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My People's Prayer Book Vol 1: The Sh'ma and Its Blessings
My People's Prayer Book provides 9 diverse and exciting commentaries to the traditional liturgy, written by some of today's most respected scholars and teachers from all perspectives of the Jewish world. They explore the text from the perspectives of ancient Rabbis and modern theologians, as well as feminist, halakhic, medieval, linguistic, biblical, Chasidic, mystical, and historical perspectives.
168 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1997
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About the author
Lawrence A. Hoffman
71 books17 followersDr. Lawrence A. Hoffman was ordained as a rabbi in 1969, received his Ph.D. in 1973, and has taught since then at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, in New York. From 1984 to 1987, he directed its School of Sacred Music as well. In 2003, he was named the first Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual. He teaches classes in liturgy, ritual, spirituality, theology and synagogue leadership. For almost forty years, he has combined research, teaching, and a passion for the spiritual renewal of North American Judaism.
Rabbi Hoffman has written or edited over forty books, including My People's Prayer Book (Jewish Lights Publishing), a ten-volume edition of the Siddur with modern commentaries, which was named a National Jewish Book Award winner for 2007. His Rethinking Synagogues: A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life (Jewish Lights Publishing) and his Art of Public Prayer (Skylight Paths) are widely used by churches and synagogues as guides to organizational visioning and liturgical renewal. In 2011, he received a second National Jewish Book Award for co-authoring Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (Alban Institute).
His articles, both popular and scholarly, have appeared in eight languages and four continents, and include contributions to such encyclopedias as The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religion, The Oxford Dictionary of Religion, The Encyclopedia of Judaism and The Encyclopedia of Religion in America. He syndicates a regular column which appears, among other places, in The Jewish Week and The Jewish Times; and writes a blog entitled "Life and a Little Liturgy."
For many years, Rabbi Hoffman served as visiting professor of the University of Notre Dame, and has lectured at such places as the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the University of Southern California, and the Yale Divinity School.
In 1990, Dr. Hoffman was selected by the United States Navy as a member of a three-person design team, charged with developing a continuing education course on worship for chaplains. He is a past-president of the North American Academy of Liturgy, the professional and academic organization for liturgists, and in January 2004, received that organization's annual Berakhah Award, for outstanding lifetime contributions to his field.
In 1994, he co-founded "Synagogue 2000," a trans-denominational project to envision the ideal synagogue "as moral and spiritual center" for the 21st century. As Synagogue 3000, it has launched Next Dor, a national initiative to engage the next generation through a relational approach featuring strong communities with transformed synagogues at their center.
He founded and is Academic Coordinator of the Tisch Fellowship Program.
Rabbi Hoffman has written or edited over forty books, including My People's Prayer Book (Jewish Lights Publishing), a ten-volume edition of the Siddur with modern commentaries, which was named a National Jewish Book Award winner for 2007. His Rethinking Synagogues: A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life (Jewish Lights Publishing) and his Art of Public Prayer (Skylight Paths) are widely used by churches and synagogues as guides to organizational visioning and liturgical renewal. In 2011, he received a second National Jewish Book Award for co-authoring Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (Alban Institute).
His articles, both popular and scholarly, have appeared in eight languages and four continents, and include contributions to such encyclopedias as The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religion, The Oxford Dictionary of Religion, The Encyclopedia of Judaism and The Encyclopedia of Religion in America. He syndicates a regular column which appears, among other places, in The Jewish Week and The Jewish Times; and writes a blog entitled "Life and a Little Liturgy."
For many years, Rabbi Hoffman served as visiting professor of the University of Notre Dame, and has lectured at such places as the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the University of Southern California, and the Yale Divinity School.
In 1990, Dr. Hoffman was selected by the United States Navy as a member of a three-person design team, charged with developing a continuing education course on worship for chaplains. He is a past-president of the North American Academy of Liturgy, the professional and academic organization for liturgists, and in January 2004, received that organization's annual Berakhah Award, for outstanding lifetime contributions to his field.
In 1994, he co-founded "Synagogue 2000," a trans-denominational project to envision the ideal synagogue "as moral and spiritual center" for the 21st century. As Synagogue 3000, it has launched Next Dor, a national initiative to engage the next generation through a relational approach featuring strong communities with transformed synagogues at their center.
He founded and is Academic Coordinator of the Tisch Fellowship Program.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 8, 2025
Not a deep scholarly source but it is a helpful breakdown of prayers and blessings around the Sh’ma. Would not recommend reading if you are not familiar with this type of content, also do read the preface/introduction as the book is formatted differently than most books
October 10, 2022
The first in a series that provides a detailed analysis of the Jewish liturgy, this book examines the central Jewish profession of faith: the Sh'ma, along with its attendant blessings and the preceding call to prayer. As with any classic Jewish work, each page of text is surrounded by marginal notes, offering different scholarly interpretations. Some themes and ideas that I found interesting were
1. The liturgy evolved from relatively free jazz-like improvisation on particular themes, to more static poetic works governed by rules, to fixed and seemingly immutable passages in mass-produced books. But some creativity lived on, as with the Sephardic practice of inserting inspiring piyyut poems into the liturgical framework.
2. Prayers are a composite of Biblical and Rabbinic-Talmudic elements, and their public performance is governed by rules: i.e., Halakhah.
3. In modern times, liberal Jewish movements have sought to reinterpret the traditional liturgy. Some have boldly removed troublesome passages, but others have used the English translation and commentary to alter vernacular meanings while keeping most of the original Hebrew text intact.
4. The dense layering of descriptive prayer language may have been used for affect, and it was certainly subject to mystical interpretations. But some modern rationalist and feminist scholars have criticized supernatural language that jars with modern science, as well as hierarchical terms that separate an "Other" deity from we mortal worshipers.
5. The call to prayer (i.e., the Barkhu) underscores how tied up the human and the divine are in one another, similar to the symbolism of the tied knots in the tzitzit. Human beings "conjure" a blessing by blessing the very source of blessing.
6. The Sh'ma is sandwiched within a body of blessings that emphasize the core Jewish beliefs of Creation, Revelation, and Redemption.
7. The Sh'ma itself calls on adherents to individually uphold the One-ness of the Divine, to collectively affirm this belief, and to use tassels (i.e., tzitzit) as a reminder of this truth and the concomitant legal obligations it entails.
1. The liturgy evolved from relatively free jazz-like improvisation on particular themes, to more static poetic works governed by rules, to fixed and seemingly immutable passages in mass-produced books. But some creativity lived on, as with the Sephardic practice of inserting inspiring piyyut poems into the liturgical framework.
2. Prayers are a composite of Biblical and Rabbinic-Talmudic elements, and their public performance is governed by rules: i.e., Halakhah.
3. In modern times, liberal Jewish movements have sought to reinterpret the traditional liturgy. Some have boldly removed troublesome passages, but others have used the English translation and commentary to alter vernacular meanings while keeping most of the original Hebrew text intact.
4. The dense layering of descriptive prayer language may have been used for affect, and it was certainly subject to mystical interpretations. But some modern rationalist and feminist scholars have criticized supernatural language that jars with modern science, as well as hierarchical terms that separate an "Other" deity from we mortal worshipers.
5. The call to prayer (i.e., the Barkhu) underscores how tied up the human and the divine are in one another, similar to the symbolism of the tied knots in the tzitzit. Human beings "conjure" a blessing by blessing the very source of blessing.
6. The Sh'ma is sandwiched within a body of blessings that emphasize the core Jewish beliefs of Creation, Revelation, and Redemption.
7. The Sh'ma itself calls on adherents to individually uphold the One-ness of the Divine, to collectively affirm this belief, and to use tassels (i.e., tzitzit) as a reminder of this truth and the concomitant legal obligations it entails.
February 5, 2013
The first volume of the My People's Prayer Book series provides an introduction to the sh'ma and its attendant blessings. This series is clearly targeted toward a non-Orthodox Jewish audience, but takes an approach that is appreciative of the tradition and halakhah of Jewish prayer.
I found this book to be somewhat less impressive than the fifth volume (Birkhot Hashachar) which I recently reviewed. Perhaps because this is the earliest book in the series, the quality and depth of the commentary is somewhat uneven (but at its finest in the pieces on the Medieval developments of the liturgy by Susan L. Einbinder).
As with the fifth volume, the weak link in the commentary was unfortunately the ostensible feminist voice. My main issue with the fifth volume was that the feminist commentator (the only female commentator in that volume) felt like a bit of tokenism. In this volume, the primary issue is that this commentary just does not hold up with its companion pieces. It eschews the more rigorous scholarship of the other commentators for a string of sophmoric dichotomies (masculine god=heirarchy=chauvinism vs. genderless god=egalitarianism=universalism). These pieces draw heavily on the work of Marcia Falk (so heavily, in fact, one wonders why Ms. Falk wasn't simply engaged to do the work instead). The result is an appeal for a liturgy that celebrates an anodyne, impotent (useless?) god that simply dodges tradition rather than making any attempt to wrestle with it (but perhaps wrestling is simply too much a product of militant patriarchies).
Overall, this book was not nearly as engaging or informative as the volume on the Birkhot Hashachar. One hopes, however, that this is simply a case of the series' editors trying to find their way to what will ultimately be a stronger series overall.
I found this book to be somewhat less impressive than the fifth volume (Birkhot Hashachar) which I recently reviewed. Perhaps because this is the earliest book in the series, the quality and depth of the commentary is somewhat uneven (but at its finest in the pieces on the Medieval developments of the liturgy by Susan L. Einbinder).
As with the fifth volume, the weak link in the commentary was unfortunately the ostensible feminist voice. My main issue with the fifth volume was that the feminist commentator (the only female commentator in that volume) felt like a bit of tokenism. In this volume, the primary issue is that this commentary just does not hold up with its companion pieces. It eschews the more rigorous scholarship of the other commentators for a string of sophmoric dichotomies (masculine god=heirarchy=chauvinism vs. genderless god=egalitarianism=universalism). These pieces draw heavily on the work of Marcia Falk (so heavily, in fact, one wonders why Ms. Falk wasn't simply engaged to do the work instead). The result is an appeal for a liturgy that celebrates an anodyne, impotent (useless?) god that simply dodges tradition rather than making any attempt to wrestle with it (but perhaps wrestling is simply too much a product of militant patriarchies).
Overall, this book was not nearly as engaging or informative as the volume on the Birkhot Hashachar. One hopes, however, that this is simply a case of the series' editors trying to find their way to what will ultimately be a stronger series overall.
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September 23, 2010"My People's Prayer Book, Vol. 1: TraditionalPrayers, Modern Commentaries--The Sh'ma and Its Blessings by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman (1997)"
March 29, 2017
Received this book years ago from friends as an Intro to Judaism type present. I read it at the time (over 15 years ago) and got a lot out of it as far as content.
I revisited this book this year for a graduate level class on liturgy and found it somewhat lacking. While there's a lot of useful information contained herein: history of liturgy (specifically just of the Sh'ma and blessings associated), feminist theology, theological reflections, (super basic) mystical perspectives, the book is overall somewhat elementary. The layout of the different commentators was confusing and broke the flow of what otherwise is a fair reference. Recommended, with some reservations.
I revisited this book this year for a graduate level class on liturgy and found it somewhat lacking. While there's a lot of useful information contained herein: history of liturgy (specifically just of the Sh'ma and blessings associated), feminist theology, theological reflections, (super basic) mystical perspectives, the book is overall somewhat elementary. The layout of the different commentators was confusing and broke the flow of what otherwise is a fair reference. Recommended, with some reservations.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews