Reform Rabbi Dana Kaplan writes in his forthcoming book The Transformation of American Judaism:
As a new rabbi in the mid 1990s, I discovered that the vast majority of my congregants were disinterested in the meaning of the words in the prayer book. Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook, which was used by the Reform movement from 1975 until 2007, had ten different Friday night services and six different Saturday morning services. Most of these different services had distinctive theological voices. I wanted to see which theology or theologies had the most meaning for my congregants. Every Friday night for a month, I chose one of the first eight Sabbath Evening Services and then moved to the next. My hope was that those in attendance would notice the differing theologies and comment on those differences, but I was to be disappointed. Only when one of the services did not include Lecha Dodi, a popular liturgical song, did I start to get any feedback at all. Even though Service One spoke of an omnipotent, omniscient God, and Service Two spoke of God as the still small voice within us, virtually no one in the congregation seemed to notice. I felt surprised that the prayers – recited in large part in English – seemed to make so little difference to them.
This observation would not surprise Professors Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, who together have studied “the moderately-affiliated Jew”. Eisen told an audience at the University of Michigan that “the words in the prayer book simply do not very much interest the Jews to whom we spoke.” He explained that “whether Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, or Reconstructionist, the liturgies describe a God in whom the Jews we met do not believe.” I think that Eisen may be being a little too definitive. Rather than consciously rejecting the traditional conceptions of God, they focus only on spiritual experiences that touch them emotionally. In their search for individualistic fulfillment, the American Jew simply ignores anything that does not immediately resonate.
