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Fragile Finitude: A Jewish Hermeneutical Theology
By Michael Fishbane. 2021
The world we engage with is a vibrant collage brought to consciousness by language and our creative imagination. It is…
through the symbolic forms of language that the human world of value is revealed—this is where religious scholar Michael Fishbane dwells in his latest contribution to Jewish thought. In Fragile Finitude, Fishbane clears new ground for a theological life through a novel reinterpretation of the Book of Job. On this basis, he offers a contemporary engagement with the four classical types of Jewish Scriptural exegesis. The first focuses on worldly experience, the second on communal forms of practice and thought in the rabbinical tradition, the third on personal development, and the fourth on transcendent, cosmic orientations. Through these four modes, Fishbane manages to transform Jewish theology from within, at once reinvigorating a long tradition and moving beyond it. What he offers is nothing short of a way to reorient our lives in relation to the divine and our fellow humans. Written from within the Jewish tradition, Fragile Finitude is intended for readers across the religious spectrum.Thinking about Good and Evil: Jewish Views from Antiquity to Modernity (JPS Essential Judaism)
By Rabbi Wayne Allen. 2021
The most comprehensive book on the topic, Thinking about Good and Evil traces the most salient Jewish ideas about why…
innocent people seem to suffer, why evil individuals seem to prosper, and God&’s role in such matters of (in)justice, from antiquity to the present. Starting with the Bible and Apocrypha, Rabbi Wayne Allen takes us through the Talmud; medieval Jewish philosophers and Jewish mystical sources; the Ba&’al Shem Tov and his disciples; early modern thinkers such as Spinoza, Mendelssohn, and Luzzatto; and, finally, modern thinkers such as Cohen, Buber, Kaplan, and Plaskow. Each chapter analyzes individual thinkers&’ arguments and synthesizes their collective ideas on the nature of good and evil and questions of justice. Allen also exposes vastly divergent Jewish thinking about the Holocaust: traditionalist (e.g., Ehrenreich), revisionist (e.g., Rubenstein, Jonas), and deflective (e.g., Soloveitchik, Wiesel). Rabbi Allen&’s engaging, accessible volume illuminates well-known, obscure, and novel Jewish solutions to the problem of good and evil.We Refuse to Be Enemies: How Muslims and Jews Can Make Peace, One Friendship at a Time
By Sabeeha Rehman, Walter Ruby. 2021
For readers of The Faith Club, Sons of Abraham, and The Anatomy of Peace, a call for mutual understanding and…
lessons for getting thereWe Refuse to Be Enemies is a manifesto by two American citizens, a Muslim woman and Jewish man, concerned with the rise of intolerance and bigotry in our country along with resurgent white nationalism. Neither author is an imam, rabbi, scholar, or community leader, but together they have spent decades doing interfaith work and nurturing cooperation among communities. They have learned that, through face-to-face encounters, people of all backgrounds can come to know the Other as a fellow human being and turn her or him into a trusted friend. In this book, they share their experience and guidance. Growing up in Pakistan before she immigrated to the United States, Sabeeha never met a Jew, and her view was colored by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his youth, Walter never met a Muslim, and his opinion was shaped by Leon Uris's Exodus. Yet together they have formed a friendship and collaboration. Tapping their own life stories and entering into dialogue within the book, they explain how they have found commonalities between their respective faiths and discuss shared principles and lessons, how their perceptions of the Other have evolved, and the pushback they faced. They wrestle with the two elephants in the room: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and polarizing material in their holy texts and history. And they share their vision for reconciliation, offering concrete principles for building an alliance in support of religious freedom and human rights. "As members of the two largest minority faith communities in America, we must stand together at a portentous moment in American history. Neither of our communities will be able to prosper in an America characterized by xenophobia and bigotry.&”—Sabeeha Rehman and Walter RubyMartin Buber: The Life of Dialogue (Martin Buber)
By Maurice S. Friedman. 2002
Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought,…
remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. Maurice S. Friedman reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief.This fully revised and expanded fourth edition includes a new preface by the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin.The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality
By Gershom Scholem. 1971
Gershom Scholem was the master builder of historical studies of the Kabbalah. When he began to work on this neglected…
field, the few who studied these texts were either amateurs who were looking for occult wisdom, or old-style Kabbalists who were seeking guidance on their spiritual journeys. His work broke with the outlook of the scholars of the previous century in Judaica--die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Science of Judaism--whose orientation he rejected, calling their "disregard for the most vital aspects of the Jewish people as a collective entity: a form of "censorship of the Jewish past." The major founders of modern Jewish historical studies in the nineteenth century, Leopold Zunz and Abraham Geiger, had ignored the Kabbalah; it did not fit into their account of the Jewish religion as rational and worthy of respect by "enlightened" minds. The only exception was the historian Heinrich Graetz. He had paid substantial attention to its texts and to their most explosive exponent, the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi, but Graetz had depicted the Kabbalah and all that flowed from it as an unworthy revolt from the underground of Jewish life against its reasonable, law-abiding, and learned mainstream. Scholem conducted a continuing polemic with Zunz, Geiger, and Graetz by bringing into view a Jewish past more varied, more vital, and more interesting than any idealized portrait could reveal.--from the Foreword by Arthur Hertzberg, 1995From the Trade Paperback edition.Not Ashamed: The Story of Jews for Jesus
By Ruth Tucker. 1991
Not Ashamed: The Story of Jews for Jesus chronicles the exciting birth and development of this high-powered evangelistic movement. Historian…
Ruth Tucker presents an unbiased, clear perspective on the fresh band of youthful zealots who, led by Martin "Moishe" Rosen, took to the streets of San Francisco in the early 1970s to win their world for Christ. Their compelling sidewalk evangelism and "broadsiding" of passersby with pointed, self-published tracts, produced massive conversions in the "Jesus People" era, and almost immediate conflict with Orthodox Jewish church leaders, who held that no one could be a Christian and a Jew at the same time. Fascinating reading!From the Trade Paperback edition.Everyman's Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages
By Abraham Cohen. 1995
Sage Tales: Wisdom and Wonder from Rabbis of the Talmud
By Burton L. Visotzky. 2011
Great stories have the power to draw the heart. But certain stories have the power to draw the heart to…
God and awaken the better angels of our nature. Such are the tales of the rabbis of the Talmud, colorful, quirky yarns that tug at our heartstrings and test our values, ethics, morality-and our imaginations.Marc Chagall (Jewish Encounters Series)
By Jonathan Wilson. 2007
Novelist and critic Jonathan Wilson clears away the sentimental mists surrounding an artist whose career spanned two world wars, the…
Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, and the birth of the State of Israel. Marc Chagall's work addresses these transforming events, but his ambivalence about his role as a Jewish artist adds an intriguing wrinkle to common assumptions about his life. Drawn to sacred subject matter, Chagall remains defiantly secular in outlook; determined to "narrate" the miraculous and tragic events of the Jewish past, he frequently chooses Jesus as a symbol of martyrdom and sacrifice. Wilson brilliantly demonstrates how Marc Chagall's life constitutes a grand canvas on which much of twentieth-century Jewish history is vividly portrayed. Chagall left Belorussia for Paris in 1910, at the dawn of modernism, looking back dreamily on the world he abandoned. After his marriage to Bella Rosenfeld in 1915, he moved to Petrograd, but eventually returned to Paris after a stint as a Soviet commissar for art. Fleeing Paris steps ahead of the Nazis, Chagall arrived in New York in 1941. Drawn to Israel, but not enough to live there, Chagall grappled endlessly with both a nostalgic attachment to a vanished past and the magnetic pull of an uninhibited secular present. Wilson's portrait of Chagall is altogether more historical, more political, and edgier than conventional wisdom would have us believe-showing us how Chagall is the emblematic Jewish artist of the twentieth century. Visit nextbook. org/chagall for a virtual museum of Chagall images. From the Hardcover edition.On Judaism
By Martin Buber. 1967
Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer With a new Foreword by Rodger Kamenetz “The question I put before you, as…
well as before myself, is the question of the meaning of Judaism for the Jews. Why do we call ourselves Jews? I want to speak to you not of an abstraction but of your own life . . . its authenticity and essence. ” With these words, Martin Buber takes us on a journey into the heart of Judaism—its spirit, vision, and relevance to modern life.Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir
By Ari L. Goldman. 2003
The best-selling author of The Search for God at Harvard continues his spiritual quest in this heartfelt and poignant account…
of the year he spent saying kaddish for his father. The day after Ari Goldman celebrated his fiftieth birthday his father died of a heart attack, and Goldman began the ritual year of mourning required by Jewish law. There were the obligations (the daily recitation of kaddish in a synagogue quorum of ten), the prohibitions (no listening to music or buying new clothes), and the self-examination that the death of a parent and the mourning rituals triggered. Death meant coming to terms with a father he loved but never fully understood, in part because of his parents' divorce and its stormy aftermath. Goldman explores the emotional and spiritual aspects of spending a year in mourning, as he examines its effects on him as a husband, father, and member of his community. Left without parents (his mother died four years earlier), he is no longer a son to anyone, but he comes to understand that through the daily recitation of kaddish, he can both connect with and honor his mother and his father in a way that he could not always do during their lifetimes. And in his daily synagogue attendance--usually near his Manhattan home but also, during the course of his travels in Israel, the Catskills, and France--he finds his fellow worshipers to be an unexpected source of strength, wisdom, and comfort. Living a Year of Kaddish is a deeply affecting journey through grief, loss, and acceptance--a book that will resonate for people of all faiths who struggle with the inevitability of losing the ones they love.A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg
By Nathaniel Deutsch, Michael Casper. 2021
The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn"A rich chronicle of…
the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg. . . . This expert account enlightens."—Publishers Weekly&“One of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States.&”—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University The Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is famously one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy groups of people in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of the toughest parts of New York City during an era of steep decline, only to later resist and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of the neighborhood. Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a group of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely opposed the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg&’s Hasidim rejected assimilation while still undergoing distinctive forms of Americanization and racialization, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.The Essential Zohar: The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom
By Rav P. S. Berg, Philip S. Berg. 2002
For thousands of years, no book has been more shrouded in mystery than the Zohar, yet no book offers us…
greater wisdom. The central text of Kabbalah, the Zohar is a commentary on the Bible's narratives, laws, and genealogies and a map of the spiritual landscape. In The Essential Zohar, the eminent kabbalist Rav P. S. Berg decodes its teachings on evil, redemption, human relationships, wealth and poverty, and other fundamental concerns from a practical, contemporary perspective. The Zohar and Kabbalah have traditionally been known as the world's most esoteric sources of spiritual knowledge, but Rav Berg has dedicated his life to making this concentrated distillation of infinite wisdom available to people of all faiths so that we may use its principles to live each day in harmony with the divine.The Jewish Festivals: A Guide to Their History and Observance
By Hayyim Schauss. 1938
Why is the Jewish New Year designated on the Jewish calendar as the first day of the seventh month, and…
not of the first month? Why do women cover their eyes when reciting the blessing over the Sabbath candles? How did the Seder originate? Does the Book of Esther, read on Purim, mirror any real historical events?Long considered a classic, The Jewish Festivals provides a rich and charming account of the origins, development, and symbolism of the Jewish holidays, and of the diverse rituals, prayers, ceremonial objects, and special foods that have been used throughout history and around the world to celebrate them. Drawing upon a wealth of knowledge of Jewish folkways and customs, Hayyim Schauss shows how these holidays evolved in meaning and importance, depending on the contemporary needs of those who observed them. Written with passion and warmth, this book will infuse your own experience of the holidays with extra meaning and delight.From the Trade Paperback edition.The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious
By Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. 2009
From one of the most innovative and acclaimed biblical commentators at work today, here is a revolutionary analysis of the…
intersection between religion and psychoanalysis in the stories of the men and women of the Bible. For centuries scholars and rabbis have wrestled with the biblical narrative, attempting to answer the questions that arise from a plain reading of the text. In The Murmuring Deep, Avivah Zornberg informs her literary analysis of the text with concepts drawn from Freud, Winnicott, Laplanche, and other psychoanalytic thinkers to give us a new understanding of the desires and motivations of the men and women whose stories form the basis of the Bible. Through close readings of the biblical and midrashic texts, Zornberg makes a powerful argument for the idea that the creators of the midrashic commentary, the medieval rabbinic commentators, and the Hassidic commentators were themselves on some level aware of the complex interplay between conscious and unconscious levels of experience and used this knowledge in their interpretations. In her analysis of the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Jonah, Abraham, Rebecca, Isaac, Joseph and his brothers, Ruth, and Esther-how they communicated with the world around them, with God, and with the various parts of their selves-Zornberg offers fascinating insights into the interaction between consciousness and unconsciousness. In discussing why God has to "seduce" Adam into entering the Garden of Eden or why Jonah thinks he can hide from God by getting on a ship, Zornberg enhances our appreciation of the Bible as the foundational text in our quest to understand what it means to be human.From the Hardcover edition.Tales of the Hasidim
By Martin Buber. 1975
This new paperback edition brings together volumes one and two of Buber's classic work Takes of the Hasidim, with a…
new foreword by Chaim Potok. Martin Buber devoted forty years of his life to collecting and retelling the legends of Hasidim. "Nowhere in the last centuries," wrote Buber in Hasidim and Modern Man, "has the soul-force of Judaism so manifested itself as in Hasidim... Without an iota being altered in the law, in the ritual, in the traditional life-norms, the long-accustomed arose in a fresh light and meaning."These marvelous tales--terse, vigorous, often cryptic--are the true texts of Hasidim. The hasidic masters, of whom these tales are told, are full-bodied personalities, yet their lives seem almost symbolic. Through them is expressed the intensity and holy joy whereby God becomes visible in everything.Sons of Abraham: A Candid Conversation about the Issues That Divide and Unite Jews and Muslims
By Samuel G. Freedman, Imam Shamsi Ali, Rabbi Marc Schneier, President Bill Clinton. 2013
A prominent rabbi and imam, each raised in orthodoxy, overcome the temptations of bigotry and work to bridge the chasm…
between Muslims and Jews Rabbi Marc Schneier, the eighteenth generation of a distinguished rabbinical dynasty, grew up deeply suspicious of Muslims, believing them all to be anti-Semitic. Imam Shamsi Ali, who grew up in a small Indonesian village and studied in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, believed that all Jews wanted to destroy Muslims. Coming from positions of mutual mistrust, it seems unthinkable that these orthodox religious leaders would ever see eye to eye. Yet in the aftermath of 9/11, amid increasing acrimony between Jews and Muslims, the two men overcame their prejudices and bonded over a shared belief in the importance of opening up a dialogue and finding mutual respect. In doing so, they became not only friends but also defenders of each other's religion, denouncing the twin threats of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and promoting interfaith cooperation. In Sons of Abraham, Rabbi Schneier and Imam Ali tell the story of how they became friends and offer a candid look at the contentious theological and political issues that frequently divide Jews and Muslims, clarifying erroneous ideas that extremists in each religion use to justify harmful behavior. Rabbi Schneier dispels misconceptions about chosenness in Judaism, while Imam Ali explains the truth behind concepts like jihad and Shari'a. And on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the two speak forthrightly on the importance of having a civil discussion and the urgency of reaching a peaceful solution. As Rabbi Schneier and Imam Ali show, by reaching a fuller understanding of one another's faith traditions, Jews and Muslims can realize that they are actually more united than divided in their core beliefs. Both traditions promote kindness, service, and responsibility for the less fortunate--and both religions call on their members to extend compassion to those outside the faith. In this sorely needed book, Rabbi Schneier and Imam Ali challenge Jews and Muslims to step out of their comfort zones, find common ground in their shared Abrahamic traditions, and stand together and fight for a better world for all.Jewish Insights on Death and Mourning
By Jack Riemer. 1995
Women and Jewish Law: The Essential Texts, Their History, and Their Relevance for Today
By Rachel Biale. 1995
How has a legal tradition determined by men affected the lives of women? What are the traditional Jewish views of…
marriage, divorce, sexuality, contraception, abortion? Women and Jewish Law gives contemporary readers access to the central texts of the Jewish religious tradition on issues of special concern to women. Combining a historical overview with a thoughtful feminist critique, this pathbreaking study points the way for "informed change" in the status of women in Jewish life.From the Trade Paperback edition.Farewell Espana: The World of the Sephardim Remembered
By Howard M. Sachar. 1994
Farewell Espana transcends conventional historical narrative. With the lucidity and verve that have characterized his numerous earlier volumes, Howard Sachar…
breathes life into the leading dramatis personae of the Sephardic world: the royal counselors Samuel ibn Nagrela and Joseph Nasi, the poets Solomon ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi, the philosophers Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza, the statesmen Benjamin Disraeli and Pierre Mendes-France, the warriors Moshe Pijade and David Elazar, the fabulous charlatans David Reuveni and Shabbatai Zvi.In its breadth and richness of texture, Sachar's account sweeps to the contemporary era of Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco, poignantly traces the fate of Balkan Sephardic communities during the Holocaust -- and their revival in the Land and State of Israel. Not least of all, the author offers a tactile dimension of immediacy in his personal encounters with the storied venues and current personalities of the Sephardic world. Farewell Espana is a window opened on a glowing civilization once all but extinguished, and now flickering again into renewed creativity.