Groundbreaking in its Initial 1985 Release, ‘Wings of Awe’ Gets New Edition
The High Holidays are upon us, and so is a newly updated and expanded edition of the Hillel machzor (High Holidays prayer book), “On Wings of Awe.” The original 1985 edition was ground-breaking in its inclusion of transliterations for many prayers, which was then a rarity even among liberal Jewish prayer books; the new edition’s cover boldly proclaims itself “A Fully Transliterated Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.”
While Bernard Scharfstein, vice president of “On Wings of Awe” publisher Ktav, told me, “We sold maybe 1,000 a year; it’s not a bestseller,” it has been a constant presence in many Hillels and in a handful of congregations for many years.
I spoke on the phone recently with the editor of both editions, Rabbi Richard Levy, about what makes “Wings” a Hillel machzor, what has changed in the new edition and how worship has changed over the last quarter-century.
New Voices: Why a new version now?
Rabbi Richard N. Levy: It was a suggestion of Bernard Scharfsetin at Ktav who felt that a fully transliterated version might be attracting to a new generation of students at Hillel and also independent congregations that had used to the older version.
NV: What makes this a Hillel machzor?
Levy: I think that fact that it incorporates a lot of features of many non-Orthodox services, that it includes, for example, [all] three paragraphs of the Shema that are still lacking in Reform worship, but are present in others. In the middle of the book there is a full silent Amidah with inserts for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for people who don’t want to use alt prayers as is suggested in some parts of the book can use the full traditional one.
There are some references to being a teacher and a student, including some reflection questions for Yom Kippur that are directed at teachers and students. There is one piece that reflects the perceived reality of single people who are yet unsure of how or when they will be loved by someone.
There was a time when some of these things could only be done in Hillel foundations that are now commonplace.
NV: What changes can people look for in the new edition versus the original one?
Levy: Two of the signature prayers of both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Unetaneh Tokef and the uvechens, I’ve come to see in different ways.
In the case of the uvechen, the transitions of the three paragraphs are clearer. The first shows that these days are for not just the Jewish people but for all people. The second paragraph asks that honor be granted to Jews, which reflects a time when Jews were much humiliated and despised. And finally [in the third uvechen paragraph] a segment of both of those groups, the tzadikim, the righteous, the prayer makes it clear that it’s all the righteous, not just the Jewish tzdakim. I tried to bring that out.
On Yom Kippur, I included several piyutim [liturgical poems] in the section after the Amidah, which try to reflect in English some of the conventions of the piyut, through acrostics and to show some of the brilliance of this peculiarly Jewish art form.
I also included study questions for all the Torah portions.
At Kol Nidrei [the service for the night before Yom Kippur], I tried to point out that the Kol Nidrei service starts with God’s promise to forgive us before we do any confession, so that there’s a sense at the very beginning that we know we’re going to be forgiven.
NV: What was remarkable about this machzor on its initial release in 1985?
Levy: The section in the foreword to the first edition includes a lot of suggestions for ways of using the service, and in reading them again after not having looked at them for a while, it’s interesting to see how many of them have become commonplace throughout the American religious scene: people reading from the congregation, [encouraging people to introduce themselves to those sitting around them]. And I suggested in the foreword to the revised edition, some of those over 20 years have gotten ritualized and habitual also and that they need to be revitalized also. Don’t just introduce yourself to the person next to you, but try to get to know them.
In the first edition, there were some prayers transliterated on the page, which was not then done anywhere. And there was a commitment to speaking of God in gender-neutral or inclusive terms, including the matriarchs in the first edition in parentheses. I’ve eliminated the parentheses in the revised edition to reflect how widespread that custom has become.
NV: What else do you want people to know about “On Wings of Awe”? What am I not asking you that I should be asking?
Levy: One aspect of the book is that it is in some ways unabashedly God-directed. It encourages people to pray to God, to use God’s name in the context of reflecting the real feelings that people have around the High Holidays, in the hopes that people could see in the word of God an ear for the things that anguish them and concern them at this time, that people would seek God as one who embraces us for our wonderful things and for the places where we’ve fallen short. That theology is throughout the book. Where it’s been used, people like that it [“On Wings of Awe”] deals with real human feelings and emotions.
It tries to be a celebratory book as well. I’m personally a fan of the word “hooray.” There’s one prayer that asks if “hooray” could be an offering on the altar.
David A.M. Wilensky is the editor of New Voices Magazine and the director of the Jewish Student Press Service. He collects prayer books and has exhibited great restraint in not asking readers to sit through a lengthy discussion of liturgical minutiae in this article. He wrote about two new machzorim around this time last year.
