Southern California File

Wilshire Boulevard Temple, one of the West Coast’s largest synagogues, has sent a new, ground-breaking High Holy Days prayer book to its 2,500 member families.

Rabbi Harvey Fields, the author and senior rabbi, said that by including photographs, the transliteration of Hebrew prayers and snatches of background information, the 430-page book is designed to be “worshiper-friendly” for congregants not well-versed in Hebrew and Jewish traditions.

Fields estimated that at least half of his Reform temple’s members can’t read Hebrew other than a few expressions or prayers learned by rote. The rabbi said he knew of no other prayer book that frequently places transliterations (as well as translations) on the same page to let the reader to join congregants in reading Hebrew passages.

Also unprecedented in a prayer book for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, according to Fields, is the use of photographs, primarily of Jewish ceremonial objects, and the footnote-like explanations of prayers.

The brief notes often give the biblical source, cite an appropriate rabbinical comment, or provide an interesting sidelight. For instance, a prayer said at the sounding of the shofar, which begins, “Out of the depths . . . “ combines seven verses from Psalms and Lamentations. The verses are arranged in an acrostic--the first letter of each Hebrew verse spells out a message, “Banish Satan.”

Rabbi Lewis Barth, a professor at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, praised the worship book. “It tries to preserve some of the core elements of Jewish liturgy and yet make the Jewish worship experience accessible to people who have not had a lot of Jewish education,” Barth said.

Barth added that “some people might look at the explanations as something out of ‘Trivial Pursuit,’ but I really like it. It gives congregants extra information that connects them with the tradition.”

* STEEPLE

The Rev. Robert H. Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral will dedicate its $5.5-million steeple and prayer chapel, designed by architect Philip Johnson, in 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. services Sunday at the church complex in Garden Grove. The 236-foot-high structure was named the Crean Tower after the donors of a major gift to complete construction. The 52-bell Arvella Schuller Carillon, named after the senior pastor’s wife, will be heard for the first time at various times during the day, played by James R. Lawson, who retired last year as carillonneur of New York’s famed Riverside Church.

Meanwhile, a dissonant note was heard from El Cajon. The Door, a bimonthly evangelical/satirical magazine, gave its latest “loser of the month” award to the steeple. “This is not a monument to God, or even to Robert Schuller,” the editors said. “This is a monument to Southern California, where wealth and materialism have become God, and where waste and insensitivity to the rest of the world are a way of life.”

* DATES

Father Raymond E. Brown, one of the most honored U.S. Catholic biblical scholars, will inaugurate at 9 a.m. next Saturday a monthly series of lectures on the effect of the historic Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Author of 20 books on the Bible, Brown retired in June from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The Vatican II lectures, sponsored by Mount St. Mary’s College and held at its downtown Los Angeles Doheny campus, will cost $15 a lecture and $120 for the 10-month program. Other scheduled speakers include Catholic thinkers George Tavard, Margaret Brennan, Richard McCormick and Gabriel Moran.

An eclectic, three-day “celebration for the Earth Mother” will begin Friday at the Institute of Mentalphysics grounds at Joshua Tree, 30 miles north of Palm Springs, with ceremonies and workshops led by Sun Bear, leader of the Bear Tribe Medicine Society, and others said to be versed in spirituality around the world. Donated food will be given to the Southern California Indian Center. Whole Life Productions of Playa del Rey is managing the event.