Download or read book Sefer Mishlei written by Eliyahu Ben Gedaliah and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-28 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a man? What is a person? The human being is one of G-ds most interesting creatures. We are commanded but allowed. We are forced but not lead. We loved it but punished. We are powerful but powerless. How can such a creation be anything less than unique? Bereshit (Genesis) 1:26 "Let us make man in our image after our likeness" Reading this passage of scripture reveals a special reality about the human being. What is that special quality one may ask? Asking the question is proof of our uniqueness. We are being fashioned in the divine image of the supreme force. A force that no human being has seen. Our very image is proof of the divine force which governs the world. Human beings are also unique in that we have to ability to acquire information and make decisions that are suited solely to our desires despite the intention of that desire. We cry when in pain but can purposely cause pain G-d, forbid.King Solomon seeks to educate the reader to ensure the straight path is followed. His instructions are passionate detail on how and why students must follow to commandments of truth. He gently leads the reader through a systematic method of wisdom.It does not appear to be systematic at first glance but with knowledge and growth, the reader will begin to see the ladder open to reveal the wisdom that only comes by the Holy One's blessed He, mercy, and the influence of his essence. As Solomon stated "the fear of G-d is the beginning of wisdom. I encourage the reader to read this work given to us by King Solomon diligently and with patients. In time the hidden meaning of the text will be revealed. G-d is a giver of wisdom to those who ask with a pure heart.
Download or read book With Reverence for the Word written by Jane Dammen McAuliffe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-14 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume represents the first trilateral exploration of medieval scriptural interpretation. During the medieval period the three exegetical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam produced a vast literature, one of great diversity but also one of numerous cross-cultural similarities.
Download or read book The Genius written by Eliyahu Stern and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIV Elijah ben Solomon, the "Genius of Vilna,” was perhaps the best-known and most understudied figure in modern Jewish history. This book offers a new narrative of Jewish modernity based on Elijah's life and influence. While the experience of Jews in modernity has often been described as a process of Western European secularization—with Jews becoming citizens of Western nation-states, congregants of reformed synagogues, and assimilated members of society—Stern uses Elijah’s story to highlight a different theory of modernization for European life. Religious movements such as Hasidism and anti-secular institutions such as the yeshiva emerged from the same democratization of knowledge and privatization of religion that gave rise to secular and universal movements and institutions. Claimed by traditionalists, enlighteners, Zionists, and the Orthodox, Elijah’s genius and its afterlife capture an all-embracing interpretation of the modern Jewish experience. Through the story of the “Vilna Gaon,” Stern presents a new model for understanding modern Jewish history and more generally the place of traditionalism and religious radicalism in modern Western life and thought. /div
Download or read book Out of the Shtetl written by Nancy Sinkoff and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2003 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Book of Proverbs written by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz and published by CCAR Press. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Proverbs, attributed to King Solomon, is a profound collection of Jewish wisdom, song, and inspiration. Yet to contemporary readers, the text can appear vague, ambiguous, and contradictory. In this refreshing and relevant commentary, Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz challenges us to find modern meaning in this ancient text. Using his signature blend of social justice practice and Jewish thought from throughout history, Rabbi Yanklowitz shows how the words of Proverbs are strikingly pertinent to issues we face today. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Rabbi Yanklowitz explores such topics as income inequality, feminism, animal rights, environmentalism, and many more. The author's commentary is paired with the full text of Proverbs--in both Hebrew and an updated, gender-accurate translation--so readers can glean their own insights. Published by CCAR Press, a division of the Central Conference of American Rabbis
Download or read book Every Person s Guide to the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes written by Ronald H. Isaacs and published by Jason Aronson. This book was released on 2001-03 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To find out more information about Rowman & Littlefield titles please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
Download or read book The Evolution of Judaism from Ezra to the Present written by Martin Sicker and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pharisaic Judaism, discussed in part 1 of this study, was an inseparable element in the political history of the Second Hebrew Commonwealth. With the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, along with the skeleton of what was once a Jewish state, Judaism entered a period of crisis far more severe than experienced with the destruction of the First Temple, along with the First Hebrew Commonwealth. Pharisaic Judaism, integral to the now nonexistent Jewish state, of necessity gave way to Rabbinic Judaism, which, as a minority religious culture, took root primarily in the enclaves of Jews strewn throughout the diaspora with little or mostly no control over their very existence. And in the absence of a centralized religious authority such as the Sanhedrin in the Temple complex, Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora developed different religious customs, traditions, and in some instances, belief systems, all nominally based on the core teachings of Scripture. Part 2 of this study of the evolution of Judaism from Ezra to the present day will attempt to trace significant developments along that evolutionary path from the transition from Pharisaic to Rabbinic Judaism, that is, Judaism as understood by the different schools of rabbis, as decisors, scholars, and teachers over the past two millennia.
Download or read book written by Moshe Wallich and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduced pages of the original 17th-century Yiddish, including the woodcuts, face the first English translation of the 34 fables that comprise Wallich's Sefer Mesholim. A valuable resource for students of the Yiddish language and of European Jewish culture of the early modern period. The fables come mostly from Aesop and medieval Hebrew and German sources. Well annotated. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Meneket Rivkah written by Rivkah bat Meir and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book of ethics by one of the first female Jewish writers
Download or read book Travels in Translation written by Ken Frieden and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-25 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries before its “rebirth” as a spoken language, Hebrew writing was like a magical ship in a bottle that gradually changed design but never voyaged out into the world. Isolated, the ancient Hebrew ship was torpid because the language of the Bible was inadequate to represent modern life in Europe. Early modern speakers of Yiddish and German gave Hebrew the breath of life when they translated dialogues, descriptions, and thought processes from their vernaculars into Hebrew. By narrating tales of pilgrimage and adventure, Jews pulled the ship out of the bottle and sent modern Hebrew into the world. In Travels in Translation, Frieden analyzes this emergence of modern Hebrew literature after 1780, a time when Jews were moving beyond their conventional Torah- and Zion-centered worldview. Enlightened authors diverged from pilgrimage narrative traditions and appropriated travel narratives to America, the Pacific, and the Arctic. The effort to translate sea travel stories from European languages—with their nautical terms, wide horizons, and exotic occurrences—made particular demands on Hebrew writers. They had to overcome their tendency to introduce biblical phrases at every turn in order to develop a new, vivid, descriptive language. As Frieden explains through deft linguistic analysis, by 1818, a radically new travel literature in Hebrew had arisen. Authors such as Moses Mendelsohn-Frankfurt and Mendel Lefin published books that charted a new literary path through the world and in European history. Taking a fresh look at the origins of modern Jewish literature, Frieden launches a new approach to literary studies, one that lies at the intersection of translation studies and travel writing.
Download or read book The Moral Proverbs of Santob de Carrion written by Theodore Anthony Perry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first English translation of Santob do Carrion's Proverbios morales (Moral Proverbs) and also the first book-length study of that monumental work. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book akirah written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible written by T. A. Perry and published by Hendrickson Publishers. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the source of wisdom? What is the biblical understanding of it, and how is it revealed? In this book, T. A. Perry brings his creative impulse and critical mind to some of the most enigmatic passages of the Hebrew Bible. Perry provides serious students with an insightful and incisive lens through which to interpret, among other biblical passages, the story of Judah and Tamar, the riddle proposed by Samson, and the words of Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) reflecting on the advancing years of life.
Download or read book The World s Great Wisdom written by Roger Walsh and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveying spiritual and philosophical traditions, this volume revives the search for wisdom for modern times. What is wisdom and how is it cultivated? These are among the most important questions we can ask, but questions that have been routinely ignored in modern times. In the twentieth century, the search for wisdom was replaced by a search for knowledge as science and technology promised answers to lifes ills. However, along with scientific achievements came disasters, particularly the devastation of the planet through the accelerating use of modern technology. In an era drenched in data, a desire for wisdom has been reborn. Where can we go to learn about wisdom? The answer is clear: to the worlds great religions and their accompanying philosophies and psychologies. The Worlds Great Wisdom makes these treasuries available. Practitioners from each of the great religionsas well as from Western philosophy and contemporary researchprovide summaries of their traditions understandings of wisdom, the means for cultivating it, and its implications for the modern world. This book offers distillations of the worlds accumulated wisdomancient and modern, religious and scientific, philosophical and psychological. It is a unique resource that for the first time in history brings together our collective understanding of wisdom and the ways to develop it.
Download or read book The Book of Job written by Leora Batnitzky and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-12-12 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Job has held a central role in defining the project of modernity from the age of Enlightenment until today. The Book of Job: Aesthetics, Ethics and Hermeneutics offers new perspectives on the ways in which Job’s response to disaster has become an aesthetic and ethical touchstone for modern reflections on catastrophic events. This volume begins with an exploration of questions such as the tragic and ironic bent of the Book of Job, Job as mourner, and theJoban body in pain, and ends with a consideration of Joban works by notable writers – from Melville and Kafka, through Joseph Roth, Zach, Levin, and Philip Roth.
Download or read book Ageing in Medieval Jewish Culture written by Elisha Russ-Fishbane and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a seminal study of cultural attitudes to old age among Jews of the medieval Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions. Rigorously researched and accessibly written, it will appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines as well as to the broader public. While the focus is on Jewish society and culture, critical context regarding the social history of ageing is provided by comparative perspectives from the Muslim world as well as from Spain and Provence and other areas of Christian Europe that were in the Arabic Andalusian cultural orbit. The study draws on many literary genres and scholarly disciplines: philosophy and theology, ethics and law, biblical commentary, Hebrew poetry, medical literature, and a host of marriage contracts, personal letters, and family and communal records from the Cairo Genizah. The result is a nuanced portrait of ageing as both a lived reality and a cultural paradigm in medieval Jewish society.
Download or read book Vshamru written by David Birnbaum and published by New Paradigm Matrix. This book was released on with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Torah has two basic components: a long, complex narrative thatserves as the backstory to the covenant and its literary frame, and thespecific commandments that serve as the terms of that covenant. Thenarrative itself—the long, complex narratives relating to the creationof the world, the great flood, the adventures of the patriarchs andmatriarchs of Israel, the descent into slavery in Egypt, the exodusfrom Egypt, the events at Mount Sinai, and the subsequent journeythe edge of the Land of Israel, where the people are camped whenthe Torah narrative concludes with Moses’ death—is relativelywell-known even in the secular Western world. And some of thecommandments too are well known to the general public in Westernlands—some because they were eventually adopted by Christiantheologians and made tenets of Christianity, others because they areso overtly characteristic of Jewish life that they have become easilyrecognizable to anyone who has even casual contact with the Jewishcommunity, and others because they have come to serve as the mostbasic moral planks in Western ethics even for people who do notself-define as Jews or Christians.But however well known the commandments may be as regardstheir general content, the Hebrew text of the Torah that preservesthe commandments in their literary guise can prove surprisinglydifficult. For one thing, Biblical Hebrew is an ancient language in2 Martin S. Cohenwhich words do not necessarily mean what they eventually came tomean after millennia of linguistic development. Moreover, classicalHebrew authors regularly presuppose information on the part oftheir readers and listeners, much of which non-specialist modernssimply do not possess. (For example, Scripture references all sorts ofpublic officials and military officers by their ranks and titles withoutexplaining them because the reader is simply assumed to be familiarwith the terminology, somewhat in the same way a contemporaryAmerican journalist might refer to someone as a senator fromOklahoma without feeling any need to pause and explain what asenator is. Or what Oklahoma is!) And then there is the questionof grammar to consider. For all that modern scholars have analyzedthe language of the Bible and attempted to describe its grammaticalrules, there are still many passages that feel inconsonant with thoserules. These passages likely do not constitute errors of usage onthe part of their ancient authors, however, but rather indicate thatour understanding of biblical grammar simply does not reflect thenuanced, dynamic way ancient Hebrew was actually spoken inantiquity as a living, vibrant language. And, finally, there is the vexingquestion of the specific way Hebrew words are related to each other.Classical Hebrew, like all Semitic languages, is built on three-lettercombinations of consonants called “roots,” and most of the wordsthat constitute the language’s vocabulary are built on those roots. Yetsome words that appear to be built on the same root seem entirelyunrelated in meaning. And still others, mysterious in their own right,do not appear to have triliteral roots at all.Any study of the commandments that carefully considers suchconcerns will naturally lead to meaningful insight, and this is preciselythe kind of examination that underlies this volume, the tenth andfinal volume in the Mesorah Matrix series. Like its predecessors inthe series, this volume is devoted to the reasoned, thoughtful, and3 Prefaceinspiring analysis of specific Jewish ideas, practices, and beliefs. Infact, all of the present essays focus on a single word that lies at theintersection of law, linguistics, spirituality, faith, and modern Jewishpractice: v’shamru. And although the word will be familiar to mostfrom its liturgical use in the version of the Kiddush prayer recitedon Shabbat that cites Exodus 31:16–17, the word appears in othercontexts as well and several of the essays in this volume considerthose uses.The key passage that connects that word with Shabbat observance,Exodus 31:16–17, reads as follows, with the English words thatcorrespond to the Hebrew v’shamru printed in bold:And so shall the Israelites keep the Sabbath, safeguardingits observance throughout all their generations as evidenceof the eternal covenant that binds Me and the Israelites, forthe Sabbath is that covenant’s eternal sign in that the Eternalmade the heavens and the earth in six days and then pausedfor rest and repose on the seventh day.It is the specific question of what v’shamru means in this context towhich our authors who have chosen to write about Shabbat turntheir attention.As noted, the word is not used exclusively with respect toShabbat observance and it appears elsewhere in the Torah text todesignate what Israelites are commanded to “do” with respect tothe commandments, or some specific commandment. But it is theShabbat connection that interests most of our authors, possiblybecause Moses himself is cited (at Deuteronomy 5:12) as recalling thefourth of the Ten Commandments as beginning with an imperativebuilt on that very root of shin-mem-resh, even though the “actual” textpresented in Exodus begins with a different word entirely.Words built on the three-letter root shin-mem-resh generally have4 Martin S. Cohensomething to do with guarding, protecting, or keeping safe, but whatit is exactly about these specific contexts, and the Shabbat contextforemost among them, that requires so much guarding or protectingis left unsaid. Is there some specific fragility that inheres in theobservance of that specific commandment which makes reasonablethe use of some version of a word based on shim-mem-resh to qualifyits observance? Or is Shabbat simply of such cardinal importancethat Scripture uses that specific verb to describe its observance solelyto say that that nation must exert itself maximally to guarantee itscareful and punctilious observance? Or does this usage hint insteadat some specific danger that might be lurking within the details ofShabbat observance, some plausible ideational, doctrinal, dogmatic,or even physical peril against which the people must be commandedscrupulously to guard themselves? To none of these questions doesScripture nod even in passing. Yet the essays in this volume thatfocus on Shabbat are all attempts, one way or another, to addressthose specific questions and others that derive from them directly. Ihope our readers will find all our authors’ efforts both intriguing anduplifting.The authors who have contributed to this volume are a varied lotdrawn from across the spectrum of organized Jewish life—Israelisand diasporan types, rabbis and academics, men and woman, olderand younger scholars, seasoned authors and relative newcomers tothe world of publishing. Some have contributed to other volumes inour series and one, the indefatigable Reuven Bulka, has contributedessays to all ten; others present their sole contribution to the seriesin this one volume. All, however, are united by their common beliefin the power of the well-written word and the sense that, even in thedigital age, the well-structured, convincingly argued essay retains itsability not just to inform but also to influence and to inspire.Unless otherwise indicated, all translations here are the authors’5 Prefaceown work. Biblical citations referenced to the NJPS derive from thecomplete translation of Scripture published under the title Tanakh:The Holy Scriptures by the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphiain 1985.As we prepare to publish this, the tenth and final volume in theMesorah Matrix series, I would like to take this opportunity toacknowledge the other senior editors of the Mesorah Matrix series,David Birnbaum and Benjamin Blech, as well as Saul J. Berman, ourassociate editor.And I would also like to add a personal note at this junctureregarding the larger operation. This project has brought together alarge number of authors in an almost unprecedented effort to unitepeople across the spectrum of Jewish affiliation for the sake of k’lalyisrael. And despite the way that Jewish people from different parts ofthe Jewish world are regularly supposed not ever to get along, muchless to wish to work together on anything at all of consequence, allof our authors have shown themselves willing to participate in thenoble effort that underlies the Mesorah Matrix project: to revitalizethe essay form and to make of it a successful vehicle for inspiringJewish readers to take their Judaism and their Jewishness to an evenhigher level, to feel ennobled by their membership in the House ofIsrael, and potentially to feel themselves called upon to embrace amore personal role in the pursuit of Jewish destiny. It has been myprivilege and pleasure to work with them all.As always, I must also express my gratitude to the men andwomen, and particularly to the lay leadership, of the synagogue Iserve as rabbi: the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, New York.Possessed of the unwavering conviction that their rabbi’s literaryprojects are part and parcel of his service to them (and, throughthem, to the larger community of those interested in learning aboutJudaism), they are remarkably supportive of my literary efforts asauthor and editor. I am in their debt and am pleased to acknowledgethat debt formally here and whenever I publish my own work or thework of others. I couldn’t be me if they weren’t them.
