Gates of Prayer: Shaarei Tefila: The New Union Prayerbook for Weekdays, Sabbaths and Festivals-Hebrew Opening

by Chaim Stern

Book Overview

Profoundly rooted in Jewish tradition, Gates of Prayaer has become the standard liturgical work for the Reform Movement. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0916694011
• ISBN13: 9780916694012
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Central Conference of American Rabbis
• Length: 779 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 8.9" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent for Shabbat or Daily Meditations.

I would give it 4.5 stars if I could. This is a fantastic book for daily or weekly meditations. It's lacking liturgy for festivals. If you want liturgy to celebrate the high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur get the companion book "Gates of Repentance," and for the Pesach "Gates of Freedom." Many of the translations are very good, some are lacking. For example the Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King) is better translated: "answer us as though we have no deeds to plead our cause..." than "answer us, for we are of little merit...." Nonetheless, this is a book of relevant and beautiful prayers and meditations. I love having the Hebrew script alongside the English text. I've given this book as a gift more than once. Highly recommend.

Soothing the Soul

The words, ancient and yet new, lift my spirit beyond its usual bounds while binding it to other like spirits going back at least 5,000 years. I rejoice in seeing and feeling the Presence through the words of other seekers and am grateful for their trust, their seeking, their perseverance. In the task of building upon the trust of those before me, this book has raised my jumping-off point.

Dated feel-good mistranslations

I no longer affiliate with the Reform Movement, but putting personal beliefs aside, this is a pretty standard Reform siddur, all of the important liturgy included (though after experiencing more traditional services I found out just how much liturgy is missing from this book!), a lot of great songs to choose from in the back, much more Hebrew than the Union prayerbook which was in usage before this, and a great selection of quotes from Pirkey Avot in the beginning. The reason I no longer think as highly of this siddur as I used to is because of all of the mistranslations (as well as a horrible cut and paste job of the Aleynu; for my first two years after my conversion I had no idea how long the Aleynu actually is and had a very hard time getting all of the words in the authentic unaltered prayer right!). I don't have any problem with creative translations; some things even sound more poetic in such a translation over how they sounded in the original, or sometimes it's done to make them rhyme in translation also, if it's a poem or song. But the mistranslations here go beyond that. The best example of this is on page 256, "Praised is the God whose gift is life, whose cleansing rains let parched men and women flower toward the sun." The Hebrew actually says "Praised is the God whose gift is life, who grants eternal life to the dead." That's probably the only instance in this entire siddur where the Hebrew word meytim is used in that prayer instead of hakol (which means "the world"). Resurrection of the dead isn't part of Reform doctrine, so maybe the original Hebrew made them uncomfortable. A lot of similar mistranslations, which are worlds away from what is being said in the Hebrew, are really lovely sentiments, but they should be in a section devoted to an alternate service or alternative readings, not as pretended translations of things which are worlds away from this lovey-dovey "We are all one" stuff. It was a good prayerbook for the era when it came out, but today it just reads like the creation of a bunch of flower children and makes it so obvious it came out in the Seventies. A good prayerbook should be for all time, not an embarrassing reminder of a bygone era.

Gates of Prayer

This is THE book of Reform Judaism's liturgy. It is Universally known and used. Rating this book is actually nonsense. . .it just is. It's a worship guide and as such has a potpouri of thoughts (some very old, some new) to help congregations have meaningful worship services.

This is one of the best meditation books I've ever read!

First: I have to confess that I'm not Jewish. I'm a practicing Lutheran, and a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.That said: Gates of Prayer is my very favorite prayer and meditation book. The meditations and prayers are some of the very best I've ever encountered: I find myself reading these meditations and prayers over and over again and getting something new from them each time I read them.I'm not familiar with the settings of all of the hymns in the back of the book; but the texts are so gorgeous that I've set several of them as hymns for the Lutheran congregation I attend. The choir and the congregation LOVE the texts, I take special care to set the texts with the joy and dignity these texts deserve. There is a timelessness to this book which I believe makes it destined to be one of the great religious classics. I enthusiastically recommend Gates of Prayer to ANYONE, regardless of religion or denomination.

The Essence of Prayer

This is a spectacular book filled with the prayers we hold closest to our hearts and heritage. The prayers convey the intermost values and conditions of this wonderful religion. It can be used on a day to day basis to remind ourselves of how we should live by the laws and teachings of the Torah. I recommend this book to all who teach and believe in a Jewish way life.