Download or read book Recharging Judaism written by Rabbi Judith Schindler and published by CCAR Press. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recharging Judaism is the essential and timely guide for every synagogue and community seeking to strengthen the bonds of Jewish communal life through advocating for social justice. This volume delves into the enriching civic engagement and acts of righteousness already undertaken by Jews and Jewish communities across the country, and further explores the positive differences we can all affect upon the future of America. There are a myriad of ways in which advocating for social justice and participating in civic engagement can create lasting change. Those inspired to affect such change will find new meaning in the texts and history of our tradition. Using real examples from both small and large congregations across the country, Recharging Judaism offers a framework to guide us through our journey of civic responsibility and social duty and into a brighter future for our country.
Download or read book Choosing a Jewish Life Revised and Updated written by Anita Diamant and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 1998-02-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive guide to the conversion process—for a new generation of Jews-by-choice. However you choose to fashion your personal journey to Judaism, Anita Diamant is the perfect guide. In this comprehensive, wide-ranging book you will learn how to choose a rabbi, a synagogue, a denomination, and a Hebrew name; how to discuss your decision with your birth family; what happens at the mikveh (ritual bath) and at the hatafat dam brit (circumcision ritual for those already circumcised); how to find your footing in a new spiritual family and create a new Jewish identity; and how you and your children can maintain bonds to your family of origin. Also included are suggestions for readings, prayers, and poems that can personalize conversion rituals; a glossary of terms; and a short history of conversion in Judaism. This revised edition contains a completely updated chapter on how the mikveh is used in the conversion process and an updated list of online resources and books for further reading. Whether you are just beginning to consider converting or have already started down the path to Judaism, here is everything you will need to make the process joyous, sacred, and meaningful.
Download or read book How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household written by Blu Greenberg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with practical advice as well as history, Blu Greenberg's book is a comprehensive guide to the joys and complexities of running a modern Jewish home. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household is a modern, comprehensive guide covering virtually every aspect of Jewish home life. It provides practical advice on how to manage a Jewish home in the traditional way and offers fascinating accounts of the history behind the tradition. In a warm, personal style, Blu Greenberg shows that, contrary to popular belief, the home, and not the synagogue, is the most important institution in Jewish life. Divided into three large sections—"The Jewish Way," "Special Stages of Life," and "Celebration and Remembering"—this book educates the uninitiated and reminds the already observant Jew of how Judaism approaches daily life. Topics include prayer, dress, holidays, food preparation, marriage, birth, death, parenthood, and many others. This description of the modern-yet-traditional Jewish household will earn special regard among the many American Jews who are re-exploring their ties to Jewish tradition. Such Jews will find this book a flexible guide that provides a knowledge of the requirements of traditional Judaism without advocating immediate and complete compliance. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household will also appeal to observant Jews, providing them with helpful tips on how to manage their homes and special insights into the most minute details and procedures in a traditional household. Herself a traditional Jew, Blu Greenberg is nevertheless quite sympathetic to feminist views on the role of women in Jewish observance. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household therefore speaks intimately to women who are struggling to reconcile their identities as modern women with their commitments to traditional Judaism.
Download or read book A Book of Life written by Michael Strassfeld and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2002 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive guide to Jewish spiritual practices, with explanations based on Talmudic and Midrashic texts as well as Hasidic and mystical stories, includes a survey of daily prayers, Shabbat rituals, holidays, Torah study, Jewish meditation, and more.
Download or read book Jewish Megatrends written by Sid Schwarz and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visionary solutions for a community ripe for transformational change--from fourteen leading innovators of Jewish life. "Jewish Megatrends offers a vision for a community that can simultaneously strengthen the institutions that serve those who seek greater Jewish identification and attract younger Jews, many of whom are currently outside the orbit of Jewish communal life. Schwarz and his collaborators provide an exciting path, building on proven examples, that we ignore at our peril." --from the Foreword The American Jewish community is riddled with doubts about the viability of the institutions that well served the Jewish community of the twentieth century. Synagogues, Federations and Jewish membership organizations have yet to figure out how to meet the changing interests and needs of the next generation. In this challenging yet hopeful call for transformational change, visionary leader Rabbi Sidney Schwarz looks at the social norms that are shaping the habits and lifestyles of younger American Jews and why the next generation is so resistant to participate in the institutions of Jewish communal life as they currently exist. He sets out four guiding principles that can drive a renaissance in Jewish life and gives evidence of how, on the margins of the Jewish community, those principles are already generating enthusiasm and engagement from the very millennials that the organized Jewish community has yet to engage. Contributors--leading innovators from different sectors of the Jewish community--each use Rabbi Schwarz's framework as a springboard to set forth their particular vision for the future of their sector of Jewish life and beyond. CONTRIBUTORS: Elise Bernhardt - Rabbi Sharon Brous - Sandy Cardin - Dr. Barry Chazan - Dr. David Ellenson - Wayne Firestone - Rabbi Jill Jacobs - Anne Lanski - Rabbi Joy Levitt - Rabbi Asher Lopatin - Rabbi Or N. Rose - Nigel Savage - Barry Shrage - Dr. Jonathan Woocher
Download or read book Relational Judaism written by Ron Wolfson and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted educator and community revitalization pioneer Dr. Ron Wolfson presents practical strategies and case studies to guide Jewish leaders in turning institutions into engaging communities that connect members to Judaism in meaningful and lasting ways.
Download or read book Jewish Life in Small Town America written by Lee Shai Weissbach and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Lee Shai Weissbach offers the first comprehensive portrait of small-town Jewish life in America. Exploring the history of communities of 100 to 1000 Jews, the book focuses on the years from the mid-nineteenth century to World War II. Weissbach examines the dynamics of 490 communities across the United States and reveals that smaller Jewish centers were not simply miniature versions of larger communities but were instead alternative kinds of communities in many respects. The book investigates topics ranging from migration patterns to occupational choices, from Jewish education and marriage strategies to congregational organization. The story of smaller Jewish communities attests to the richness and complexity of American Jewish history and also serves to remind us of the diversity of small-town society in times past.
Download or read book The Golden Age Shtetl written by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-30 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major history of the shtetl's golden age The shtetl was home to two-thirds of East Europe's Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet it has long been one of the most neglected and misunderstood chapters of the Jewish experience. This book provides the first grassroots social, economic, and cultural history of the shtetl. Challenging popular misconceptions of the shtetl as an isolated, ramshackle Jewish village stricken by poverty and pogroms, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern argues that, in its heyday from the 1790s to the 1840s, the shtetl was a thriving Jewish community as vibrant as any in Europe. Petrovsky-Shtern brings this golden age to life, looking at dozens of shtetls and drawing on a wealth of never-before-used archival material. Illustrated throughout with rare archival photographs and artwork, this nuanced history casts the shtetl in an altogether new light, revealing how its golden age continues to shape the collective memory of the Jewish people today.
Download or read book Remix Judaism written by Roberta Rosenthal Kwall and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-02-14 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remix Judaism: Preserving Tradition in a Diverse World offers an eloquent and thoughtful new vision for all Jews seeking a sense of belonging in a changing world, regardless of their current level of observance. Kwall sets out a process of selection, rejection, and modification of rituals that allow for a focus on Jewish tradition rather than on the technicalities of Jewish law. Her goal is not to sell her own religious practices to readers but, rather, to encourage them to find their own personal meaning in Judaism outside the dictates of Commandment by broadening their understanding of how law, culture and tradition fit together. In Remix Judaism, Kwall inspires her audience to be intentional and mindful about the space they allocate for these elements in defining their individual Jewish journeys and identities.
Download or read book Becoming Soviet Jews written by Elissa Bemporad and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-29 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “endlessly rewarding” contribution to the study of Jewish life in the Soviet Union: “Fascinating . . . nuanced and respectful of human limitations” (Slavic Review). Minsk, the present capital of Belarus, was a heavily Jewish city in the decades between the world wars. Recasting our understanding of Soviet Jewish history, Becoming Soviet Jews demonstrates that pre-revolutionary forms of Jewish life in Minsk maintained continuity through the often violent social changes enforced by the communist project. Using Minsk as a case study of the Sovietization of Jews in the former Pale of Settlement, Elissa Bemporad reveals the ways in which many Jews acculturated to Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s while remaining committed to older patterns of Jewish identity, such as Yiddish culture and education, attachment to the traditions of the Jewish workers’ Bund, circumcision, and kosher slaughter. This pioneering study also illuminates the reshaping of gender relations on the Jewish street and explores Jewish everyday life and identity during the years of the Great Terror. “Highly readable and brimming with novel facts and insights . . . [A] rich and engaging portrayal of a previously overlooked period and place.” —H-Judaic
Download or read book Triumph and Tragedy written by Joel Padowitz and published by Feldheim Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews today tend to associate Poland exclusively with the horrors of the Holocaust. Poland has been called the world s biggest graveyard, because on its soil was where most of the systematic murder of our people during World War II took place. However, it is very shortsighted to view Poland as little more than the darkest corner of Europe into which the Nazis concentrated the Jews before exterminating them.Jews have lived in Poland for over a thousand years. In fact, for centuries, Poland was the most Jew-friendly state in Europe. Countless thousands of persecuted Jews throughout Christian Europe found refuge in Poland. For hundreds of years, Poland was the largest, most significant, most intellectually vibrant Jewish community in all of Europe. In fact, at its peak in the 17th century, the majority of the world s Jews lived in Poland, a land referred to in Latin as, paradisus Iudaeorum: Jewish paradise.JRoots, based in London, was created to empower today s generation of Jews to meaningfully connect with their past through transformational travel and multi-media experiences. JRoots has inspired thousands on its signature trip to Poland. Walking the streets our forebears walked, praying where they prayed, singing where they sang, dancing where they danced touches the soul in a lasting way no book or movie ever could. By weaving a tapestry of life and death made real by the places they visit and the personalities they meet, the trips provide a sense of Jewish context and pride, ensuring participants focus on their commitment to a better tomorrow rather than despair over the tragedies of yesteryear. JRoots produced this guidebook for their own participants as a supplement to be read before, during, and after their trip, to help make their personal journey as meaningful as it could be. It is now available to anyone, in the hope that it will enhance the significance of your own Poland experience, so that you too will return home more deeply motivated to invest in the Jewish people and our future.
Download or read book Yeshiva Days written by Jonathan Boyarin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate and moving portrait of daily life in New York's oldest institution of traditional rabbinic learning New York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway. Yeshiva Days is Jonathan Boyarin's uniquely personal account of the year he spent as both student and observer at Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem, and a poignant chronicle of a side of Jewish life that outsiders rarely see. Boyarin explores the yeshiva's relationship with the neighborhood, the city, and Jewish and American culture more broadly, and brings vividly to life its routines, rituals, and rhythms. He describes the compelling and often colorful personalities he encounters each day, and introduces readers to the Rosh Yeshiva, or Rebbi, the moral and intellectual head of the yeshiva. Boyarin reflects on the tantalizing meanings of "study for its own sake" in the intellectually vibrant world of traditional rabbinic learning, and records his fellow students' responses to his negotiation of the daily complexities of yeshiva life while he also conducts anthropological fieldwork. A richly mature work by a writer of uncommon insight, wit, and honesty, Yeshiva Days is the story of a place on the Lower East Side with its own distinctive heritage and character, a meditation on the enduring power of Jewish tradition and learning, and a record of a different way of engaging with time and otherness.
Download or read book Sparks Like Stars written by Nadia Hashimi and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Suspenseful…emotionally compelling. I found myself eagerly following in a way I hadn’t remembered for a long time, impatient for the next twist and turn of the story."—NPR An Afghan American woman returns to Kabul to learn the truth about her family and the tragedy that destroyed their lives in this brilliant and compelling novel from the bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, The House Without Windows, and When the Moon Is Low. Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives. Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, Sitara takes on a new name—Aryana Shepherd—and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. A survivor, Aryana has refused to look back, choosing instead to bury the trauma and devastating loss she endured. New York, 2008: Thirty years after that fatal night in Kabul, Aryana’s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room—a man she never expected to see again. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family. Seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers—and, perhaps, revenge. Realizing that she cannot go on without finding the truth, Aryana embarks on a quest that takes her back to Kabul—a battleground between the corrupt government and the fundamentalist Taliban—and through shadowy memories of the world she loved and lost. Bold, illuminating, heartbreaking, yet hopeful, Sparks Like Stars is a story of home—of America and Afghanistan, tragedy and survival, reinvention and remembrance, told in Nadia Hashimi’s singular voice.
Download or read book The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex written by Lila Corwin Berman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive history of American Jewish philanthropy and its influence on democracy and capitalism For years, American Jewish philanthropy has been celebrated as the proudest product of Jewish endeavors in the United States, its virtues extending from the local to the global, the Jewish to the non-Jewish, and modest donations to vast endowments. Yet, as Lila Corwin Berman illuminates in The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex, the history of American Jewish philanthropy reveals the far more complicated reality of changing and uneasy relationships among philanthropy, democracy, and capitalism. With a fresh eye and lucid prose, and relying on previously untapped sources, Berman shows that from its nineteenth-century roots to its apex in the late twentieth century, the American Jewish philanthropic complex tied Jewish institutions to the American state. The government’s regulatory efforts—most importantly, tax policies—situated philanthropy at the core of its experiments to maintain the public good without trammeling on the private freedoms of individuals. Jewish philanthropic institutions and leaders gained financial strength, political influence, and state protections within this framework. However, over time, the vast inequalities in resource distribution that marked American state policy became inseparable from philanthropic practice. By the turn of the millennium, Jewish philanthropic institutions reflected the state’s growing investment in capitalism against democratic interests. But well before that, Jewish philanthropy had already entered into a tight relationship with the governing forces of American life, reinforcing and even transforming the nation’s laws and policies. The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex uncovers how capitalism and private interests came to command authority over the public good, in Jewish life and beyond.
Download or read book Empowered Judaism written by Elie Kaunfer and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have thousands of young Jews, otherwise unengaged with formal Jewish life, started more than sixty innovative prayer communities across the United States? What crucial insights can these grassroots communities provide for all of us?
Download or read book Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe written by Robert Chazan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-27 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book re-evaluates the prevailing notion that Jews in medieval Christian Europe lived under an appalling regime of ecclesiastical limitation, governmental exploitation and expropriation, and unceasing popular violence. Robert Chazan argues that, while Jewish life in medieval Western Christendom was indeed beset with grave difficulties, it was nevertheless an environment rich in opportunities; the Jews of medieval Europe overcame obstacles, grew in number, explored innovative economic options, and fashioned enduring new forms of Jewish living. His research also provides a reconsideration of the legacy of medieval Jewish life, which is often depicted as equally destructive and projected as the underpinning of the twentieth-century catastrophes of antisemitism and the Holocaust. Dr Chazan's research proves that, although Jewish life in the medieval West laid the foundation for much Jewish suffering in the post-medieval world, it also stimulated considerable Jewish ingenuity, which lies at the root of impressive Jewish successes in the modern West.
Download or read book Anxious Histories written by Jordana Silverstein and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last seventy years, memories and narratives of the Holocaust have played a significant role in constructing Jewish communities. The author explores one field where these narratives are disseminated: Holocaust pedagogy in Jewish schools in Melbourne and New York. Bringing together a diverse range of critical approaches, including memory studies, gender studies, diaspora theory, and settler colonial studies, Anxious Histories complicates the stories being told about the Holocaust in these Jewish schools and their broader communities. It demonstrates that an anxious thread runs throughout these historical narratives, as the pedagogy negotiates feelings of simultaneous belonging and not-belonging in the West and in Zionism. In locating that anxiety, the possibilities and the limitations of narrating histories of the Holocaust are opened up once again for analysis, critique, discussion, and development.
