Book picks similar to
Doing Jewish Theology: God, Torah & Israel in Modern Judaism by Neil Gillman
judaism
jewish
honours
jewish-studies
Together: A Journey for Survival
Ann Arnold - 2016
Married to the man of her dreams, mother to two beautiful children, and a member of one of the most respected families in town; she had it all. The year was 1939, and the world was about to change. In a heartbreaking instant, she had to trade her life of security, family, and simple pleasures--for one of unspeakable loneliness, hardship, and danger. Nothing more than hunted prey, she relied on her inner strength and indomitable will to keep her children alive. But would it be enough? How far would she have to go, and did she have the resolve to get there? One thing she knew for sure ...she and her children would live or die one way …. TOGETHER. Manek was six years old when his world began to collapse. At first, his young eyes failed to see it, but reality came quickly into focus, when his loving gentle mother was forced to beat him in order to save his life. That is when he realized the Nazis wanted to kill him. Suddenly thrust into a new role as man of the house, would he be able to help keep his family safe? Was he strong enough to protect them? He knew only one thing ... they would survive if they could stay …TOGETHER. In Together: A Journey for Survival, Ann Arnold shares her family's journey through Poland's countryside as a war of nations thunders around them. The story displays the magnificent strength of a mother's love and the incredible courage of good people during the worst of times. "An important work. Ann Arnold's effort to both tell their tale of her family's survival during the Holocaust while being a part of encouraging the next generation to embrace tolerance is inspiring." -Michael Cohen, The Simon Wiesenthal Center "A fascinating story that takes a reader inside an already wounded family toiling through horrific difficulty in the pursuit of life itself. .. it forces readers to ask themselves if they could endure a struggle or whether they might support another person in a life or death battle. This angle makes the book valuable for teachers to use and beneficial for students to read at the high school level.” -Lawrence M. Glaser, N.J. Commission on Holocaust Education “Incredible Story” –Northern Valley Press "Arnold’s perspective is colored not only by those non-Jews who saved her father’s family but also by her experience visiting Brzostek as an adult." –New Jersey Jewish News
All Who Go Do Not Return
Shulem Deen - 2015
As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world—only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression—turning on the radio—is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs, until, several years later, his faith unravels entirely. Now a heretic, he fears being discovered and ostracized from the only world he knows. His relationship with his family at stake, he is forced into a life of deception, and begins a long struggle to hold on to those he loves most: his five children. In All Who Go Do Not Return, Deen bravely traces his harrowing loss of faith, while offering an illuminating look at a highly secretive world.
Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry
Samuel G. Freedman - 2000
secularist, denomination vs. denomination, liberal vs. conservative -- in the last forty years, American Jews have increasingly found themselves torn apart by their diversity. In this chronicle of the evolution of American Jewry, Samuel G. Freedman illuminates the forces that have undermined the traditional peaceful coexistence among the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist branches, and secular and unaffiliated Jews. Examining recent headline-making stories as well as less publicized controversies, Freedman discusses the vitriolic battles that have arisen over intermarriage, standards of conversion, the role of women in religious ritual, the Middle East peace process, and the secular influence on religious life. As he weighs the arguments of both extremes, Freedman comes to the controversial conclusion that the Jewish-American community is headed for a Reformation, a permanent fracture of one faith into many.
Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition
Arthur Green - 2010
As featured on the cover of Tikkun magazine How do we articulate a religious vision that embraces evolution and human authorship of Scripture? Drawing on the Jewish mystical traditions of Kabbalah and Hasidism, path-breaking Jewish scholar Arthur Green argues that a neomystical perspective can help us to reframe these realities, so they may yet be viewed as dwelling places of the sacred. In doing so, he rethinks such concepts as God, the origins and meaning of existence, human nature, and revelation to construct a new Judaism for the twenty-first century.
The Second Jewish Book of WHY
Alfred J. Kolatch - 1985
Rabbi Alfred J. Kolatch includes the attitudes of Jewish legal scholars toward such far-reaching topics as artificial insemination, birth control, and intermarriage, while expanding on answers included in the first volume.
Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press
Eddy Portnoy - 2017
But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weird-Jews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt. These marginal Jews may have found their way into the history books far less frequently than their more socially upstanding neighbors, but there's one place you can find them in force: in the Yiddish newspapers that had their heyday from the 1880s to the 1930s. Disaster, misery, and misfortune: you will find no better chronicle of the daily ignominies of urban Jewish life than in the pages of the Yiddish press.An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi exposes the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With true stories plucked from the pages of the Yiddish papers, Eddy Portnoy introduces us to the drunks, thieves, murderers, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in print. There's the Polish rabbi blackmailed by an American widow, mass brawls at weddings and funerals, a psychic who specialized in locating missing husbands, and violent gangs of Jewish mothers on the prowl-in short, not quite the Jews you'd expect. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.
Holy Days: The World Of The Hasidic Family
Lis Harris - 1985
Harris chronicles the personal transformation she experienced as she grew closer to the largely hidden men and women of the Hasidic world.
The Heritage: A Jewish Historical Fiction Novel
Jack Michonik - 2015
Thousands of Jewish families are forced to flee poverty and anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. Fate takes two families to the magical continent of South America, which opens its generous arms to them. Many surprises await the immigrants in the New World. In this exciting story of their lives from their early teens in the “shtetl” to leisurely musings of middle age, we see the hardships immigrants face in the long journey to America, the complex process of adaptation to an unfamiliar environment and the phenomenal development of their businesses. Parallel to the story of the main characters, another story emerges: that of the birth of a typical Jewish community within a Christian city. Translated from the original Spanish book, La Descendencia, The Heritage is peppered with reflections on religion and historical events of the time regarding the Jews and the state of Israel. Throughout the narrative, the author captivates us with a fascinating story of overcoming, human conflicts and addresses issues of assimilation and identity. Though not an autobiographical novel, it could be the story of the parents or grandparents of any Jew from Central or South America. The author preferred to use a fictional provincial capital of Latin American so that the reader can recognize the history of his or her own Jewish community, as all Jewish communities in Latin America came into being in an almost identical manner.
My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq
Ariel Sabar - 2008
Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born. Yona's son Ariel grew up in Los Angeles, where Yona had become an esteemed professor, dedicating his career to preserving his people’s traditions. Ariel wanted nothing to do with his father’s strange immigrant heritage—until he had a son of his own.Ariel Sabar brings to life the ancient town of Zakho, discovering his family’s place in the sweeping saga of Middle-Eastern history. This powerful book is an improbable story of tolerance and hope set in what today is the very center of the world’s attention.
Colors Passing Through Us
Marge Piercy - 2003
Feisty and funny as always, she turns a sharp eye on the world around her, bidding an ex-hausted farewell to the twentieth century and singing an "electronic breakdown blues" for the twenty-first. She memorializes movingly those who, like los desaparecidos and the victims of 9/11, disappear suddenly and without a trace. She writes an elegy for her mother, a woman who struggled with a deadening round of housework, washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, and so on, "until stroke broke / her open." She remembers the scraps of lace, the touch of velvet, that were part of her maternal inheritance and first aroused her sensual curiosity. Here are paeans to the pleasures of the natural world (rosy ripe tomatoes, a mating dance of hawks) as the poet confronts her own mortality in the cycle of seasons and the eternity of the cosmos: "I am hurrying, I am running hard / toward I don't know what, / but I mean to arrive before dark." Other poems-about her grandmother's passage from Russia to the New World, or the interrupting of a Passover seder to watch a comet pass-expand on Piercy's appreciation of Jewish life that won her so much acclaim in The Art of Blessing the Day. Colors Passing Through Us is a moving celebration of the endurance of love and of the phenomenon of life itself-a book to treasure.
The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party with Racism, the Rest of Us with Coronavirus, And Why We Aren’t Done With Him Yet
S.V. Date - 2021
Help Self: Learn from my mistakes so you can make different ones!
Tanya Hennessy - 2020
And wrong. This is not your average self-help book.There are no filters, no frittatas and no fake. In Help Self, Tanya gets real as she discusses food, love, friendship, careers and mental health, and (of course) she gets real hilarious too.From being mistaken for a pregnant woman when she'd just had too many Cheezels, to understanding whatever alien language your friend's child is speaking, to overcoming an unexpected breakup with your best friend, Tanya Hennessy has all the life-hack, pro-tips for getting through this chaos we call life.
Modernist Cooking Made Easy: Sous Vide: The Authoritative Guide to Low Temperature Precision Cooking
Jason Logsdon - 2014
Most importantly it will allow you to significantly increase the quality and consistency of the dishes you create on a daily basis. And for those of you whose lives are harried, the sous vide technique also allows you to create remarkable meals while working around your hectic schedule.Modernist Cooking Made Easy: Sous Vide is the authoritative guide to low temperature precision cooking and it will help make sous vide a part of your everyday cooking arsenal.Sous vide is a simple an extremely effective way to cook. This book covers every step of the sous vide process, from seasoning, sealing, and temperature control to how to determine the times and temperatures needed to turn out great food. There are also extensive write ups for the main types of food including steak and red meat, pork, fish and shellfish, eggs, fruits and vegetables, and much more.What You Get In This Book:•The bulk of this book is the more than 85 recipes it contains. Designed so you can skim the recipes, looking for something that inspires you, or turn to a specific recipe to learn all about how to cook the cut of meat it features.•A detailed look at the entire sous vide process, including pre-sous vide preparation, sous vide sealing, temperature control, determining time and temperatures, and finishing sous vided foods.•More than 85 recipes providing a wide variety of dishes across many cuts of meat and types of vegetables. They include:•Beef, Lamb, and Other Red Meat•Pork•Sausage and Ground Meats•Chicken, Turkey, Duck, and Poultry•Eggs•Fish and Shellfish•Fruits and Vegetables•Infusions of Alcohol, Oil, and Vinegar•Sweet and Sours such as yogurt, creme brulee, and dulce de leche•An introduction to the equipment you will need for cooking sous vide. From a simple no-cost method that will allow you to give sous vide cooking a try, to a low-cost setup that will meet all of your sous vide cooking needs.•A comprehensive sous vide time and temperature chart, as well as cooking-by-thickness times.•More than 35 "Modernist Notes" with suggestions for using modernist ingredients and techniques to turn everyday meals into upscale and elegant dishes.If you want to use sous vide to prepare amazing food simply and easily then this is the book for you!
Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman
Abby Stein - 2019
Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life. Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be?