God's Favorite Prayers 猶太人的六種禱告

[Sorry: worth buying, but the free promotion period is over]
God's Favorite Prayers (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005D5CD02)

If you are not Jewish and English is not your native language, this will not be an easy book to read. Professor Zahavy writes in an easy, conversational style, but in the meandering introduction he throws out a whole series of terms relating to Jewish prayer. A patient reader who is willing to spend the time to digest this information will learn a great deal about what makes Jewish prayer unique and very different from Christian prayers (the author does mention Jesus and Paul in passing).

The author starts out by imagining a synagogue visitor who does not know a word of Hebrew. The visitor...

would see Jews stand and sit, and then sit again. ... They would open cabinet doors and close doors, march around, carry and touch objects, read from a scroll, kiss the fringes of their garments and cover their eyes and, throughout all that, they would chant, sing, be silent and chant again.

You would see them start to pray in the morning service on page one and then, eighty-eight pages later, you would hear the leader call out, "Bless!" meaning, let us now start to pray. Those previous words, it turns out, were just preliminary. During all this action and recitation, those Jews who were reciting the prayers would move around, shake and shiver, rock and roll.

The author explains Jewish prayer services as a sort of "rock festival"

Come to the synagogue to witness a rock festival with six bands performing. Each presentation has its own sound, lyrics and style.

In six separate chapters, the author analyzes the six types of Jewish prayers in terms of personalities: the performer, the mystic, the scribe, the priest, the meditator and the celebrity (表演者，神秘人物，書記官，祭祀，修道者和名人)