SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA

vernacular alongside Hebrew in lands throughout the world. The amount of Hebrew in our services has varied from one locale to another, but we have always retained enough Hebrew to continue a strong bond with the tradition, and enough vernacular to enable our congregants to understand the prayers and to recite them with appropriate devotion and not by rote. This should also be the goal of your services in Israel .

During this period when English remains your primary tongue and the local Liberal services are therefore not meaningful, there is nothing wrong with starting another service for your family and friends that follows the American minhag and contains some English . We should remember that minhagim connected with ritual, poetry, melodies, and language were often continued by immigrants or long-term visitors in the land in which they found themselves. Since the first century, synagogues in Israel were identified as Babylonian , which meant that they followed Babylonian rites and possibly some Aramaic . Later, of course, many Aramaic prayers were added to all services. In the Middle Ages the immigration of Sephardim to Ashkenazi lands led to debates and acrimony as local congregations sought to impose a single minhag on all Jews in their locale(David Cohen of Corfu , Responsa 11; Moses of Trani , Responsa Vol. 1, No. 307; etc). Such efforts to establish uniformity inevitably failed. In the United States each group that arrived brought its own minhagim, and these included variations in liturgy and melody. There would be nothing improper about establishing a minyan that had a service partially in English for the benefit of your friends and family.

Walter Jacob ,“Questions and Reform Jewish Answers,” New American Reform Responsa(New York : Conference of American Rabbis, 1992).

174