Cohen, Benjamin. Siddur Rinah U’Tephilah: Prayerbook and Hymnal for the American Orthodox Jewish Youth.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA)

El Paso, Texas

1920

American, British and Zionist flags on front cover, portrait of the author on the title-page.

Not in Worldcat

Benjamin Cohen's rabbinic career in America got off to a rocky start. Ordained in Russia, he was still in his twenties when he became rabbi of Bellingham, Washington, but due to community division he moved from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, becoming rabbi of the Bnai Zion Congregation in El Paso, Texas. There, he published this little prayer-book, extraordinary for the fact that while it appears to be just one more American Reform liturgy, its author loudly insists as to its Orthodox orientation. The book is intended, states the author, for American Orthodox Jewish youth, and, in an impassioned Yiddish preface, addressed to the author's "fellow Orthodox," he describes the sunken condition of the members of his far-flung American congregation, where the youth do not attend services, or, if they do, it is only to chat. The reason for this, says the rabbi, is due to the fact that Hebrew is no longer understood and thus his solution here is to rework the traditional prayers into English and radically truncate them. A colorful description of some of the rabbi's unusual communal exploits accompanies the lot.