A review, by Rabbi Hecht, of the recently published Koren-Sacks siddur appeared this week in the Jewish Tribune (Toronto). The review can be accessed at
http://www.jewishtribune.ca/TribuneV2/index.php/200904281582/New-Koren-Sacks-Siddur-has-many-innovations-but-is-it-for-you.html
4 comments:
R' Hecht writes:
The siddur does seem to wish to serve the novice as well as one experienced in prayer. While admirable, “attempting to be all things to all people” may be an impossible objective.If it's going to be the Artscroll-killer [at least for Mod-O synagogues] that many seem to think it's intended to be, it has to try to be all things to all people - that's the way Artscroll has produced its English works. Consider their blue shul chumash: it tries to replace both the old square all-Hebrew chumashim with Rashi and Onqelos, AND the translation-with-commentary chumashim produced by Soncino (Hertz and Cohen).
As a result, it's too heavy (I find) for practical shul use, unless you're in a shul where you have a table or folding shtender in front of you.
If you find the standard size too heavy, then you can try the personal size or the compact size.
One nit to pick:
The First editions of the Koren Humash [circa 1962] had Shabbat morning Tefillot in the back. In virtually every prayer, the proper "trope" was printed. The inclusion of Te'amim is de riguer in Sephardic Siddurim and USED to the be the Standard in "yekke" Siddurim and Mahcarzorim, too.
Koren is a Tanach publisher. How much effort would it take to include the masoretic texts in the Siddur itself? Why are we dumbing down the worshipper insted of enlightening them with classical Hebraic diacritical notes?
Why can't every tefillah look like the Shema or Shirat Hayam?
RRW
Many of the prayers that appear in the Siddur are from Tehillim that use a different system of taamey mikra (that of sifey em"t). Very few people really understand how they work so I'm not sure how they benefit the reader. They may be more authentic, but if you can't read the prayer properly as a consequence, I'm not sure how they help.
Instead, we spent a tremendous amount of resources on the tehillim of the davening adding punctuation, the kamatz katan, the shva na and a meteg to indicate mileil by experts in taamey em"t so that the reader can simply read the words correctly without being confused by the odd taamim and hopefully increasing their kavana.
As an aside, the Koren Humash that you mention, never had the taamim in the davening. They were manually and painstakingly taken out for this precise reason, but unfortunately at the time, due to technological limitations, the aforementioned reading aides were not inserted.
However, we have just published the new Koren Talpiot Shabbat Humash which is an updated version with the davening and haftarot completely reset with English instructions.
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