Through the act of blessing, we awaken our appreciation of the world's abiding gifts. In The Book of Blessings, Marcia Falk re-creates Jewish prayer by offering new blessings, poems and meditations that focus on the sacred potential of each moment. Evoking the diversity of human experience, The Book of Blessings provides a collage of poetic form that invites us to celebrate "the dynamic, alive and unifying wholeness within creation." Steeped in dialogue within rabbinical tradition, it calls into question the tradition's patriarchal assumptions and challenges hierarchical structures of power. A groundbreaking work in the literature of spirituality, The Book of Blessings offers, for the first time, a complete new liturgy, in Hebrew as well as English, for use in both house and the community on weekdays, Sabbaths and the festival of the New Moon. The liturgy is enhanced by a Commentary that illuminates its meanings for scholars and general readers alike. The Book of Blessings is for those who are in the habit of praying and for those who are not. It is for those dissatisfied with the traditional liturgy and for those who wish to supplement it. The Book of Blessings is a part of an ongoing conversation that seeks to keep Judaism vital and responsive to our spiritual needs and moral concerns. Poet and translator Marcia Falk received a B.A. in philosophy from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Stanford. She was a Fulbright Scholar and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she studied Bible and Hebrew literature. A university professor for many years, she now lectures widely. Her other books include The Song of Songs: A New Translation and Interpretation and With Teeth in the Earth: Selected Poems of Malka Heifetz Tussman. She is currently at work on further volumes of blessings for the major and minor festivals, the High Holidays, the Passover Haggadah and the ordinary and extraordinary events of the life cycle. - from Amzon