Rabbi Meir Birnbaum is a scholar of tefillah and mashgiach of a major yeshivah. 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.