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Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today
By Ari L. Goldman. 2000
Increasing numbers of Jews are returning to their religious roots in a search for meaning, eager to explore a heritage…
that is deeply embedded in history and at the same time rapidly changing. But what is Judaism today? And what does it mean -- culturally, spiritually, and ritually -- to be Jewish in the twenty-first century? In Being Jewish, Ari L. Goldman offers eloquent, thoughtful answers to these questions through an absorbing exploration of modern Judaism. A bestselling author and widely respected chronicler of Jewish life, Goldman vividly contrasts the historical meaning of Judaism's heritage with the astonishing and multiform character of the religion today. The result will be a revelation for those already involved with Judaism, and a fascinating introduction for those whose interests are newly minted or rekindled. Taking the reader through the process of discovery -- or rediscovery -- Being Jewish is divided into three sections, each focusing on one of the cycles of human life. Beginning with the traditions associated with the life cycle -- birth, marriage, death -- Goldman moves on to describe the rituals that mark the course of the Jewish year, starting with Rosh Hashanah. Finally, he reflects on the character of the Jewish day, exploring the role of prayer, dietary laws, and ethical behavior. All of these moments, from a minute to a lifetime, take on vibrant meaning in his thoughtful picture. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Being Jewish is Goldman's discussion of the extraordinary variations in how Jews live their Judaism today. He finds a wide variety of practices, between Judaism's branches and within them. For example, a family on Long Island keeps a unique version of kosher: they have three sets of dishes and utensils -- one for meat, one for milk, and one for nonkosher Chinese takeout. While traditional Judaism frowns on such quirky modes of observance, Goldman elevates them. Jews today, he concludes, are "reaching for the holy" in unexpected and innovative ways. These dramatically different ideas about how a Jewish life may be lived suggest how difficult it can be for today's reader to find an objective account of Judaism. And it is precisely Goldman's reporter's eye that sets this book apart. Informed by tradition without embracing any one ideology, this award-winning journalist's probing book moves across the boundaries of modern Judaism to demonstrate how it is lived. While other efforts to tackle these themes are written from the perspective of a particular religious tradition, Being Jewish is the work of a sophisticated observer who describes rather than proscribes. By weaving a complex and compelling commentary on Judaism, this inspiring volume encourages us to find our own place within the tradition and leads us into a deeper understanding not just of the details of the religion but, ultimately, of what it means to be Jewish.Drawing on untapped resources, exclusive interviews, and new archival research, The Pope’s Last Crusade by Peter Eisner is a thrilling…
narrative that sheds new light on Pope Pius XI’s valiant effort to condemn Nazism and the policies of the Third Reich—a crusade that might have changed the course of World War II.A shocking tale of intrigue and suspense, illustrated with sixteen pages of archival photos, The Pope’s Last Crusade: How an American Jesuit Helped Pope Pius XI's Campaign to Stop Hitler illuminates this religious leader’s daring yet little-known campaign, a spiritual and political battle that would be derailed by Pius’s XIs death just a few months later. Peter Eisner reveals how Pius XI intended to unequivocally reject Nazism in one of the most unprecedented and progressive pronouncements ever issued by the Vatican, and how a group of conservative churchmen plotted to prevent it.For years, only parts of this story have been known. Eisner offers a new interpretation of this historic event and the powerful figures at its center in an essential work that provides thoughtful insight and raises controversial questions impacting our own time.“Jenkins is one of America’s top religious scholars.” —Forbes magazineThe Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins offers a revolutionary view…
of the history of the Christian church. Subtitled “The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died,” it explores the extinction of the earliest, most influential Christian churches of China, India, and the Middle East, which held the closest historical links to Jesus and were the dominant expression of Christianity throughout its first millennium. The remarkable true story of the demise of the institution that shaped both Asia and Christianity as we know them today, The Lost History of Christianity is a controversial and important work of religious scholarship that sounds a warning that must be heeded.Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief
By Rodney Stark. 2007
Winner of the 2008 Christianity Today Award of Merit in Theology/EthicsThe History of God In Discovering God, award-winning sociologist Rodney…
Stark presents a monumental history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age and wrestles with the central questions of religion and belief.The Jewish Wedding Now
By Anita Diamant. 2017
Newly revised and updated, the definitive guide to planning a Jewish wedding, written by bestselling novelist Anita Diamant—author of The…
Red Tent and The Boston Girl—and one of the most respected writers of guides to contemporary Jewish life.This complete, easy-to-use guide explains everything you need to know to plan your own Jewish wedding in today’s ever-changing world where the very definition of what constitutes a Jewish wedding is up for discussion. With enthusiasm and flair, Anita Diamant provides choices for every stage of a wedding—including celebrations before and after the ceremony itself—providing both traditional and contemporary options. She explains the Jewish tradition of love and marriage with references drawn from Biblical, Talmudic, and mystical texts and stories. She guides you step by step through planning the ceremony and the party that follows—from finding a rabbi and wording the invitation to organizing a processional and hiring a caterer. Samples of wedding invitations and ketubot (marriage contracts) are provided for inspiration and guidance, as well as poems that can be incorporated into the wedding ceremony or party and a variety of translations of traditional texts. “There is no such thing as a generic Jewish wedding,” writes Anita Diamant, “no matter what the rabbi tells you, no matter what the caterer tells you, no matter what your mother tells you.” Complete, authoritative, and indispensable, The Jewish Wedding Now provides personalized options—some new, some old—to create a wedding that combines spiritual meaning and joyous celebration and reflects your individual values and beliefs.A Wish Can Change Your Life: How to Use the Ancient Wisdom of Kabbalah to Make Your Dreams Come True
By Gahl Sasson, Steve Weinstein. 2003
Engaging, innovative, and fresh, Gahl Sasson's approach to Kabbalah—the ancient teachings of Jewish mysticism—integrates mythology, scholarship, and practical exercises for…
seekers of both material and spiritual gratification.Based on his popular Tree of Life workshops, which incorporate meditation, dreams, and real-life synchronicities with myths, rituals, and philosophies from around the world, A Wish Can Change Your Life provides a universal path to finding and embracing all of life's riches.We Need to Talk About Antisemitism
By Rabbi Diana Fersko. 2023
A millennial rabbi explores why we&’re reluctant to discuss antisemitism—and empowers us to fight against it Antisemitism is on the…
rise in America, in cities and rural areas, in red states and blue states, and in guises both subtle and terrifyingly overt. Rabbi Diana Fersko is used to having difficult conversations with members of her congregation about the issues they face—from the threat of violence to microaggressions and identity denial. In We Need to Talk About Antisemitism, she gives all of us the ultimate guide to modern antisemitism in its many forms. Exploring topics like vile myths about Jewish people and the intersection of antisemitism with other forms of discrimination, We Need to Talk About Antisemitism gives readers the tools they need to understand the state of antisemitism today. Fersko shows Jews and non-Jews alike how to speak up and come together, spreading a message of solidarity and hope. This is a timely read for anyone passionate about fighting for social justice.The Unorthodox Haggadah: A Dogma-free Passover for Jews & Other Chosen People
By Nathan Phillips. 2015
The Unorthodox Haggadah is a way to enjoy the strange and wonderful world of religion, while skipping the boring parts. …
Ritual is at the core of every culture, but people are no longer into dogma. This book offers the ritual with a hilarious, irreverent twist. It is genuinely funny, fun to flip through, and a riot to use at the seder. Make sure everyone around your table has a copy for the next Passover. Sample text: Let's begin by drinking the blood of a virgin lamb off the tip of a flaming golden scimitar. In the event that you've de-virginized your lamb or misplaced your scimitar, use wine. Now, we toast the Israelites for rolling out of Egypt in time and generally being clever. Here are a few things they've invented since 1901: Jeans, lipstick, Hollywood, the fax machine, psychoanalysis, and the weekend. Thanks for getting us out of Egypt before shit got too real. Drink the second cup of wine while leaning to the left. &“…light up your seder.&” -Huffington Post "A cool, creative affront to Jewish grandmothers." -MediaBistro &“Redefine Bitter Herbs…slightly insane.&” -Tablet Magazine "It&’s the Passover you never knew you always wanted...While there are many (many!) different Haggadah versions out there, this one is hands down our favorite (sorry Maxwell house). Genuinely funny, which puts it head and shoulders above 99.9% of the treacly crap people foist on unsuspecting seder guests to try to fool them into thinking they&’re actually enjoying themselves.&” -Heeb MagazineThe Jerusalem Files: The Secret Journey of the Menorah to Oak Island
By Corjan Mol, Christopher Morford. 2024
A non-fiction Da Vinci Code for the 21st century, this thrilling treasure hunt traces the voyage of the legendary Jewish Menorah from…
the Jerusalem of the Knights Templar through France, Portugal and North America, providing mind-blowing history and mystery for fans of The Curse of Oak Island.The Jewish Menorah is one of the world&’s most sacred artefacts, a man-size lampstand with seven arms, made from a single block of gold, that is an iconic symbol for the Jewish people. King Solomon placed it in the inner sanctum of the Temple of Jerusalem, but by the 5th century AD, all trace of it had disappeared from the official record, and it was assumed lost.Two historical researchers, Corjan Mol and Christopher Morford, now reveal the astounding secret of what happened to the Menorah. Through their meticulous research as well as a jaw-dropping stroke of luck, Mol and Morford discovered that the Menorah was dug up from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in the time of the Crusades by the Knights Templar and smuggled to France with the help of the French King Louis IX. From there it was taken to Portugal, to end up in North America after interventions by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. The secret was hidden in plain sight in both France and North America, on a scale so big that it took 800 years for it to be discovered.Paths on the Tree of Wisdom: A Course in 21st Century Kabbalah
By Mike Bais. 2024
The most up-to-date and comprehensive guide to the Kabbalah, making this complex mystical tradition easy to understand and use.Kabbalah is…
a tradition that is closely related to Judaism, but which has links also with Ancient Egyptian religion and currents all across the Near and Middle East. Outwardly it was studied and taught principally by Rabbis, but in fact on a more secret level its development was also taken forward by Moslem scholars, Renaissance princes, alchemists of all kind and magicians. It found its expression in the tarot deck and in the esoteric teachings of Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune.In a way, it's all in here and Kabbalah holds the key to all the workings of the universe. We can use it to make sense of our own minds and motivations and become better happier people by relating more consciously to all that is. As Dutch teacher Mike Bais points out, we can also use this supremely flexible system to understand the universe and how it works and one of his key points in this book is that Kabbalah is ideally placed to bring science and spirituality back together again after centuries of estrangement. The book is full of diagrams and illustrations that enhance the text. The exercises and practical teachings here form a crystal clear course of study for anyone willing put in the time and change their lives.One of a Kind: The Life of Sydney Taylor
By Richard Michelson. 2024
For fans of All-of-a-Kind Family, here is the true story of how Sarah Brenner, a poor girl from New York…
City&’s Lower East Side, became Sydney Taylor: dancer, actress, and successful children&’s book author.Sarah Brenner might have come from an all-of-a-kind family (five sisters who all dressed alike), but she was always one of a kind. Growing up in a Jewish immigrant family on New York&’s impoverished Lower East Side, Sarah loved visiting the library, celebrating holidays with her family, and taking free dance classes at the Henry Street Settlement. But she was always aware of things that weren&’t fair—whether it was that women couldn&’t vote, or how girls were treated in her school, or that her parents had had to leave Europe because they were Jewish. When she grew up, Sarah changed her name to Sydney and became an actress and a dancer, but she never forgot the importance of fighting unfairness, whether it was anti-Semitism at her job or the low wages of workers. And when her daughter complained that it wasn&’t fair that there were no books about Jewish children like her, Sydney put pen to paper and wrote a one-of-a-kind children&’s book.From well-known Jewish children&’s author Richard Michelson, this is the story of how Sarah became Sydney and how she showed children the joy of seeing their culture reflected on the page.A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day
By Meddeb Abdelwahab. 2014
The first encylopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the worldThis is the first encyclopedic…
guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today. Richly illustrated and beautifully produced, the book features more than 150 authoritative and accessible articles by an international team of leading experts in history, politics, literature, anthropology, and philosophy. Organized thematically and chronologically, this indispensable reference provides critical facts and balanced context for greater historical understanding and a more informed dialogue between Jews and Muslims.Part I covers the medieval period; Part II, the early modern period through the nineteenth century, in the Ottoman Empire, Africa, Asia, and Europe; Part III, the twentieth century, including the exile of Jews from the Muslim world, Jews and Muslims in Israel, and Jewish-Muslim politics; and Part IV, intersections between Jewish and Muslim origins, philosophy, scholarship, art, ritual, and beliefs. The main articles address major topics such as the Jews of Arabia at the origin of Islam; special profiles cover important individuals and places; and excerpts from primary sources provide contemporary views on historical events.Contributors include Mark R. Cohen, Alain Dieckhoff, Michael Laskier, Vera Moreen, Gordon D. Newby, Marina Rustow, Daniel Schroeter, Kirsten Schulze, Mark Tessler, John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and many more.Covers the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to todayWritten by an international team of leading scholarsFeatures in-depth articles on social, political, and cultural historyIncludes profiles of important people (Eliyahu Capsali, Joseph Nasi, Mohammed V, Martin Buber, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, Edward Said, Messali Hadj, Mahmoud Darwish) and places (Jerusalem, Alexandria, Baghdad)Presents passages from essential documents of each historical period, such as the Cairo Geniza, Al-Sira, and Judeo-Persian illuminated manuscriptsRichly illustrated with more than 250 images, including maps and color photographsIncludes extensive cross-references, bibliographies, and an indexJesus in the Talmud
By Peter Schäfer. 2007
Scattered throughout the Talmud, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, can be found quite a few references…
to Jesus--and they're not flattering. In this lucid, richly detailed, and accessible book, Peter Schäfer examines how the rabbis of the Talmud read, understood, and used the New Testament Jesus narrative to assert, ultimately, Judaism's superiority over Christianity. The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus' birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus' resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell--and that a similar fate awaits his followers. Schäfer contends that these stories betray a remarkable familiarity with the Gospels--especially Matthew and John--and represent a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives. He carefully distinguishes between Babylonian and Palestinian sources, arguing that the rabbis' proud and self-confident countermessage to that of the evangelists was possible only in the unique historical setting of Persian Babylonia, in a Jewish community that lived in relative freedom. The same could not be said of Roman and Byzantine Palestine, where the Christians aggressively consolidated their political power and the Jews therefore suffered. A departure from past scholarship, which has played down the stories as unreliable distortions of the historical Jesus, Jesus in the Talmud posits a much more deliberate agenda behind these narratives.Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud
By Moulie Vidas. 2014
Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the…
Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. Moulie Vidas argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis' self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition.Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, Vidas analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. He also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.Jewish Questions: Responsa on Sephardic Life in the Early Modern Period
By Matt Goldish. 2008
In Jewish Questions, Matt Goldish introduces English readers to the history and culture of the Sephardic dispersion through an exploration…
of forty-three responsa--questions about Jewish law that Jews asked leading rabbis, and the rabbis' responses. The questions along with their rabbinical decisions examine all aspects of Jewish life, including business, family, religious issues, and relations between Jews and non-Jews. Taken together, the responsa constitute an extremely rich source of information about the everyday lives of Sephardic Jews. The book looks at questions asked between 1492--when the Jews were expelled from Spain--and 1750. Originating from all over the Sephardic world, the responsa discuss such diverse topics as the rules of conduct for Ottoman Jewish sea traders, the trials of an ex-husband accused of a robbery, and the rights of a sexually abused wife. Goldish provides a sizeable introduction to the history of the Sephardic diaspora and the nature of responsa literature, as well as a bibliography, historical background for each question, and short biographies of the rabbis involved. Including cases from well-known communities such as Venice, Istanbul, and Saloniki, and lesser-known Jewish enclaves such as Kastoria, Ragusa, and Nablus, Jewish Questions provides a sense of how Sephardic communities were organized, how Jews related to their neighbors, what problems threatened them and their families, and how they understood their relationship to God and the Jewish people.The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image
By Daniel B. Schwartz. 2012
Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated…
by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World #42)
By Maristella Botticini, Zvi Eckstein. 2012
How the Jewish people went from farmers to merchantsIn 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living…
mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492 the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change? The Chosen Few presents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein offer a powerful new explanation of one of the most significant transformations in Jewish history while also providing fresh insights into the growing debate about the social and economic impact of religion.The Jewish Social Contract: An Essay in Political Theology (New Forum Books #39)
By David Novak. 2006
The Jewish Social Contract begins by asking how a traditional Jew can participate politically and socially and in good faith…
in a modern democratic society, and ends by proposing a broad, inclusive notion of secularity. David Novak takes issue with the view--held by the late philosopher John Rawls and his followers--that citizens of a liberal state must, in effect, check their religion at the door when discussing politics in a public forum. Novak argues that in a "liberal democratic state, members of faith-based communities--such as tradition-minded Jews and Christians--ought to be able to adhere to the broad political framework wholly in terms of their own religious tradition and convictions, and without setting their religion aside in the public sphere. Novak shows how social contracts emerged, rooted in biblical notions of covenant, and how they developed in the rabbinic, medieval, and "modern periods. He offers suggestions as to how Jews today can best negotiate the modern social contract while calling upon non-Jewish allies to aid them in the process. The Jewish Social Contract will prove an enlightening and innovative contribution to the ongoing debate about the role of religion in liberal democracies.Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict
By Maud S. Mandel. 2014
This book traces the global, national, and local origins of the conflict between Muslims and Jews in France, challenging the…
belief that rising anti-Semitism in France is rooted solely in the unfolding crisis in Israel and Palestine. Maud Mandel shows how the conflict in fact emerged from processes internal to French society itself even as it was shaped by affairs elsewhere, particularly in North Africa during the era of decolonization. Mandel examines moments in which conflicts between Muslims and Jews became a matter of concern to French police, the media, and an array of self-appointed spokesmen from both communities: Israel's War of Independence in 1948, France's decolonization of North Africa, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1968 student riots, and François Mitterrand's experiments with multiculturalism in the 1980s. She takes an in-depth, on-the-ground look at interethnic relations in Marseille, which is home to the country's largest Muslim and Jewish populations outside of Paris. She reveals how Muslims and Jews in France have related to each other in diverse ways throughout this history--as former residents of French North Africa, as immigrants competing for limited resources, as employers and employees, as victims of racist aggression, as religious minorities in a secularizing state, and as French citizens. In Muslims and Jews in France, Mandel traces the way these multiple, complex interactions have been overshadowed and obscured by a reductionist narrative of Muslim-Jewish polarization.Jews and the Military: A History
By Derek J. Penslar. 2013
A historical reevaluation of the relationship between Jews, miltary service, and warJews and the Military is the first comprehensive and…
comparative look at Jews' involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Derek Penslar shows that although Jews have often been described as people who shun the army, in fact they have frequently been willing, even eager, to do military service, and only a minuscule minority have been pacifists. Penslar demonstrates that Israel's military ethos did not emerge from a vacuum and that long before the state's establishment, Jews had a vested interest in military affairs.Spanning Europe, North America, and the Middle East, Penslar discusses the myths and realities of Jewish draft dodging, how Jews reacted to facing their coreligionists in battle, the careers of Jewish officers and their reception in the Jewish community, the effects of World War I on Jewish veterans, and Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Penslar culminates with a study of Israel's War of Independence as a Jewish world war, which drew on the military expertise and financial support of a mobilized, global Jewish community. He considers how military service was a central issue in debates about Jewish emancipation and a primary indicator of the position of Jews in any given society.Deconstructing old stereotypes, Jews and the Military radically transforms our understanding of Jews' historic relationship to war and military power.