www.reformjudaism.org.uk

Leading a Community in Prayer: Kabbalat Shabbat

Following the publication of Leading a Community in Prayer in June 2008, this second booklet in the series looks in detail at the Kabbalat Shabbat service. A guide for service leaders, this booklet will also be useful to teachers, wardens and anyone interested in the history and development of the liturgy.

The booklet is published here in 3 parts:

• Pages 1 – 41 are a guide to the Kabbalat Shabbat service
• Pages 42 – 45 are T’fillah (Prayer) planning sheets and are published in WORD so that you can adapt them to suit your community’s needs.
• Pages 46 – 57 are study passages, suitable for a variety of purposes and audiences.

Ideas on how to use this resource:

One way is to read some of the passages out at your seder. The first page is relevant at the beginning, and the centre pages at the point in the seder when you get to the paragraph beginning "In every generation...". Perhaps you could hand out copies of the insert and people can read them and choose which passages they want to share.  Or perhaps your guests can study them with the person next to them. The questions can be used to prompt discussion of important issues at your seder table.

Pesach is not just about something that happened a long time ago. It is about what we are doing now. What will we speak out for and against, what actions we can take to further the Jewish values of the seder? We do not know what you are going to decide but we hope that this can give you some ideas.