A prayer book author seeks to capture a spiritual 'Wow!'
by Marilyn Silverstein

New Jersey Jewish News

In the eyes of Joseph Rosenstein of Highland Park, every moment is the right time for prayer.

Sitting in a computer room at the Center for Math, Science, and Computer Education on Rutgers University's Busch Campus in Piscataway, where he is a mathematics professor, Rosenstein opened the pages of his recently self-published prayer book, Siddur Eit Ratzon.

"Usually, eit ratzon is translated as 'May this time be an acceptable time for prayer,'" Rosenstein said.   "That leaves open the possibility that God may not listen to someone's prayer.   The perspective of my siddur is that God is always listening to prayer."

In illustration, he began reading from a passage in the prayer book, which offers his translations, commentaries, meditations, and prayers for the morning service on Shabbat and festivals.

"'In Your eyes, every moment is eit ratzon -- the right time for prayer,'" he recited, quoting from his translation of Psalm 69. "'You receive my prayers with great love, and You respond with true assistance.'   That's the perspective here," he said. "That seemed for me to be the appropriate title."

Mathematician and meditation guide, teacher and translator, prayer leader and spiritual seeker, the 63-year-old Rosenstein has spent the past five years writing and refining his distinctive Siddur Eit Ratzon.   The prayer book, brightly bound in yellow, is intended specifically for the Highland Park Minyan, the nondenominational congregation he helped to found, and more generally for those who seek a traditional siddur but who are hungry for a spirituality and meaning that often elude them.  

"The language of the traditional prayerbook, unfortunately, keeps many Jews away from God," Rosenstein writes in his introduction. "Many find that, for example, the spiritual path is disguised, the prerequisite philosophical commitments are unacceptable, the imagery and language do not resonate, and both the prayer community and God are assumed to be male. In this Siddur, I have tried to be inclusive, to use language that invites all people to come closer and become engaged in our people's prayers.

"This Siddur is thus both a spiritual guide and a theological exploration, and is also an invitation to take another look at Jewish prayer, to find new ways of inviting God into our lives."

Rosenstein brought to that enterprise a lifelong dedication to prayer and Jewish learning. In addition to being a founding member of the Highland Park Minyan, he is a member and longtime adult-education teacher at the Highland Park Conservative Temple and also a founding member and teacher at the National Havurah Committee's Summer Institute.

"What are the obstacles to prayer?" asked Rosenstein. "Very often, the obstacles have to do with the prayer book. People don't understand the Hebrew. The translation is difficult for them. They don't have a guide to what's in it. They don't have a way of making their way through the siddur. What I tried to do is to write a siddur that has a translation that keeps the obstacles in mind and tries to overcome them.

"What I've learned is that for many people, prayer is not a spiritual event," he said. "Whether they're Orthodox or Reform, people tend to recite the words and not to focus on the message the words convey. What I wanted to do is to have a siddur where the messages are important. The spiritual messages of the prayers are highlighted rather than hidden."

In the pages of his prayer book, Rosenstein highlights those messages both graphically and philosophically. Each page is a map of the mysteries inherent in the text. For example, page 9 offers up "Birchot HaShachar" - the Morning Blessings - in Hebrew, in Hebrew transliteration, and in Rosenstein's at once straightforward and inviting translations.

In a column to the right of the prayer text, a "Guidepost" grounds the reader in the rituals surrounding the prayer. Below that, the "Kavvanah," or Intention, suggests an interpretation of the spiritual meaning of the prayer. And below that, Rosenstein suggests alternatives to the prayer through chanting or meditation. For those who wish to savor the latter, "Meditation, Surrounding Ourselves with Your Light," at the bottom of the page, offers a soulful spiritual journey into the heart of the lines from Psalm 36: "For with You is the Source of Life, / in Your light we see light."

"I made the prayers much more in the second person," Rosenstein said, "and that solved another problem -- the gender problem of prayer. If you use the word 'you,' you don't have to use 'he' or 'she.'

"I wanted to have a prayer book where the translation spoke to people in a language people can relate to," he said. "People are looking to have a closer relationship with God... so I tried to make it more personal."

Rosenstein said that he had a number of goals in compiling Siddur Eit Ratzon . "One very important goal is that I wanted to create a siddur our group could daven from," he said, referring to his 50-family havurah, which meets on Shabbat mornings in the annex of the Highland Park Reformed Church. "The traditional siddur was not meeting our needs."

"Another goal was to create something other people could use as well," he said. "The third goal was outreach. My sense is that there are many people who are not connected to the Jewish community and therefore are not involved in any prayer setting. For them, this may be an entrée book in order to revisit Jewish prayer. It's an invitation to prayer."

For example, Rosenstein said, he gave a copy of his siddur to a relative and received back an interesting note. "He said, 'I was reading your book in the subway station and I found myself davening for the first time in 15 years.'" Rosenstein related with pleasure. "That means this kind of prayer book could touch him. I expect there are many others out there who could be touched by this."

Ultimately, Rosenstein said, he hopes his siddur will help readers recapture the spiritual "Wow!" that inspired Jewish visionaries to write their prayers in the first place.

"Basically, the people who wrote these prayers had visions of reality, and those visions are very important in the prayers," he said. "If you just read the text of the prayer without thinking about what led to the prayer, then you're missing something important.

"What I tried to do in these meditations is to bring out the experience the authors had that led them to these words," he said. "They had some kind of spiritual experience, and I've tried to capture it with words."

For more information about Siddur Eit Ratzon , including audio selections, sample pages, and ordering information, go to http://newsiddur.org.

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