Rayner the Liturgist

Abstract This article describes the liturgical work that Rabbi John D. Rayner did over a period of fifty years that helped change the image and direction of Liberal Judaism in the United Kingdom, from his first Pesach Haggadah in 1962, through two generations of Sabbath and Festival prayerbooks. Service of the Heart (1967) and Gate of Repentance (1973), co-edited with Rabbi Chaim Stern, formed the basis of the American Reform prayerbooks of that era. Intense scholarly investigation into the earliest Jewish liturgical sources helped Rabbi Rayner produce authentic versions of the standard liturgy that accorded with Liberal Jewish values of inclusivity and intellectual honesty. As well as the standard liturgy, he developed a style of English translation that read well and he reacted to contemporary trends by modernising the English translations and then degendering Hebrew references to God.