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JTA
EST 1917

Prayer

The prayer known as the Shema, the six-word proclamation of God‘s singularity, might be the most important prayer in Judaism. The version that appears in prayer books today includes this crucial sentence, followed by excerpts from three different parts of the Torah: A paragraph about loving God, a paragraph about reward and punishment, and a paragraph about tzitzit. Long […]

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One of the most famous Shabbat prayers–Nishmat Kol Chai (literally, “the soul of all that lives”)–might have actually been written by an apostle of Jesus. The oldest extant Ashkenazic siddur, the Mahzor Vitry, attributes Nishmat to “Simon Peter, the error of Rome,” who “established this prayer…when he was on the rock.” Puzzling? In his new book Why We Pray What We […]

In school, many of us were reprimanded: “Sit still and pay attention!” In Judaism, however, the opposite concept exists. Shuckeling, the Yiddish term for swaying during prayer and Torah study, has been a Jewish tradition for centuries. Some people sway back and forth. Others twist from side to side. According to the Zohar, the seminal kabbalistic work, a swaying body is […]

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