Download or read book The Shabbes Goy written by Jacob Katz and published by Jewish Publication Society of America. This book was released on 1989 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Babylonian period to the twentieth century, strictly observant Jews have depended on a non-Jew, or shabbes goy to perform work that was forbidden on the Sabbath. The author traces the role of the shabbes goy through the centuries. Katz affords the shabbes goy the central role in this fascinating case study on the larger question of the adapatability of halakhah to the ever-changing circumstances of life.
Download or read book The Shabbat Elevator and other Sabbath Subterfuges written by Alan Dundes and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2002-01-21 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are literally hundreds if not thousands of books written about Judaism and Jews, but this book is unlike any previously published. It focuses on the topic of 'circumventing custom' with special emphasis on the ingenious ways Orthodox (and other) Jews have devised to avoid breaking the extensive list of activities forbidden on the Sabbath. After examining the sources of Sabbath observance as set forth in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and rabbinical writings, some of the most salient forms of circumvention are described. These include: riding a special Shabbat elevator, unscrewing the lightbulb in the refrigerator, constructing an eruv (a space extending one's domicile so that objects may be carried outside the home), and relying on the services of the so-called 'Shabbes Goy,' among others. Dundes respectfully analyzes such facets of Jewish characteristics as an undue concern with purity, and a long-established tradition of indulging in nit-picking and argumentation. The resultant picture of Jewish character is drawn from an unusual mixture of religious written texts and oral tradition (jokes and proverbs). The sources range from ancient Israel to works from the twenty-first century. In many ways, it is an authentic and striking Jewish self-portrait that is painted for the very first time in this fascinating volume.
Download or read book The Sabbath World written by Judith Shulevitz and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2011-04-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the Sabbath, anyway? The holy day of rest? The first effort to protect the rights of workers? A smart way to manage stress in a world in which computers never get turned off and work never comes to an end? Or simply an oppressive, outmoded rite? In The Sabbath World, Judith Shulevitz explores the Jewish and Christian day of rest, from its origins in the ancient world to its complicated observance in the modern one. Braiding ideas together with memories, Shulevitz delves into the legends, history, and philosophy that have grown up around a custom that has lessons for all of us, not just the religious. The shared day of nonwork has built communities, sustained cultures, and connected us to the memory of our ancestors and to our better selves, but it has also aroused as much resentment as love. The Sabbath World tells this surprising story together with an account of Shulevitz’s own struggle to keep this difficult, rewarding day.
Download or read book The Sabbath Girl written by Cary Gitter and published by Steele Spring Stage Rights. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Full-Length Play | Angie Mastrantoni has a lot going for her-a job at a hip art gallery, a new apartment on the Upper West Side-but not much time or hope for relationships. Then her neighbor Seth, a divorced Orthodox Jew with a knish store on the Lower East Side, knocks on her door. The Sabbath Girl is a contemporary romantic comedy about the loneliness of big-city life and the possibility of finding love next door. (3F, 2M)
Download or read book Snow in August written by Pete Hamill and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-31 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deeply affecting and wonderfully evocative of old New York, Snow in August is a brilliant fable for our time and all time -- and another triumph for Pete Hamill. Brooklyn, 1947. The war veterans have come home. Jackie Robinson is about to become a Dodger. And in one close-knit working-class neighborhood, an eleven-year-old Irish Catholic boy named Michael Devlin has just made friends with a lonely rabbi from Prague. Snow in August is the story of that unlikely friendship -- and of how the neighborhood reacts to it. For Michael, the rabbi opens a window to ancient learning and lore that rival anything in Captain Marvel. For the rabbi, Michael illuminates the everyday mysteries of America, including the strange language of baseball. But like their hero Jackie Robinson, neither can entirely escape from the swirling prejudices of the time. Terrorized by a local gang of anti-Semitic Irish toughs, Michael and the rabbi are caught in an escalating spiral of hate for which there's only one way out -- a miracle....
Download or read book The I L Peretz Reader written by I. L. Peretz and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 749 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These short works from a master of Jewish literature offer “a brilliantly evocative tribute to a bygone era” (Publishers Weekly). Isaac Leybush Peretz is one of the most influential figures of modern Jewish culture. Born in Poland and dedicated to Yiddish culture, he recognized that Jews needed to adapt to their times while preserving their cultural heritage, and his captivating and beautiful writings explore the complexities inherent in the struggle between tradition and the desire for progress. This book, which presents a memoir, poem, travelogue, and twenty-six stories by Peretz, also provides a detailed essay about Peretz’s life by Ruth R. Wisse. This edition of the book includes, as well, Peretz’s great visionary drama A Night in the Old Marketplace, in a rhymed, performable translation by Hillel Halkin.
Download or read book The Devil s Arithmetic written by Jane Yolen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1990-10-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A triumphantly moving book." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review Hannah dreads going to her family's Passover Seder—she's tired of hearing her relatives talk about the past. But when she opens the front door to symbolically welcome the prophet Elijah, she's transported to a Polish village in the year 1942. Why is she there, and who is this "Chaya" that everyone seems to think she is? Just as she begins to unravel the mystery, Nazi soldiers come to take everyone in the village away. And only Hannah knows the unspeakable horrors that await. A critically acclaimed novel from multi-award-winning author Jane Yolen. "[Yolen] adds much to understanding the effects of the Holocaust, which will reverberate throughout history, today and tomorrow." —SLJ, starred review "Readers will come away with a sense of tragic history that both disturbs and compels." —Booklist Winner of the National Jewish Book Award An American Bookseller "Pick of the Lists"
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 Goy written by Adi Ophir and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work traces the development of the term and category of the goy from the Bible to rabbinic literature.
Download or read book Mother Can You Not written by Kate Siegel and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the wildly popular Instagram account @CrazyJewishMom, Kate Siegel's essay collection about life with the woman who redefined the term "helicopter mom." There is nothing more wonderful than a mother’s love. There is also nothing more annoying. Who else can proudly insist that you’re perfect while simultaneously making you question every career, fashion, and relationship decision you have ever made? No one understands the delicate mother-daughter dynamic better than Kate Siegel—her own mother drove her so crazy that she decided to broadcast their hilarious conversations on Instagram. Soon, hundreds of thousands of people were following their daily text exchanges, eager to see what outrageous thing Kate’s mom would do next. Now, in Mother, Can You NOT?, Kate pays tribute to the woman who invented the concept of drone parenting. From embarrassing moments (like crashing Kate's gynecological exams) to outrageous stories (like the time she made Kate steal a cat from the pound) to hilarious celebrations (including but not limited to parties for Kate's menstrual cycles), Mother, Can you NOT? lovingly lampoons the lengths to which our mothers will go to better our lives (even if it feels like they’re ruining them in the process).
Download or read book In the Land of Israel written by Amos Oz and published by HMH. This book was released on 1993-10-31 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A snapshot of Israel and the West Bank in the 1980s, through the voices of its inhabitants, from the National Jewish Book Award–winning author of Judas. Notebook in hand, renowned author and onetime kibbutznik Amos Oz traveled throughout his homeland to talk with people—workers, soldiers, religious zealots, aging pioneers, desperate Arabs, visionaries—asking them questions about Israel’s past, present, and future. Observant or secular, rich or poor, native-born or new immigrant, they shared their points of view, memories, hopes, and fears, and Oz recorded them. What emerges is a distinctive portrait of a changing nation and a complex society, supplemented by Oz’s own observations and reflections, that reflects an insider’s view of a country still forming its own identity. In the Land of Israel is “an exemplary instance of a writer using his craft to come to grips with what is happening politically and to illuminate certain aspects of Israeli society that have generally been concealed by polemical formulas” (The New York Times).
Download or read book Tradition and Crisis written by Jacob Katz and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2000-02-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new edition of Katz's study of European Jewish society at end of the Middle Ages. It taps into a rich source, the responsa literature of the Rabbinic establishment of the time, a time when self-governing communities of Jews dealt with their own civil and religious issues.
Download or read book Nahmanides written by Moshe Halbertal and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broad, systematic account of one of the most original and creative kabbalists, biblical interpreters, and Talmudic scholars the Jewish tradition has ever produced Rabbi Moses b. Nahman (1194–1270), known in English as Nahmanides, was the greatest Talmudic scholar of the thirteenth century and one of the deepest and most original biblical interpreters. Beyond his monumental scholastic achievements, Nahmanides was a distinguished kabbalist and mystic, and in his commentary on the Torah he dispensed esoteric kabbalistic teachings that he termed “By Way of Truth.” This broad, systematic account of Nahmanides’s thought explores his conception of halakhah and his approach to the central concerns of medieval Jewish thought, including notions of God, history, revelation, and the reasons for the commandments. The relationship between Nahmanides’s kabbalah and mysticism and the existential religious drive that nourishes them, as well as the legal and exoteric aspects of his thinking, are at the center of Moshe Halbertal’s portrayal of Nahmanides as a complex and transformative thinker.
Download or read book The Adventures of Ulysses written by Bernard Evslin and published by Graymalkin + ORM. This book was released on 2023-04-13 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary adventures of the Greek king’s epic journey come to life in a modern retelling of The Odyssey that’s “an unmitigated delight” (School Library Journal). In their ten-year siege of Troy, the Greeks claim victory thanks to the cunning wit of Ulysses, King of Ithaca, who devised the infamous Trojan Horse. Now, with the epic war finally finished, Ulysses sets sail for home—but his journey will be long and arduous. Having angered Poseidon, god of the sea, Ulysses and his men are thrown off course by a raging storm and forced to wander the perilous world for another ten years. On his epic trek, Ulysses must match wits and strength with man-eating Sirens, a towering Cyclops, the witch-goddess Circe, and a slew of other deadly foes. Meanwhile, in Ithaca, his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, contend with a rowdy mob of suitors who have taken over their home in an attempt to usurp the absent ruler’s place.
Download or read book The Sabbath written by Abraham Joshua Heschel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2005-08-17 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication--and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel, one of the most widely respected religious leaders of the twentieth century, introduced the influential idea of an 'architecture of holiness" that appears not in space but in time. Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the materials things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that 'the Sabbaths are our great catherdrals.' Featuring black-and-white illustrations by Ilya Schor
Download or read book Rupture and Reconstruction written by Haym Soloveitchik and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-10 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essay that forms the core of this book is an attempt to understand the developments that have occurred in Orthodox Jewry in America in the last seventy years, and to analyse their implications. The prime change is what is often described as ‘the swing to the right’, a marked increase in ritual stringency, a rupture in patterns of behaviour that has had major consequences not only for Jewish society but also for the nature of Jewish spirituality. For Haym Soloveitchik, the key feature at the root of this change is that, as a result of migration to the ‘New Worlds’ of England, the US, and Israel and acculturation to its new surroundings, American Jewry—indeed, much of the Jewish world— had to reconstruct religious practice from normative texts: observance could no longer be transmitted mimetically, on the basis of practices observed in home and street. In consequence, behaviour once governed by habit is now governed by rule. This new edition allows the author to deal with criticisms raised since the essay, long established as a classic in the field, was originally published, and enables readers to gain a fuller perspective on a topic central to today’s Jewish world and its development.
Download or read book Summoned written by Iddo Tavory and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-03-11 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a typical weekday, men of the Beverly-La Brea Orthodox community wake up early, beginning their day with Talmud reading and prayer at 5:45am, before joining Los Angeles’ traffic. Those who work “Jewish jobs”—teachers, kosher supervisors, or rabbis—will stay enmeshed in the Orthodox world throughout the workday. But even for the majority of men who spend their days in the world of gentiles, religious life constantly reasserts itself. Neighborhood fixtures like Jewish schools and synagogues are always after more involvement; evening classes and prayers pull them in; the streets themselves seem to remind them of who they are. And so the week goes, culminating as the sabbatical observances on Friday afternoon stretch into Saturday evening. Life in this community, as Iddo Tavory describes it, is palpably thick with the twin pulls of observance and sociality. In Summoned, Tavory takes readers to the heart of the exhilarating—at times exhausting—life of the Beverly-La Brea Orthodox community. Just blocks from West Hollywood’s nightlife, the Orthodox community thrives next to the impure sights, sounds, and smells they encounter every day. But to sustain this life, as Tavory shows, is not simply a moral decision they make. To be Orthodox is to be constantly called into being. People are reminded of who they are as they are called upon by organizations, prayer quorums, the nods of strangers, whiffs of unkosher food floating through the street, or the rarer Anti-Semitic remarks. Again and again, they find themselves summoned both into social life and into their identity as Orthodox Jews. At the close of Tavory’s fascinating ethnography, we come away with a better understanding of the dynamics of social worlds, identity, interaction and self—not only in Beverly-La Brea, but in society at large.
