Entering Jewish Prayer: A Guide to Personal Devotion and the Worship Service

As a "spirit-filled protestant" Christian I thought my prayer life was good, but reading this brought such a depth of joy, wonder and awe for our God. If you want to get deeper into the heart of God in your prayer-life & worship, regardless of your faith, this book is going to help.

Even if you have been attending synagogue for years, this book will give you a greater understanding of the meaning of the entire service....and for someone less experienced it will be ever more helpful.

Reuven Hammer does a wonderful job explaining away about traditional Jewish prayer. He goes into depth and detail to explain how the synogogue service works. This is a definate read for any person who is just starting to redescover their Jewish heritage.

The Siddur is a precious, age-old resource of Jewish spirituality, and the prayer service is an anchor for Jewish community. But it is complex. Rabbi Hammer helps us find our way, historically and in the synagogue services of today. A good companion book is MINDING THE TEMPLE OF THE SOUL, which adds meditations and movements you can do in your own home. With these, you can enrich your prayer life, your community life, and your relationship to God.

This is much more than a "how-to" guide; Rabbi Hammer here deals with the basic issues in prayer, the historical compilation of the Siddur, and the orchestration of the daily, Sabbath, and festival prayers. The themes of special prayers, such as the Blessing After Meals and the Kaddish are explained lucidly. This book makes one aware of the essential experience of making prayer a vital part of one's life. A nice feature is that it explains differences between the liturgy of each of the Jewish movements prayerbooks.