A Bit of History

The computer revolution combined with low-cost duplicating equipment has provided the biggest change in publishing since the invention of the printing press. Before the advent of printing, manuscripts were of necessity written by hand and so were both rare and costly. Prayer books were rare, too, and Jewish prayer was propagated and developed by word of mouth.[+]

With the advent of printing, prayer books slowly became the norm. For the entire history of Reform Judaism, the Movement has been able to provide printed prayers in the form of prayer books. Contrarily, the only form of printed prayers came from publishing houses, in particular, from CCAR publications. To the extent that Jewish prayer is text-based[+] --- and for the history of Reform Judaism it has been --- one consequence of the central role of the CCAR-published prayer books was the editorial control the CCAR was able to exert over prayer. The CCAR, through its prayer books for the Reform Movement, created a uniform liturgy with consistent content for the Reform Movement.

In the 1960's, however, duplicating equipment became available, and with it the possibility of tailoring services to an individual occasion. Inexpensive typewriters were used to create novel English liturgy, onto which was pasted Hebrew liturgy from a standard source. (Because this material was often cut out from another source, these services have been referred to as ``cut and paste'' services.) The result was a new form of service, incorporating the Movement's Hebrew liturgy, but (often) using English liturgy created locally. These services were and are given the somewhat misleading name[+] of ``creative services,'' a term adopted here without prejudice.

However, these creative services suffered from two limitations. On one hand, they did not look typeset (because they were not), but rather looked like cheap typed documents. While this was sufficient for many groups (particularly NFTY), the printing quality immediately differentiated these in-house publications from ``real'' publications. There was no danger that these creative services could pass for ``real'' prayer books. This distinction, however, was based on form and not on content.

The second limitation resulted from the expense of equipment that could create fully pointed Hebrew. Accordingly, Hebrew was either copied in blocks from existing prayer books (usually CCAR publications), or omitted. In either case, the Hebrew in use was the Hebrew decided upon by the CCAR. Creative services generally had unique English liturgy, but, because of technical limitations, retained the Movement's Hebrew liturgy.

A brief note about the content of these services is also in order. While there can be little doubt that much positive innovation resulted from the ability to create services locally, there can also be little doubt that much drivel resulted as well. One of the consequences of the partial de-centralization of liturgy-creating was a de-centralization of editorial control. Certainly the CCAR committees on liturgy did not contain the only people capable of writing good liturgy, but they were able to draw one the entire resources of the CCAR. Local service-creators did not have this luxury.