Page:Philip Birnbaum - ha-Siddur ha-Shalem (The Daily Prayer Book,1949).pdf/15

 benedictions of the Shemoneh Esreh. Instructed to add the special paragraph, he is puzzled by the improper arrangement of the text so that he combines two variant formulas and says: “Blessed art thou... Author of peace” and “Blessed art thou... who blessest thy people with peace.” As many as forty-five cumbersome words are employed merely to indicate that is omitted from the Kiddush on the last two nights of Pesaḥ. The direction is phrased obscurely enough to perplex the reader whenever he recites the Kiddush for festivals. The well-known blessing over cakes and pastry bears a heading of no less than twenty-two words such as “the five species of grain... oats and spelt.” What does it all mean? The answer can be put in one word: confusion. As a result of poor arrangement and inadequate instructions, comparatively few worshipers ever succeed in properly reciting the full Musaf for Ḥol ha-Mo‘ed Sukkoth.

Some translators, unfortunately, have failed in their task of making intelligible the meaning of the prayers. In their carelessness, they have imitated the antiquated versions of the Bible that abound in phrases like “yielded up the ghost” instead of died, and filled the Siddur with a mass of words which convey little meaning to the mind of the modern Jew. The general complaint that “we do not understand what we say” is an indictment against many translations of the Siddur.

“Bible English” has inevitably hindered many from gaining a wholesome appreciation of the Siddur. If translation is to facilitate a proper understanding of the original, it must be freed from archaic forms like this: “Thou sawest the afflictions of our fathers... and heardest their cry... and shewedst signs and wonders.” Unquestionably irritating are expressions such as “he gathereth the outcasts of Israel”; “he hath lifted up a horn for his people”; “as for me, in the abundance of thy lovingkindness will I come into thy house.” To the modern reader, dispersed is undoubtedly better