New Page 1
Rabbi Meir Birnbaum is a
scholar of tefillah and mashgiach of a major yeshiva. In this splendidly useful
phrase-by-phrase treatment, he combines his scholarship and experience to shed
light on the prayers that matter enormously to most people: the Shemoneh Esrai
prayers of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Rabbi Birnbaum combs the major commentators and adds his
own knowledge and sensitivity to produce a volume that belongs alongside every
machzor. It is slim, but packed with information, inspiration, background - and
the ideas and intent that every serious Jew wants to pour into his Yamim
Noraim prayers.
It is rare indeed to find an English-language volume that
offers such a combination of clarity and depth, authoritatively presented in a
down to earth manner. Rabbi Birnbaum is both a thinker and a teacher, and both
those qualities are beautifully displayed in this work. Not only does he offer
invaluable ideas, he is practiced in presenting them. There is nothing
patronizing or condescending in this book; it reads like a good friend baring
his own soul, and in the process we are swept along to join him in present our
most heartfelt entreaties to Our Father Our King, on the days when He longs for
us to approach Him.