Jewish Liturgy as a Spiritual System

Readers of this book will emerge with a new awareness of what we as Jews are doing when we pray, why we are doing it, how we are supposed to be affected by prayer, how the prayers came to be as they are today, and how they differ among the major movements of American Judaism. The traditional Jewish liturgy, if properly understood, is a deep and powerful technique for spiritual transformation. However, spiritual depth of prayer has been progressively reduced over the past 2000 years as the underlying currents of the Siddur, the Jewish prayerbook, have been lost to the majority of worshippers. This book explains the Jewish liturgy prayer by prayer, according to what, in the context of ancient and medieval Judaism, was its raison d'_tre: a structure for transforming one's mind and way of life. The author writes: 'The crisis Judaism now faces, while genuine, is due not to a lack of depth in the traditional Jewish prayer service, but to a profound and almost universal lack of