing the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15). Hannah's whispered entreaty (I Samuel 1) became a model for the Amidah, the centerpiece of the three daily prayer services. Moses' supplication for his sister—"Oh God, please heal her" (Numbers 12)—offers an enduringly eloquent standard of brevity and pathos. Recent scholarship into ancient prayer has begun to emphasize the physical as well as the textual—a useful hint to moderns that even the most elegant and updated liturgies will come to nothing without flesh-and-blood people at prayer, together and alone.

How We Pray  Amy Scheinerman, Louis Rieser,  NuViewTalmud.  The Song at the Sea: litany, repetition, antiphonal chanting, or individual prayer?  SAVE

The Sacks Siddur  Elli Fischer,  Seforim.  An elegant and handsome challenge to the regnant bilingual prayer book in the Orthodox world.  SAVE

The Siddur Reconfigured  Andrew Sacks,  Masorti Matters.  A new Hebrew prayer book, proudly introduced by a leader of the movement that sponsored it.  SAVE

Taking Prayer into Their Own Hands  Steve Lipman,  Jewish Week.  Several new siddurim are taking shape through the Internet; is this good for the Jews?  SAVE

Jewish Soul Music  Basmat Hazan Arnoff,  Zeek.  Medieval piyyut finds surprising new audiences.  SAVE

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