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LITURGY AND SPIRITUALITY
Again, I will mention one of my own books as a general, popular-level introduction written for Christians but perhaps of interest also to Jews. The Jewish Roots of Christian Liturgy (Mahwah: Paulist, 1990) gathers 15 articles from the pages of the Roman journal, SIDIC, recommended above. Written by both Jews and Christians, the essays delve into the Jewish origins of Christian liturgy, Jewish and Christian liturgies with relation to life cycle events such as marriage and death, Sabbath and Sunday, and "Liturgical Tensions and Renewal." Appended to the book is a document of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy, God's Mercy Endures Forever: Guidelines on the Presentation of Jews and Judaism in Catholic Preaching (NCCB, 1988). This official statement illustrates how the bishops would like their priests and deacons to proclaim the Gospel from the pulpit.

Carmine DiSante's Jewish Prayer: The Origins of Christian Liturgy (Mahwah: Paulist, 1991) is more exhaustive and scholarly in style. It seeks to explain to Christian readers the sources and structure of Jewish liturgy, private and communal phases of Jewish prayer, and the major and minor Jewish "feasts." Even more scholarly is the collection of essays edited by Tamara Eskenazi, Daniel Harrington, and William Shea, The Sabbath in Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York: Crossroad, 1991). This includes 21 articles by leading Jewish and Christian biblical and liturgical scholars such as Robert Goldenberg, Samuele Bacchiocchi, John Primus, Walter Wurzburger, Jacques Doukhan, John Baldovin, and Lawrence Hoffman, covering rabbinic and New Testament, historical, theological, liturgical, legal and ecumenical perspectives. A "must" for researchers and libraries, but not casual readers.

College of Idaho professor Michael Lodahl's Shechinah/Spirit: Divine Presence in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Mahwah, NJ:: Paulist/Stimulus, 1992) is an excursus in process theology. It attempts to deal with the "Spirit of God" concept in both Judaism and Christianity in terms of three theological "problems": religious exclusivism (monotheism, trinitarianism); evil (the Zohar, Isaac Luria, the Holocaust); and eschatology (creation, covenant, history). The result is worthwhile for the dialogue but hard going for the non-professional.

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