Books for readers and communities
Jewish feminist books for the questions that stay with us.
Laurie S. Sherman writes books of prayer, ritual, monologue, and moral inquiry for readers, performers, and Jewish communities. They begin where inherited language grows thin and a person or community needs words that can keep faith with lived experience.
A living conversation
Read toward a fuller record.
A Jewish feminist book is not one thing. It may be a prayerbook that lets a worshipper hear familiar liturgy differently. It may be a ritual text that gives a group enough form to gather without forcing agreement. It may be a monologue that returns a woman to the centre of a story where she has been treated as an aside. It may be a work of moral inquiry that refuses the easy relief of blame.
The books gathered here move among those forms. They take Jewish inheritance seriously, including its beauty, its gaps, and the people whose lives have too often been made secondary to the record. Their feminism is not a decorative lens laid over settled answers. It is an insistence that women's voices, bodies, questions, anger, devotion, humour, grief, and authority belong in the work of reading and making meaning.
This collection is for the reader looking for company in private, and for the person who has been asked to convene others. A facilitator may need a way to shape a circle. An educator may be looking for material that lets a class linger with a difficult voice. A performer may want language that does not flatten a woman into symbol. A Jewish community may be preparing a study session, a reading, a ritual, or a season of conversation. The right book does not do that work in anyone's place. It helps a room become more honest about the work it has come to do.
Choosing with care
Let the purpose lead.
Before choosing a book for a group, it helps to name the kind of attention the gathering requires. A book club may want a story or argument that makes room for disagreement without turning the evening into a contest. A class may need a passage that opens study of a biblical woman, a prayer, or a pattern of exclusion. A reading may need several voices that can stand beside one another without being made to speak in unison. A ritual leader may need language that makes participation possible while leaving every person their own dignity and choice.
Laurie's books offer different entries because no two rooms begin at the same place. Return to Presence brings feminist language into Shabbat prayer and private reflection. The Miriam Syndrome names the cost when organisations depend on women's labour, then refuse their authority. Scapegoat stays with the pressure to sacrifice someone when fear rises. The HINENI trilogy moves from a framework for gathering, to many women's voices, to a communal ritual form. Kol Isha and In Sarah's Tent are made to be heard as well as read.
This is not a prescribed course or a promise that a book can settle a community's hard questions. It is a collection of companions for the work already at hand. Read the descriptions closely, choose a book whose form fits the room, and allow enough time for a response that may be thoughtful, unfinished, or quietly changed by what it has encountered.
Choose your way in
Books for prayer, ritual, voice, and refusal.
Each title has its own invitation. Follow the one that meets the question in front of you, then explore the book page for a fuller description and available editions.
For the room you have
A book can be an opening, not an answer.
For a personal practice
Begin with the book you can return to in the ordinary rhythm of a week. Return to Presence and She Who Dwells in Spirit offer prayerful language for Shabbat, gratitude, mourning, courage, and the quiet work of becoming present.
For study and discussion
Choose a text that gives people something particular to encounter. The Miriam Syndrome and Scapegoat bring systems, fear, memory, and responsibility into view without pretending those questions have tidy endings.
For readers and performers
Let the text stay close to the speaker. HINENI: Voices, Kol Isha, and HINENI: In Sarah's Tent offer distinct voices for rehearsal, reading, and ritual performance, with room for silence as well as speech.
For a community gathering
Start with the purpose of the gathering rather than a desire to produce a feeling on command. HINENI: Ritual can help a host ask what the room can hold, what participation is truly being invited, and how a gathering might close with care.
Three volumes, one body of work
The HINENI trilogy.
HINENI: Ritual, HINENI: Voices, and HINENI: In Sarah's Tent belong together as the HINENI trilogy. One volume attends to the shape of a ritual, one brings Jewish women into distinct speech, and one joins prayer, story, and communal action in a sacred reader's script.
Read separately, each offers a complete way into the work. Read together, the trilogy gives readers, performers, and Jewish communities a sequence: prepare the ground, meet the voices, and make a room where attention can become shared practice.
Explore the HINENI trilogy →Before you choose
Questions readers often bring.
- Where should I begin?
- Begin with the question you are carrying. For a personal or shared Shabbat practice, start with Return to Presence. For a group preparing a gathering, HINENI: Ritual offers a thoughtful framework. For study, rehearsal, or a public reading, HINENI: Voices gives a group many distinct voices to encounter.
- Are these books only for Jewish communities?
- The work is rooted in Jewish text, ritual, history, and feminist practice. Readers and performers from many backgrounds may find it meaningful, while Jewish communities will recognise the particular questions, forms, and inheritances with which the books are in conversation.
- Can we use a book for a group programme?
- Yes. The books can support reading groups, adult learning, rehearsals, library programmes, ritual gatherings, and performances. A group should choose the scale and material that suits its own people, leadership, and purpose.
- Can Laurie join our reading or gathering?
- Laurie is available for readings, ritual performances, presentations, and community conversations. Contact her with the shape of your event, the people you hope to gather, and the question you want the room to hold.
Make a beginning
Find the book
for your room.
Explore the collection, or contact Laurie about a reading, ritual performance, presentation, or community gathering. The right beginning is one made with care for the people who will be there.
Contact Laurie