Prayer has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I don’t mean those moments of private contemplation, reflection, of awe, wonder, gratitude or even hope (or despair).
I’m talking about gathering in community and reciting an agreed liturgy, publicly reciting a text, large parts of it in Hebrew. That all seems not to make much sense. But communal prayer and liturgy draws me in. And it’s not just me.
Over the High Holy Days, our congregations will swell with seasonal prayers and pray-ers. The prayers are a mix of standard texts that make up any Jewish service and special ones that highlight the particular themes (such as repentance and self-reflection) of the High Holy Days. The pray-ers are a mix of synagogue regulars for whom these services are a variation on a familiar theme, and many others for whom the habit may feel somehow compelling despite its irregularity.
And somewhere in the mix is the One to whom these prayers are addressed, indeed the One these pray-ers might even seek to address. Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King”.
Singing Avinu Malkeinu along with the rest of the congregation is a quintessential (if not halachically essential) High Holy Day moment. With the repeated opening words each line, by the end of even the first rendition it feels familiar and ancient – a traditional High Holy Day prayer. Yet it’s not quite as traditional, or fixed, as it seems.
The “original” Avinu Malkeinu is attributed to Rabbi Akiva in the Talmud and is just two lines long. It is only in later manuscript and printed editions of the Talmud that a new opening line (“We have sinned before You”) was added and, with that repentant addition, that it started its journey into our High Holy Day liturgy.
By the 9th century, in the earliest book of High Holyday prayers that we have, Avinu Malkeinu had grown to 27 lines. Machzor Vitry, in the 11th century, has Avinu Malkeinu with 35 lines, whereas in the 13th-century Italian Machzor Roma it has only 30.
The wording varies greatly and has continued to do so in different prayerbooks to this day, not just between Ashkenazi and Sephardi rites but in various forms within and beyond those traditions. So when modern prayerbooks introduce new variations, both of old prayers or by introducing new compositions, this is a continuation of a centuries-long process. In every age, Jewish creativity has developed a liturgy to speak to us and for us, while being rooted in tradition. It’s a fine balance.
Even the language we use to speak to and of God is a challenge for many. God features so prominently in our prayerbooks but not quite so clearly in our lives. The God-language of our prayers is so easy to take literally and then to dismiss as irrelevant or outdated.
Even when we think of the liturgy as poetry, what does it mean to address God as “Our Father, Our King”? Does translating the Hebrew words convey their (original) metaphorical associations, even if we would want to? Surely God is not literally a father or a king, perhaps not even like either in our experience? Was imagining that God is somehow like Queen Elizabeth more ridiculous, or blasphemous, than that God is like King Charles? Surely God is not really male.
In recent decades, progressive liturgies have used more gender-inclusive language to refer to ourselves and our ancestors (as we no longer insist that “the male embraces the female”).
But the same consideration is also needed in our language for God if our prayers are to remain accessible and relevant. In the introduction to the British Liberal prayerbook, Siddur Lev Chadash, in 1995, Rabbi John Rayner put it succinctly: “The truth is: literally, God is neither male nor female; metaphorically, God is both!”
So one tendency is to avoid gendered language altogether. God’s name is no longer translated as “the Lord” but, without the male (and feudal) associations, as “the Eternal” or “Eternal One”, capturing something of the meaning of the Hebrew word.
Yet, in our language for God, to restrict the range of metaphors we employ is to increase the risk of their being understood literally, for God is not really a father or a king.
Avinu Malkeinu is an excellent example of the liturgical challenge. As it evolves in every generation to remain engaging and relevant, the liturgy we inherit can still hold great power, as we continue the creative task of adapting, editing and supplementing.
In the case of Avinu Malkeinu, modern liturgies have offered a range of alternatives. The Liberal machzor translates Avinu Malkeinu as “Our Creator and Sovereign”, but also includes a novel composition – Sh’chinah M’kor Chayyeinu, “Divine Presence, Source of our Lives” – thereby providing alternative metaphors for God.
The new Reform machzor, published this year, offers three different versions of Avinu Malkeinu (as well as a Sephardi alternative, Eloheinu She-ba-shamayim, “Our God in Heaven”).
Two versions reflect different traditions in the selection of verses (and the music to which they may be sung) but the original epithets, Avinu (originally evoking a God of love and intimacy) and Malkeinu (God of awe, wonder and respectful distance) are left untranslated, leaving the unresolvable tension between the two names.
The most innovative is a new version that is a chiastic alphabetical acrostic (thankfully with an explanatory footnote) starting with “Our Father, Our King” and continuing with a different biblical or rabbinic image of God for every other letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The effect is that were we not limited by the number of letters in the alphabet we could continue endlessly with partial, inadequate metaphors for God.
We have come a long way from the “original” two-line Avinu Malkeinu. Liturgy remains traditionally innovative and progressive.
Rabbi Freedman is joint-editor of the new Reform movement High Holy Day machzor
