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Have you ever wanted to attend a traditional Jewish service but were intimidated because you were afraid you couldn't follow what was going on? Or have you ever felt totally lost at a service with no one to turn to for help?

Then "The Synagogue Survival Kit" may be for you.

The new book by Jordan Lee Wagner takes the reader step by step through the traditional Kabbalat Shabbat and Shabbat morning services.

Don't understand why you stand up here or sit down there? Why certain prayers are said aloud and others silently? This book explains it all.

"The book starts with the presumption that there's absolutely nothing the reader knows about the service," says Wagner, a member of Congregation Agudas Achim Anshei Sfard (The Adams Street Shul) in Newton, Mass., where he lives. "It's written for the non-Jew who wants to attend a service or an adult Jew who is rediscovering his heritage after giving it up after his bar mitzvah."

The book first took seed about seven years ago, when a non-Jewish friend who wanted to explore Judaism asked Wagner to explain the service. The friend lived on the West Coast. "I couldn't go [to the service] and explain as it went along, so I decided to write everything out in a letter," Wagner says.

The letter grew to 60 pages — including a transliteration into English characters of the entire Hebrew prayerbook — and was augmented by a cassette tape with all the melodies used in the service. The friend "used it and said it helped a lot," Wagner says."

Not wanting to "spend my whole life at the copy center," Wagner decided to turn the letter into a full-fledged book. While many first-time authors have trouble getting noticed, Wagner was immediately signed by the first publisher he contacted, Jason Aronson Inc. Then came the hardest part, turning the informal letter into a real book manuscript. "That took four years," Wagner says ruefully.

The result is a remarkably thorough book. It starts well before the service begins, with proper dress and the layout of the synagogue. It then goes into minute detail of each part of the liturgy, discussing the history, words, meaning and posture (standing, sitting or bowing) of each prayer. The book points out the differences in Conservative, Reform and Orthodox practices.

Appendices tell how to put on tefillin, list the order of prayers in each service and — wonder of wonders — list the page numbers for various services in the nine most common prayerbooks.

The book works because Wagner knows what questions newcomers to synagogues are likely to ask. Raised in a "semi-observant" household — "we'd go to services most Friday nights, then drive to Little League baseball Saturday morning" — he was "out of there" once he celebrated his bar mitzvah.

Ten years ago, at the age of 30, he found his way back to synagogue, struggling to relearn "what I had ignored or rejected as a teen.

"I would have loved to have had [this book] 10 years ago."

Wagner based the book on his own experiences as an observant congregant and as a former administrator at the Boston Synagogue and Temple Reyim in Newton.

The one flaw with the book is that its very completeness may make it somewhat intimidating. Some readers may get bogged down in the book's excessive detail and not benefit from its advice.

"That can be a problem," Wagner admits, "but I tried to set each chapter up so that the first part is a summary and the latter part has the details. The first part gives [a reader] enough information to go to the service and get through it. Then, once he has some familiarity with the service, he can use the latter part [of each chapter] to follow the service better."

The "Synagogue Survival Kit" is a main selection of the Jewish Book Club. Wagner is currently at work on his second Jewish educational piece, tentatively entitled "The Eruv Book." Written in the same style as "Survival Kit," it will be a beginner's guide to Shabbat practices.