Download or read book Five Years with Orthodox Jews written by Gidon Ariel and published by Root Source Press. This book was released on 2020-12-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most important book besides the Bible to read this year." Rabbi Tuly Weisz, Founder of Israel365. Does the Old Testament feel difficult and harsh? That's because we're reading somebody else's mail! The good news is God's original recipients are still with us! Relationship with the Jewish people unlocks the meaning and beauty of God's Word. Discover forty Christian insights God gives those who befriend the people of Israel. "In this strikingly original read you will experience the awe of God, Israel and the Torah in a powerful new way." Dr. Marvin Wilson, Author of Our Father Abraham. "A page-turner! A must-read!" Dr. Brad Young, Judaic Christian Studies, Oral Roberts University.
Download or read book Off the Derech written by Faranak Margolese and published by Devora Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Off the Derech is the phrase used within the Orthodox Jewish community to describe those who have left Jewish observance. Using questionnaires, extensive interviews with psychologists and rabbis, and her Off The Derech website, the author reveals the multilayered reasons for the defection of so many observant Jews from Judaism. At the same time, she presents solutions to this growing problem, thereby creating an invaluable handbook for parents, teachers and rabbis. Each chapter of this well-researched book deals with a different element of the Off the Derech syndrome as it explains, in detail, how parents can reach children who have become alienated and disaffected from their culture and their people.
Download or read book Becoming Eve written by Abby Stein and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?
Download or read book American Shtetl written by Nomi M. Stolzenberg and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soil Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. This book tells the story of how this group of pious, Yiddish-speaking Jews has grown to become a thriving insular enclave and a powerful local government in upstate New York. While rejecting the norms of mainstream American society, Kiryas Joel has been stunningly successful in creating a world apart by using the very instruments of secular political and legal power that it disavows. Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers paint a richly textured portrait of daily life in Kiryas Joel, exploring the community's guiding religious, social, and economic norms. They delve into the roots of Satmar Hasidism and its charismatic founder, Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, following his journey from nineteenth-century Hungary to post–World War II Brooklyn, where he dreamed of founding an ideal Jewish town modeled on the shtetls of eastern Europe. Stolzenberg and Myers chart the rise of Kiryas Joel as an official municipality with its own elected local government. They show how constant legal and political battles defined and even bolstered the community, whose very success has coincided with the rise of political conservatism and multiculturalism in American society over the past forty years. Timely and accessible, American Shtetl unravels the strands of cultural and legal conflict that gave rise to one of the most vibrant religious communities in America, and reveals a way of life shaped by both self-segregation and unwitting assimilation.
Download or read book The Last Words We Said written by Leah Scheier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine months after Danny disappeared, his closest friends, Ellie, Rae, and Deenie, deal with their loss very differently but will have to share secrets about the night he disappeared to uncover the truth. Chapters alternate between past and present.
Download or read book Mitzvah Girls written by Ayala Fader and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-20 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mitzvah Girls is the first book about bringing up Hasidic Jewish girls in North America, providing an in-depth look into a closed community. Ayala Fader examines language, gender, and the body from infancy to adulthood, showing how Hasidic girls in Brooklyn become women responsible for rearing the next generation of nonliberal Jewish believers. To uncover how girls learn the practices of Hasidic Judaism, Fader looks beyond the synagogue to everyday talk in the context of homes, classrooms, and city streets. Hasidic women complicate stereotypes of nonliberal religious women by collapsing distinctions between the religious and the secular. In this innovative book, Fader demonstrates that contemporary Hasidic femininity requires women and girls to engage with the secular world around them, protecting Hasidic men and boys who study the Torah. Even as Hasidic religious observance has become more stringent, Hasidic girls have unexpectedly become more fluent in secular modernity. They are fluent Yiddish speakers but switch to English as they grow older; they are increasingly modest but also fashionable; they read fiction and play games like those of mainstream American children but theirs have Orthodox Jewish messages; and they attend private Hasidic schools that freely adapt from North American public and parochial models. Investigating how Hasidic women and girls conceptualize the religious, the secular, and the modern, Mitzvah Girls offers exciting new insights into cultural production and change in nonliberal religious communities.
Download or read book The Pharisees written by Joseph Sievers and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary appraisal of the Pharisees: who they were, what they taught, and how they’ve been understood and depicted throughout history For centuries, Pharisees have been well known but little understood—due at least in part to their outsized role in the Christian imagination arising from select negative stereotypes based in part on the Gospels. Yet historians see Pharisees as respected teachers and forward-thinking innovators who helped make the Jewish tradition more adaptable to changing circumstances and more egalitarian in practice. Seeking to bridge this gap, the contributors to this volume provide a multidisciplinary appraisal of who the Pharisees actually were, what they believed and taught, and how they have been depicted throughout history. The topics explored within this authoritative resource include: the origins of the Pharisees the meaning of the name “Pharisee” Pharisaic leniency, relative to the temple priesthood, in judicial matters Pharisaic concerns for the Jewish laity Pharisaic purity practices and why they became popular the varying depictions of Pharisaic practices and beliefs in the New Testament Jesus’s relationship to the Pharisees the apostle Paul and his situation within the Pharisaic tradition the question of continuity between the Pharisaic tradition and Rabbinic Judaism the reception history of the Pharisees, including among the rabbis, the church fathers, Rashi, Maimonides, Luther, and Calvin the failures of past scholarship to deal justly with the Pharisees the representations, both positive and negative, of the Pharisees in art, film, passion plays, and Christian educational resources how Christian leaders can and should address the Pharisees in sermons and in Bible studies Following the exploration of these and other topics by a team of internationally renowned scholars, this volume concludes with an address by Pope Francis on correcting the negative stereotypes of Pharisees that have led to antisemitic prejudices and finding resources that “will positively contribute to the relationship between Jews and Christians, in view of an ever more profound and fraternal dialogue.” Contributors: Luca Angelelli, Harold W. Attridge, Vasile Babota, Shaye J. D. Cohen, Philip A. Cunningham, Deborah Forger, Paula Fredriksen, Yair Furstenburg, Massimo Grilli, Susannah Heschel, Angela La Delfa, Amy-Jill Levine, Hermut Löhr, Steve Mason, Eric M. Meyers, Craig E. Morrison, Vered Noam, Henry Pattarumadathil, Adele Reinhartz, Jens Schröter, Joseph Sievers, Matthias Skeb, Abraham Skorka, Günter Stemberger, Christian Stückl, Adela Yarbro Collins, and Randall Zachman.
Download or read book Jews and Power written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Jewish Encounter series Taking in everything from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Ruth Wisse offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power. Traditional Jews believed that upholding the covenant with God constituted a treaty with the most powerful force in the universe; this later transformed itself into a belief that, unburdened by a military, Jews could pursue their religious mission on a purely moral plain. Wisse, an eminent professor of comparative literature at Harvard, demonstrates how Jewish political weakness both increased Jewish vulnerability to scapegoating and violence, and unwittingly goaded power-seeking nations to cast Jews as perpetual targets. Although she sees hope in the State of Israel, Wisse questions the way the strategies of the Diaspora continue to drive the Jewish state, echoing Abba Eban's observation that Israel was the only nation to win a war and then sue for peace. And then she draws a persuasive parallel to the United States today, as it struggles to figure out how a liberal democracy can face off against enemies who view Western morality as weakness. This deeply provocative book is sure to stir debate both inside and outside the Jewish world. Wisse's narrative offers a compelling argument that is rich with history and bristling with contemporary urgency.
Download or read book Cut Me Loose written by Leah Vincent and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of Prozac Nation and Girl, Interrupted, an electrifying memoir about a young woman's promiscuous and self-destructive spiral after being cast out of her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family Leah Vincent was born into the Yeshivish community, a fundamentalist sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. As the daughter of an influential rabbi, Leah and her ten siblings were raised to worship two things: God and the men who ruled their world. But the tradition-bound future Leah envisioned for herself was cut short when, at sixteen, she was caught exchanging letters with a male friend, a violation of religious law that forbids contact between members of the opposite sex. Leah's parents were unforgiving. Afraid, in part, that her behavior would affect the marriage prospects of their other children, they put her on a plane and cut off ties. Cast out in New York City, without a father or husband tethering her to the Orthodox community, Leah was unprepared to navigate the freedoms of secular life. She spent the next few years using her sexuality as a way of attracting the male approval she had been conditioned to seek out as a child, while becoming increasingly unfaithful to the religious dogma of her past. Fast-paced, mesmerizing, and brutally honest, Cut Me Loose tells the story of one woman's harrowing struggle to define herself as an individual. Through Leah's eyes, we confront not only the oppressive world of religious fundamentalism, but also the broader issues that face even the most secular young women as they grapple with sexuality and identity.
Download or read book Orthodox Jews in America written by Jeffrey S. Gurock and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although there are many good books on the history of Jews in America and a smaller subset that focuses on aspects of Orthodox Judaism in contemporary times, no one, until now, has written an overview of how Orthodoxy in America has evolved over the centuries from the first arrivals in the 17th century to the present. This broad overview by Gurock (Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva Univ.; Judaism's Encounter with American Sports) is distinctive in examining how Orthodox Jews have coped with the personal, familial, and communal challenges of religious freedom, economic opportunity, and social integration, as well as uncovering historical reactionary tensions to alternative Jewish movements in multicultural and pluralistic America. Gurock raises penetrating questions about the compatibility of modern culture with pious practices and sensitively explores the relationship of feminism to traditional Orthodox Judaism. There are several excellent reference sources on Orthodox Jews in America, e.g., Rabbi Moshe D. Sherman's outstanding Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook, to which this is an accessible and illuminating companion; recommended not only for serious readers on the topic but for general readers as well.David B. Levy, Touro Coll. Women's Seminary Lib., Brooklyn, NY Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Download or read book Portrait of American Jews written by Samuel C. Heilman and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has America been a place that has preserved and protected Jewish life? Is it a place in which a Jewish future is ensured? Samuel Heilman, long-time observer of American Jewish life, grapples with these questions from a sociologist’s perspective. He argues that the same conditions that have allowed Jews to live in relative security since the 1950s have also presented them with a greater challenge than did the adversity and upheaval of earlier years. The second half of the twentieth century has been a time when American Jews have experienced a minimum of prejudice and almost all domains of life have been accessible to them, but it has also been a time of assimilation, of swelling rates of intermarriage, and of large numbers ignoring their Jewishness completely. Jews have no trouble building synagogues, but they have all sorts of trouble filling them. The quality of Jewish education is perhaps higher than ever before, and the output of Jewish scholarship is overwhelming in its scope and quality, but most American Jews receive a minimum of religious education and can neither read nor comprehend the great corpus of Jewish literature in its Hebrew (or Aramaic) original. This is a time in America when there is no shame in being a Jew, and yet fewer American Jews seem to know what being a Jew means. How did this come to be? What does it portend for the Jewish future? This book endeavors to answer these questions by examining data gleaned from numerous sociological surveys. Heilman first discusses the decade of the fifties and the American Jewish quest for normalcy and mobility. He then details the polarization of American Jewry into active and passive elements in the sixties and seventies. Finally he looks at the eighties and nineties and the issues of Jewish survival and identity and the question of a Jewish future in America. He also considers generational variation, residential and marital patterns, institutional development (especially with regard to Jewish education), and Jewish political power and influence. This book is part of a stocktaking that has been occurring among Jews as the century in which their residence in America was firmly established comes to an end. Grounded in empirical detail, it provides a concise yet analytic evaluation of the meaning of the many studies and surveys of the last four and a half decades. Taking a long view of American Jewry, it is one of very few books that build on specific sociological data but get beyond its detail. All those who want to know what it means and has meant to be an American Jew will find this volume of interest.
Download or read book The Spiritual Transformation of Jews Who Become Orthodox written by Roberta G. Sands and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A psychological study, based on extensive interview data, of Jewish adults who take on a devout lifestyle. Spiritual transformation is the process of changing one’s beliefs, values, attitudes, and everyday behaviors related to a transcendent experience or higher power. Jewish adults who adopt Orthodoxy provide a clear example of spiritual transformation within a religious context. With little prior exposure to traditional practice, these baalei teshuvah (literally, “masters of return” in Hebrew) turn away from their former way of life, take on strict religious obligations, and intensify their spiritual commitment. This book examines the process of adopting Orthodox Judaism and the extensive life changes that are required. Based on forty-eight individual interviews as well as focus groups and interviews with community outreach leaders, it uses psychological developmental theory and the concept of socialization to understand this journey. Roberta G. Sands examines the study participants’ family backgrounds, initial explorations, decisions to make a commitment, spiritual struggles, and psychological and social integration. The process is at first exciting, as baalei teshuvah make new discoveries and learn new practices. Yet after commitment and immersion in an Orthodox community, they face challenges furthering their education, gaining cultural knowledge, and raising a family without parental role models. By showing how baalei teshuvah integrate their new understandings of Judaism into their identities, Sands provides fresh insight into a significant aspect of contemporary Orthodoxy. “Sands’s judicious and comprehensive application of social science theories to the study of Jewish returnees provides a unique contribution to the social scientific study of religion.” — Roberta Rosenberg Farber, coeditor of Jews in America: A Contemporary Reader
Download or read book Sexual Abuse Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities written by Michael Lesher and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-07-23 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book--the first of its kind--analyzes how and why cases of child sexual abuse have been systematically concealed in Orthodox Jewish communities. The book examines many such cover-ups in detail, showing how denial, backlash against victims, and the manipulation of the secular justice system have placed Orthodox Jewish community leaders in the position of defending or even enabling child abusers. The book also examines the generally disappointing treatment of this issue in popular media, while dissecting the institutions that contribute to the cover-ups, including two--rabbinic courts and local Orthodox "patrols"--that are more or less unique to Orthodox Jewish communities. Finally, the book explores the cultural factors that have contributed to this tragedy, and concludes with hopes and proposals for future reform.
Download or read book Hidden Heretics written by Ayala Fader and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book concerns a cohort of ultra-orthodox Jews based in the greater New York area who, while retaining membership and close familial and other ties with their strictly observant communities, seek out secular knowledge about the world on the down low (so to speak), both online and via in-person encounters. Ayala Fader conducted her ethnographic research in these rarified social circles for years, developing relationships of trust with the mostly young married men and women who have taken to clandestine methods to find alternative social spaces in which to question what it means to be ethical and what a life of self-fulfillment looks like. Fader's book reveals the stresses and strains that such "double-lifers" experience, including the difficulty these life choices inject into relationships with wives, husbands, and one's children. Not all of these "double-lifers" become atheists. Fader's interlocutors can be placed on a broad spectrum ranging from religiously observant but open-minded at one end to atheism on the other. The rabbinical leadership of these ultra-orthodox communities are well aware of this phenomenon and of how unfiltered internet access makes such alternative forms of seeking an ever-present temptation. (Some ultra-orthodox rabbis have been sounding the alarm for years, claiming that the internet represents more of a threat to community survival today than the Holocaust did in the last century.) Fader's book examines the institutional responses of ultra-orthodox communities to the double-lifers. These include what is typically referred to as a Torah-based type of "religious therapy" conducted by trained members of these communities who as therapists and "life coaches" blend elements of modern psychiatry with ultra-orthodoxy and "treat" troubling, potentially life-altering doubt and skepticism as symptoms of underlying emotional pathology"--
Download or read book The Institution Quarterly written by and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 974 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Judaism Straight Up written by Moshe Koppel and published by Maggid. This book was released on 2020-11-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Becoming Frum written by Sarah Bunin Benor and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When non-Orthodox Jews become frum (religious), they encounter much more than dietary laws and Sabbath prohibitions. They find themselves in the midst of a whole new culture, involving matchmakers, homemade gefilte fish, and Yiddish-influenced grammar. Becoming Frum explains how these newcomers learn Orthodox language and culture through their interactions with community veterans and other newcomers. Some take on as much as they can as quickly as they can, going beyond the norms of those raised in the community. Others maintain aspects of their pre-Orthodox selves, yielding unique combinations, like Matisyahu’s reggae music or Hebrew words and sing-song intonation used with American slang, as in “mamish (really) keepin’ it real.” Sarah Bunin Benor brings insight into the phenomenon of adopting a new identity based on ethnographic and sociolinguistic research among men and women in an American Orthodox community. Her analysis is applicable to other situations of adult language socialization, such as students learning medical jargon or Canadians moving to Australia. Becoming Frum offers a scholarly and accessible look at the linguistic and cultural process of “becoming.”
