Download or read book Contested Utopia written by Marc Rosenstein and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first book to examine the Jewish state through the lens of Jewish utopian thought, from its biblical beginnings to modernity, offers a fresh perspective on the political, religious, and geopolitical life of Israel. As Marc J. Rosenstein argues, the Jewish people's collective memories, desires, hopes, and faith have converged to envision an ideal life in the Land of Israel--but, critically, the legacy is a kaleidoscope of conflicting (and sometimes overlapping) visions. And after three millennia of imagining utopia, it is almost impossible for Jews to respond to Israel's realities without being influenced--even unconsciously--by these images. Charting the place of utopian thought in Judaism, Rosenstein then illustrates, with original texts, diverse utopian visions of the Jewish state: Torah state (Yavetz), holy community (based on nostalgic memories of the medieval community), national-cultural home (Lewinsky), "normal" state (Herzl), socialist paradise (Syrkin), anarchy (Jabotinsky), and a polity defined by Israel's historic or divinely ordained borders. Analyzing how these disparate utopian visions collide in Israel's attempts to chart policy and practice regarding the Sabbath, social welfare, immigration, developing versus conserving the land, and the Israel-Diaspora relationship yields novel perspectives on contemporary flashpoints. His own utopian vision offers a further entryway for both Israelis and Diaspora Jews into more informed and nuanced conversations about the "Jewish state."
Download or read book Jewish Dreams and Realities Contrasted with Islamic and Christian Claims written by Henry Iliowizi and published by . This book was released on 1890 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book At the Edge of a Dream written by Lawrence J Epstein and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-08-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Lower East Side Tenement Museum book."
Download or read book Broken Promises Broken Dreams written by Alice Rothchild and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tragedies of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians are never far from the pages of the mainstream press. Yet it is rare to hear about the reality of life on the ground, and it is rarer still when these voices belong to women. This book records the intimate journey of a Jewish-American physician travelling and working within Israel and the Occupied Territories. Alice Rothchild grew up in a family grounded by the traumas of the Holocaust and passionately devoted to Israel. This book recounts her experiences as she grapples with the reality of life in Israel, the complexity of Jewish Israeli attitudes, and the hardships of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Through her work with a medical and human rights project, Rothchild is able to offer a unique personal insight into the conflict. Based on interviews with a number of different women, she examines their diverse perspectives and the complexities of Jewish Israeli identity. Rothchild's memorable account brings to life the voices of people mutually entwined in trauma, and explores individual examples of resilience and resistance. Ultimately, the book raises troubling questions regarding U.S. policy and the insistence of the mainstream Jewish community on giving unquestioning support to all Israeli policy. Alice Rothchild, M.D., serves on the steering committee of Jewish Voice for Peace, Boston. She has worked with medical delegations to Israel and the Occupied Territories with the JVP Health and Human Rights Project. A Boston-based physician, she has sought to build alliances between Israelis and Palestinians in opposition to Israeli policies of occupation and to promote a more honest dialogue within the Jewish community in the United States.
Download or read book Dreaming of Michelangelo written by Asher Biemann and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-14 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dreaming of Michelangelo is the first book-length study to explore the intellectual and cultural affinities between modern Judaism and the life and work of Michelangelo Buonarroti. It argues that Jewish intellectuals found themselves in the image of Michelangelo as an "unrequited lover" whose work expressed loneliness and a longing for humanity's response. The modern Jewish imagination thus became consciously idolatrous. Writers brought to life—literally—Michelangelo's sculptures, seeing in them their own worldly and emotional struggles. The Moses statue in particular became an archetype of Jewish liberation politics as well as a central focus of Jewish aesthetics. And such affinities extended beyond sculpture: Jewish visitors to the Sistine Chapel reinterpreted the ceiling as a manifesto of prophetic socialism, devoid of its Christian elements. According to Biemann, the phenomenon of Jewish self-recognition in Michelangelo's work offered an alternative to the failed promises of the German enlightenment. Through this unexpected discovery, he rethinks German Jewish history and its connections to Italy, the Mediterranean, and the art of the Renaissance.
Download or read book Jewish with Feeling written by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi 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: A how-to for Jewish spirituality that works. "A spiritual seeker is a person whose soul is awake. In this book I make no assumptions about how much you know about Judaism, what holidays you keep, or whether you believe in God. I want us to start from your soul's experience and carry on from there." --from the Introduction "Virtually anyone remotely affiliated with Judaism should read this book," wrote Publishers Weekly, which listed Jewish with Feeling among its Best Religion Books of the Year. "Without question the best, most readable introduction to Reb Zalman's philosophy of Judaism, it is also the best beginner's guide to Jewish spirituality available today," wrote the Forward, "the perfect book for both the spiritual seeker and the curious skeptic." Taking off from basic questions like "Why be Jewish?" and whether the word God still speaks to us today, Reb Zalman lays out a vision for a whole-person Judaism. This is not only Sinai then but Sinai now, a revelation of the Torah inside and all around us. Complete with many practical suggestions to enrich your own Jewish life, Jewish with Feeling is "a mystical masterpiece filled with spiritual practices and an exciting vision of the future" (Spirituality & Health). Spiritual experience, as Reb Zalman shows, repays every effort we make to acquire it.
Download or read book Everyday Jews written by Yehoshue Perle and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-11-14 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Everyday Jews was first published in Poland in 1935, the Jewish Left was scandalized by the sex scenes, and I. B. Singer complained that the novel was too bleak to be psychologically credible. Yet within two years Perle’s novel was heralded as a modern Yiddish masterpiece. Offering a unique blend of raw sexuality and romantic love, thwarted desire and spiritual longing, Everyday Jews is now considered Perle’s consummate achievement. The voice of Mendl, the novel's 12-year-old narrator, is precisely captured by this artfully simple translation. Mendl's impoverished and dysfunctional family struggles to survive in a nameless Polish provincial town. In his unsettled world, most ordinary people yearn to be somewhere else—or someone else. As Mendl journeys to adulthood, Perle captures the complex interplay of Christians and Jews, weekdays and Sabbaths, town and country, dream and reality, against a relentless and never-ending battle of the sexes.
Download or read book Reality of Dreams written by Japhy Wilson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of radical megaprojects in the Ecuadorian Amazon, considering the fate of utopian fantasies under conditions of global capitalism From 2007 to 2017, the “Citizens’ Revolution” launched an ambitious series of post-neoliberal megaprojects in the remote Amazonian region of Ecuador, including an interoceanic transport corridor, a world-leading biotechnology university, and a planned network of two hundred “Millennium Cities.” The aim was to liberate the nation from its ecologically catastrophic dependence on Amazonian oil reserves, while transforming its jungle region from a wild neoliberal frontier into a brave new world of “twenty-first-century socialism.” This book documents the heroic scale of this endeavor, the surreal extent of its failure, and the paradoxical process through which it ended up reinforcing the economic model that it had been designed to overcome. It explores the phantasmatic and absurd dimensions of the transformation of social reality under conditions of global capitalism, deconstructing the utopian fantasies of the state, and drawing attention to the eruption of insurgent utopias staged by those with nothing left to lose.
Download or read book Torah Today written by Pinchas H. Peli and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The central element of Jewish worship is the yearly cycle of reading the first five books of the Bible, the Five Books of Moses, called the Torah in Hebrew. Torah Today, a compilation of fifty-four essays that grew out of Pinchas Peli's Torah column in the Jerusalem Post, comments upon the weekly readings from the Torah. Written in a clear style, each essay brings the reader closer to the rich spiritual world of Torah as it confronts the challenges of modern society. These commentaries, which emulate the traditional midrash, have long been essential reading for Jews throughout the world - families at the Shabbat dinner table, pulpit rabbis, teachers, and students of the Bible. Christians, too, have been among Rabbi Peli's devoted readers. This reissue of Torah Today, with a new preface by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, makes this classic work available to a new generation of Bible students."--Jacket.
Download or read book Imagining Zion written by S. Ilan Troen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: divdivThis timely book tells the fascinating story of how Zionists colonizers planned and established nearly 700 agricultural settlements, towns, and cities from the 1880s to the present. This extraordinary activity of planners, architects, social scientists, military personnel, politicians, and settlers is inextricably linked to multiple contexts: Jewish and Zionist history, the Arab/Jewish conflict, and the diffusion of European ideas to non-European worlds. S. Ilan Troen demonstrates how professionals and settlers continually innovated plans for both rural and urban frontiers in response to the competing demands of social and political ideologies and the need to achieve productivity, economic independence, and security in a hostile environment. In the 1930s, security became the primary challenge, shaping and even distorting patterns of growth. Not until the 1993 Oslo Accords, with prospects of compromise and accommodation, did planners again imagine Israel as a normal state, developing like other modern societies. Troen concludes that if Palestinian Arabs become reconciled to a Jewish state, Israel will reassign priority to the social and economic development of the country and region. /DIV/DIV
Download or read book Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming written by Catherine Shainberg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-02-16 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dynamic exposition of the powerful, ancient Sephardic tradition of dreaming passed down from the renowned 13th-century kabbalist Isaac the Blind • Includes exercises and practices to access the dream state at will in order to engage with life in a state of enhanced awareness • Written by the close student of revered kabbalist Colette Aboulker-Muscat In Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming Catherine Shainberg unveils the esoteric practices that allow us to unlock the dreaming mind's transformative and intuitive powers. These are the practices used by ancient prophets, seers, and sages to control dreams and visions. Shainberg draws upon the ancient Sephardic Kabbalah tradition, as well as illustrative stories and myths from around the Mediterranean, to teach readers how to harness the intuitive power of their dreaming. While the Hebrew Bible and our Western esoteric tradition give us ample evidence of dream teachings, rarely has the path to becoming a conscious dreamer been articulated. Shainberg shows that dreaming is not something that merely takes place while sleeping--we are dreaming at every moment. By teaching the conscious mind to be awake in our sleeping dreams and the dreaming mind to be manifest in daytime awareness, we are able to achieve revolutionary consciousness. Her inner-vision exercises initiate creative and transformative images that generate the pathways to self-realization.
Download or read book Entering the Temple of Dreams written by Tamar Frankiel and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You spend one-third of your life sleeping. Is spirituality a part of that time? This book shows you how it can be. This inspiring, informative guide shows us how we can use the often overlooked time at the end of each day to enhance our spiritual, physical and psychological well-being. Each chapter takes a new look at traditional Jewish prayers and what they have to teach us about the spiritual aspects of preparing for the end of the day, and about sleep itself. Drawing on Kabbalistic teachings, prayer, the Bible and midrash, the authors enrich our understanding of traditional bedtime preparations, and show how, by including them in our bedtime rituals, we can gain insight into our lives and access the spiritual enrichment the world of dreams has to offer. Clear illustrations and diagrams, step-by-step meditations, visualization techniques and exercise suggestions for fully integrating body, mind and spirit show us the way to: Hashkivenu--Creating a safe space for sleep Hareni Mochel--Clearing our hearts through forgiveness Shema--Connecting to God in Love Bircat Cohanim--Experiencing the reality of blessing Hamapil--Thanking God for sleep and the illumination that comes in sleeps This perfect nighttime companion draws on the power of Jewish tradition to help us enhance our spiritual awareness--in both our waking and sleeping hours.
Download or read book Jewish Magic and Superstition written by Joshua Trachtenberg and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.
Download or read book Turning Points in Jewish History written by Marc J. Rosenstein and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-07-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examining the entire span of Jewish history through the lens of thirty pivotal moments in the Jewish people's experience from biblical times through the present, Turning Points in Jewish History provides "the big picture": both a broad and a deep understanding of the Jewish historical experience"--
Download or read book The Americanization of the Jews written by Robert Seltzer and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1995-02 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assesses the current state of American Jewish life, drawing on the research and thinking of scholars from a variety of disciplines and diverse points of view.
Download or read book Catch The Jew written by Tuvia Tenenbom and published by Gefen Publishing House. This book was released on 2015-02-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catch the Jew! recounts the adventures of gonzo journalist Tuvia Tenenbom, who wanders around Israel and the Palestinian Authority for seven months in search of the untold truths in today's Holy Land. With holy chutzpah, Tenenbom boldly goes where no Jew has gone before, at times risking his life as he assumes the identities of Tobi the German and even Abu Ali in order to probe into the many stories in this strange land and poke holes in all of them. From the self-hating leftists in Tel Aviv to the self-promoting PLO execs in Ramallah, from the black-clad Haredim of Bet Shemesh to the glowing foreign human rights activists in Beit Hanina, from Jewish settlers and the Christians who come from abroad to toil with them to ardent Jerusalem monks and Bedouins in surprisingly glorious shacks, Tenenbom takes on the people of the land, getting to know them and disarming them as he breaks bread and mingles with anyone and everyone. Does Palestinian wife number one hate the Jews more than she hates wife number two? Who finances cash-rich NGOs pursuing a Judenrein Israel? Who sets Palestinian olive groves on fire and why? What is the emotional gravity that pulls idealistic human rights activists from other countries to Israel and only to Israel? Who are the flaming feminists who sacrifice their lives for the rights of polygamists? Whose land is this, anyway? By turns poignant, enraging, and laugh-out-loud funny, this unique travelogue lays bare the intensity of this turbulent land in an unprecedented, eye-opening education, person by person, city by city, and meal by meal. You will never look at Israel the same way again.
Download or read book The Fetters of Rhyme written by Rebecca M. Rush and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-12-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How rhyme became entangled with debates about the nature of liberty in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetry In his 1668 preface to Paradise Lost, John Milton rejected the use of rhyme, portraying himself as a revolutionary freeing English verse from “the troublesome and modern bondage of Riming.” Despite his claim to be a pioneer, Milton was not initiating a new line of thought—English poets had been debating about rhyme and its connections to liberty, freedom, and constraint since Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The Fetters of Rhyme traces this dynamic history of rhyme from the 1590s through the 1670s. Rebecca Rush uncovers the surprising associations early modern readers attached to rhyming forms like couplets and sonnets, and she shows how reading poetic form from a historical perspective yields fresh insights into verse’s complexities. Rush explores how early modern poets imagined rhyme as a band or fetter, comparing it to the bonds linking individuals to political, social, and religious communities. She considers how Edmund Spenser’s sonnet rhymes stood as emblems of voluntary confinement, how John Donne’s revival of the Chaucerian couplet signaled sexual and political radicalism, and how Ben Jonson’s verse charted a middle way between licentious Elizabethan couplet poets and slavish sonneteers. Rush then looks at why the royalist poets embraced the prerational charms of rhyme, and how Milton spent his career reckoning with rhyme’s allures. Examining a poetic feature that sits between sound and sense, liberty and measure, The Fetters of Rhyme elucidates early modern efforts to negotiate these forces in verse making and reading.
