Shalom Aleichem and Shabbat Dinner Texts
I never knew Shalom ALeichem first appeared in 1641: since it was on my tape entitled "A Child's Look at What It Means to be Jewish" and therefore got worked into my consciousness as one of those essential Jewish things. (It was one of my very favorite tapes. My parents ought to have predicted this whole life-path for me then. I think that to some extent they might have.)
ALso interestingly, there seems to be Much, much less thought and writing out there about the texts used for home ritual than for regular liturgy: I'm in the midst of reading the volume of "My People's Prayerbook" on the Shabbat home liturgy, and it's ridiculously repetitive between teh different commentators, while the volume on the Amidah was almost never repetitive at all. But I do like Ellen Frankel better than Marcia Falk as the feminist thought commentator, so it does have its advantages. (I felt like Falk was mostly pushing her own book in her commentary.)
ALso interestingly, there seems to be Much, much less thought and writing out there about the texts used for home ritual than for regular liturgy: I'm in the midst of reading the volume of "My People's Prayerbook" on the Shabbat home liturgy, and it's ridiculously repetitive between teh different commentators, while the volume on the Amidah was almost never repetitive at all. But I do like Ellen Frankel better than Marcia Falk as the feminist thought commentator, so it does have its advantages. (I felt like Falk was mostly pushing her own book in her commentary.)