Customer Reviews

Gates of Prayer: Shaarei Tefila: The New Union Prayerbook for Weekdays, Sabbaths and Festivals-Hebrew (English and Hebrew Edition)

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

First: I have to confess that I'm not Jewish. I'm a practicing Lutheran, and a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

That said: Gates of Prayer is my very favorite prayer and meditation book. The meditations and prayers are some of the very best I've ever encountered: I find myself reading these meditations and prayers over and over again and getting something new from them each time I read them.

I'm not familiar with the settings of all of the hymns in the back of the book; but the texts are so gorgeous that I've set several of them as hymns for the Lutheran congregation I attend. The choir and the congregation LOVE the texts, I take special care to set the texts with the joy and dignity these texts deserve.

There is a timelessness to this book which I believe makes it destined to be one of the great religious classics. I enthusiastically recommend Gates of Prayer to ANYONE, regardless of religion or denomination.

I enjoy using this book at our religious services at our Temple. I have two problems with this prayer book. Some of the prayers we use are gender sensitive;for example when mentioning the patriarch's, Abraham etc. we also add Sarah, Rebekah and Leah at our services. This prayerbook does not have that addition. Since my reading knowledge of Hebrew is at the beginning level (I just learned as an adult last year) I would prefer to have the transliteration with the respective prayer and not all at the end of the book. On the plus side, some of the translations into English are beautifully done and very moving.

This prayer book is good, but you should be aware that the Reform Movement has replaced it by publishing Mishkan T'Filah, which is a written in a more contemparary light.

This is THE book of Reform Judaism's liturgy. It is Universally known and used. Rating this book is actually nonsense. . .it just is. It's a worship guide and as such has a potpouri of thoughts (some very old, some new) to help congregations have meaningful worship services.

In my congregation, we have been using the Gates of Prayer less and less often becuase of the lack of gender sensitivity that is used. However, it must be remembered that when this book was printed in 1975, gender sensitivity was not an issue. I believe that it is a quality book for its time, but the changing times has expired its welcome in today's Reform Congregations.

The words, ancient and yet new, lift my spirit beyond its usual bounds while binding it to other like spirits going back at least 5,000 years. I rejoice in seeing and feeling the Presence through the words of other seekers and am grateful for their trust, their seeking, their perseverance. In the task of building upon the trust of those before me, this book has raised my jumping-off point.

I have to say I am quite surprised how good of a prayerbook Gates of Prayer is. It was a little confusing at first about which side to open, even though it was Hebrew opening, it had English cover as well on the opposite side. So I wasn't sure. But currently I am testing out the Mishkan Tefilah. But when I get toward using Gates of Prayer regularly, I am sure I will be able to appreciate it alot more. If you like a prayer book that has some contemporary language, gives you wonderful readings and traditional prayers, then this book is definitely for you.

If you like Hallmark prose and "poetry," if you're still stuck in a 1970's Weltanschauung, if you enjoy distorted translations, if you like having others decide which parts of the traditional liturgy you will even see, you will love this siddur (prayerbook.) As for me, I have suffered with it for the past 20 years as a member of a Reform congregation in Maryland.

Can you imagine... whole sections of some prayers, such as the Shema, are left out. I suspect much of this was for ideological reasons dictated by the elite of the Reform Movement. For example, the entire section in the Shema about Tzizit is missing, because, hey, who needs to be reminded about Mitzvot, after all?

Often, a section of the liturgy is "freely translated" but "maintains the spirit of the original," according to the editors. The problem is, the "spirit" is often quite a bit stretched and distorted by the time the editors have gotten through with it. And these distortions are *in place* of an accurate translation, not as an alternate reading. Another serious problem I have seen is that Hebrew school students (and sometimes adult Hebrew beginners) often believe the "translation" on the left side represents the Hebrew on the facing page.

Some years ago, I saw a prototype of a new Reform prayerbook. I thought it was quite well done, and although there were some nits to pick, a *much* better work than Gates of Prayer.

In general, I'd recommend congregations look into the new prayerbook available from Union of Reform Judaism or even develop their own prayerbooks (not all that hard to do with Heberw/English word processing software readily available at reasonable cost.)

As for Grates of Prayer, I'd recommend that we round up all the existing copies and donate them to various Lutheran congregations - that's how far this book is from Jewish tradition.

No wait, I wouldn't want to inflict this book on those nice Lutherans!

Some of the sayings and meditations are great however, the prayers themselves are more designed for congregational use. Me living in Texas and not having a Synagogue nearby, this is bad for me; it may be good for others however.

This is a spectacular book filled with the prayers we hold closest to our hearts and heritage. The prayers convey the intermost values and conditions of this wonderful religion. It can be used on a day to day basis to remind ourselves of how we should live by the laws and teachings of the Torah. I recommend this book to all who teach and believe in a Jewish way life.