Volume 7 of My People's Prayer Books celebrates Shabbat as a central family ritual, tracing the development of its loosely structured liturgy from early rabbinic prayer books through medieval Jewish practice and the influence of Lurianic mysticism.
Dr. Marc Zvi Brettler is the Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis University. He contributed to all volumes of the My People's Prayer Book: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries series, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, and to My People's Passover Haggadah: Traditional Texts, Modern Commentaries; Who by Fire, Who by Water--Un'taneh Tokef; All These Vows--Kol Nidre; May God Remember: Memory and Memorializing in Judaism--Yizkor; and We Have Sinned: Sin and Confession in Judaism--Ashamnu and Al Chet (all Jewish Lights). He is coeditor of The Jewish Annotated New Testament and The Jewish Study Bible, which won the National Jewish Book Award; co-author of The Bible and the Believer; and author of How to Read the Jewish Bible, among other books and articles. He has also been interviewed on National Public Radio's Fresh Air by Terry Gross.
Dr. David Ellenson is president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Dr. Ellenson was ordained as a rabbi at HUC JIR and received his PhD from Columbia University. His book After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity won the National Jewish Book Award. His most recent book, Pledges of Jewish Allegiance: Conversion, Law, and Policymaking in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Orthodox Responsa, was coauthored with Daniel Gordis.
Ellen Frankel, LCSW, a member of Congregation Shirat Hayam, is a popular author and speaker on spirituality and wellness. Her work has been featured on TV nationally and in The Boston Globe, The Jewish Journal North of Boston and The Jewish Advocate.
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD, has served for more than three decades as professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He is a world-renowned liturgist and holder of the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Chair in Liturgy, Worship and Ritual. His work combines research in Jewish ritual, worship and spirituality with a passion for the spiritual renewal of contemporary Judaism.
He has written and edited many books, including All the World: Universalism, Particularism and the High Holy Days; May God Remember: Memory and Memorializing in Judaism--Yizkor, We Have Sinned: Sin and Confession in Judaism--Ashamnu and Al Chet, Who by Fire, Who by Water--Un'taneh Tokef and All These Vows--Kol Nidre, the first five volumes in the Prayers of Awe series; the My People's Prayer Book: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries series, winner of the National Jewish Book Award; and he is coeditor of My People's Passover Haggadah: Traditional Texts, Modern Commentaries (all Jewish Lights), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.
Rabbi Hoffman is a developer of Synagogue 3000, a transdenominational project designed to envision and implement the ideal synagogue of the spirit for the twenty-first century.
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD, is available to speak on the following topics:
- A Day of Wine and Moses: The Passover Haggadah and the Seder You Have Always Wanted
- Preparing for the High Holy Days: How to Appreciate the Liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
- The Essence of Jewish Prayer: The Prayer Book in Context and Worship in Our Time
- Beyond Ethnicity: The Coming Project for North American Jewish Identity
- Synagogue Change: Transforming Synagogues as Spiritual and Moral Centers for the Twenty-First Century
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Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is one of the most widely read authors by people of all faiths on Jewish spiritual life. He is the best-selling author of such books as
Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary; God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know: Finding Self, Spirituality and Ultimate Meaning; Honey from the Rock: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism;
The Book of Letters: A Mystical Hebrew Alphabet;
The Book of Miracles: A Young Person's Guide to Jewish Spiritual Awareness;
The Book of Words: Talking Spiritual Life, Living Spiritual Talk;
Eyes Remade for Wonder: A Lawrence Kushner Reader;
I'm God, You're Not: Observations on Organized Religion and other Disguises of the Ego;
Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians;
The River of Light: Jewish Mystical Awareness;
The Way Into Jewish Mystical Tradition; and co-author of
Because Nothing Looks Like God;
How Does God Make Things Happen?;
Where Is God?;
What Does God Look Like?; and
In God's Hands. He is the Emanu-El Scholar at San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El and an adjunct professor of Jewish mysticism and spirituality at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is available to speak on the following topics: - Jewish Mystical Imagination
- Rymanover's Silent Aleph: What Really Happened on Sinai
- Zohar on Romance and Revelation
- What Makes Kabbalah Kabbalah
- Sacred Stories of the Ordinary: When God Makes a Surprise Appearance in Everyday Life
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