CCAR RESPONSA
New American Reform Responsa
7. Hebrew or English at an Israeli Service
QUESTION: My family and I spend a part of each year in Israel. Although we are beginning to feel at home with spoken Hebrew, it remains rather basic, and we feel ill at ease in the Liberal Jewish services which we have attended. We would like to establish a service which will use English. That effort has been discouraged by various individuals who felt that this was inappropriate in Israel, and that it would hurt the Liberal movement in Israel. May we use a service which contains a considerable amount of English in Israel? (Norman Miller, Tel Aviv Israel)ANSWER Problems with the lack of familiarity with Hebrew are very ancient. Ezra already had to explain the Torah to the exiles who returned from Babylonia (Neh 8.7). Subsequently the Torah and other sections of the Bible were translated into Aramaic as well as Greek, so that they could be properly understood. We find some discussion of the language to be used in prayers both in the Mishnah and the Talmud. Permission to recite the basic prayers in the vernacular was granted quite early (M Sotah 7.1; 32b ff). Such decisions in favor of the vernacular were carried into all the great codifications of Jewish law (Yad Hil Qeriat Shema 2.10; Tur and Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayim 62; 101). In addition to this, of course, many devotional volumes and books of women’s prayers were written in the vernacular throughout the Middle Ages (Solomon B. Freehof “Devotional Literature in the Vernacular” Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook Vol 33 pp 380 ff). Reform prayerbooks began to use the vernacular in Europe and in the United States. The earliest such liturgy is the Charleston, South Carolina prayerbook of 1824. We have continued to use the vernacular alongside Hebrew in lands throughout the world. The amount of Hebrew in our services has varied from one locale to another, but we have always retained enough Hebrew to continue a strong bond with the tradition, and enough vernacular to enable our congregants to understand the prayers and to recite them with appropriate devotion and not by rote. This should also be the goal of your services in Israel. During this period when English remains your primary tongue and, therefore, the local Liberal services are not meaningful, there is nothing wrong with starting another service for your family and friends which follows the American minhag and contains some English. We should remember that minhagim connected with ritual, poetry, melodies and language were often continued by immigrants or long term visitors in the land in which they found themselves. Since the first century, synagogues in Israel were identified as Babylonian which meant that they followed Babylonian rites and possibly some Aramaic. Later, of course, many Aramaic prayers were added to all services. In the Middle Ages the immigration of Sephardim to Ashkenzi lands led to debates and acrimony as local congregations sought to impose a single minhag on all Jews in their locale (David Cohen of Corfu Responsa #11; Moses of Trani Responsa Vol I #307; etc). Such efforts to establish uniformity inevitably failed. In the United States, each group which arrived brought its own minhagim and these included variations in liturgy and melodies. There would be nothing improper about establishing a minyan which will have a service partially in English for the benefit of your friends and family.January 1991
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