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Body of Prayer
The book is composed of three parts, written by David Shapiro, Jacques Derrida and Michal Govrin. The three are writing as Secular-Religious or Religious-Secular people about the nature and Praxis of 'praying'. The book is concerned primarily with mapping the central issues surrounding the act of praying and offers, instead of 'relieving' those issues, to embrace these issues as a vital part of the praying experience itself. The book also offers a more existential notion of prayer, as something that is embedded in the act of living, deeply rooted in our 'bodies' and in the female act of 'childbirth'.

Derrida presents the notion of the book by elaborating on a few inherent paradoxes and contradictions in the notion of prayer. He then continues to show that those paradoxes are an inherent part of the prayer itself, such as – in praying, the praying man is to assume that his prays are 'answered' by God; but the possibility of God 'refusing' or 'ignoring' the prayer is inherent to the prayer itself; otherwise there wouldn't be a prayer, but an everyday-act of which the person is sure of its result. Derrida than equates the notion of a 'refusing' and 'ignoring' God to the belief that there is no God. Thus, Derrida considers the atheist's position as an inherent part of praying.

Furthermore, Derrida elaborates on earlier notions of his, which are also quoted in the book, from The Gift of Death. In his explication of Kierkegaard, Derrida also mentions another important aspect of prayer – the aspect of sacrifice. To Derrida, every prayer entails an act of sacrifice, a sacrifice of the self, a sacrifice of the public sphere and ultimately a sacrifice of everything human.

In the book, Govrin secures an alternative approach to the sacrificial aspect of prayer. Drawing from her own mother experience as a holocaust survivor, Govrin offers a prayer that is inherent in the anticipation of the body. Govrin asks whether the act of childbirth itself is not some sort of a prayer, a prayer that the child will live in a secure world, a prayer for the goodness of the future.

Instead of sacrifice, Govrin perceives the act of life itself a prayer and anticipation for a better world. In The Gift of Death Derrida asks whether the presence of a woman in the Akkedah could have softened the verdict. Govrin's account seems to answer this call and elaborate on the 'female alternative' for notion of prayer. In the book, Govrin connects the acts of anticipation inherent in the phenomenon of the body with the fundamental essence of praying. After the holocaust, her mother was no-longer a religious person but, - Govrin asserts - in the act of giving-birth itself, and the act of a crying baby calling out for his mother, is rich with religious significance.

The Name
The Name is a novel written by Michal Govrin. The plot of the book traces a young woman named Amalia, a daughter to holocaust survivor and named after his first wife who was murdered in the holocaust. Amalia is expected in a way to 'replace' the first wife, an expectation that puts tremendous pressure on her and causes her to run away and 'sink' into a world of sex and drugs.

After Amalia's initial attempt to escape her name and identity, Amalia nonetheless explores the identity of the woman she was named after. Following her name's path, Amalia Hozeret BeTshuva (becomes religious). After following a conventional path for the newly-religious which includes, amongst the rest, engagement to a boy named Yesha'aya, Amalia cancels the engagement and starts a romance with God.

Through introspection, Amalia discovers a rich religious world rooted amongst the rest in the tradition of Jewish mysticism called Kabbalah. Her relationship with God intensifies and eventually she decides to sacrifice herself at the end of Sphirat-HaOmer (the counting of days before Shavuoth). In the end the sacrificial act is avoided by a change in Amalia's decision, followed by the early arrival of a stranger that came looking for her.

The Name is a novel rich with human and religious significance, drawing heavily both from Western literature and the texts of the Jewish tradition, both mythical and non-mystical. The last editions also include an essay about the book by the renounced Kabbalah scholar Yehuda Leibes, which gives a partial account on the book's sources.

The book was awarded the Koret Jewish Book award and the Kugel award and was translated from Hebrew to English and Russian. The book received positive reviews at its publication.