What is prayer for a modern Jewish freethinker? The dictionary definition of prayer is communication between a person and God, characterized by words of praise and supplication. But how can I pray to God when I doubt his existence? And yet, as a person so immersed in the traditions of his ancestors, how can I not pray? In this new bilingual edition of my Rosh Hashannah Machzor I combine the traditional text on one page and my humanist compositions on the opposite page, thus allowing readers to be part of the wider community and, at the same time, to interact with the prayers in a way that is perhaps more relevant to them.
What is prayer for a modern Jewish freethinker? The dictionary definition of prayer is communication between a person and God, characterized by words of praise and supplication. But how can I pray to God when I doubt his existence? And yet, as a person so immersed in the traditions of his ancestors, how can I not pray? In this new bilingual edition of my Rosh Hashannah Machzor I combine the traditional text on one page and my humanist compositions on the opposite page, thus allowing readers to be part of the wider community and, at the same time, to interact with the prayers in a way that is perhaps more relevant to them.
