📖 תפלות ושירים | Prayers & Readings, selected and arranged by Rabbi Solomon Goldman (1938)
Contributed on: 05 Dec 2022 by
❧The experimental siddur, Prayers & Readings Selected and Arranged by Rabbi Solomon Goldman can be found appended to Harry Coopersmith’s songbook, Songs of My People (1938). The work, I believe, is an excellent reflection of the creative spirit of the nascent Reconstructionist movement. Goldman’s prayerbook is both traditional and expansive, seeking to bring into its pages both familiar liturgy along with additional works from all over Jewish literary history. The work represents what Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan would call a “Binder Siddur” — the siddur as a container of inspired works for collective reading and reflection in the synagogue. Perhaps even for personal use. With its good number of authors and translators expressing different voices appealing to Goldman, Prayers & Readings is also a kind of proto-Open Siddur. However, unlike the Open Siddur, Goldman only provides acknowledgement of the various authors and translators in his preface, and we are left uncertain as to which works should actually be attributed to each contributor. If you can tell which of the listed authors and translators contributed what, please leave a comment or contact us. . . .