Customer Reviews

Companion Guide to the Rosh Hashanah Prayer Service: Featuring Selected Transliterations and Explanation of Prayers

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This book, and it's companion for Yom Kippur, make the High Holy Days approachable for novice or otherwise no- to low-Hebrew speaking Jews. The transliterations are literally a G_d-send. This book made my second RH/YK more communal, as I could chant the prayers with the congregation - sometimes better than many others there. I held it next to my Machzor and read the english along with the transliteration to understand the words, although many of them I know from Shabbat siddur. My friends who are learning Hebrew also appreciated it, as they find it difficult to quickly sound out the Hebrew for an unfamiliar prayer. I have "sold" several copies to other congregants and newly converted / baal tshuvah's through example.

A big benefit is, being more Orthodox in orientation, this book has just about everything that could be done in a service - you are getting the whole megillah here, excuse the misplaced holiday joke.

Another nice touch are the interspersed vignettes, which are thought provoking and help focus on the major themes of the season.

The only little flaw is that the Birnbaum combined Machzor my conserviative congregation used did not correlate to the "BC" page numbers in the book (we use a fairly modern one; don't know the press date - ours was shorter than the one Moshe correlated to). Fortunately it was not too difficult to just follow along the normal course of the service. A minor annoyance which did not detract from the overwhelming value of the book, and one which I can graciously overlook, given the truly gallant attempt to correlate this book to at least 5 different denominational Machzors!

And one appeal: Moshe, please do one more mitzvah by writing one of these books for the Shabbat service too! (although since many of the HH prayers are also observed on Shabbat, this book has already helped me learn and participate in the chanting for Shabbat services)

Yasher Koach!