Siddur is designed for all Jews, individual needs and private interests are often disregarded in the prescribed prayers. These are phrased in plural form and are meant to be the voice of all Israel. The diversified authorship of the Siddur, embracing prophets and psalmists, legalists and poets, proclaims that all Israel has a share in its making. For nearly two thousand years, the Hebrew prayers have helped to keep the Jews alive, saving them from losing their language and their identity.
There is profound truth in the statement that from a man’s prayers we can discover whether he is cultured or not.[1] It is regrettable that the Siddur, over which many generations have brooded and wept, has never been sufficiently appreciated as a vehicle of Jewish knowledge. People have learned to recite it by heart without giving adequate attention to its fine beauty and deep significance. Many have recited Ashre, for instance, three times a day for decades without knowing what it means. In the schools, where the Siddur is used as a text for the study of the mechanics of reading, the pupils are seldom taught to appreciate its contents.
The Siddur cannot be understood correctly unless it is read thoughtfully. Talmudic authorities have invariably laid stress on mental concentration as the chief requirement in praying. Maimonides writes: “Prayer without devotion is not prayer... He whose thoughts are wandering or occupied with other things ought not to pray... Before engaging in prayer, the worshiper ought... to bring himself into a devotional frame of mind, and then he must pray quietly and with feeling, not like one who carries a load, unloads it and departs.”[2] Clearly, this is said because by means of the traditional prayers the ideals of Judaism are ever brought afresh to the consciousness of the worshiper.
