And They Call Themselves Conservative

“People are used to multitasking and hypertext and are able to absorb multiple flows of information,” he said.

Does that sound as if it relates to a computer program, a new gadget or an blog technical breakthrough?

Nope.

It's the new Conservative Mahzor:

This mahzor, as the prayer book for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is known, is the Conservative movement’s first updating in nearly 40 years. Called Lev Shalem...It also includes transliterations of every widely sung prayer for those who cannot read Hebrew...

He added, “The richness of the margins in this mahzor spoke to them.”

During Yom Kippur’s Yizkor memorial for dead relatives, which this year falls on Saturday, the new prayer book will for the first time include a prayer for a deceased “partner”— an effort to include gay Jews — and also one for “a parent who was hurtful.”

“His/her death left me with a legacy of unhealed wounds, of anger and dismay,” the passage says.

The revised mahzor includes works by modern poets like Yehuda Amichai and at least two by Gentiles— Denise Levertov and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Given that the movement has become more egalitarian, ordaining women as rabbis since 1985, the mahzor also includes more language that is gender-neutral and names female Biblical figures like Hannah and Miriam as models of righteous heroism.

...While the pages are more crowded with the added commentary, Rabbi Feld said he thought the new mahzor would feel congenial in an Internet age...

And they call themselves Conservative.


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