Title search results
Showing 1121 - 1140 of 2001 items
Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel
By Susan Martha Kahn. 2000
There are more fertility clinics per capita in Israel than in any other country in the world and Israel has…
the world's highest per capita rate of in-vitro fertilization procedures. Fertility treatments are fully subsidized by Israeli national health insurance and are available to all Israelis, regardless of religion or marital status. These phenomena are not the result of unusually high rates of infertility in Israel but reflect the centrality of reproduction in Judaism and Jewish culture.In this ethnographic study of the new reproductive technologies in Israel, Susan Martha Kahn explores the cultural meanings and contemporary rabbinic responses to artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, egg donation, and surrogacy. Kahn draws on fieldwork with unmarried Israeli women who are using state-subsidized artificial insemination to get pregnant and on participant-observation in Israeli fertility clinics. Through close readings of traditional Jewish texts and careful analysis of Israeli public discourse, she explains how the Israeli embrace of new reproductive technologies has made Jewish beliefs about kinship startlingly literal. Kahn also reveals how a wide range of contemporary Israelis are using new reproductive technologies to realize their reproductive futures, from ultraorthodox infertile married couples to secular unmarried women.As the first scholarly account of assisted conception in Israel, this multisited ethnography will contribute to current anthropological debates on kinship studies. It will also interest those involved with Jewish studies.Conflicting Attitudes to Conversion in Judaism, Past and Present
By Isaac Sassoon. 2018
Evidence suggests that conversion originated during the Babylonian Exile. Around the same time, biological genealogy was gaining popularity, especially among…
priests whose legitimacy was becoming increasingly defined by 'pure' pedigree. When the biological, or ethnic, criterion is extended to the definition of Jewishness, as it seems to have been by Ezra, the possibility of conversion is all but precluded. The Rabbis did not reject the primacy of genealogy, yet were also heirs to a strong pro-conversion tradition. In this book, Isaac Sassoon confronts the tensions and paradoxes apparent in rabbinic discussions of conversion, and argues that they resulted from irresolution between the two conflicting traditions. He also contends that attitudes to conversion can impact not only one's conception of Judaism but also on one's faith, as seems to be demonstrated by authors cited in the book whose espousal of a narrowly ethnic view of Judaism allows for a nepotistic theology.Sacred Paths of the West
By Theodore M Ludwig. 2006
This text combines study of the dynamic historical development of each religious tradition with a comparative thematic structure. Students are…
encouraged to discover and explore the nature of religious experience by comparing basic themes and issues common to all religions, finding connections with their own personal experiences. By sensitively introducing descriptive material within a comparative thematic structure, this text helps students to understand how each religion provides, for its adherents, patterns and meanings that make up a full way of life.As German scholars, poets, and theologians searched for the origins of the ancient Israelites, Ofri Ilany believes they created a…
model for nationalism that drew legitimacy from the biblical idea of the Chosen People. In this broad exploration of eighteenth-century Hebraism, Ilany tells the story of the surprising role that this model played in discussions of ethnicity, literature, culture, and nationhood among the German-speaking intellectual elite. He reveals the novel portrait they sketched of ancient Israel and how they tried to imitate the Hebrews while forging their own national consciousness. This sophisticated and lucid argument sheds new light on the myths, concepts, and political tools that formed the basis of modern German culture.Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination #2)
By Ranen Omer-Sherman. 2015
In Imagining the Kibbutz, Ranen Omer-Sherman explores the literary and cinematic representations of the socialist experiment that became history’s most…
successfully sustained communal enterprise. Inspired in part by the kibbutz movement’s recent commemoration of its centennial, this study responds to a significant gap in scholarship. Numerous sociological and economic studies have appeared, but no book-length study has ever addressed the tremendous range of critically imaginative portrayals of the kibbutz. This diachronic study addresses novels, short fiction, memoirs, and cinematic portrayals of the kibbutz by both kibbutz “insiders” (including those born and raised there, as well as those who joined the kibbutz as immigrants or migrants from the city) and “outsiders.” For these artists, the kibbutz is a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, between individual aspiration and ideological rigor, between self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Portraying kibbutz life honestly demands retaining at least two oppositional things in mind at once—the absolute necessity of euphoric dreaming and the mellowing inevitability of disillusionment. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.LIFE The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Race to Solve an Ancient Mystery
By The Editors of LIFE. 2017
In the late 1940s, perhaps the greatest archeological find of modern times occurred when Bedouin shepherds unearthed mysterious scrolls in…
a cave near the Dead Sea, just south of Jerusalem. These documents turned out to be manuscripts-some of them biblical-reflecting the beliefs of a vanished Jewish sect that fled Jerusalem during the time of Christ. But what was the connection between the documents and the ruins of an abandoned nearby settlement known as Qumran? Like some holy, historical cross between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Da Vinci Code, LIFE's book follows the race to unearth-and decode-the many other manuscripts hidden in the desert caves.The Socialism of Fools?
By William I. Brustein. 2015
Anti-Semitism, as it has existed historically in Europe, is generally thought of as having been a phenomenon of the political…
right. To the extent that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century leftist movements have been found to manifest anti-Semitism, their involvement has often been suggested to be a mere fleeting and insignificant phenomenon. As such, this study seeks to examine more fully the role that the historic European left has played in developing and espousing anti-Semitic views. The authors draw upon a range of primary and secondary sources, including the analysis of left- and right-wing newspaper reportage, to trace the relationship between the political left and anti-Semitism in France, Germany, and Great Britain from the French Revolution to World War II, ultimately concluding that the relationship between the left and anti-Semitism has been much more profound than previously believed.The Early Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings
By Dr Everett Fox. 2014
The story of ancient Israel, from the arrival in Canaan to the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah and the…
Babylonian exile some six centuries later, here is the highly anticipated second volume in Everett Fox's landmark translation of the Hebrew Bible. The personalities who appear in the pages of The Early Prophets, and the political and moral dilemmas their stories illuminate, are part of the living consciousness of the Western world. From Joshua and the tumbling walls of Jericho to Samson and Delilah, the prophet Samuel and the tragic King Saul, David and Goliath, Bathsheba and Absalom, King Solomon's temple, Elijah and the chariot of fire, Ahab and Jezebel--the stories of these men and women are deeply etched into Western culture because they beautifully encapsulate the human experience. The four books that comprise The Early Prophets look at tribal rivalries, dramatic changes in leadership, and the intrusions of neighboring empires through the prism of the divine-human relationship. Over the centuries, the faithful have read these narratives as demonstrations of the perils of disobeying God's will, and time and again Jews in exile found that the stories spoke to their own situations of cultural assimilation, destruction, and the reformulation of identity. They have had an equally indelible impact on generations of Christians, who have seen in many of the narratives foreshadowings of the life and death of Jesus, as well as models for their own lives and the careers of their leaders. But beyond its importance as a foundational religious document, The Early Prophets is a great work of literature, a powerful and distinctive narrative of the past that seeks meaning in the midst of national catastrophe. Accompanied by illuminating commentary, notes, and maps, Everett Fox's masterly translation of the Hebrew original re-creates the echoes, allusions, alliterations, and wordplays that rhetorically underscore its meaning and are intrinsic to a timeless text meant to be both studied and read aloud.From the Hardcover edition.When Memory Comes
By Claire Messud, Helen R. Lane, Saul Friedländer. 1979
A classic of Holocaust literature, the eloquent, acclaimed memoir of childhood by a Pulitzer-winning historian, now reissued with a new…
introduction by Claire Messud Four months before Hitler came to power, Saul Friedländer was born in Prague to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1939, seven-year-old Saul and his family were forced to flee to France, where they lived through the German Occupation, until his parents' ill-fated attempt to flee to Switzerland. They were able to hide their son in a Roman Catholic seminary before being sent to Auschwitz where they were killed. After an imposed religious conversion, young Saul began training for priesthood. The birth of Israel prompted his discovery of his Jewish past and his true identity. Friedländer brings his story movingly to life, shifting between his Israeli present and his European past with grace and restraint. His keen eye spares nothing, not even himself, as he explores the ways in which the loss of his parents, his conversion to Catholicism, and his deep-seated Jewish roots combined to shape him into the man he is today. Friedländer's retrospective view of his journey of grief and self-discovery provides readers with a rare experience: a memoir of feeling with intellectual backbone, in equal measure tender and insightful.The Scandal of Kabbalah
By Yaacob Dweck. 2011
The Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern…
Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as Yaacob Dweck argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. The Scandal of Kabbalah examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack--a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past--and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. Dweck argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.Salviamo gli ebrei
By Simona Trapani, Bernard Levine. 2018
E davvero triste ed un terribile tragedia che la nazione ebraica il Popolo del…
Libro non creda in Ges Gli ebrei sono ossessionati dal rispetto di molte leggi e tradizioni create dall uomo stabilite dai loro rabbini Poich i sacrifici di sangue dell Antico Testamento sono stati eliminati e non vengono pi osservati i peccati degli ebrei non possono essere purificati e perdonati senza sangue Ci sono molto cose di Ges che gli ebrei non conoscono o di cui non hanno mai sentito parlare E voi parlerete agli ebrei di GesGender in Judaism and Islam: Common Lives, Uncommon Heritage
By Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Beth S. Wenger. 2015
Jewish and Islamic histories have long been interrelated. Both traditions emerged from ancient cultures born in the Middle East and…
both are rooted in texts and traditions that have often excluded women. At the same time, both groups have recently seen a resurgence in religious orthodoxy among women, as well as growing feminist movements that challenge traditional religious structures. In the United States, Jews and Muslims operate as minority cultures, carving out a place for religious and ethnic distinctiveness. The time is ripe for a volume that explores the relationship between these two religions through the prism of gender. Gender in Judaism and Islam brings together scholars working in the fields of Judaism and Islam to address a diverse range of topics, including gendered readings of texts, legal issues in marriage and divorce, ritual practices, and women's literary expressions and historical experiences, along with feminist influences within the Muslim and Jewish communities and issues affecting Jewish and Muslim women in contemporary society. Carefully crafted, including section introductions by the editors to highlight big picture insights offered by the contributors, the volume focuses attention on the theoretical innovations that gender scholarship has brought to the study of Muslim and Jewish experiences. At a time when Judaism and Islam are often discussed as though they were inherently at odds, this book offers a much-needed reconsideration of the connections and commonalties between these two traditions. It offers new insights into each of these cultures and invites comparative perspectives that deepen our understanding of both Islam and Judaism.The Kabbalah of Money: Jewish Insights on Giving, Owning, and Receiving
By Nilton Bonder. 1996
This book challenges us to take a broad and ethical view of economic behavior, which includes all forms of exchange…
and human interaction, from how we spend our money to how we fulfill our role as responsible human beings in a global economic framework. Drawing on Jewish ethical teachings, mystical lore, and tales of the Hasidic masters, Bonder explores a wide range of subjects including competition, partnerships, contracts, loans and interest, tipping, and giving gifts.Imagining Jewish Authenticity
By Ken Koltun-Fromm. 2015
Exploring how visual media presents claims to Jewish authenticity, Imagining Jewish Authenticity argues that Jews imagine themselves and their place…
within America by appealing to a graphic sensibility. Ken Koltun-Fromm traces how American Jewish thinkers capture Jewish authenticity, and lingering fears of inauthenticity, in and through visual discourse and opens up the subtle connections between visual expectations, cultural knowledge, racial belonging, embodied identity, and the ways images and texts work together.The Jews of Windsor, 1790-1990: A Historical Chronicle
By Jonathan V Plaut. 2007
Beginning with the first Jewish settler, Moses David, the important role that Windsor Jews played in the development of Ontario’s…
south is mirrored in this 200-year chronicle. the founding pioneer families transformed their Eastern European shtetl into a North American settlement; many individuals were involved in establishing synagogues, schools, and an organized communal structure in spite of divergent religious, political, and economic interests. Modernity and the growing influences of Zionism and Conservative/Reform Judaism challenged the traditional and leftist leanings of the community’s founders. From the outset, Jews were represented in city council, actively involved in communal organizations, and appointed to judicial posts. While its Jewish population was small, Windsor boasted Canada’s first Jewish Cabinet members, provincially and federally, in David Croll and Herb Gray. As the new millennium approached, jews faced shrinking numbers, forcing major consolidations in order to ensure their survival.How to Improve Your Mind
By Dagobert D. Runes, Baruch Spinoza. 1956
How to Improve Your Mind is an engaging philosophical text by master Enlightenment thinker Baruch Spinoza. Dr. Dagobert D. Runes,…
the founder of Philosophical Library, and Albert Einstein were close friends and colleagues who regarded Spinoza as the greatest of modern philosophers. This edition includes exclusive commentary and biographical notes written by Dagobert D. Runes.Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith
By Ann Spangler, Lois Tverberg. 2009
A rare chance to know Jesus as his first disciples knew him. What would it be like to journey back…
to the first century and sit at the feet of Rabbi Jesus as one of his Jewish disciples? How would your understanding of the gospel have been shaped by the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the Jewish culture in which you lived?Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus takes you on a fascinating tour of the Jewish world of Jesus, offering inspirational insights that can transform your faith. Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg paint powerful scenes from Jesus’ ministry, immersing you in the prayers, feasts, history, culture, and customs that shaped Jesus and those who followed him. You will hear the parables as they must have sounded to first-century Jews, powerful and surprising. You will join the conversations that were already going on among the rabbis of his day. You will watch with new understanding as the events of his life unfold. And you will emerge with new excitement about the roots of your own Christian faith.Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus will change the way you read Scripture and deepen your understanding of the life of Jesus. It will also help you to adapt the rich prayers and customs you learn about to your own life, in ways that both respect and enrich your Christian faith. By looking at the Jewishness of Jesus, Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg take you on a captivating journey into the heart of Judaism, one that is both balanced and insightful, helping you to better understand and appreciate your own faith.This newly expanded softcover edition includes a discussion guide for both individuals and groups, and instructions for a simple home Passover Seder celebration.Jewish Magic and Superstition
By Moshe Idel, Joshua Trachtenberg. 2004
Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished--ideas and…
practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past.Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams.First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred-Year Retrospective on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies Series #3)
By Steven T. Katz, Richard Landes. 2012
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in Russia around 1905, claimed to be the captured secret protocols…
from the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 describing a plan by the Jewish people to achieve global domination. While the document has been proven to be fake, much of it plagiarized from satirical anti-Semitic texts, it had a major impact throughout Europe during the first half of the 20th century, particularly in Germany. After World War II, the text was further denounced. Anyone who referred to it as a genuine document was seen as an ignorant hate-monger.Yet there is abundant evidence that The Protocols is resurfacing in many places. The Paranoid Apocalypse re-examines the text's popularity, investigating why it has persisted, as well as larger questions about the success of conspiracy theories even in the face of claims that they are blatantly counterfactual and irrational. It considers the medieval pre-history of The Protocols, the conditions of its success in the era of early twentieth-century secular modernity, and its post-Holocaust avatars, from the Muslim world to Walmart and Left-wing anti-American radicalism. Contributors argue that the key to The Protocols' longevity is an apocalyptic paranoia that lays the groundwork not only for the myth's popularity, but for its implementation as a vehicle for genocide and other brutal acts.Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America
By Jeffrey Shandler. 2009
Engaging media has been an ongoing issue for American Jews, as it has been for other religious communities in the…
United States, for several generations. Jews, God, and Videotape is a pioneering examination of the impact of new communications technologies and media practices on the religious life of American Jewry over the past century. Shandler's examples range from early recordings of cantorial music to Hasidic outreach on the Internet. In between he explores mid-twentieth-century ecumenical radio and television broadcasting, video documentation of life cycle rituals, museum displays and tourist practices as means for engaging the Holocaust as a moral touchstone, and the role of mass-produced material culture in Jews' responses to the American celebration of Christmas.Shandler argues that the impact of these and other media on American Judaism is varied and extensive: they have challenged the role of clergy and transformed the nature of ritual; facilitated innovations in religious practice and scholarship, as well as efforts to maintain traditional observance and teachings; created venues for outreach, both to enhance relationships with non-Jewish neighbors and to promote greater religiosity among Jews; even redefined the notion of what might constitute a Jewish religious community or spiritual experience. As Jews, God, and Videotape demonstrates, American Jews' experiences are emblematic of how religious communities' engagements with new media have become central to defining religiosity in the modern age.