With a new English translation by Michael Haruni
introductory piece by Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo.
Nehalel a complete, strictly traditional siddur in which photographs depicting central meanings of the texts direct your attention to what prayers are about.
Nehalel is modeled on the Nevarech bencher, which in 1999 pioneered the idea of juxtaposing prayers with photographs portraying their meanings. Messages still continually come in from people discovering Nevarech, telling us that Birkat Hamazon (Grace After Meals) “a prayer they may have recited every day since childhood” is suddenly brought to life by the photographs alongside its text. Nehalel now brings this coming-to-life effect to the full orthodox liturgy.
The images in Nehalel reflect these different themes. The photos are partly contemporary and partly historical; partly of the natural order, partly of human reality; partly from Eretz Yisrael, partly from a much wider panorama. Many are drawn from various archives “ some documenting the dark times in Europe, others showing the triumphs of modern Zionism.
The result is a work that makes the themes of the liturgy conspicuous to us as we pray “with a force that possibly no siddur has achieved ever before.”
Nehalel has been six years in development. Extensive resources have gone into developing a reliable and accurate, fully orthodox Hebrew text that is contemporary yet strictly within the bounds of tradition.
The new English translation is both elegant and literal, in a living idiom while uncompromisingly faithful to the meaning of the original.