PREFACE

At the request of the Ritual Committee, the author of this modest Book of Prayer was requested to arrange a series of services for “Congregation Rodeph Shalom,” to be used during the Sunday Services, which were introduced in Pittsburgh during the first year of his rabbinate. From week to week the services were written and used by the Congregation in pamphlet form.

The Committee thought it best to preserve the services in book form, for constant use by the Congregation. Hence this little work, which has been printed by the unanimous vote of the members of “Rodeph Shalom.” The thirty services are uniform in method, but differ in contents each week. Although written solely for the author’s congregants, they are adapted (with but trifling changes) to the use of congregations holding Friday evening or Sunday morning services, or of small communities, where laymen may conduct services for their co-religionists.

A word as to arrangement. The author has striven to use the language of Scripture. The Old Testament passages have been used, with very few alterations, with a view to furnishing the worshipper with texts dealing with the most important Jewish themes. The hymns have been carefully selected after consulting a large number of hymnals, and have been chosen chiefly for their religious and moral teachings. The Kaddish has been freely translated, the special object of the author being to make clear that it is a prayer sanctifying the name of God in the hour of trial, a prayer in memory of the dead, and not a prayer for the repose of the soul of the dead.

If this book, in a small degree, add to the dignity of the weekly services-and cause an increased interest to be taken in public worship; if it move the congregants to feel a little stronger desire for spiritual exercises and lead the worshippers to join heartily in the reading of the prayers, the labor entailed in writing the various compositions and in selecting the Old Testament Readings and Hymns, will be well repaid.

J.L.L.
Pittsburgh, 1902.