I learned a really entertaining thing at our religion committee meeting last night. Maybe all of you know this already? But in case you don't, I thought I'd share.

As you may know, the Reform movement has a new prayerbook in-progress, called Mishkan Tefilah. It's been in-progress for a long time; my shul ordered our copies five years ago, and the release date keeps getting pushed forward for one reason or another. (At the Biennial two years ago we davened using proofs, and they told us then that it would be out "soon." Yeah, right.) Anyway, the most recent publication date had been this summer...

...but apparently the paper that the publication committee chose for the prayerbook is the same paper on which the forthcoming seventh Harry Potter book will be published. And because Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is expected to be a really big seller, Mishkan Tefilah is in a kind of suspended animation. They can't print MT until after the Harry Potter rush is over, lest that print job use up paper which might need to be allocated to printing more copies of HP7.

In other words: because I'm pre-ordering a copy of the new HP from my local independent bookstore...? I'm pretty much guaranteeing that my shul won't have a copy of MT until fall. Fortunately, I like the homegrown siddur we use at my shul; I don't mind waiting another few months for MT. (HP7, on the other hand...)

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, MishkanTefilah, HarryPotter.