Telushkin speaks to the major ethical issues of our time, issues that have, of course, been around since the beginning. He offers one or two pages a day of pithy, wise, and easily accessible teachings designed to be put into immediate practice. The range of the book is as broad as life itself: The first trait to seek in a spouse (Day 17)When, if ever, lying is permitted (Days 71-73)Why acting cheerfully is a requirement, not a choice (Day 39)What children don't owe their parents (Day 128)Whether Jews should donate their organs (Day 290)An effective but expensive technique for curbing your anger (Day 156)How to raise truthful children (Day 298)What purchases are always forbidden (Day 3)In addition, Telushkin raises issues with ethical implications that may surprise you, such as the need to tip those whom you don't see (Day 109), the right thing to do when you hear an ambulance siren (Day 1), and why wasting time is a sin (Day 15). Whether he is telling us what Jewish tradition has to say about insider trading or about the relationship between employers and employees, he provides fresh inspiration and clear guidance for every day of our lives.

    What happened to these rebels in the ghetto and in the forest, and how, fighting for the State of Israel, they moved beyond the violence of the Holocaust and made new lives.In 1944, a band of Jewish guerrillas emerged from the Baltic forest to join the Russian army in its attack on Vilna, the capital of Lithuania. The band, called the Avengers, was led by Abba Kovner, a charismatic young poet. In the ghetto, Abba had built bombs, sneaking out through the city's sewer tunnels to sabotage German outposts. Abba's chief lieutenants were two teenage girls, Vitka Kempner and Ruzka Korczak. At seventeen, Vitka and Ruzka were perhaps the most daring partisans in the East, the first to blow up a Nazi train in occupied Europe. Each night, the girls shared a bed with Abba, raising gossip in the ghetto. But what they found was more than temporary solace. It was a great love affair. After the liquidation of the ghetto, the Avengers escaped through the city's sewage tunnels to the forest, where they lived for more than a year in a dugout beside a swamp, fighting alongside other partisan groups, and ultimately bombing the city they loved, destroying Vilna's waterworks and its powerplant in order to pave the way for its liberation.Leaving a devastated Poland behind them, they set off for the cities of Europe: Vitka and Abba to the West, where they would be instrumental in orchestrating the massive Jewish exodus to the biblical homeland, and Ruzka to Palestine, where she would be literally the first person to bring a first hand account of the Holocaust to Jewish leaders. It was in these last terrifying days--with travel in Europe still unsafe for Jews and the extent of the Holocaust still not widely known--that the Avengers hatched their plan for revenge. Before it was over, the group would have smuggled enough poison into Nuremberg to kill ten thousand Nazis. The Avengers is the story of what happened to these rebels in the ghetto and in the forest, and how, fighting for the State of Israel, they moved beyond the violence of the Holocaust and made new lives.From Rich Cohen, one of the preeminent journalists of his generation and author of the highly praised Tough Jews, a powerful exploration of vindication and revenge, of dignity and rebellion, painstakingly recreated through his exclusive access to the Avengers themselves. Written with insight, sensitivity, and the moral force of one of the last great struggles of the Second World War, here is an unforgettable story for our time.

    Offers a translation of and commentary on the first five books of the Hebrew Bible...Title: .The Five Books of Moses..Author: .Fox, Everett (EDT)/ Schwebel (ILT)/ Fox, Everett..Publisher: .Random House Inc..Publication Date: .2000/02/01..Number of Pages: .1024..Binding Type: .PAPERBACK..Library of Congress: .BL 00007461

    And it is true that, many times in the course of history, they have been nearly decimated: when the First and Second Temples were destroyed, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, when Hitler proposed his Final Solution. Astoundingly, the Jewish people have survived catastrophe after catastrophe and remained a thriving and vibrant community. The question Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks is, quite simply: How? How, in the face of such adversity, has Judaism remained and flourished, making a mark on human history out of all proportion to its numbers?Written originally as a wedding gift to his son and daughter-in-law, A Letter in the Scroll is Rabbi Sacks's personal answer to that question, a testimony to the enduring strength of his religion. Tracing the revolutionary series of philosophical and theological ideas that Judaism created -- from covenant to sabbath to formal education -- and showing us how they remain compellingly relevant in our time, Sacks portrays Jewish identity as an honor as well as a duty.The Ba'al Shem Tov, an eighteenth-century rabbi and founder of the Hasidic movement, famously noted that the Jewish people are like a living Torah scroll, and every individual Jew is a letter within it. If a single letter is damaged or missing or incorrectly drawn, a Torah scroll is considered invalid. So too, in Judaism, each individual is considered a crucial part of the people, without whom the entire religion would suffer. Rabbi Sacks uses this metaphor to make a passionate argument in favor of affiliation and practice in our secular times, and invites us to engage in our dynamic and inclusive tradition. Never has a book more eloquently expressed the joys of being a Jew.This is the story of one man's hope for the future -- a future in which the next generation, his children and ours, will happily embrace the beauty of the world's oldest religion.

    In Essential Judaism, George Robinson has created the accessible compendium that he sought when he rediscovered his Jewish roots as an adult. Robinson illuminates the Jewish life cycle at every stage, and lays out many fascinating aspects of Judaism -- the Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, the evolution of Hasidism, and much more -- while keeping a firm focus on the different paths to living a good Jewish life in today's world.

    Happiness isn't somewhere else, it's where we are. It isn't something we don't have, we do. It isn't fantasy, it's reality experienced in a certain way. Happiness is a close relative of faith'Following the painful loss of his father, Chief Rabbi Sacks began to learn how to celebrate life in a new way. He discovered where happiness lives, often in unexpected places, through family, community, friendship and responsibilities. He also found it through a renewed relationship with God who spoke to his deepest needs.Based, in part, on his columns in the UK's Times newspaper, Celebrating Life is for people of all faiths and none. It shows us how to be human and, in becoming so, how we can touch the divine.

    In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered-not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.

    By carefully introducing the letters and vowels of the Hebrew alphabet, the goal is to develop the reader's ability to decode written Hebrew words as well as to ground the learning of Hebrew in the broader sense of its use in Jewish life, ritual, study, and tradition. Each chapter introduces two or three Hebrew letters; through instructional drills and exercises, the reader progressively becomes familiar with key Hebrew vocabulary and its role in Jewish tradition, text, and prayer.

    And what interests him most about these people is their humanity, in all its glorious complexity. They get angry—at God for demanding so much, and at people, for doing so little. They make mistakes. They get frustrated. But through it all one constant remains—their love for the people they have been charged to teach and their devotion to the Supreme Being who has sent them. In these tales of battles won and lost, of exile and redemption, of despair and renewal, we learn not only by listening to what they have come to tell us, but by watching as they live lives that are both grounded in earthly reality and that soar upward to the heavens.From the Hardcover edition.

    A Holocaust survivor chronicles the chain of events that kept him alive, providing first-hand accounts of Hitler's rise to power, Kristallnacht, and confinement in various concentration camps.

    It tells the story of a family of secret Jews living in Seville on the eve of the Spanish Inquisition.

    True, the mistakes he made were common, ordinary things: a broken promise, a temper lost for no reason, a little untruth told here and there. But unlike most people, Gershon never regretted what he did. He never apologized or asked anyone's forgiveness. Why should he? Every year, on Rosh Hashanah, he would merely stuff his mistakes into a sack and cast them out to sea.Little did Gershon know, though, that his reckless behavior would certainly come back to haunt him. Was there still a chance for him to change?Eric A. Kimmel and Jon J Muth capture all the drama and wonder of this traditional Hasidic legend, as they rekindle our hope for beginning the year anew.

    Discover how their interpretations of the Torah can enrich your perspective. "Rich and engaging...makes available to a wide readership the collective wisdom of women who have changed the face of Judaism." --Judith Plaskow, author, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective; Professor of Religious Studies, Manhattan College Here, for the first time, women's unique experiences and perspectives are applied to the entire Five Books of Moses, offering all of us the first comprehensive commentary by women. In this groundbreaking book, more than 50 women rabbis come together to offer us inspiring insights on the Torah, in a week-by-week format. Included are commentaries by the first women ever ordained in the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements, and by many other women across these denominations who serve in the rabbinate in a variety of ways. This rich resource offers new perspectives to inspire all of us to gain deeper meaning from the Torah and a heightened appreciation of Judaism. A major contribution to modern biblical commentary. The gift of choice for every young woman's bat mitzvah, and for anyone wanting a new, exciting view of Torah. Contributing Rabbis: Rebecca T. Alpert - Lia Bass - Miriam Carey Berkowitz - Elizabeth Bolton - Analia Bortz - Sharon Brous - Judith Gary Brown - Nina Beth Cardin - Diane Aronson Cohen - Sandra J. Cohen - Cynthia A. Culpeper - Lucy H.F. Dinner - Lisa A. Edwards - Amy Eilberg - Sue Levi Elwell - Rachel Esserman - Helaine Ettinger - Susan Fendrick - Lori Forman - Dayle A. Friedman - Elyse D. Frishman - Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer - Shoshana Gelfand - Laura Geller - Elyse M. Goldstein - Julie K. Gordon - Claire Magidovitch Green - Rosette Barron Haim - Jill Hammer - Karyn D. Kedar - Sarra Levine - Valerie Lieber - Ellen Lippmann - Sheryl Nosan - Stacy K. Offner - Sara Paasche-Orlow - Barbara Rosman Penzner - Hara E. Person - Audrey S. Pollack - Sally J. Priesand - Geela-Rayzel Raphael - Laura M. Rappaport - Debra Judith Robbins - Rochelle Robins - Gila Colman Ruskin - Sandy Eisenberg Sasso - Ilene Schneider - Rona Shapiro - Michal Shekel - Beth J. Singer - Sharon L. Sobel - Ruth H. Sohn - Julie Ringold Spitzer z"l - Shira Stern - Pamela Wax - Nancy Wechsler-Azen - Nancy H. Wiener - Elana Zaiman

    One of the world's most famous and respected rabbis has given us the one guide we need to practice Jewish prayer and understand the prayer book.From the origins and meaning of prayer to a step-by-step explanation of the daily services to the reason you're not supposed to chat with your friends during the service, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz answers many of the questions likely to arise about Jewish prayer.  Here are chapters on daily prayer; Sabbath prayer; prayer services for the holidays; the yearly cycle of synagogue Bible readings; the history and make-up of the synagogue; the different prayer rites for Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Yemenites, and other cultural/geographic groupings; the role of the rabbi and the cantor in the synagogue; and the role of music in the service.The book also contains a glossary, a bibliography, and biographical sketches of the rabbis who were instrumental in creating and ordering the prayers through the ages.Rabbi Steinsaltz's guide is an essential volume both for the newcomer to Jewish prayer and for those who have been engaged in prayer for years.From the Hardcover edition.

    Edith survived, but most of her family perished in the death camps. Unable to cope with the loss of her family and homeland, Edith closed the door on her past, refusing to discuss even the smallest details.Fifty-four years later, when the void of her childhood was consuming both her and her family, she returned to Stockstadt with her grown daughter Fern. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. Together, they found a town that had dramatically changed on the surface, but which hid guilty secrets and lived in enduring denial.On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and--more importantly--with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them. Motherland is a story of learning to face the past, of remembering and honoring while looking forward and letting go. It is an account of the Holocaust's lingering grip on its witnesses; it is also a loving story of mothers and daughters, roots, understanding, and, ultimately, healing.

    It reveals Esther's ideas of the good state, how effective leadership makes decisions for the welfare of its people, and what modern-day Jews can learn about how to stand up to their enemies and maintain Jewish faith and nationhood even as God's face remains hidden from His people.

    Examining ideological trends in academia, literature, media, law, the armed forces, and the foreign policy establishment, Hazony contends that Israelis are preparing themselves for the final break with the Jewish past and the Jewish future. In a dramatic new reading of Israeli history, Hazony uncovers the story of how Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and other German-Jewish intellectuals bitterly fought against the establishment of Israel, and later used the Hebrew University as a base for deposing David Ben-Gurion and discrediting Labor Zionism. The Jewish State is a must-read for anyone concerned with Israel's present and future.

    Through the diversity of Marxist, pragmatist, and existential ideologies and philosophies, as well as merchant marine and military experiences, Art was brought to a final moral crisis as a teacher, able to raise, but not answer the groaning perplexities of the modern age and his own heart. During a leave of absence, on a hitch-hiking odyssey through North Africa, Western Europe and the Middle East, the cynical and unbelieving atheist - vehement anti-religionist and anti-Christian - was radically apprehended by a God whom he was not seeking. The actual journal, Ben Israel - Odyssey of a modern Jew, recounts the breaking into consciousness and ultimate apprehension of an unsuspecting and resistant 'son of Israel.'

    8 yr old Josh Hardman,an only child, is abducted from his room one night. The kidnapper, who keeps in touch by apparently untraceable e-mails, isn't after money, so the motive is as much of a mystery as who has taken the kid, and is he alive or dead? Hard bitten Detective Inspector Colin Sommers, himself an assimilated Jew, finds himself reluctantly sucked back in to his roots to find Josh, and possibly another lost son, himself.

    For Rubens, the anti-semitism which rocked France at the turn of the last century has not gone away. This time it crops up in 1990s England. Sir Alfred Dreyfus is the headmaster of a Church of England school. His only sin has been one of omission--he has concealed his Jewish origins to further his career. However, the novel opens with Sir Alfred imprisoned for a crime far more heinous. Literary agent and fellow Jew Sam Temple (names are emblematic for Rubens, and Temple does indeed prove to be an emotional haven for Dreyfus) visits the prisoner in his cell and persuades him to write a memoir of his downfall. The resulting narrative reveals a man coming to terms with his religious identity, and reclaiming his family's past. It is a deeply felt account of spiritual renewal, and should be read as an expertly crafted parable. Fans of psychological realism may balk at the evil anti-Semites she pits against her hero, but will rally at the sly humour of her ending. --Lilian Pizzichini

    Joining them are younger writers such as Melvin Jules Bukiet, Jacqueline Osherow, Art Speigelman, Steve Stern and Allegra Goodman, who bring the tradition up to its thriving present.Yiddish and Hebrew Writing in AmericaJewish American Literature: Traces in breadth and depth America's rich Yiddish-language culture, from the work of Morris Rosenfeld and David Edelshtadt in the 1880s through the Yunge and Introspectivist movements to the post-Holocaust writings of Kadya Molodowsky and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Also represented is Hebrew writing, in translations of the work of Ephraim E. Lisitzky and modernist Gabriel Preil.Special Sections: Jewish Humor offers choice selections of Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, and a cluster of perennial Jewish jokes; The Golden Age of the Broadway Song samples the unforgettable lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser, and Stephen Sondheim, among others; Jews Translating Jews reflects on the translator's role in transmitting tradition, gathering poems translated from Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Spanish by Jewish American poets from Emma Lazarus to David Unger.Helpful and Lively Reader's Apparatus: The Reader's Apparatus includes a general introduction, period introductions, author headnotes, explanatory annotations, and selected bibliographies.

    Though Ildiko’s family immigrates to Israel soon after, Ildiko’s life continues to be shaped by the secret deep within her; not until many years later is Ildiko able to reveal her story. In flashback fashion, she recounts her horror to her worried husband, who at the novel’s start is nearly hysterical with worry about a recent mysterious and possibly violent incident. Only as Ildiko’s story unfolds—and with it the parallel stories of her family and her husband—do readers come to understand what has taken place and how Ildiko’s story has come full circle. This psychological thriller focuses on family relationships and the aftermath of childhood trauma, and although not a novel specifically of the Holocaust, the narrative is driven by characters whose lives were shaped by it, so much so that those events become a silent character in the book.

    In it Rabbi Soloveitchik presents an extended theological meditation on the Holocaust and the rise of the State of Israel, the Jewish covenant of faith, and the covenant of fate and destiny which links all Jews, religious, irreligious, and nonreligious. Rabbi Dr. Walter S. Wurzberger, a prominent discipline of the Rav, has provided an introduction.

    For five decades this unique book was all but forgotten. Now JPS is proud to issue a facsimile edition, previously translated into English and published by the American Jewish Historical Society only as a limited edition. This is a haggadah written for and truly dedicated to the She'erith Hapletah, the Saved Remnant, “the few who escaped.” Interwoven with the traditional Passover liturgy are two stories: that of the deliverance from Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Holocaust story of those Jews who survived Hitler. Bold illustrations vividly associate the biblical Exodus with the liberation from Nazi horror.

    All these powers merge in this major new work of nonfiction, The Will to Live On, an illuminating account of the worldwide revolution that has been sweeping over Jewry, set against a swiftly reviewed background of history, tradition, and sacred literature.Forty years ago, in his modern classic This Is My God, Herman Wouk stated the case for his religious beliefs and conduct. His aim in that work and in The Will to Live On has been to break through the crust of prejudice, to reawaken clearheaded thought about the magnificent Jewish patrimony, and to convey a message of hope for Jewish survival.Although the Torah and the Talmud are timeless, the twentieth century has brought earthquake shocks to the Jews: the apocalyptic experience of the Holocaust, the reborn Jewish state, the precarious American diaspora, and deepening religious schisms. After a lifetime of study, Herman Wouk examines the changes affecting the Jewish world, especially the troubled wonder of Israel, and the remarkable, though dwindling, American Jewry. The book is peppered with wonderful stories of the author's encounters with such luminaries as Ben Gurion, Isidor Rabi, Yitzhak Rabin, Saul Bellow, and Richard Feynan.Learned in general culture, warmly tolerant of other beliefs, this noted author expresses his own other beliefs, this noted author expresses his own faith with a passion that gives the book its fire and does so in the clear, engaging style tha-as in all Wouk's fiction -- makes the reader want to know what the next page will bring.Herman Wouk writes, in The Will to Live On:"And so the Melting Pot is beginning to work on Jewry. Its effect was deferred in the passing century by the shock of the Holocaust and the rise of Israel, but today the Holocaust is an academic subject, and Israel is no longer a beleaguered underdog. Amkha in America is not dying, it is slowly melting, and those are very different fates. Dying is a terror, an agony, a strangling finish, to be fought off by sheer instinct, by the will to live on, to the last breath. Melting is a mere diffusion into an ambient welcoming warmth in which one is dissolved and disappears, as a teaspoon of sugar vanishes into hot tea....Yet here in the United States, for all the scary attrition I have pictured, we are still a community of over five million strong....At a far stretch of my hopes, our descendants could one day be a diaspora comparable to Babylonia. At the moment, of course, that is beyond rational expectation. We have to concentrate on lasting at all...."

    The remarkable story of collective and individual acts of bravery and altruism.

    You can serve up a mean s'il vous plait in a French bistro, live la vida loca for a night of margaritas, and manage a sayonara! after sushi, sake, and karaoke. But when it comes to throwing around a little Yiddish, you feel like a total nebbish!Don't throw your hands up in a helpless 'Oy, vey' just yet! 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Yiddish' is your guide to this unique tongue, whether you're tackling rules of grammar or just throwing around some key phrases so you sound a little less goyish. In this 'Complete Idiot's Guide', you get:-A fascinating explanation of how and why Yiddish developed.-An easy introduction to the Yiddish alphabet, as well as to the distinctive sound of Yiddish.-All the Yiddish you'll need for communicating with family and friends or for bargain-hunting on New York's Lower East Side. -A treasury of Yiddish words and phrases for everything.

    

    1,000 Jewish Recipes includes instructions for maintaining a kosher kitchen, information on the delicious culinary heritage of Jewish cultures, and tempting and easy-to-follow recipes such as Three-Cheese Knishes and Old-Fashioned Roast Chicken.

    Throughout history, argues brilliant feminist critic Andrea Dworkin, women and Jews have been stigmatized as society's scapegoats. In this stunning and provocative book, Dworkin brings her rigorous intellect to bear on the dynamics of scapegoating. Drawing upon history, philosophy, literature, and politics, she creates a terrifying picture of the workings of misogyny and anti-Semitism in the last millennium.With examples that range from the Inquisition, when women were targeted as witches and Jews as heretics, to the terror of the Nazis, whose aggression was both race- and gender-motivated, Dworkin illustrates how and why women and Jews have been scapegoated and compares the civil inequality, prejudices, and stereotypes that have framed identity for both groups. Taking the state of Israel as a paradigm, Dworkin traces the growth of male dominance in societies both old and new -- resulting in the subordination of women and a racial or ethnic "other."In Israel today, Palestinians and prostitutes are the new scapegoats: degraded, inferior, abject. Although the gentle Jewish martyrs of old have become modern Israeli warriors, women retain the stigmatized status of "weak Jews" who, when attacked, never fight back. This leads Dworkin to imagine a world in which women betray men of their own kind in order to develop and defend their own sovereignty. Ultimately, her book forces us to ask profound questions: Why do women continue to value their own lives less than those of themen they love? Where is the line between justifiable self-defense and violence? Both an impassioned plea for women to challenge and destroy the author- ity of the men in their own group and a startling work of history, "Scapegoat" will forever change how we think about the patterns of behavior and belief that give rise to domination and oppression.

    Best known for her ongoing work as a member of The Five Lesbian Brothers, Kron's solo pieces are very personal examinations of both herself and her family history. This is singularly clear in 2.5 Minute Ride, where her writing deftly maneuvers between the tragic drama of the Holocaust and the wry comedy of her family's attempts to pursue pleasure at the local amusement park. This critically acclaimed work played to sold out audience for over six months at New York's Public Theatre. Also included is the riotous 101 Humiliating Stories, which first premiered in 1993, and in fact only consists of seventeen tales but each, as the author observes, has several humiliations. It recounts the adventures and misadventures of a self-described Big Lesbian as she tests the boundaries of decorum in social and professional situations.

    Now, the English-speaking reader can enjoy a clearly written and easy to read summary of Jewish law, based on the Mishnah Berurah. Among the many topics included in this work are: Tzitzis, the daily routine, prayer, tefillin, blessings, the Sabbath, festivals and special days, the dietary laws, and mourning. Shaarei Halachah has been hailed as the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch for our time!

    In Sephardic Flavors, Goldstein uncovers the culinary history of the Diaspora, revealing in vivid prose and delicious recipes how the Sephardic Jews adapted the cuisines of their new homelands. Drawing upon the cultural and gastronomic heritages of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, Goldstein has amassed a remarkable array of unique recipes and historical information. A fascinating voyage into culinary history as well as a compilation of superbly satisfying dishes, Sephardic Flavors captures the indomitable spirit and brilliant cuisines that continue to capture our imaginations today.

    The relationship of humanity with the earth—of adam to adamah—has long been a vital element of Hebrew Scripture. Today the Tu B’Shvat holiday has taken on added significance because of the greening of Israel and the growth of the ecology and environmental movements in the United States and abroad. This anthology draws from biblical, rabbinical, medieval, and modern sources that address the significance and historical development of the holiday, offers several examples of a “Seder Tu B’Shvat,” and includes mystical writings along with Zionist and Eco-Jewish pieces.

    Based on Israeli military and political documents, this book looks at the origins of the Druze's unique status in Israeli society by telling the story of the military and political alliance that emerged between the Druze and the Jewish army in the 1948 war.

    Armed with false papers identifying them as aristocratic Gentiles, this Jewish family took shelter in the very shadow of the Nazi machine.

    For everyone who wants to understand Torah, this book shows the way into an essential aspect of Judaism, and allows you to interact directly with the sacred texts of the Jewish tradition.Guided by Dr. Norman J. Cohen, rabbi and professor of midrash at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, The Way Into Torah helps us explore the origins and development of Torah, why it should be studied, and how to do it.What Torah is. The texts, and beyond: Not simply the Five Books of Moses, Torah refers to much more than written words.The different approaches to studying Torah. The many ways Jews have interacted with Torah through the ages and how, by learning to read Torah ourselves, we can connect it to our lives today.The levels of understanding Torah. How Torah can come alive in different ways, at different times; and how new meanings of Torah are discovered by its readers.Why Torah study is a part of the Jewish experience. How it allows us to experience God's presence--and why the Rabbis called Torah study more important even than belief in God.This guide offers an entrance into the world of Torah, and to its meaning for our lives. The Way Into Torah shows us why reading Torah is not the same as reading anything else--and enables us to become a part of a chain of Jewish tradition that began millennia ago, and remains unbroken today.

    The first book to connect the prewar and wartime experiences of Jewish survivors to the lives they subsequently made for themselves in the United States, Troubled Memory is also a dramatic testament to how the experiences of survivors as new Americans spurred their willingness to bear witness. Perhaps the only family to survive the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto as a group, the Skoreckis evaded deportation to Treblinka by posing as Aryans. The family eventually made their way to New Orleans, where they became part of a vibrant Jewish community. Lawrence Powell traces their dramatic odyssey and explores the events that eventually triggered Anne Skorecki Levy's brave decision to honor the suffering of the past by confronting the recurring specter of racist hatred.

    Is the designated impurity of menstruation sexist? Or does ritual absence from sex during menstruation encourage a rhythmic reaffirmation of conjugal intimacy?This book offers a new perspective on the extensive rabbinic discussions of menstrual impurity, female physiology, and anatomy, and on the social and religious institutions those discussions engendered. It analyzes the functions of these discussions within the larger textual world of rabbinic literature and in the context of Jewish and Christian culture in late antiquity.How did gender work—how was it made to work—in rabbinic literature? How did that literature dictate the place of women in Jewish culture? In search of answers to these questions, the author analyzes the architectural metaphors deployed to describe female anatomy, arguing that this discursive construction operated culturally to associate women with the home and exclude them from rabbinic study halls.The author shows that rabbinic discourse is not completely controlled by rabbinic ideology, however. She analyzes talmudic discussions that allow alternative gender perspectives to emerge, indicating that women and their bodies were not completely objectified. This suggests that the Babylonian Talmud does not present a completely homogeneous gender structure, but contains a number of different, sometimes contradictory, possibilities.The book concludes with a study of early Christian texts that relate to the same biblical laws on menstrual impurity as rabbinic texts, focusing in particular on a Jewish-Christian text in which the anonymous author polemicizes against Jewish women converts who remain attached to the biblical laws. This text allows us to reconstruct women’s perspectives on the inscription of religious meaning onto their bodies and physiological processes.

    Divided into 13 lessons and additional useful appendices and bibliography, the book allows the reader to "self-teach" the important principles of Torah cantillation. The only pre-requisite for this course of learning is a basic ability to read Hebrew and a willingness to learn! It is a perfect selection for B'nai Mitzvah students, beginning learners, and for adult education courses. Step-by-step exercises and instructions CD of recordings correspond with written exercises Includes both male and female voices on recording Includes glossary, list of parashiyot, High Holy Day cantillation and more!

    D. Goitein's magisterial five-volume work on Jewish communities in the medieval Mediterranean world offers an unparalleled view of how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic and social affairs. Living under Muslim rule, the Jews became increasingly urbanized and played a significant part in an expanding world economy. As major actors in the flourishing intellectual life of the period, they forged much of what constitutes traditional Judaism today and served as a conduit of Islamic learning to the Christian West.Goitein's masterpiece is now abridged and reworked by Jacob Lassner in a single volume that captures the essential narratives and contexts of the original. To understand the value of this distillation, we need to picture the remarkable, all-but-impenetrable cache of unique letters and documents found by accident in a geniza, or repository of sacred writings, in Old Cairo. These materials, unlike historical chronicles and literary texts of the time, represent the living experiences of people in a wide variety of settings throughout the entire Mediterranean and stretching as far east as the Indian subcontinent.Goitein explored and interpreted these texts as no other scholar had. Lassner, in turn, makes Goitein's findings available to a wide audience and then moves on to raise a host of new and tantalizing questions about the Jews of the Geniza and the relationship of their community to the hegemonic Muslim society.

    With descriptions of both traditional and contemporary practice, The Tapestry of Jewish Time hands us our tradition as an heirloom and shows us how to remake that tradition. In Part One, Jewish Holidays, Rabbi Cardin tells the story of the Jewish week, month, and year, showing us the struggles and celebrations we share with our ancestors, and how we have transformed those struggles and celebrations. Rabbi Cardin teaches that Jews once celebrated Passover by sacrificing a lamb, but Jews now celebrate Passover by foregoing chametz, leavening. Jews have always left a cup of wine for Elijah; today some leave a cup of water for Miriam as well. But we all celebrate Passover with a family meal and the telling of the freedom story.In Part Two, Jewish Life-Cycle Events, Rabbi Cardin reveals the eternal cycle of Jewish life through contemporary and ancient stories. She writes about marriage in the down-to-earth language of Genesis, the poetic language of the Song of Songs, and the devout language of the Talmud. But Rabbi Cardin also describes the variety of wedding ceremonies Jews choose from today, shows us how Judaism releases men and women from unhappy unions, and remembers the widow and the widower.Perhaps most strikingly, The Tapestry of Jewish Time teaches all of us to knit our personal stories together with those of our ancestors. The chapter Prayers and Rituals for the Home shares blessings in Hebrew, English, and transliteration, empowering us to transform our everyday life by speaking those ancient words. The beautifully decorated Personal Weavings write-in chapter invites us to weave memories and experiences from our own lives into Tapestry itself.About the Author: Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin is the Director of Jewish Life at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore, and the Chair of the Editorial Committee of Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility. She was the editor of Sh'ma from 1993 to 1998, and Director of the National Jewish Healing Center in New York City from 1995 to 1997. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, Rabbi Avram Reisner, and their children.

    In examining the evolution of ancient Jewish attitudes towards sin and defilement, Klawans sheds light on a fascinating but previously neglected topic.

    Book Details: Format: Paperback Publication Date: 3/15/2000 Pages: 96 Reading Level: Age 9 and Up

    What is their secret to making the six years last a lifetime? In this inspiring story of generosity, a thread of kindness stretches on forever.

    Once a group of isolated voices, their number and range has grown in the last 50 years to reveal a distinct American poetic tradition. The first complete guide to the diversity and vitality of this tradition, Jewish American Poetry features poems by 26 leading poets (some written especially for this volume) followed by the poets' own reflections on the Jewish and American aspects of their work. The second half of the book gathers ten wide-ranging essays on the history and scope of Jewish American poetry, offering an unprecedented introduction to its Yiddish and Sephardic heritage, its distinctive poetics of commentary, its Kabbalists, its feminists, and more. With a general introduction that places this literature in the contexts of both Jewish culture and American poetry, Jewish American Poetry opens the door to a much-needed discussion of the significance of the Jewish voice in American literature.

    Along with this new translation, this text offers a variety of literary works spanning the 17th to the 20th centuries.

    As spring turns to summer and summer to fall, Sammy watches Josh nurture the small tree as it sprouts tiny buds, then full blossoms, then colorful autumn leaves. Birds and squirrels come to visit the tree, and as autumn turns to winter, the leaves drop and the birds leave. Sammy worries as the tree shivers in the cold winter air. And then, as he practices weaving a new web, he gets an idea...

    He remembered that it was Picture Day. He remembered that Mrs. Hughes told them to look spiffy.Bertie is determined to look his very best for his second grade school picture on Monday. In fact, he even plans to wear his red polka-dot bow tie. But before the weekend's over, Bertie loses a front tooth, gets a shiner, and receives a "terribly interesting" haircut from his little sister Eloise. Bertie and Eloise, whom young readers met in Hot Fudge Hero, are back--and as charming as ever. In their smart and playful style, Pat Brisson and Diana Cain Bluthenthal capture these endearing characters in all of their trials and triumphs.

    Edelshtein the Poet seethes with jealousy and desperately seeks a translator to bring his work to life."The Pagan Rabbi"Isaac Kornfeld, a learned rabbi, has hanged himself in a park. His beautiful young widow tells the story of Isaac's great struggle -- between the flowering nymph of his passions and the book-laden old Jew of his soul.

    The siddur features a faithful translation of the Hebrew that is gender neutral. All Hebrew text in the siddur is transliterated.

    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 sleepsThis perfect nighttime companion draws on the power of Jewish tradition to help us enhance our spiritual awareness--in both our waking and sleeping hours.

    This book shows you how to do it. "Renew the soul and your perspective of daily life will completely change. It is simply a matter of taking time, slowing down, shifting mundane consciousness into realms of higher insight and giving yourself the gift of reflection and contemplation."--from the IntroductionWhile broad interest in Jewish meditation is a relatively new phenomenon, meditative practices have been deeply rooted in Judaism for thousands of years. Here, Rabbi David A. Cooper shows newcomers and experienced meditators alike how Jewish meditation can be an integral part of daily life, and can refresh us in our day-to-day encounters with ourselves, other people and in ritual, prayer, Torah study and our celebration of the Sabbath and other holy days.

    Read together, the stories and poems in this book will help to create a more sophisticated understanding of Middle Eastern passions and realities, and will foster a wealth of discussion about the meanings of homeland, exile, and diaspora; women's sexuality and spirituality; gender roles; the legacy of the Holocaust; the tensions and reconciliations of religion and secular life; the effects of war; and the power of memory.In her introduction, Miriyam Glazer vividly reconstructs the diversities, tensions, and complexity of current Israeli literature, and the book reflects the multiculturality of modern-day Israel by including stories and poems originally written in Arabic, Russian, Hebrew, and English. Brief biographical and critical introductions are provided for each writer, and the book features specially commissioned and new translations of twenty stories and seventy-five poems, many available here for the first time in English.