Encountering God

When it comes to God, it is not belief that matters but experience. Where, in human life, does Judaism promise the possibility of experiencing God? The Thirteen Attributes (Adonai, Adonai, el rachum v'chanun), a small but critical prayer with which Yom Kippur begins and ends, highlights the Jewish insistence that the God of Jewish tradition is experienced through love. Of all prayers, this one especially tackles head-on the way we encounter God and how that encounter informs the purpose behind human life itself. Through a series of lively introductions and commentaries, almost forty contributors—men and women, scholars and rabbis, artists and thinkers from all Jewish denominations and from around the world—explain how finite human beings can know an infinite God. They explore the history and significance of the attributes that the Hebrew Bible ascribes to God—and how Jewish tradition refines and recasts them as the best way also to understand human nature and our search for meaning. Prayers of Awe: A multi-volume series designed to explore the High Holy Day liturgy and enrich the praying experience for everyone—whether experienced worshipers or guests who encounter Jewish prayer for the very first time Contributors: Rabbi Jonathan Blake Dr. Annette M. Boeckler Dr. Marc Zvi Brettler Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson Rabbi Lawrence A. Englander, CM, DHL, DD Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand Rabbi Edwin Goldberg, DHL Rabbi Andrew Goldstein, PhD Rabbi Aaron Goldstein Dr. Joel M. Hoffman Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD Rabbi Walter Homolka, PhD, DHL Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, DHL Dr. Sharon Koren Rabbi Asher Lopatin Catherine Madsen Rabbi Jonathan Magonet, PhD Rabbi Dalia Marx, PhD Ruth W. Messinger Rabbi Charles H. Middleburgh, PhD Rabbi Jay Henry Moses Rabbi Julia Neuberger Rabbi Sonja Keren Pilz, PhD Rabbi Nicole Roberts Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, DMin Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso, DMin Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, DMin Rabbi David A. Teutsch, PhD Rabbi Andrea L. Weiss, PhD Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, DD Rabbi Daniel G. Zemel Dr. Wendy Zierler

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. His many books, written and edited, include seven volumes in the Prayers of Awe series: Who by Fire, Who by Water—Un'taneh Tokef; All These Vows—Kol Nidre; We Have Sinned: Sin and Confession in Judaism—Ashamnu and Al Chet; May God Remember: Memory and Memorializing in Judaism—Yizkor; All the World: Universalism, Particularism and the High Holy Days; Naming God: Avinu Malkeinu—Our Father, Our King; and Encountering God: El Rachum V'chanun—God Merciful and Gracious. Hoffman also edited the ten-volume series My People's Prayer Book: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries, winner of the National Jewish Book Award; and coedited My People's Passover Haggadah: Traditional Texts, Modern Commentaries, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award (all Jewish Lights). Rabbi Hoffman cofounded and developed Synagogue 2/3000, a transdenominational project to envision and implement the ideal synagogue of the spirit for the twenty-first century. In that capacity, he wrote Rethinking Synagogues: A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life (Jewish Lights).