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Undercurrents of Jewish Prayer (Paperback)
Loot Price: R896
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Undercurrents of Jewish Prayer (Paperback)
Series: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Traditional Jews encounter the prayer-book-the Siddur-more often in
their daily lives than any other text, yet it is mysteriously
absent from their otherwise nearly comprehensive curriculum of
study. In addition, they tend to recite it mantrically, more for
its sound than its meaning. The neglect of meaning is so complete
that no edition of the prayer-book has yet appeared with a
comprehensive range of commentaries. The present work, the first to
examine this paradox, explains it as a reluctance to engage with
the intellectual and emotional questions that lie just beneath the
surface of the text. An analysis of the opening sequences of the
daily ritual reveals that the prayer-book, far from representing
one side of a deferential dialogue with an attentive deity,
actually challenges God to allow access to the revelation on which
human safety depends and to keep his side of the covenant.
Confronting the chaotic unpredictability of the human condition,
this undercurrent of protest allows Jews to question why God's
urgently needed intervention seems absent. Anger at this apparent
absence is qualified only by gratitude at being alive. The core of
this book consists of a novel examination of the opening sections
of the traditional daily morning liturgy according to the Ashkenazi
rite. The analysis is based on mostly untranslated medieval and
later commentaries identifying the biblical and rabbinic echoes
from which the liturgy is woven, and employs analytical methods of
the kind traditionally applied to talmudic and midrashic texts. It
shows how each citation and echo imports aspects of its original
context into the new composition, forming a countertext to the
words on the page. It examines each textual layer, as well as the
surface meaning that is usually the only one to be noted, and
relates these to the speaker's actual location-home and later the
synagogue-as well as to the time of day when the prayers are
recited, as the worshipper faces the dangers of the day ahead. The
resulting chorus of ideas-linking everyday life to the sacred
narrative from creation to exile-demonstrates the philosophical
sophistication of rabbinic spirituality in offering poetic insight
into an ultimately tragic vision of reality.
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