I am SO EXCITED to announce that ACCEPT OUR PRAYERS: THE AMIDAH PROJECT, the new book from the Bayit Liturgical Artists, co-published by Bayit and Ben Yehuda Press, is now available for preorder -- don't miss Ben Yehuda's "back to shul" sale where it's available for $19.96 until the pub date of September 8! https://www.benyehudapress.com/books/accept-our-prayers/ Also available on Amazon
Featuring gorgeous work from members of our Liturgical Arts Working Group: Trisha Arlin, R. Rachel Barenblat, Mike Cockrill, Elisheva Sherrill Kratenstein Cropper, Joanne Fink, R. Sonja Keren Pilz, Emily Rogal, Steve Silbert and R. David Zaslow.
“The Amidah prayer is the ancient heart of Jewish communal prayer. But liturgy is merely a recipe. Prayer requires the addition of intention and heart.
In Accept Our Prayers, the Bayit collective—writers and artists, poets and liturgists, rabbis and laypeople—responds to each blessing of the Shabbat Amidah through contemporary prayers, poems, meditations, commentary, and visual art. Each blessing’s creative responses are preceded by its complete text in Hebrew, English translation, and transliteration. Together, these works invite us to encounter familiar liturgy anew and to bring the words of our mouths into deeper conversation with the meditations of our hearts.
Read this book—and, more importantly, pray with it—to enliven your experience of Jewish prayer, whether in community or alone. You could choose from its selections and assemble them into your own Amidah, or take a deeper dive into a single chapter and let it inform how you encounter that blessing—in synagogue, on a hike, at home, wherever and however you may be. Prayer leaders can use Accept Our Prayersboth to deepen their own practice and to inspire the communities they serve.
This is a fresh, wise and evocative look at prayer from some of the great Jewish prayer-writers of our time. The poems feel intimate, new and surprising, sometimes reverent, sometimes playful and skeptical. The translations feel clear and authentic. A siddur for contemporary seekers with open hearts and inquiring minds. Bring it to shul with you or use it at home to get yourself into sacred space. These prayers are, as poet Joanne Fink writes, “rain that refills the empty cup of the heart.”
—Rabbi Jill Hammer, translator of Siddur haKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook and The Romemu Siddur.
“Before our prayers were fixed, they were the spontaneous expressions of our ancestors who were mystics, poets and shamans. Accept Our Prayers reclaims the ancient freedom to express the truth of this moment, giving us all the bold permission to be both real and creative in our prayer. This is a book that inspires us to step into a prayer-life that is authentic, imaginative, alive and relevant to the state of our souls and the needs of our world.”
—Rabbi Shefa Gold, author of Torah Journeys
