Rabbi Jules Harlow, a liturgist who brought a poet’s sensibility and a musician’s rhythm to the style of prayer in Conservative Judaism for much of the second half of the 20th century, died on February 12. He was 92 years old.
His wife, Navah Harlow, said the cause was aspiration pneumonia. He did not say where he died.
For a time, Rabbi Harlow’s major works—prayer books for daily use, the Sabbath, the festival, and the High Holy Days—became the standards for worship in Conservative synagogues in North America. Many of his books sold more than 100,000 copies each, according to the Rabbinical Assembly, which published them.
Conservative Judaism, which occupies a middle ground between the more liberal Reform and the more traditional Orthodox, was the largest movement in American Judaism until Reform overtook it in the 1990s.
Although Hebrew is the language of Jewish prayer, Rabbi Harlow aspired to make the prayer book accessible to those who did not speak the language. He did this through elegant, if not always literal, English translations that often captured the rhyme and meter of the original texts.
At a funeral for Rabbi Harlow in Manhattan on February 14, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor emeritus of Jewish Theological Seminarycalled him “the poet of the conservative movement.”
The Jewish liturgy, noted Rabbi Schorsch, is often “burdened with an excess of words.” Rabbi Harlow wrote and translated prayers and cut more than a few.
“He taught us that fewer words spoken well go farther than many words we no longer understand,” said Rabbi Scores. “He taught us that less is more.”
Many of Rabbi Harlow’s liturgical innovations were in “Siddur Sim Shalom,” a daily Sabbath prayer book published in 1985.
When “Sim Shalom” was published, Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, then vice president of the rabbinical organization, said it was the first prayer book that “embedded the creation of the State of Israel as a theological reality and the Holocaust as a moral tragedy. “
In an interview with the Long Island Jewish World weekly in 1986, Rabbi Kelman said, “What Jules succeeded in doing was not only to produce a book of functional beauty and beauty of design and translation, but to produce a book that traces the evolution of Conservative Jewish Theology’.
The volume also included several original poems by Rabbi Harlow, including “Changing the Light,” which was offered as an alternative to parts of the evening service known as ma’ariv:
Bright skies, sunset, sunrise
The grandeur of creation elevates our lives
Evening darkness, morning dawn
Renew our lives as you renew all time.
The complete poem was even set to music by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The piece had its world premiere in Helsinki in 2002, on the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and its American premiere at Carnegie Hall in 2003.
On a smaller scale, one of Rabbi Harlow’s liturgical innovations involved the unique Hebrew letter “vav.” He added the letter—which, in this context, meant “and”—to one of the blessings said over the Hanukkah candles. The opening prayer thanks God “who did wonders for our ancestors in ancient times, in our time,” usually understood as referring to the season of time. With his addition, he writes “in antiquity and in our time”.
In a Hanukkah message from 2020, Shuly Rubin Schwartz, the chancellor of Hebrew Theological Seminary, embraced the change as a way to recognize the daily miracles of life, though most prayer books do not include the additional letter.
Rabbi Harlow worked at Sim Shalom for 11 years, studying the history of the Jewish liturgy dating back to the Middle Ages. He published the book in 1985, the same year the seminary first ordained women to the rabbinate.
It was not, however, a feminist text. Rabbi Harlow was a traditionalist. In his volume, God is still called “King.” More inclusive and gender-neutral language appeared in later editions of “Sim Shalom” and the subsequent Conservative prayer book, “Lev Shalem.”
Jules Edwin Harlow was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on June 28, 1931, to Henry and Lena (Lipman) Harlow, who owned a small grocery store together. One of his greatest influences was his high school teacher, Vera Banks, who encouraged him to develop his writing talent. “You could be a great writer,” she recalled telling him. He was also influenced by his grandfather Sam Lipman. who took him to study the Talmud every Sabbath when he was a child.
After graduating from Morningside College (now Morningside University) in Sioux City, he enrolled in rabbinical school at the Hebrew Theological Seminary in New York, where he wrote long letters to his grandfather detailing his studies, down to the page of the Talmud. was revising.
One day he got a call that his grandfather had died and rushed home to Sioux City. When he arrived, he found a Talmud in his grandfather’s house, open to the same page he had written in his most recent letter. Only then did he learn that even though they were separated by so many hundreds of miles, his grandfather still studied the Talmud with him.
Once ordained in 1959, Rabbi Harlow took a job with the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative Rabbis. He remained there until he retired as publications director in 1994. During his 35-year career, he left his mark on many of the movement’s books and magazines. One, the “Mahzor for Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur” (1972), a special prayer book for the Holy Days, became popularly known as the Harlow Mahzor.
In addition to his wife, Rabbi Harlow is survived by his son, David; his daughter, Ilana Harlow; and five grandchildren.
After his retirement, Rabbi Harlow and his wife became involved in international Jewish causes. They championed his cause Sephardic Bnei Anusim, the descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism during the 15th and 16th centuries in Spain and Portugal. The Harlows prepared more than a dozen members of the community for conversion to Judaism and accompanied them to the conversion ceremony in London with the European Masorti Bet Din, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement. They also spent time in Sweden, where Rabbi Harlow served as rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Stockholm for two years.
Rabbi Harlow was also a student of the clarinet. He took up the instrument in high school and played in bands in high school and college. He took his clarinet with him to rabbinical school, and friends at the funeral remembered him sitting in on sessions at the nearby West End Bar. He also led classmates on field trips to Manhattan jazz clubs.
When houses of worship were closed during the pandemic, Rabbi Harlow spent hours on his clarinet, his wife said. He recalled playing a Duke Ellington standard, “Solitude,” often. One Friday afternoon, he recorded the song on the clarinet, then recited the lyrics:
In my loneliness
I pray
Dear Sir above
Send back my love.
He sent the video file to friends in his synagogue, or minyan. In his arrangement, he changed the last lines to “Dear Lord above/Send back my minyan to me.”