Hi Foobs,

What you say may well be tied into the very viewpoint that Schultz seems to express: the Reform Jewish viewpoint, if not something more liberal still. (For that or for some other reason, he may well be something of an outsider to his own people's religious tradition. It would be interesting to cross-check his C.V. and find out.)

Take a look at my comment to islandtime below, however. Beauty is as beauty does, and beauty is not always the aim (or even within the reach) of synagogue liturgy. But I am speaking of the early synagogues, where at best they could get musically untrained people with what they considered good voices to read. When the medieval religious prayers were created (including some for Yom Kippur), and later when professional cantorial schools arose in Europe in the Renaissance, it was different, much different. But I am speaking of the times in which the Yom Kippur liturgy actually arose. You might be surprised at just how dull the early synagogues can make what is supposed to be deeply meaningful; even if the words are good, the melodies can be terrible.

I think your instinct is either correct or else close to the mark with regard to Mr. Schultz's relative "outsider" status, yet for some reason I pick up more emotion from the poem than either you or islandtime do. Perhaps it's because I've been to Reform synagogue here, understand its liturgical strengths, weaknesses and sensibilities, and therefore must (respectfully) disagree with the idea that the poem lacks "Jewishness". Its allusions are chock-full of "Jewishness". What it does lack (though not entirely, even so) is a direct connection with Biblical and Prayerbook Hebrew idiom, with which you're in tune more than most Fraysters. This disconnect is shockingly (to me) characteristic of Reform liturgy in English; some of the stock phrases in that liturgy probably appear in the poem ("an alphabet of woe" being the most obvious example).

wr ()()