Undercurrents of Jewish Prayer

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 comprehensive curriculum of study. The present work, the first to examine this paradox, explains this as a reluctance to engage with the intellectual and emotional questions that the liturgy generates. Submitted to close examination, Jewish prayer is shown to be less a deferential dialogue with an attentive deity than a liturgy of protest in the face of the chaotic unpredictability of the human condition, a protest qualified only by joyous recognition of Gods role in ensuring life itself. This ground-breaking work studies the opening sections of the morning liturgy

Jeremy Schonfield is Mason Lecturer at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and Rabbi John Rayner Lecturer in Liturgy at Leo Baeck College in London.