Download or read book Berit Mila in the Reform Context written by Lewis M. Barth and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Berit Mila in the Reform Context written by Lewis M. Barth and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This textbook for doctors and other licensed practitioners interested in becoming certified Reform mohalim and mohalot introduces the practical issues of conducting this time-honored ceremony.
Download or read book Understanding Circumcision written by George C. Denniston and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, in the United States and the third world combined, 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls are circumcised. Whether because of perceived medical, cultural, or religious necessity, most of these parents feel they have no alternative but to allow their children to undergo this surgery. Sparking intense debate, the circumcision of children is a highly controversial and complex phenomenon that touches a variety of sociological areas, such as religious beliefs, identity issues, medical conceptualizations, fear, and superstition. The contributors to this volume comprise an international panel of experts in the fields of medicine, psychology, law, ethics, sociology, anthropology, history, theology, and politics. In 18 chapters they discuss the history of circumcision; document the physical and psychological consequences of circumcision; present the latest anatomical discoveries about the male prepuce; analyze the role of circumcision in various traditions; reveal the medical industry's investment in the practice; describe current legislative efforts to protect children from circumcision; and outline effective, culturally sensitive methods that are being implemented today to safeguard the human rights of at-risk children. For its insights into this troubling aspect of culture, Understanding Circumcision: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to a Multi-Dimensional Problem is a critically important contribution to the growing body of literature on this subject.
Download or read book Contested Rituals written by Robin Judd and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Contested Rituals, Robin Judd shows that circumcision and kosher butchering became focal points of political struggle among the German state, its municipal governments, Jews, and Gentiles. In 1843, some German-Jewish fathers refused to circumcise their sons, prompting their Jewish communities to reconsider their standards for membership. Nearly a century later, in 1933, another blood ritual, kosher butchering, served as a political and cultural touchstone when the Nazis built upon a decades-old controversy concerning the practice and prohibited it. In describing these events and related controversies that raged during the intervening years, Judd explores the nature and escalation of the ritual debates as they transcended the boundaries of the local Jewish community to include non-Jews who sought to protect, restrict, or prohibit these rites. Judd argues that the ritual debates grew out of broad shifts in German politics: the competition between local and regional authority following unification, the possibility of government intervention in private affairs, the place of religious difference in the modern age, and the relationship of the German state to its religious and ethnic minorities, including Catholics. Anti-Semitism was only one factor driving the debates and it often functioned in unexpected ways. Judd gives us a new understanding of the formation of German political systems, the importance of religious practices to Jewish political leadership, the interaction of Jews with the German government, and the reaction of Germans of all faiths to political change.
Download or read book Marked in Your Flesh written by Leonard B. Glick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book of Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on the condition that he and all his male descendents must be circumcised. For thousands of years thereafter, the distinctive practice of circumcision served to set the Jews apart from their neighbors. The apostle Paul rejected it as a worthless practice, emblematic of Judaism's fixation on physical matters. Christian theologians followed his lead, arguing that whereas Christians sought spiritual fulfillment, Jews remained mired in such pointless concerns as diet and circumcision. As time went on, Europeans developed folklore about malicious Jews who performed sacrificial murders of Christian children and delighted in genital mutilation. But Jews held unwaveringly to the belief that being a Jewish male meant being physically circumcised and to this day even most non-observant Jews continue to follow this practice. In this book, Leonard B. Glick offers a history of Jewish and Christian beliefs about circumcision from its ancient origins to the current controversy. By the turn of the century, more and more physicians in America and England--but not, interestingly, in continental Europe--were performing the procedure routinely. Glick shows that Jewish American physicians were and continue to be especially vocal and influential champions of the practice which, he notes, serves to erase the visible difference between Jewish and gentile males. Informed medical opinion is now unanimous that circumcision confers no benefit and the practice has declined. In Jewish circles it is virtually taboo to question circumcision, but Glick does not flinch from asking whether this procedure should continue to be the defining feature of modern Jewish identity.
Download or read book Contesting Conversion written by Matthew Thiessen and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-08-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matthew Thiessen offers a nuanced and wide-ranging study of the nature of Jewish thought on Jewishness, circumcision, and conversion. Examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity, he gives a compelling account of the various forms of Judaism from which the early Christian movement arose.Beginning with analysis of the Hebrew Bible, Thiessen argues that there is no evidence that circumcision was considered to be a rite of conversion to Israelite religion. In fact, circumcision, particularly the infant circumcision practiced within Israelite and early Jewish society, excluded from the covenant those not properly descended from Abraham. In the Second Temple period, many Jews began to subscribe to a definition of Jewishness that enabled Gentiles to become Jews. Other Jews, such as the author of Jubilees, found this definition problematic, reasserting a strictly genealogical conception of Jewish identity. As a result, some Gentiles who underwent conversion to Judaism in this period faced criticism because of their suspect genealogy.Thiessen's examination of the way in which Jews in the Second Temple period perceived circumcision and conversion allows a deeper understanding of early Christianity. Contesting Conversion shows that careful attention to a definition of Jewishness that was based on genealogical descent has crucial implications for understanding the variegated nature of early Christian mission to the Gentiles in the first century C.E.
Download or read book Mothers and Children written by Elisheva Baumgarten and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a synthetic history of the family--the most basic building block of medieval Jewish communities--in Germany and northern France during the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on the special roles of mothers and children, it also advances recent efforts to write a comparative Jewish-Christian social history. Elisheva Baumgarten draws on a rich trove of primary sources to give a full portrait of medieval Jewish family life during the period of childhood from birth to the beginning of formal education at age seven. Illustrating the importance of understanding Jewish practice in the context of Christian society and recognizing the shared foundations in both societies, Baumgarten's examination of Jewish and Christian practices and attitudes is explicitly comparative. Her analysis is also wideranging, covering nearly every aspect of home life and childrearing, including pregnancy, midwifery, birth and initiation rituals, nursing, sterility, infanticide, remarriage, attitudes toward mothers and fathers, gender hierarchies, divorce, widowhood, early education, and the place of children in the home, synagogue, and community. A richly detailed and deeply researched contribution to our understanding of the relationship between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors, Mothers and Children provides a key analysis of the history of Jewish families in medieval Ashkenaz.
Download or read book Judaism in Christian Eyes written by Yaacov Deutsch and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Christian ethnographic writing about the Jews in early modern Europe, offering a systematic historical analysis of this literary genre and arguing its importance for better understanding both the period in general and Jewish-Christian relations in particular. The book focuses on nearly 80 texts from Western Europe (mostly Germany) that describe the customs and ceremonies of the contemporary Jews, containing both descriptions and illustrations of their subjects. Deutsch is one of the first scholars to study these unique writings in extensive detail. He examines books in which Christian authors describe Jewish life and provides new interpretations of Christian perceptions of Jews, Christian Hebraism, and the attention paid by the Hebraist to contemporary Jews and Judaism. Since many of the authors were converts, studying their books offers new insights into conversion during the period. Their work presents new perspectives the study of religion, developments in the field of anthropology and ethnography, and internal Christian debates that arose from the portrayal of Jewish life. Despite the lack of attention by modern scholars, some of these books were extremely popular in their time and represent one of the important ways by which Jews were perceived during the period. The key claim of the study is that, although almost all of the descriptions of Jewish customs are accurate, the authors chose to concentrate mainly on details that show the Jewish ceremonies as anti-Christian, superstitious, and ridiculous; these details also reveal the deviation of Judaism from the Biblical law. Deutsch suggests that these ethnographic descriptions are better defined as polemical ethnographies and argues that the texts, despite their polemical tendency, represent a shift from writing about Judaism as a religion to writing about Jews, and from a mode of writing based on stereotypes to one based on direct contact and observation.
Download or read book Talking with Christians written by David Novak and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition: - Uses the clear, easy-to-read Popular format - Contains a Concordance with approximately 1000 entry words and over 10,000 Bible references - Is beautifully bound in popular soft-tone leather - Has a flexible cover, with blind embossing - Has gilded page edges - Has a ribbon marker and head/tail bands - Has pagination to match TNIV Pew and Lectern Bibles, so it can be easily used in church TNIV is a thoroughly accurate, fully trustworthy Bible text built on the rich heritage of the NIV. It presents the fruit of the ongoing study of the same team of translators that were responsible for the original NIV. The uniqueness of TNIV rests in its ability to speak God's word clearly and accurately in English that has developed and changed over the last quarter century. The result is a Bible text that reflects the NIV but also clarifies and updates passages and words to provide a more timely, contemporary English rendition for a new generation of Bible readers. The royalty from every Hodder & Stoughton TNIV Bible that you buy helps to fund the International Bible Society's effort to translate and distribute Bibles to people in need around the world.
Download or read book A Lifetime of Genesis written by Henry A. Zoob and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-12-22 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many readers of the Bible, there are two major obstacles to the enjoyment of scripture: comprehension and relevancy. In A Lifetime of Genesis, Rabbi Zoob seeks to help the reader overcome these obstacles. In clear, logical prose, Rabbi Zoob explains the course of the Covenant of Abraham in Genesis and how each major player--Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah--has an impact on the development and continuity of the Covenant of Abraham. He solves the relevancy problem by sharing stories from his life that are connected to the patriarchal and matriarchal events and themes in each previous chapter. For example, following an analysis of the challenge of infertility that Abraham and Sarah faced, he tells the story of how he and his wife Barbara struggled through thirteen years of childlessness. And after the chapter on how Jacob wrestled with the angel and the many challenges in his life, Rabbi Zoob recalls his sibling struggles with his brother and his wrestling with seasonal depression. Rabbi Zoob hopes that his use of this midrashic process to discover personal insights will encourage the reader to do the same.
Download or read book Mediating Modernity written by Lauren B. Strauss and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark collection of essays by prominent academics in modern Jewish and German-Jewish history, honoring Michael A. Meyer, a pioneer in those fields. In Mediating Modernity, contemporary Jewish scholars pay tribute to Michael A. Meyer, scholar of German-Jewish history and the history of Reform Judaism, with a collection of essays that highlight growing diversity within the discipline of Jewish studies. The occasion of Meyer's seventieth birthday has served as motivation for his colleagues Lauren B. Strauss and Michael Brenner to compile this volume, with essays by twenty-four leading academics, representing institutions in five countries. Mediating Modernity is introduced by an overview of modern Jewish historiography, largely drawing on Meyer's work in that field, delineating important connections between the writing of history and the environment in which it is written. Meyer's own areas of specialization are reflected in essays on Moses Mendelssohn, German-Jewish historiography, the religious and social practices of German Jews, Reform Judaism, and various Jewish communities in America. The volume's field of inquiry is broadened by essays that deal with gender issues, literary analysis, and the historical relationship of Israel and the Palestinians. Though other volumes have been compiled to honor Jewish historians, Mediating Modernity is unique in the personal and intellectual relationships shared by its contributors and Michael A. Meyer. Scholars of Jewish studies, German history, and religious history will appreciate this timely volume.
Download or read book The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies written by Jeremy Tambling and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-29 with total page 1977 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This encyclopaedia will be an indispensable resource and recourse for all who are thinking about cities and the urban, and the relation of cities to literature, and to ways of writing about cities. Covering a vast terrain, this work will include entries on theorists, individual writers, individual cities, countries, cities in relation to the arts, film and music, urban space, pre/early and modern cities, concepts and movements and definitions amongst others. Written by an international team of contributors, this will be the first resource of its kind to pull together such a comprehensive overview of the field.
Download or read book Teaching Torah written by Sorel Goldberg Loeb and published by Behrman House, Inc. This book was released on 1997 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A teacher's bible for teaching the Five Books of Moses This invaluable guide for preparing to teach or study the weekly Torah portion provides a precise synopsis of each of the 54 parashiyot, as well as overviews of commentaries and sources, capsule biographies of Torah interpreters, and provocative questions. Over 1,000 unusual strategies help readers analyze, extend, and personalize the text. A bibliography and a thematic index make this an especially useful resource for Bar/Bat Mitzvah preparation, sermon/D'var Torah ideas, and Havurah discussions.
Download or read book Studies in the Meaning of Judaism JPS Scholar of Distinction Series written by Eugene B. Borowitz and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted educator, author, and speaker Eugene Borowitz delivers the fruits of his scholarship with grace in this new addition to the JPS Scholar of Distinction series. Gathered in this single volume are 33 essays covering the themes of modern Jewish theology, education, the history of Reform Judaism in America, Jewish law, ethics, and religious dialogue. This collection will appeal to a wide audience, including rabbis; scholars; and readers of religion, modern Jewish thought, and liturgy.
Download or read book An Irreverent Curiosity written by David Farley and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-07-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read David Farley's posts on the Penguin Blog.A tour through the centuries and through a bizarre Italian town in search of an unbelievable relic: the foreskin of Jesus Christ In December 1983, a priest in the Italian hill town of Calcata shared shocking news with his congregation: the pride of their town, the foreskin of Jesus, had been stolen. Some postulated that it had been stolen by Satanists. Some said the priest himself was to blame. Some even pointed their fingers at the Vatican. In 2006, travel writer David Farley moved to Calcata, determined to find the missing foreskin, or at least find out the truth behind its disappearance. Farley recounts how the relic passed from Charlemagne to the papacy to a marauding sixteenth-century German solider before finally ending up in Calcata, where miracles occurred that made the sleepy town a major pilgrimage destination. Blending history, travel, and perhaps the oddest story in Christian lore, An Irreverent Curiosity is a weird and wonderful tale of conspiracy and misadventure.
Download or read book Reform Responsa For the Twenty First Century written by Mark Washofsky and published by CCAR Press. This book was released on 2019-09-04 with total page 972 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reform Responsa for the Twenty-First Century: Sh'eilot Ut'shuvot is the latest in an ongoing series of Reform Responsa. Drawing from the breadth of traditional and modern Jewish texts, law, and ideology, this two volumes set addresses over seventy contemporary topics, including conversion of adopted children, fertility treatments, patrilineal descent, issues of synagogue management, social justice activism, interfaith marriage and rituals of death and mourning. Published by CCAR Press, a division of the Central Conference of American Rabbis
Download or read book A Time to Be Born written by and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 1998 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
