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American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change
By Emily Sigalow. 2019
A revealing look at the Jewish American encounter with BuddhismToday, many Jewish Americans are embracing a dual religious identity, practicing…
Buddhism while also staying connected to their Jewish roots. This book tells the story of Judaism's encounter with Buddhism in the United States, showing how it has given rise to new contemplative forms within American Judaism—and shaped the way Americans understand and practice Buddhism.Taking readers from the nineteenth century to today, Emily Sigalow traces the history of these two traditions in America and explains how they came together. She argues that the distinctive social position of American Jews led them to their unique engagement with Buddhism, and describes how people incorporate aspects of both into their everyday lives. Drawing on a wealth of original in-depth interviews conducted across the nation, Sigalow explores how Jewish American Buddhists experience their dual religious identities. She reveals how Jewish Buddhists confound prevailing expectations of minority religions in America. Rather than simply adapting to the majority religion, Jews and Buddhists have borrowed and integrated elements from each other, and in doing so they have left an enduring mark on the American consciousness.American JewBu highlights the leading role that American Jews have played in the popularization of meditation and mindfulness in the United States, and the profound impact that these two venerable traditions have had on one another.Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom
By Ariel Burger. 2018
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD—BIOGRAPHY Elie Wiesel was a towering presence on the world stage—a Nobel laureate, activist,…
adviser to world leaders, and the author of more than forty books, including the Oprah’s Book Club selection Night. But when asked, Wiesel always said, “I am a teacher first.” In fact, he taught at Boston University for nearly four decades, and with this book, Ariel Burger—devoted protégé, apprentice, and friend—takes us into the sacred space of Wiesel’s classroom. There, Wiesel challenged his students to explore moral complexity and to resist the dangerous lure of absolutes. In bringing together never-before-recounted moments between Wiesel and his students, Witness serves as a moral education in and of itself—a primer on educating against indifference, on the urgency of memory and individual responsibility, and on the role of literature, music, and art in making the world a more compassionate place. Burger first met Wiesel at age fifteen; he became his student in his twenties, and his teaching assistant in his thirties. In this profoundly thought-provoking and inspiring book, Burger gives us a front-row seat to Wiesel’s remarkable exchanges in and out of the classroom, and chronicles the intimate conversations between these two men over the decades as Burger sought counsel on matters of intellect, spirituality, and faith, while navigating his own personal journey from boyhood to manhood, from student and assistant, to rabbi and, in time, teacher. “Listening to a witness makes you a witness,” said Wiesel. Ariel Burger’s book is an invitation to every reader to become Wiesel’s student, and witness.Judaism: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides)
By Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok, Dan Cohn-Sherbok. 1997
In this clear and authoratative guide, Lavinia and Dan Cohn-Sherbok concisely examine the Jewish faith and its practices and explore…
what it means to be a Jew today. From the nature of God to the divisions within Judaism and from worship to customs, Judaism: A Beginner's Guide covers all the topics essential to an informed understanding of this highly influential 3000-year old faith and its traditions.The Torah: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides)
By Joel N. Lohr, Joel S Kaminsky. 2011
There is no question that the Torah has had an enormous influence on Western Civilization. It is the source of…
widely known characters like Joseph, Moses, and Noah, and timeless stories such as the Garden of Eden and the Exodus. Jointly authored by professors of Judaism and Christianity, The Torah: A Beginner's Guide takes a unique approach, exploring the interplay and dynamics of how these two religions share this common scripture. Drawing on both scholarly and popular sources, Kaminsky and Lohr examine the key debates, while simultaneously illustrating the importance of the Torah in western jurisprudence, ethics, and contemporary conceptions of the family, morality, and even politics. Joel S. Kaminsky is Professor in the Department of Religion at Smith College where he teaches courses on the Hebrew Bible and on ancient Jewish religion and literature. Joel N. Lohr teaches in the areas of Bible and Old Testament at the department of religious studies at Trinity Western University, Canada.Somewhere There Is Still a Sun: A Memoir of the Holocaust
By Todd Hasak-Lowy, Michael Gruenbaum. 2002
Resilience shines throughout a boy's firsthand, present-tense account of life in the Terezin concentration camp during the Holocaust, an ideal…
companion to the bestselling Boy on the Wooden Box.Michael "Misha" Gruenbaum enjoyed a carefree childhood playing games and taking walks through Prague with his beloved father. All of that changed forever when the Nazis invaded Prague. The Gruenbaum family was forced to move into the Jewish Ghetto in Prague. Then, after a devastating loss, Michael, his mother and sister were deported to the Terezin concentration camp. At Terezin, Misha roomed with forty other boys who became like brothers to him. Life in Terezin was a bizarre, surreal balance--some days were filled with friendship and soccer matches, while others brought mortal terror as the boys waited to hear the names on each new list of who was being sent "to the East." Those trains were going to Auschwitz. When the day came that his family's name appeared on a transport list, their survival called for a miracle--one that tied Michael's fate to a carefully sewn teddy bear, and to his mother's unshakeable determination to keep her children safe. Collaborating with acclaimed author Todd Hasak-Lowy, Michael Gruenbaum shares his inspiring story of hope in an unforgettable memoir that recreates his experiences with stunning immediacy. Michael's story, and the many original documents and photos included alongside it, offer an essential contribution to Holocaust literature.History and Memory in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Remembering the Teacher of Righteousness
By Travis B. Williams. 2019
The nature and reliability of the ancient sources are among the most important issues in the scholarship on the Dead…
Sea Scrolls. It is noteworthy, therefore, that scholars have grown increasingly skeptical about the value of these materials for reconstructing the life of the Teacher of Righteousness. Travis B. Williams' study is designed to address this new perspective and its implications for historical inquiry. He offers an important corrective to popular conceptions of history and memory by introducing memory theory as a means of informing historical investigation. Charting a new methodological course in Dead Sea Scrolls research, Williams reveals that properly representing the past requires an explanation of how the mnemonic evidence found in the relevant sources could have developed from a historical progression that began with the Teacher. His book represents the first attempt in Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship to integrate history and memory in a comprehensive way.It Will Yet Be Heard: A Polish Rabbi's Witness of the Shoah and Survival
By Leon Thorne. 2019
Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer once described Dr. Leon Thorne’s memoir as a work of “bitter truth” that he compared…
favorably to the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Proust. Out of print for over forty years, this lost classic of Holocaust literature now reappears in a revised, annotated edition, including both Thorne’s original 1961 memoir Out of the Ashes: The Story of a Survivor and his previously unpublished accounts of his arduous postwar experiences in Germany and Poland. Rabbi Thorne composed his memoir under extraordinary conditions, confined to a small underground bunker below a Polish peasant’s pigsty. But, It Will Yet Be Heard is remarkable not only for the story of its composition, but also for its moral clarity and complexity. A deeply religious man, Rabbi Thorne bore witness to forced labor camps, human degradation, and the murders of entire communities. And once he emerged from hiding, he grappled not only with survivor’s guilt, but also with the lingering antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence in Poland even after the war ended. Harrowing, moving, and deeply insightful, Rabbi Thorne’s firsthand account offers a rediscovered perspective on the twentieth century’s greatest tragedy.Studying Hasidism: Sources, Methods, Perspectives
By Galit Hasan-Rokem, Edwin Seroussi, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Shaul Magid, David Assaf, Maya Balakirsky Katz, Uriel Gellman, Gadi Sagiv, Levi Cooper, Vladimir Levin. 2019
Hasidism, a Jewish religious movement that originated in Poland in the eighteenth century, today counts over 700,000 adherents, primarily in…
the U.S., Israel, and the UK. Popular and scholarly interest in Hasidic Judaism and Hasidic Jews is growing, but there is no textbook dedicated to research methods in the field, nor sources for the history of Hasidism have been properly recognized. Studying Hasidism, edited by Marcin Wodzinski, an internationally recognized historian of Hasidism, aims to remedy this gap. The work’s thirteen chapters each draws upon a set of different sources, many of them previously untapped, including folklore, music, big data, and material culture to demonstrate what is still to be achieved in the study of Hasidism. Ultimately, this textbook presents research methods that can decentralize the role community leaders play in the current literature and reclaim the everyday lives of Hasidic Jews.The Power of Dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians: Stories of Change from the School for Peace
By Nava Sonnenschein, Tamar Saguy. 2019
In The Power of Dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, scholar and activist Nava Sonnenschein shares a collection of twenty-five powerful…
interviews she conducted with Palestinian and Jewish Israeli alumni of peacebuilding courses, a decade after their graduation. Participants with diverse personal and professional backgrounds completed a series of conflict transformation workshops using the model developed by the School for Peace at the world’s only intentional Jewish-Palestinian community, Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam (“Oasis of Peace” in Hebrew and Arabic). Critically, the interviews vividly demonstrate that peacebuilding does not end with the courses. Most of the graduates choose to work professionally in roles that contribute to peace-building. Sonnenschein shows the transformational potential of encounter between members of groups in conflict, sharing how ordinary Israelis and Palestinians coming together in an open and honest environment undergo life-changing experiences that provide concrete hope for a sustainable path to a peaceful shared existence as equals in Israel and Palestine.The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World: Jewish Heritage in Europe and the United States
By Daniel J. Walkowitz. 2018
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Jewish socialist movement played a vital role in protecting workers’ rights…
throughout Europe and the Americas. Yet few traces of this movement or its accomplishments have been preserved or memorialized in Jewish heritage sites. The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World investigates the politics of heritage tourism and collective memory. In an account that is part travelogue, part social history, and part family saga, acclaimed historian Daniel J. Walkowitz visits key Jewish museums and heritage sites from Berlin to Belgrade, from Krakow to Kiev, and from Warsaw to New York, to discover which stories of the Jewish experience are told and which are silenced. As he travels to thirteen different locations, participates in tours, displays, and public programs, and gleans insight from local historians, he juxtaposes the historical record with the stories presented in heritage tourism. What he finds raises provocative questions about the heritage tourism industry and its role in determining how we perceive Jewish history and identity. This book offers a unique perspective on the importance of collective memory and the dangers of collective forgetting.In The Shadow Of The Virgin: Inquisitors, Friars, And Conversos In Guadalupe, Spain
By Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau. 2003
In the Shadow of the Virgin is unique in pointing out that the power of the Inquisition came from the…
collective participation of witnesses, accusers, and even sometimes its victims. For the first time, it draws the connection between the malleability of religious identity and the increase in early modern political authority. It shows that, from the earliest days of the modern Spanish Inquisition, the Inquisition reflected the political struggles and collective religious and cultural anxieties of those who were drawn into participating in it.The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia: From Abraham to Zabar's and Everything in Between
By Mark Oppenheimer, Liel Leibovitz, Stephanie Butnick. 2019
“[A] delightfully irreverent romp through Jewish history and culture.”—Library Journal, starred reviewAn Unorthodox Guide to Everything Jewish Deeply knowing, highly…
entertaining, and just a little bit irreverent, this unputdownable encyclopedia of all things Jewish and Jew-ish covers culture, religion, history, habits, language, and more. Readers will refresh their knowledge of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the artistry of Barbra Streisand, the significance of the Oslo Accords, the meaning of words like balaboosta,balagan, bashert, and bageling. Understand all the major and minor holidays. Learn how the Jews invented Hollywood. Remind themselves why they need to read Hannah Arendt, watch Seinfeld, listen to Leonard Cohen. Even discover the secret of happiness (see “Latkes”). Includes hundreds of photos, charts, infographics, and illustrations. It’s a lot.Josephus's The Jewish War: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books #45)
By Martin Goodman. 2019
An essential introduction to Josephus’s momentous war narrativeThe Jewish War is Josephus's superbly evocative account of the Jewish revolt against…
Rome, which was crushed in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Martin Goodman describes the life of this book, from its composition in Greek for a Roman readership to the myriad ways it touched the lives of Jews and Christians over the span of two millennia.The scion of a priestly Jewish family, Josephus became a rebel general at the start of the war. Captured by the enemy general Vespasian, Josephus predicted correctly that Vespasian would be the future emperor of Rome and thus witnessed the final stages of the siege of Jerusalem from the safety of the Roman camp and wrote his history of these cataclysmic events from a comfortable exile in Rome. His history enjoyed enormous popularity among Christians, who saw it as a testimony to the world that gave rise to their faith and a record of the suffering of the Jews due to their rejection of Christ. Jews were hardly aware of the book until the Renaissance. In the nineteenth century, Josephus's history became an important source for recovering Jewish history, yet Jewish enthusiasm for his stories of heroism—such as the doomed defense of Masada—has been tempered by suspicion of a writer who betrayed his own people.Goodman provides a concise biography of one of the greatest war narratives ever written, explaining why Josephus's book continues to hold such fascination today.A New Hasidism: Branches
By Arthur Green, Ariel Evan Mayse. 2019
You are invited to enter the new-old pathway of Neo-Hasidism—a movement that uplifts key elements of Hasidism’s Jewish revival of…
two centuries ago to reexamine the meaning of existence, see everything anew, and bring the world as it is and as it can be closer together. This volume brings this discussion into the twenty-first century, highlighting Neo-Hasidic approaches to key issues of our time. Eighteen contributions by leading Neo-Hasidic thinkers open with the credos of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Arthur Green. Or Rose wrestles with reinterpreting the rebbes’ harsh teachings concerning non-Jews. Ebn Leader assesses the perils of trusting one’s whole being to a single personality: can Neo-Hasidism endure as a living tradition without a rebbe? Shaul Magid candidly calibrates Shlomo Carlebach: how “the singing rabbi” transformed him and why Magid eventually walked away. Other contributors engage questions such as: How might women enter this hitherto gendered sphere created by and for men? How can we honor and draw nourishment from other religions’ teachings? Can the rebbes’ radiant wisdom guide those who struggle with self-diminishment to reclaim wholeness? Together these intellectually honest and spiritually robust conversations inspire us to grapple anew with Judaism’s legacy and future.A New Hasidism: Roots
By Arthur Green, Ariel Evan Mayse. 2019
Neo-Hasidism applies the Hasidic masters’ spiritual insights—of God’s presence everywhere, of seeking the magnificent within the everyday, in doing all…
things with love and joy, uplifting all of life to become a vehicle of God’s service—to contemporary Judaism, as practiced by men and women who do not live within the strictly bounded world of the Hasidic community. This first-ever anthology of Neo-Hasidic philosophy brings together the writings of its progenitors: five great twentieth-century European and American Jewish thinkers—Hillel Zeitlin, Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Shlomo Carlebach, and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi—plus a young Arthur Green. The thinkers reflect on the inner life of the individual and their dreams of creating a Neo-Hasidic spiritual community. The editors’ introductions and notes analyze each thinker’s contributions to Neo-Hasidic thought and influence on the movement. Zeitlin and Buber initiated a renewal of Hasidism for the modern world; Heschel’s work is quietly infused with Neo-Hasidic thought; Carlebach and Schachter-Shalomi re-created Neo-Hasidism for American Jews in the 1960s; and Green is the first American-born Jewish thinker fully identified with the movement. Previously unpublished materials by Carlebach and Schachter-Shalomi include an interview with Schachter-Shalomi about his decision to leave Chabad-Lubavitch and embark on his own Neo-Hasidic path.A History of the Talmud
By David C. Kraemer. 2019
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the Talmud in Judaism and beyond. Yet its difficult language and its…
assumptions, so distant from modern sensibilities, render it inaccessible to most readers. In this volume, David C. Kraemer offers students of Judaism a sophisticated and accessible introduction to one of the religion's most important texts. Here, he brings together his expertise as a scholar of the Talmud and rabbinic Judaism with the lessons of his experience as director of one of the largest collections of rare Judaica in the world. Tracing the Talmud's origins and its often controversial status through history, he bases his work on the most recent historical and literary scholarship while making no assumptions concerning the reader's prior knowledge. Kraemer also examines the continuities and shifts of the Talmud over time and space. His work will provide scholars and students with an unprecedented understanding of one of the world's great classics and the spirit that animates it.Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library)
By Karel Van Toorn. 2019
Based on a previously unexplored source, this book transforms the way we think about the formation of Jewish identity This…
book tells the story of the earliest Jewish diaspora in Egypt in a way it has never been told before. In the fifth century BCE there was a Jewish community on Elephantine Island. Why they spoke Aramaic, venerated Aramean gods besides Yaho, and identified as Arameans is a mystery, but a previously little explored papyrus from Egypt sheds new light on their history. The papyrus shows that the ancestors of the Elephantine Jews came originally from Samaria. Due to political circumstances, they left Israel and lived for a century in an Aramean environment. Around 600 BCE, they moved to Egypt. These migrants to Egypt did not claim a Jewish identity when they arrived, but after the destruction of their temple on the island they chose to deploy their Jewish identity to raise sympathy for their cause. Their story—a typical diaspora tale—is not about remaining Jews in the diaspora, but rather about becoming Jews through the diaspora.Ghetto: The History of a Word
By Daniel B. Schwartz. 2019
Few words are as ideologically charged as “ghetto,” a term that has described legally segregated Jewish quarters, dense immigrant enclaves,…
Nazi holding pens, and black neighborhoods in the United States. Daniel B. Schwartz reveals how the history of ghettos is tied up with struggle and argument over the slippery meaning of a word.The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History
By Paul Mendes-Flohr, Jehuda Reinharz. 2011
The last two centuries have witnessed a radical transformation of Jewish life. Marked by such profound events as the emancipation…
from the ghettoes of Europe, the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, Judaism's long journey through the modern age has been a complex and tumultuous one, leading many Jews to ask themselves not only where they have been and where they are going, but what it means to be a Jew in today's world. Tracing the dramatic changes in Jewish religion, culture, and identity from the seventeenth century to 1948, The Jew in the Modern World, Third Edition, remains the most complete sourcebook on modern Jewish history available. Now thoroughly expanded and updated, this critically acclaimed volume of primary materials features previously unpublished and inaccessible sources concerning the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa; women in Jewish history; American Jewish life; the Holocaust; and Zionism and the nascent Jewish community in Palestine on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel. The documents are arranged chronologically in each chapter and are meticulously and extensively annotated and cross-referenced. Providing useful tables detailing Jewish demographic trends, this unique text is ideal for courses in modern Jewish history, Zionism and Israel, the Holocaust, or modern European history.Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire: A History of the Book of Zerubbabel
By Martha Himmelfarb. 2017
The seventh-century CE Hebrew work Sefer Zerubbabel (Book of Zerubbabel)—a tale of two messiahs—is the first full-fledged messianic narrative in…
Jewish literature. Martha Himmelfarb offers a comprehensive analysis of this rich understudied text, illuminating its distinctive literary features and the complex milieu from which it arose.