Union Prayer Book - Consideration of A Successor Prayer Book

Consideration of A Successor Prayer Book

At a meeting of American and Canadian Reform leaders held in Toronto in June 1966, an announcement was made that the CCAR's Committee on Liturgy would begin a "re-evaluation and research" process aimed at a rewrite of the Union Prayer Book

At the 78th annual meeting of the CCAR in June 1967, held at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, discussions were undertaken regarding a replacement or revision of the Union Prayer Book. Rabbi Joseph Narot, who had been working on the project, described how the Union Prayer Book had been last updated 30 years prior, "before the Nazi holocaust, before the atomic bomb and before the space age" and that it did not address "the theological and moral questions that have been raised by these momentous issues". A study of the prayer book by Rabbi Jack Bemporad included sharp criticism of several aspects of the UPB.

With rising interest in the 1960s in Zionism and The Holocaust, as well as an upsurge in Jewish pride and identity following the Six-Day War, it became clear that the Union Prayer Book was no longer adequate. The CCAR released an updated prayer book, edited by Rabbi Chaim Stern as part of a committee chaired by Rabbi A. Stanley Dreyfus. The new Gates of Prayer, the New Union Prayer Book was announced in October 1975 as a replacement for the UPB, incorporating more Hebrew content and was updated to be more accessible to modern worshipers.

In 2000, Chicago Sinai Congregation in Chicago, Illinois published yet another revised version of the Union Prayer Book, which modernized the Elizabethan English of the previous versions, while attempting to preserve the lofty, poetic prose of the original. In addition, the liturgy was updated to address and reflect upon the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel, neither of which had happened yet at the time of the publication of the 1940 edition. Only a handful of ultra-liberal congregations have adopted the Sinai Edition of the UPB, the rest preferring to use Gates of Prayer or Mishkan Tefillah, which reflect more closely the neo-traditionalist trends in the Reform Movement.