תפילת נשים (מהדורה מיוחדת)

A best-seller in Israel, Tefillat Nashim is a book about and containing both old and new prayers for Jewish women. Full of variety in subject, mood and style, the book is attractively set in two colors, distinguishing prayer from commentary, with a stylized decoration around each title. is the texts are expected to be prayed rather than studied. On the whole, these are prayers that once were alive in the supplications of the petitioner. Is it possible that they will live again on the lips of our own generation? The success with which Tefillat nashim has been met since its publication two years ago suggests that this is happening. Aliza Lavie's task has been a difficult one. Throughout Jewish history, a man's strict daily recitation of the statutory prayers took place in the public arena of the synagogue. These were the prayers that were written down and preserved in siddurim over the ages. Women's prayer, on the other hand, was a private matter and on the whole extemporary. Prayers were transmitted orally from mother to daughter-an oral tradition that, with the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, has been all but lost. In addition, male scholars' disinterest in the subject gave rise to the suggestion that women did not pray. It has taken a generation of female scholars to show this to be quite wrong, and to revisit such ancient prayers as do exist in writing and reevaluate them in the context of the ages in which they were written. While many studies have been done on individuals and on specific groups of prayers, Lavie's book, to my knowledge, is the first to have gathered examples of all the known literature relating to women's prayer life and rituals. This impressive collection covers seven different areas of women's lives: daily life; infertility and fertility; motherhood; the three "women's" mitzvot of candle-lighting, separating hallah and family purity; festivals...(from a review by Sybil Sheridan in 2008)