More in ‘Gates of Prayer’

Publishers of prayer books—siddurim—have long struggled to engage American Jews, to heighten their alertness at synagogue, to encourage them to see prayers not as mere echoes of the past but as vital supplications whose meaning is renewed daily. One way of doing this is to flood the page with commentaries, explications, instructions, and supplementary readings; this approach, exemplified by the ArtScroll siddur, has been the dominant mode for the past 25 years. Yet too much additional reading risks turning a prayer book into a tutorial rather than a conduit to sustained reflection.

When I was about 9 years old, my family’s Reform temple started asking congregants to identify copies of Gates of Prayer that needed some TLC: a little glue on the spine, the reattachment of a dangling cover. The books had been in use for many years, and they were getting worn. They’d seen some changes, ...