Because of the July 4 holiday weekend, we present an encore of the May 22, 2022 episode of the Seekers of Meaning TV Show and Podcast.
On this program, Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, Ph.D., the Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor Emeritus of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, discusses new ways of looking at worship ritual and liturgy.
Seekers of Meaning TV Show and Podcast Now Available on Roku Streaming Service
You can add the Jewish Sacred Aging TV channel to your Roku streaming subscription by visiting this page: https://channelstore.roku.com/details/600964/jewish-sacred-aging.
You can also watch this week’s show in the player below. The shows now include closed-captioning for the deaf or people with a hearing loss. Click the “CC” button on the video player to activate closed-captions.
Listen to the Audio Podcast
You can listen to the audio podcast version in the player below, or subscribe to the podcast in one of the popular platforms by clicking one of the buttons below the player.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Apple Podcasts
YouTube
Spotify
Podchaser
Amazon MusicAbout the Guest
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman was ordained as a rabbi in 1969, received his Ph.D. in 1973, and taught from then until 2019 at HUC-JIR/New York. From 1984 to 1987, he also directed the School of Sacred Music. In 2003, he was named the first Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual. He taught classes in liturgy, ritual, spirituality, theology and synagogue leadership. For almost forty years, he has combined research, teaching, and a passion for the spiritual renewal of North American Judaism.
Rabbi Hoffman has written or edited more than 40 books, including My People’s Prayer Book (Jewish Lights Publishing), a ten-volume edition of the Siddur with modern commentaries, which was named a National Jewish Book Award winner for 2007. His Rethinking Synagogues: A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life (Jewish Lights Publishing) and his Art of Public Prayer (Skylight Paths) are widely used by churches and synagogues as guides to organizational visioning and liturgical renewal. In 2011, he received a second National Jewish Book Award for co-authoring Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (Alban Institute).
His articles, both popular and scholarly, have appeared in eight languages and four continents, and include contributions to such encyclopedias as The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religion, The Oxford Dictionary of Religion, The Encyclopedia of Judaism and The Encyclopedia of Religion in America. He syndicates a regular column which appears, among other places, in The Jewish Week and The Jewish Times; and writes a blog entitled “Life and a Little Liturgy.”
For many years, Rabbi Hoffman served as visiting professor of the University of Notre Dame, and has lectured at such places as the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the University of Southern California, and the Yale Divinity School.
In 1990, Dr. Hoffman was selected by the United States Navy as a member of a three-person design team, charged with developing a continuing education course on worship for chaplains. He is a past-president of the North American Academy of Liturgy, the professional and academic organization for liturgists, and in January 2004, received that organization’s annual Berakhah Award, for outstanding lifetime contributions to his field.
In 1994, he co-founded “Synagogue 2000,” a trans-denominational project to envision the ideal synagogue “as moral and spiritual center” for the 21st century. As Synagogue 3000, it has launched Next Dor, a national initiative to engage the next generation through a relational approach featuring strong communities with transformed synagogues at their center.
He founded and is Academic Coordinator of the Tisch Fellowship Program.
This is a very timely and helpful discussion. It is one that many of my fellow congregants & I have felt disappointment and sorry over. So much that was beautiful and inspirational in our services has disappeared. Learning more about how and why this has been happening is helpful to understand, but not necessarily to accept.