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Negotiating Masculinity and Identity as a Jewish British Male: Young Jews Talking
By Anthony J. Nicholls. 2023
In this book, Dr. Anthony Nicholls uses a series of in-depth interviews to investigate how young Jews talk about their Jewishness,…
Britishness, and masculinity. From his analysis, he argues that Jewishness is constructed between adherence to halachic requirement on one hand, and Jewishness experienced as cultural affinity to history, family, and tradition without recourse to halacha on the other hand. He further argues that Britishness is experienced between varying degrees of nationalistic localism against cosmopolitan liberalism played out against a backdrop of Britain contrasted with the rest of the world, and also London against the rest of Britain. Nicholls rejects the view that masculinity is constructed in the inherently unstable terms of physicality against intellectualism. Instead, he argues that it is better considered as lying in a range between competitive hegemonic masculinity and a cooperative model with which physicality and intellectualism combine to produce a more stable and emotionally satisfying mode of living.
Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy
By Shmuley Boteach. 2023
Great sex consists entirely of motions, Kosher Sex consists of motions that elicit lasting emotions. Great sex is an undertaking…
of two separate bodies, Kosher Sex is two halves of the same whole. Twenty-five years ago, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's celebrated international bestseller Kosher Sex changed how we view and approach sex, marriage, erotic attraction, and personal relationships by drawing on traditional Jewish wisdom. Based on his extensive experience counseling individuals and couples, the author breaks down sexual taboos and openly yet respectfully discusses the meanings, emotions, and hidden power of sex. With his unique anecdotal style, Rabbi Boteach illustrates each and every point, using real couples who have discovered the joys of "kosher sex"—sex that blends passion and lovers—and suggests revolutionary ways of synthesizing the best that each has to offer. When half of all marriages fail and one third are sexless and platonic, Kosher Sex has an astonishing and electrifying impact.
The Jews of China: v. 2: A Sourcebook and Research Guide
By Jonathan Goldstein. 2000
An impressive interdisciplinary effort by Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, and Western Sinologists and Judaic Studies specialists, these books scrutinize patterns…
of migration, acculturation, assimilation, and economic activity of successive waves of Jewish arrivals in China from approximately A.D.1100 to 1949.
Saints and Sanctity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Striving for remembrance (Sanctity in Global Perspective)
By Linda G. Jones, Alexandre Coello De La Rosa. 2018
A common objective of saint veneration in all three Abrahamic religions is the recovery and perpetuation of the collective memory…
of the saint. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all yield intriguing similarities and differences in their respective conceptions of sanctity. This edited collection explores the various literary and cultural productions associated with the cult of saints and pious figures, as well as the socio-historical contexts in which sainthood operates, in order to better understand the role of saints in monotheistic religions. Using comparative religious and anthropological approaches, an international panel of contributors guides the reader through three main concerns. They describe and illuminate the ways in which sanctity is often configured. In addition, the diverse cultural manifestations of the cult of the saints are examined and analysed. Finally, the various religious, social, and political functions that saints came to play in numerous societies are compared and contrasted. This ambitious study covers sanctity from the Middle Ages until the contemporary period, and has a geographical scope that includes Europe, Central Asia, North Africa, the Americas, and the Asian Pacific. As such, it will be of use to scholars of the history of religions, religious pluralism, and interreligious dialogue, as well as students of sainthood and hagiography.
Digital Media, Young Adults and Religion: An International Perspective (Routledge Studies in Religion and Digital Culture)
By Marcus Moberg, Sofia Sjö. 2020
It has become increasingly clear that an adequate understanding of the contemporary processes of social, cultural, and religious change is…
contingent on an appreciation of the growing impact of social media. Utilising results of an unprecedented global study, this volume explores the ways in which young adults in seven different countries engage with digital and social media in religiously significant ways. Presenting and analysing the findings of the global research project Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective (YARG), an international panel of contributors shed new light on the impact of social media and its associated technologies on young people’s religiosities, worldviews, and values. Case studies from China, Finland, Ghana, Israel, Peru, Poland, and Turkey are used to demonstrate how these developments are progressing, not just in the West, but across the world. This book is unique in that it presents a truly macroscopic perspective on trends in religion amongst young adults. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars working in religious studies, digital media, communication studies, sociology, cultural studies, theology and youth studies.
In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in religion and religious issues. Some have linked this to…
a neo-liberal form of individualism, while others noted that secularism has left people bereft of a humanly necessary link with the transcendent. The importance of identity issues has also been remarked upon. This book examines how liberal forms of religion are allowing people to engage with religion on their own terms, while also feeling part of something more universal. Looking at liberal approaches to the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity and Islam – this book teases out how postmodern culture has shaped the way in which people engage with these religions. It also compares and contrasts how liberal thinking and theology have been expressed in each of the faiths examined, as well as the reactionary responses to its emergence. By considering how liberalism has influenced the narrative around the Abrahamic faiths, this book demonstrates how malleable faith and spirituality can be. As such, it will be of interest to scholars working in Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology and Cultural Anthropology.
Deceptive Images: Towards a Redefinition of American Judaism
By Charles S. Liebman. 1988
Deceptive Images is a profoundly thoughtful effort by a social scientist—who is a participant observer in American Jewish life—to come…
to terms with his concerns about how American Jews and Judaism have been studied, and his sensitivity to the policy implications of such studies. Liebman writes about what he cares deeply about; as a social scientist he is able to use concepts and theories in which he has been trained, although not without a sense of their limitations.In the passionately argued book that results, Liebman contends that those concerned with American Jews, both social scientists and communal leaders, have placed too much emphasis on what Jews do and too little emphasis on Judaism itself. Because they have depended too much on quantitative studies to help them understand contemporary American Jews, they have given too little encouragement to efforts to probe the meaning of Judaism in the lives of American Jews.This stimulating volume takes exception to the notion that American Jewish life is flourishing. It calls for reassessment both of the study of American Judaism and the priorities of American Jewish organizations.
Synagogue Life: A Study in Symbolic Interaction
By Samuel C. Heilman. 1998
Via a participant-observer approach, Synagogue Life analyzes the three essential dimensions of synagogue life: the houses of prayer, study, and…
assembly. In each Heilman documents the rich detail of the synagogue experience while articulating the social and cultural drama inherent in them. He illustrates how people come to the synagogue not only for spiritual purposes but also to find out where and how they fit into life in the neighborhood in which they share.In his new introduction, Heilman discusses what led him to write this book and the process of personal transformation through which he, as an Orthodox Jew, had to go in order to turn a disciplined eye on the world from which he came. Rather than using the stranger-as-native approach of classic anthropology, he had instead to begin as a native who discoverd how to look at a once-taken-for-granted synagogue life like a stranger. In the afterword, arguing for the efficacy of this approach, Heilman offers guidance on how natives can use their special familiarity and still be trained to distance themselves from their own group, making use of the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. Synagogue Life offers a fascinating portrait that has something to say to social scientists as well as all those curious about what happens in the main arena of Orthodox Jewish community life.
&“An important and powerful work that speaks to Mordecai M. Kaplan&’s position as perhaps the most significant Jewish thinker of…
the twentieth century.&” (Deborah Dash Moore coeditor of Gender and Jewish History) Mordecai M. Kaplan, founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist movement, is the only rabbi to have been excommunicated by the Orthodox rabbinical establishment in America. Kaplan was indeed a radical, rejecting such fundamental Jewish beliefs as the concept of the chosen people and a supernatural God. Although he valued the Jewish community and was a committed Zionist, his primary concern was the spiritual fulfillment of the individual. Drawing on Kaplan&’s 27-volume diary, Mel Scult describes the development of Kaplan&’s radical theology in dialogue with the thinkers and writers who mattered to him most, from Spinoza to Emerson and from Ahad Ha-Am and Matthew Arnold to Felix Adler, John Dewey, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. This gracefully argued book, with its sensitive insights into the beliefs of a revolutionary Jewish thinker, makes a powerful contribution to modern Judaism and to contemporary American religious thought. &“An interesting, stimulating, and well-done analysis of Kaplan&’s life and thought. All students of contemporary Jewish life will benefit from reading this excellent study.&” —Jewish Media Review &“The book is highly readable―at times almost colloquial in its language and style―and is recommended for anybody with a familiarity with Kaplan but who wants to understand his thought within a broader context.&” —AJL Reviews
This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity (Dimyonot)
By Oren Kroll-Zeldin and Ariella Werden-Greenfield. 2023
Phish has a diehard fan base and a dedicated community of enthusiasts—called Phishheads—who follow the band around the country, some…
fans attending every show. What may be surprising is that a significant percentage of Phishheads are Jewish.Two members of the band—bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jonathan Fishman—were raised in Jewish households, and Phish has been known to play Hebrew songs in concert. At live shows, many attendees, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Phish” written in Hebrew letters, express feeling something special—even distinctly Jewish—during their performances. As this book shows, Phish is one avenue through which many Jews find cultural and spiritual fulfillment outside the confines of traditional and institutional Jewish life. In effect, Phish fandom and the live Phish experience act as a microcosm through which we see American Jewish religious and cultural life manifest in unique and unexpected spaces.Featuring an interview with Mike Gordon and a collection of fascinating photographs, This Is Your Song Too is an in-depth look at Jewishness in the Phish universe that also provides a deeper understanding of how spirituality, ritual, and identity function in the world of rock and roll.In addition to the editors, the contributors include Evan S. Benn, Dean Budnick, Jacob A. Cohen, Benjamin David, Jessy Dressin, Josh Fleet, Mike Greenhaus, Joshua S. Ladon, Noah Munro Lehrman, Caroline Rothstein, and Isaac Kandall Slone.
God on the Western Front: Soldiers and Religion in World War I
By Joseph F. Byrnes. 2023
From 1914 to 1918, religious believers and hopeful skeptics tried to find meaning and purpose behind divinely willed destruction. God…
on the Western Front is a history of lived religion across national boundaries, religious affiliations, and class during World War I, utilizing an expansive record of primary sources.Joseph F. Byrnes takes readers on a tour of the battlefields of France, listening to the words of German, French, and English soldiers; going behind the lines to hear from the men and women who provided pastoral and medical care; and reviewing the religious writings of priests, bishops, ministers, and rabbis as they tried to make sense of it all. The story begins with citizens at home as they responded to the obligation to make war and then focuses on the “God-talk” and “nation-talk” that soldiers used to express their foundational religious experiences. Byrnes’s study attends to the words of average men who struggled to articulate their religious sentiments, alongside the generals Helmuth von Moltke, Ferdinand Foch, and Douglas Haig and the soldier theologians Franz Rosenzweig, Paul Tillich, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy. In doing so, he shows how religious and battle experience are intertwined and showcases the wide range of spiritual responses that emerged across boundaries.Going beyond the typical constraints of studies focused either on one nation or one confessional affiliation, Byrnes’s international and interfaith approach breaks new ground. It will appeal to scholars and students of modern European history, religious history, and the history of war.
Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul: A Summer on the Lower East Side
By Jonathan Boyarin. 2011
This story of one of the last remaining synagogues in the historic neighborhood and its congregation is &“as absorbing as…
a good cinema verité documentary&” (Booklist). On New York&’s Lower East Side, a narrow building, wedged into a lot designed for an old-law tenement, is full of clamorous voices—the generations of the dead, who somehow contrive to make their presence known, and the newer generation, keeping the building and its memories alive and making themselves Jews in the process. In this book, Jonathan Boyarin, at once a member of the congregation and a bemused anthropologist, follows this congregation of &“year-round Jews&” through the course of a summer during which its future must once again be decided. Famous as the jumping off point for millions of Jewish and other immigrants to America, the neighborhood has recently become the hip playground of twentysomething immigrants to the city from elsewhere in America and from abroad. Few imagine that Jewish life there has stubbornly continued through this history of decline and regeneration. Yet, inside with Boyarin, we see the congregation&’s life as a combination of quiet heroism, ironic humor, lively disputes, and—above all—the ongoing search for ways to connect with Jewish ancestors while remaining true to oneself in the present. Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul is both a portrait of a historic neighborhood facing the challenges of gentrification, and a poignant, humorous chronicle of vibrant, imperfect, down-to-earth individuals coming together to make a community.
A new history of how the Nazi era upended German-Jewish experiences of space and time from eminent historian Guy Miron.…
In Space and Time under Persecution, Guy Miron considers how social exclusion, economic decline, physical relocation, and, later, forced evictions, labor, and deportation under Nazi rule forever changed German Jews’ experience of space and time. Facing ever-mounting restrictions, German Jews reimagined their worlds—devising new relationships to traditional and personal space, new interpretations of their histories, and even new calendars to measure their days. For Miron, these tactics reveal a Jewish community’s attachment to German bourgeois life as well as their defiant resilience under Nazi persecution.
The Preservation of Youth: Essays on Health
By Moses Maimonides. 1958
Based on his Jewish faith, Maimonides fused neo-Aristotelian philosophy with the Jewish legal tradition into a systemic whole. In his…
main philosophic work, The Guide for the Perplexed, he attempted to appeal to rationalists troubled by the personal embodiment of God in the biblical accounts. It is in that rational spirit that he provided a strikingly modern work to be used by patients and practicing physicians alike. Capitalizing on his vast practical experience as a physician, combined with his knowledge of classical and medieval principles of healing, Maimonides was able to provide a comprehensive theory for the therapy of body and mind. In this work he describes many conditions including asthma, diabetes, hepatitis and pneumonia. He includes recommendations on many aspects for a healthy life which are still applicable today. Included are suggestions on diet and exercise, sex life and the underlying psychological causes of illness.
Spinoza Dictionary
By Dagobert D. Runes. 1951
This A-to-Z reference volume presents definitions, propositions, and explanations of Spinoza&’s thought—all in the philosopher&’s own words. The seventeenth-century…
philosopher Baruch Spinoza remains one of the most significant thinkers of our time. Yet his works, written in a rigidly geometric form of argumentation, are notoriously difficult to navigate. Expertly edited by Dagobert D. Runes, Spinoza Dictionary presents an alphabetical selection of Spinoza&’s own writings, making essential definitions, concepts, and passages immediately accessible. In his introduction, Runes sheds new light on Spinoza&’s private, political, and religious life, and exposes and explains the dramatic story of his apostasy. If the reader despairs of finding his way through Spinoza&’s works, here he will find a reliable guide speaking in Spinoza&’s own words. &“The grand ideas of Spinoza&’s Ethics are brought out clearly in this book: not less than the heroic illusions of this great and passionate man.&” —Albert Einstein
The Preservation of Youth: Essays on Health
By Moses Maimonides. 1958
Based on his Jewish faith, Maimonides fused neo-Aristotelian philosophy with the Jewish legal tradition into a systemic whole. In his…
main philosophic work, The Guide for the Perplexed, he attempted to appeal to rationalists troubled by the personal embodiment of God in the biblical accounts. It is in that rational spirit that he provided a strikingly modern work to be used by patients and practicing physicians alike. Capitalizing on his vast practical experience as a physician, combined with his knowledge of classical and medieval principles of healing, Maimonides was able to provide a comprehensive theory for the therapy of body and mind. In this work he describes many conditions including asthma, diabetes, hepatitis and pneumonia. He includes recommendations on many aspects for a healthy life which are still applicable today. Included are suggestions on diet and exercise, sex life and the underlying psychological causes of illness.
How to Improve Your Mind
By Baruch Spinoza. 1956
The Enlightenment thinker asserts that mental tranquility is achieved through knowledge of God in this brief philosophical treatise.Seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch…
Spinoza was one of the most original and important thinkers of his time. His magnum opus, Ethics, influenced generations of great minds from Karl Marx to Ludwig Wittgenstein and George Santayana. In this earlier work, Spinoza articulates his view that life is best lived with the supreme happiness of knowing God&’s infinite love. By extension, all earthly pursuits—including money, fame, and sex—are mere distractions from the greater joy of the soul&’s quietude. This edition of How to Improve Your Mind is translated by the philosopher and founder of the Philosophical Library, Dagobert D. Runes. Runes also provides exclusive commentary and biographical notes.
God's Generals: The Military Lives of Moses, the Buddha & Muhammad
By Richard A. Gabriel. 2016
It is one of the more startling facts of military history that the founders of three of the four 'great…
religions'—Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam—were also accomplished field generals with extensive experience in commanding men in battle. One of these, Muhammad, fought eight battles and was wounded twice, once almost fatally. Another, Siddhartha Gautama (later to become the Buddha), witnessed so much battlefield carnage that he suffered a psychological collapse. Moses had become so much a 'god-intoxicated' personality, it is a reasonable suspicion that he, like the Buddha, was murdered. Indeed, had the experiences of these men in war not been so successful, it is quite possible that their achievements as religious leaders would never have occurred. For all three, war and religion were so closely intertwined in their personalities that it is difficult to discern where the influence of one ended and the other began. This book attempts to explore the military lives of Moses, the Buddha and Muhammad, and the role their war experiences played in their religious lives.
This book begins by arguing that early Greek reflection on the afterlife and immortality insisted on the importance of the…
physical body whereas a wealth of Jewish texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism and early (Pauline) Christianity understood post-mortem existence to be that of the soul alone. Changes begin to appear in the later New Testament where the importance of the afterlife of the physical body became essential, and such thoughts continued into the period of the early Church where the significance of the physical body in post-mortem existence became a point of theological orthodoxy. This book will assert that the influx of Greco-Romans into the early Church changed the direction of Christian thought towards one which included the body. At the same time, the ideological and polemical thrust of an eternal tortuous afterlife for the wicked became essential.
The Kabbalah Unveiled: Kabbala Denudata (Routledge Revivals)
By S.L. MacGregor Mathers. 1926
The Kabbalah is an esoteric Jewish doctrine adapted by author S.L. MacGregor Mathers to form the Hermetic order of the…
Golden Dawn, an occult organisation. This volume includes three of the critical books from the Zohar, the fundamental work in Kabbalah, as well as Mathers' introduction explaining the key elements of Jewish mysticism. Mathers' translation from Hebrew originally appeared in 1926, and it continues to be a valuable resource for students interested in Religious Studies, particularly Mysticism and the Occult.