The Art of Public Prayer Quotes

“Why Jewish Stars Have Six Points How happy I was that beautiful morning in May when the president of my student pulpit asked me for the story behind the six-pointed Star of David. Having just finished reading a scholarly monograph on that very subject, I launched a copious explanation of when Jews first started using the star, how they used it, and so on. I told her that Muslims had used it too, and called it the Star of Solomon; that Jews began putting it on their tombstones in the High Middle Ages; that it was taken over by mystics in the sixteenth century; and that in modern times, it was chiseled on synagogue walls, primarily because its straight-line design made it easy for stone masons to work with. Churches had crosses; synagogues had stars. The woman who asked the question was impatient with me and quickly shrugged off everything I had to say. “Rabbi,” she retorted, “the Star of David symbolizes the Jewish People. It has six points, you see, so no matter how you stand it up, it will always have two points on which to balance. From such a firm base, it cannot be toppled. Just so, we Jews are firmly entrenched, no matter what history brings us.”
― Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Art of Public Prayer: Not for Clergy Only

“The notion of culminating moments was anticipated many years ago by the psychologist Abraham Maslow, who named such experiences “peak moments.” His interest was not religious worship or even ritual, but human psychology as it applies to religious experience in general. Maslow wrote in the 1960s, when all institutions—including churches and synagogues—were under attack by a younger generation that considered them sterile. He tried to replace organized religion with a sort of humanistic personalism, in that he denied the need for any institutionalized format to bring out the religious impulse within us. Instead, he felt that every human being has the potential for religious experience, since religion is an intrinsic element in our psychological makeup.”
― Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Art of Public Prayer: Not for Clergy Only

“mean no disrespect to any of these people when I say as a simple matter of observable fact that the majority of would-be religious Canadians and Americans are not like them. We are more like the young Muslim student from Morocco described by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Both Hands Full He is on an airplane bound for New York, his first trip away from home, where he will study at an American university. Frightened, as well he might be, by the experience of flying (as well as the thought of what awaits him when he lands), he passes the entire trip with the Koran gripped in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other. Like him, most of us have discovered not scotch but the elixir of modernity, which we do not easily let slip from our grasp, even as we hold equally fast to the texts and forms of our premodern youth. As they say, “You can’t go home again.”
― Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Art of Public Prayer: Not for Clergy Only

“We do some things because we should, whether it feels good or not. Nonetheless, doing what we should ought not necessarily feel bad.”
― Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Art of Public Prayer: Not for Clergy Only