Download or read book Communings of the Spirit written by Mordecai M. Kaplan and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2002-05 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), founder of Reconstructionism, is the preeminent American Jewish thinker and rabbi of our times. His life embodies the American Jewish experience of the first half of the twentieth century. With passionate intensity and uncommon candor, Kaplan compulsively recorded his experience in his journal (some 10,000 pages). This first volume of Communings of the Spirit covers Kaplan's early years as a rabbi, teacher of rabbis, and community leader. Kaplan, who trained rabbis for half a century, gives us an inside picture of life at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the center of Conservative Judaism in America. He records his masterful weekly sermons, which were attended regularly by his students. With unflinching candor, he reveals his successes and failures, uncertainties and self-doubts. Undeterred by attacks on his radical beliefs, he never wavered in the pursuit of a more dynamic Judaism.
Download or read book Communings of the Spirit The journals of Mordecai M Kaplan 1913 1934 written by Mordecai Menahem Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Communings of the Spirit written by Mel Scult and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With honesty and vivid detail, Kaplan explores his evolving beliefs on religious naturalism and his uncertainties and self-doubts as he grapples with a wide range of theological issues.
Download or read book The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M Kaplan written by Mel Scult and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An important and powerful work that speaks to Mordecai M. Kaplan’s position as perhaps the most significant Jewish thinker of the twentieth century.” (Deborah Dash Moore coeditor of Gender and Jewish History) Mordecai M. Kaplan, founder of the Jewish Reconstructionist movement, is the only rabbi to have been excommunicated by the Orthodox rabbinical establishment in America. Kaplan was indeed a radical, rejecting such fundamental Jewish beliefs as the concept of the chosen people and a supernatural God. Although he valued the Jewish community and was a committed Zionist, his primary concern was the spiritual fulfillment of the individual. Drawing on Kaplan’s 27-volume diary, Mel Scult describes the development of Kaplan’s radical theology in dialogue with the thinkers and writers who mattered to him most, from Spinoza to Emerson and from Ahad Ha-Am and Matthew Arnold to Felix Adler, John Dewey, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. This gracefully argued book, with its sensitive insights into the beliefs of a revolutionary Jewish thinker, makes a powerful contribution to modern Judaism and to contemporary American religious thought. “An interesting, stimulating, and well-done analysis of Kaplan’s life and thought. All students of contemporary Jewish life will benefit from reading this excellent study.” —Jewish Media Review “The book is highly readable―at times almost colloquial in its language and style―and is recommended for anybody with a familiarity with Kaplan but who wants to understand his thought within a broader context.” —AJL Reviews
Download or read book Kabbalah in America written by Brian Ogren and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-06 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kabbalah in America includes chapters from leading experts in a variety of fields and is the first-ever comprehensive treatment of the title subject from colonial times until the present. As the first of its kind, it will set the tone for all future scholarship on the subject.
Download or read book Reappraisals and New Studies of the Modern Jewish Experience written by Brian Smollett and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reappraisals and New Studies of the Modern Jewish Experience brings together twenty scholars of Modern Jewish history and thought. The essays provide a fresh perspective on several central questions in Jewish intellectual, social, and religious history from the eighteenth century to the present in the contexts of Russia, Western and Central Europe, and the Americas.
Download or read book Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers written by John R. Shook and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-05-15 with total page 2000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers includes both academic and non-academic philosophers, and a large number of female and minority thinkers whose work has been neglected. It includes those intellectuals involved in the development of psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, education, theology, political science, and several other fields, before these disciplines came to be considered distinct from philosophy in the late nineteenth century. Each entry contains a short biography of the writer, an exposition and analysis of his or her doctrines and ideas, a bibliography of writings, and suggestions for further reading. While all the major post-Civil War philosophers are present, the most valuable feature of this dictionary is its coverage of a huge range of less well-known writers, including hundreds of presently obscure thinkers. In many cases, the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers offers the first scholarly treatment of the life and work of certain writers. This book will be an indispensable reference work for scholars working on almost any aspect of modern American thought.
Download or read book The Jewish Journaling Book written by Janet Ruth Falon and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore your experiences, relationships, and feelings through this guided tour of journal-keeping in Jewish tradition. Journaling has been, and remains, an inherently Jewish activity. From the Kabbalist mystics who recorded their practices of reaching altered states of consciousness, to the more recent journals of those who lived during the Holocaust, to the spiritual precedent for Jewish journal-keeping at holy times of the year, writing, recording, and reflecting have long been a part of Jewish custom. Janet Ruth Falon delves into the practical aspects of keeping a journal as well as how you can use your journal to nurture Jewish values and concerns. Using examples from her own writing, she demonstrates how journaling can unleash your creativity and reveal aspects of yourself that you may not have thought about before. She also includes 52 journaling tools that teach specific techniques to help you create and maintain a vital, living journal, from a Jewish perspective. Inspiring and practical, this guided tour of journaling shows how yours can be used to better understand yourself and the world.
Download or read book God Optional Religion in Twentieth Century America written by Isaac Barnes May and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-13 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is about the relationship between the American religious left and secularization. It explores how three liberal religions -liberal Quakers, Unitarians, and Reconstructionist Jews- attempted to preserve their traditions in the modern world by redefining what it meant to be religious. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, these groups underwent the most massive theological change imaginable, allowing their members to opt not to believe in a personal God. As the God of traditional theism did not seem to fit into a post-Darwinian framework, these traditions took the dramatic step of redefining that concept to make a "God" that did fit, and eventually they went even further by making belief in God a matter of purely personal preference. This book narrates how, over the course of the twentieth century, believing in God and being religious became increasingly disconnected. It documents the continuance of these religious communities even after the theological rationales that originally brought them together disappeared, their communal identities instead becoming focused on humanitarian service and political commitments, which began to replace a shared adherence to theism. The radical religious views of these small liberal denominations became influential among the wider society, and eventually became accepted in American popular culture and law"--
Download or read book An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers written by Alan T. Levenson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2006 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting well-known Jewish thinkers from a very wide spectrum of opinion, the author addresses a range of issues, including: What makes a thinker Jewish? What makes modern Jewish thought modern? How have secular Jews integrated Jewish traditional thought with agnosticism? What do Orthodox thinkers have to teach non-Orthodox Jews and vice versa? Each chapter includes a short, judiciously chosen selection from the given author, along with questions to guide the reader through the material. Short biographical essays at the end of each chapter offer the reader recommendations for further readings and provide the low-down on which books are worth the reader's while. Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers represents a decade of the author's experience teaching students ranging from undergraduate age to their seventies. This is an ideal textbook for undergraduate classes.
Download or read book Imagining the American Jewish Community written by Jack Wertheimer and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2007 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively collection of sixteen essays on the many ways American Jews have imagined and constructed communities
Download or read book Hanukkah in America written by Dianne Ashton and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the ways American Jews have reshaped Hanukkah traditions across the country In New Orleans, Hanukkah means decorating your door with a menorah made of hominy grits. Latkes in Texas are seasoned with cilantro and cayenne pepper. Children in Cincinnati sing Hanukkah songs and eat oranges and ice cream. While each tradition springs from its own unique set of cultural references, what ties them together is that they all celebrate a holiday that is different in America than it is any place else. For the past two hundred years, American Jews have been transforming the ancient holiday of Hanukkah from a simple occasion into something grand. Each year, as they retell its story and enact its customs, they bring their ever-changing perspectives and desires to its celebration. Providing an attractive alternative to the Christian dominated December, rabbis and lay people alike have addressed contemporary hopes by fashioning an authentically Jewish festival that blossomed in their American world. The ways in which Hanukkah was reshaped by American Jews reveals the changing goals and values that emerged among different contingents each December as they confronted the reality of living as a religious minority in the United States. Bringing together clergy and laity, artists and businessmen, teachers, parents, and children, Hanukkah has been a dynamic force for both stability and change in American Jewish life. The holiday’s distinctive transformation from a minor festival to a major occasion that looms large in the American Jewish psyche is a marker of American Jewish life. Drawing on a varied archive of songs, plays, liturgy, sermons, and a range of illustrative material, as well as developing portraits of various communities, congregations, and rabbis, Hanukkah in America reveals how an almost forgotten festival became the most visible of American Jewish holidays.
Download or read book Judaism as a Civilization written by Mordecai M. Kaplan and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 2010 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A transformative work on modern Judaism
Download or read book Clergy Education in America written by Larry Abbott Golemon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clergy have historically been represented as figures of authority, wielding great influence over our society. During certain periods of American history, members of the clergy were nearly ever-present in public life. But men and women of the clergy are not born that way, they are made. And therefore, the matter of their education is a question of fundamental public importance. In Clergy Education in America, Larry Golemon shows not only how our conception of professionalism in religious life has changed over time, but also how the education of religious leaders have influenced American culture. Tracing the history of clergy education in America from the Early Republic through the first decades of the twentieth century, Golemon tracks how the clergy has become increasingly diversified in terms of race, gender, and class in part because of this engagement with public life. At the same time, he demonstrates that as theological education became increasingly intertwined with academia the clergy's sphere of influence shrank significantly, marking a turn away from public life and a decline in their cultural influence. Clergy Education in America offers a sweeping look at an oft-overlooked but critically important aspect of American public life.
Download or read book Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness written by Christian Wiese and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-05-11 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume, composed by excellent scholars from different academic disciplines, is a comprehensive handbook devoted to the complex relationship between modern Judaism and historical thinking in Europe, the United States, and Israel from the Enlightenment to the present. Apart from analyzing the emergence of a new scholarly historical paradigm during this period, the contributions interpret the interaction and the tensions between Jewish historiography and other disciplines such as literature, theology, sociology, and philosophy, describe the way historical consciousness was popularized and used for ideological purposes and explore the impact of different – religious or secular – identities on the historical representation of the Jewish past. A final part envisions new theoretical and methodological concepts within the field, including cultural studies and gender studies.
Download or read book Landmark of the Spirit written by Annie Polland and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York City’s magnificent Eldridge Street Synagogue was built in 1887 in response to the great wave of Jewish immigrants who fled persecution in eastern Europe. Finding their way to the Lower East Side, the new arrivals formed a vibrant Jewish community that flourished from the 1850s until the 1940s. Their synagogue served not only as a place of worship but also as a singularly important center in the development of American Judaism. A near ruin in the 1980s that was recently reopened after a massive twenty-year restoration, the Eldridge Street Synagogue has been named a National Historic Landmark. But as Bill Moyers tells us in his foreword, the synagogue is also “a landmark of the spirit, . . . the spirit of a new nation committed to the old idea of liberty.” Annie Polland uses elements of the building’s architecture—the façade, the benches, the grooves worn into the sanctuary floor—as points of departure to discuss themes, people, and trends at various moments in the synagogue’s history, particularly during its heyday from 1887 until the 1930s. Exploring the synagogue’s rich archives, the author shines new light on the religious life of immigrant Jews, introduces various rabbis, cantors and congregants, and analyzes the significance of this special building in the context of the larger American-Jewish experience. For more information, go to: www.EldridgeStreet.org
Download or read book Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism written by Geoffrey Cantor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin’s theory of evolution transformed the life sciences and made profound claims about human origins and the human condition, topics often viewed as the prerogative of religion. As a result, evolution has provoked a wide variety of religious responses, ranging from angry rejection to enthusiastic acceptance. While Christian responses to evolution have been studied extensively, little scholarly attention has been paid to Jewish reactions. Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism is the first extended meditation on the Jewish engagement with this crucial and controversial theory. The contributors to Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism—from several academic disciplines and two branches of the rabbinate—present case studies showing how Jewish discussions of evolution have been shaped by the intersections of faith, science, philosophy, and ideology in specific historical contexts. Furthermore, they examine how evolutionary theory has been deployed when characterizing Jews as a race, both by Zionists and by anti-Semites. Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism addresses historical and contemporary, as well as progressive and Orthodox, responses to evolution in America, Europe, and Israel, ultimately extending the history of Darwinism into new religious domains.
