The simplest answer is that we do so in order to accommodate our congregants whose worship roots are in the old UNION PRAYER BOOK; what we used to call the “UPB”.  This is where their comfort level is to be found.  For them, GATES OF PRAYER was enough of a traumatic change.  MISHKAN T’FILAH is like relocating them to another planet.

I most certainly can appreciate how they feel.  The UPB, in one form or another, was the prayer book of our movement from 1894 to 1975 - 81 years!  There are members of our congregation, myself included, who grew up with this book.  Indeed, GATES OF PRAYER was not introduced until my ordination year.  In other words, throughout my childhood, my undergraduate and graduate education, I prayed out of this prayer book.  If you think about it, this book was at least the childhood prayer book of anyone in our con­gregation, 40 years of age or older, who was raised in the Reform movement.

For those of us in that category, the UPB is like worship comfort food.  We were raised with the security of knowing that the candle lighting could always be found on page 7; the Kiddush on page 93; the Adora­tion on page 71, and the Kaddish on page 77, with its transliteration on page 78.  The geography of this prayer book was as familiar to us as the neighborhoods in which we grew up.

And the English!  There was so much English!  We understood it all, and much of it we could recite by heart - “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might...”  “Grant us peace, Thy most precious gift, O Thou, eternal source of peace...”  Not only was the English familiar, but it was also majestic.  All the “Thee’s, Thy’s and Thou’s”.  Yes, they were archaic, but they made the language of prayer distinctive, something set apart from the language of the street.  What better way to teach us that prayer itself is distinctive; that prayer is special?

As time marched on, and our movement began to embrace more and more tradition, we found ourselves reading more and more from the Hebrew side of the page.  But that was only in the later years.  Before that, while the Hebrew had always been there in the prayer book, beyond the most elemental of Hebrew prayers, we were barely aware of its presence.

For those of you who were at services last week and for those of you who will be at services next week, there can be no question but that those services and tonight’s service exist in two almost completely sepa­rate worship universes.  It is no wonder that those of our congregation who were nurtured on the UN­ION PRAYER BOOK find themselves as strangers in a strange land when we pray out of MISHKAN T’FILAH.

But what about the rest of our congregation?  What about those who are under 40?  What about those who came to Reform Judaism, whether out of other movements or through conversion, after 1975?  Why is it important that they experience the UNION PRAYER BOOK?  It is not their worship comfort food.  That would be GATES OF PRAYER.  Indeed when we pray from the UPB, they are the strangers in a strange land.

The answer is perspective.  In order for us to know where we are today, we need to know where we came from, as well as where we wish to go.  One cannot truly appreciate nor understand a prayer book like MISHKAN T’FILAH unless one has a grasp on its Reform worship roots.  Our new prayer book can only make true sense to us when we place it beside GATES OF PRAYER and the UNION PRAYER BOOK.  We need to not only see that they are different in nature, but we also need to ask ourselves, “What precisely are those differences and why were those changes made?”

A prayer book is meaningless - any prayer book is meaningless - a gobbledegook of words, whether they be in Hebrew or in English - unless we grasp and embrace the messages of its prayers.  More than any other text in Jewish tradition - even the Torah - the prayer book is the window into the Jewish soul.  The Reform prayer book - the Reform prayer books - are the windows into the ever evolving, ever “reform­ing” Reform Jewish soul.
It is simply not enough for us to know that Reform Jewish worship has changed from the days of the UPB to today’s MISHKAN T’FILAH.  It is not even enough for us to know how our worship has changed.  If our worship is ever to have any deeper and fuller meaning for us, we need to understand why it has changed.  And not only that.  We need to know why the UNION PRAYER BOOK was written in the way that it was; why it was a change from traditional Jewish worship.

We cannot even begin to accomplish all that in the course of this one service and I am not going to even try in the course of this sermon.  This is a matter of serious study - important study - and any such study takes time and attention.  But what we can accomplish in the course of this service and this sermon is to start to bring to our awareness the dramatic differences between these books and to start us on this jour­ney of asking the right questions and seeking the best answers.

I have traveled this path of discovery for many years, and continue to travel it.  I have found it enlightening, invigorating, and inspiring.  As your Rabbi, I am here to assist any and all of you who wish to embark upon this journey as well.