Tzemah Yoreh’s Atheist Siddur

by Brian on April 16, 2010

in Jewish Holidays and Culture

Tzemah YorehI was quoted in last week’s Jerusalem Post in an article profiling Tzemah Yoreh who has created a new “atheist and feminist siddur” (it’s at ReligiousAtheist.com) My quote referred to how I’ve found inspiration in Yoreh’s work for my own humanistic siddur project – SiddurWiki.

If you haven’t visited, I encourage you to take a look. It’s an ambitious project which is dedicated to the memory of my father, Walter Blum, who passed away in March of last year. Here’s a link to the article.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

1 Rabbi Adam Chalom July 20, 2010 at 10:02 pm

What you are doing is quintessential Mordecai Kaplan Reconstructionism (which even the Reconstructionist movement doesn’t do much anymore). I have many thoughts about the problems of a “redefinition while keeping the old words” project, and why Humanistic Judaism’s approach of being willing to change the prayers rather than make them “mean what we want them to mean” is better, but in the end for me it comes down to a statement of integrity. “lo yidabber ekhad ba-peh v’ekhad ba’lev” (BT Bava Metzia 49a) – my ancestors said what they believed and believed what they said, and so do I. Drop me an email if you’d like a short article I’ve written on the subject.

One other note – your second alternative Kaddish (“wonderful is peace in the world”) was done by Rabbi Sherwin Wine, and there is an accompanying Hebrew text that modifies certain words in the Kaddish while keeping the overall rhythm.

Rabbi Adam Chalom

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