Many people are reluctant to approach prayer on a personal level, speaking directly to God, because we have never been encouraged to do so or are intimidated by the prospect of creating spontaneous prayer. But as we grow spiritually, it becomes clear that traditional or rote prayers are not sufficient to express the deepest longings and feelings of our connection with the Divine. Whatever your faith tradition, this unique and inspiring book helps you connect by giving you the tools you need to speak directly to God in prayer, without relying on traditional written prayers or formulas. Accessible and from a multifaith perspective, it distinguishes among prayer, contemplation, and meditation, and then encourages you to engage in various forms of prayer involving the spirit and the physical body. It draws on prayer practices from many different traditions and offers concrete suggestions and exercises for how to incorporate those practices into your own tradition on a regular basis.

An accessible introduction to the reasons for and the ways of Jewish prayer.

"The Way Into Jewish Prayer" helps us to explore the reasons for and the ways of Jewish prayer. It opens the door to 3,000 years of Jewish prayer, making available all you need to feel at home in the Jewish way of communicating with God.

PMA Best Religion Book of the Year The inspiring guide to spiritual celebration used in hundreds of congregations Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist revised and expanded

"Parents and their children acutely feel the social pressures that surround bar and bat mitzvah. But they want to feel the spiritual promise of the event, the pull of the divine, and the knowledge that they are participating in an event that has meaning both in the ancient past and in the very immediate present. They want to know that the steep incline before them is their family's own version of Sinai, the summit where, in every generation, Jews meet God, individually and as a people. They want to know that bar and bat mitzvah can be a path to that summit. And they want to know how to get there. . . . This book can be their guide." from "Why This Book Was Born"

Helps people find core spiritual values in American Jewry's most misunderstood ceremony bar and bat mitzvah. In a joining of explanation, instruction and inspiration, Rabbi Salkin helps both parent and child truly be there when the moment of Sinai is recreated in their lives.

Rabbi Salkin asks and answers questions that make parents and children more comfortable with the event and able to experience it more joyfully. How did bar and bat mitzvah originate? What is the lasting significance of the event? What are the ethics of celebration? What specific things can you do to reclaim the spiritual meaning of the event? How to further develop spirituality? What spiritual values can parents and young people build together?

To help guide friends and family who are not Jewish through this important Jewish life cycle event, Rabbi Salkin provides a brief, welcoming overview: "What Non-Jews Should Know About the Bar and Bat Mitzvah Service.""

Women rabbis are changing the face of Judaism. 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"

A spiritual keepsake that will become a family heirloom.The companion book to the author's Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child's Bar or Bat Mitzvah 100,000 copies in print The perfect gift to help a bar or bat mitzvah preserve the spiritual memories of this sacred event. This hands-on album updated and expanded for this second edition is designed to help everyone involved better participate in creating the spiritual meaning of this joyful rite of passage.

Created by Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, author of the award-winning classic Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child s Bar or Bat Mitzvah, and his wife, author Nina Salkin, this guided album is a wonderfully interactive way to remember important moments and details. Included are special sections to record your family s history; the hopes, wishes, and memories of influential people in the bar/bat mitzvah s life; mitzvot performed; contributions to tzedakot and more.

With ample space for writing, reflecting and pasting mementos, this spiritual keepsake gives young people a place to treasure their special experiences and encourages them to prepare for spiritual life as Jewish adults."

In Truly Beyond Wonders Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis investigates texts and material evidence associated with healing pilgrimage in the Roman empire during the second century AD. Her focus is upon one particular pilgrim, the famous orator Aelius Aristides, whose Sacred Tales, his fascinating account of dream visions, gruelling physical treatments, and sacred journeys, has been largely misunderstood and marginalized. Petsalis-Diomidis rehabilitates this text by placing it within the material context of the sanctuary of Asklepios at Pergamon, where the author spent two years in search of healing. The architecture, votive offerings, and ritual rules which governed the behaviour of pilgrims are used to build a picture of the experience of pilgrimage to this sanctuary. Truly Beyond Wonders ranges broadly over discourses of the body and travel and in so doing explores the place of healing pilgrimage and religion in Graeco-Roman society and culture. It is generously illustrated with more than 80 drawings and photographs, and four colour plates.

Often when people have become alienated from their religious backgrounds, they access their traditions through lifecycle events such as marriage. At times, modern values such as gender equality may be at odds with some of the traditions; many of which have always been in a state of flux in relationship to changing social, economic and political realities. Traditional Jewish marriage is based on the man acquiring the woman, which has symbolic and actual ramifications. Grounded in the traditional texts yet accessible, this book shows how the marriage is an acquisition and contextualises the gender hierarchy of marriage within the rabbinic exclusion of women from Torah study, the highest cultural practice and women's exemption from positive commandments. Melanie Landau offers two alternative models of partnership that partially or fully bypass the non-reciprocity of traditional Jewish marriage and that have their basis in the ancient rabbinic texts.

A revolutionary, science-based approach to meditation from a neuroscientist turned meditation master, The Mind Illuminated is an accessible, step-by-step toolkit for anyone looking to start—or improve—their daily meditation practice.

The book that bestselling meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg raves “brings the path of meditation to life,” The Mind Illuminated is the first how-to meditation guide from a neuroscientist who is also an acclaimed meditation master. This innovative book offers a 10-stage program that is both deeply grounded in ancient spiritual teachings about mindfulness and holistic health, and also draws from the latest brain science to provide a roadmap for anyone interested in achieving the benefits of mindfulness. Dr. John Yates offers a new and fascinating model of how the mind works, including steps to overcome mind wandering and dullness, extending your attention span while meditating, and subduing subtle distractions.

This groundbreaking manual provides illustrations and charts to help you work through each stage of the process, offering tools that work across all types of meditation practices. The Mind Illuminated is an essential read, whether you are a beginner wanting to establish your practice or a seasoned veteran ready to master the deepest state of peace and mindfulness.

Voices of the Ritual analyzes the revival of rituals performed at female saint shrines in the Middle East. In the midst of turbulent political contention over land and borders, Nurit Stadler shows, religious minorities lay claim to space through rituals enacted at sacred spaces in the Holy Land. Using ethnographic analysis, Stadler explores the rise of these rituals, their focus on the body, female materiality, and their place in the Israeli-Palestinian landscape. Stadler examines the varied features of the practice and implications of the rituals, looking at themes of femininity and material experience. She considers the role of the body in rituals that represent the act of birth or the circle of life and that aim to foster an intimate connection between the female saint and her worshippers. Stadler underscores the political, cultural, and spatial elements of this practice, bringing attention to how religious minorities (Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze, among others) have utilized these rituals to assert their right to the land. Voices of the Ritual offers a valuable assessment of religious ritual practice that encrypts female themes into a landscape that has historically been defined by war and conflict.

The 'Science of properties' represents a large and fascinating part of Arabic technical literature. The book of 'Isa ibn 'Ali (9th cent.) 'On the useful properties of animal parts' was the first of such compositions in Arabic. His author was a Syriac physician, disciple of Hunayn ibn Ishaq, who worked at the Abbasid court during the floruit of the translation movement. For the composition of his book, as a multilingual scholar, he collected many different antique and late antique sources. The structure of the text itself-a collection of recipes that favoured a fluid transmission-becomes here the key to a new formal analysis that oriented the editorial solutions as well. The 'Book on the useful properties of animal parts' is a new tile that the Arabic tradition offers to the larger mosaic representing the transfer of technical knowledge in pre-modern times. This text is an important passage in that process of acquisition and original elaboration of knowledge that characterized the early Abbasid period.

Different forms of religious worship and ritual are present throughout the development of human beings, from early stone-age ritual, nature religion and ancestor worship, to faiths from which Christianity and the Eucharist emerge. In this book, Bastiaan Baan traces the origins and metamorphosis of human religion in historical, theological and humanistic terms, examining its significance for human life on earth and in the spiritual world.

Recent years have seen an increased interest in Jewish life, its culture, and its celebrations. There are many new students of Judaism, often potential converts or members of interfaith families who are seeking to learn more about the religion and its rituals. Unfortunately, many of the existing texts that examine the Jewish holidays are written in a dry, unexciting way, making it difficult for the reader to retain much information. For those seeking to learn more about Jewish celebrations, Cantor Matt Axelrod has written Your Guide to the Jewish Holidays: From Shofar to Seder. Intended for the reader who has no prior knowledge about the Jewish holidays as well as the reader who knows the basics about the holidays but wants to understand the holidays on a deeper level, Axelrod's book takes a humorous, light-hearted look at the 11 most important Jewish holidays. Instead of simply explaining that Jews are obligated to observe in a certain way because of a biblical text, Axelrod shows where each holiday, along with its rituals, came from in a historical context. He provides a humorous retelling of the biblical passages relating to the holiday, explorations of rituals associated with each holiday, and descriptions of traditional foods. Your Guide to the Jewish Holidays also features special sections labeled "In Depth" or "Perfect for Families" that expand upon elements of each holiday in ways that provide greater understanding of traditions or that invite the reader to get the rest of the family involved.

Each year, more than two million pilgrims from over 100 countries converge on the holy city of Mecca to reenact the ritual dramas that Muslims have been performing for centuries. Making the hajj is one of the most important duties in the life of a Muslim. The pilgrimage-and its impact on international politics-is enormous and growing every year, yet Westerners know virtually nothing about it. What is the hajj and what does it mean? Who are the hajjis? What do they do and say in Mecca and how do they interpret their experiences? Who runs the hajj and what are their political objectives? How does the hajj encourage international cooperation among Muslims and can it also promote harmony between Islam and the West? In Guests of God, Robert R. Bianchi seeks to answer these and many other questions. While it is first and foremost a religious festival, he shows, the hajj is also very much a political event. The Muslim world's leading multinational organization, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has established the first international regime explicitly devoted to pilgrimage. Every large Muslim nation has developed a comprehensive hajj policy and a powerful bureaucracy to enforce it. Yet, Bianchi argues, no authority- secular or religious, national or international-can really control the hajj. Pilgrims believe that they are entitled to travel freely to Mecca as "Guests of God"-not as guests of any nation or organization that might wish to restrict or profit from their efforts to fulfill a fundamental religious obligation. Drawing on his personal experience as a pilgrim and a wealth of data gathered over the course of ten years of research, Bianchi has produced a fascinating look at the hajj filled with personal, candid stories from political and religious leaders and hajjis from all walks of life. A wide-ranging study of Islam, politics, and power, Guests of God is the most complete picture of the hajj available anywhere.

The Tibetan district of Tsari with its sacred snow-covered peak of Pure Crystal Mountain has long been a place of symbolic and ritual significance for Tibetan peoples. In this book, Toni Huber provides the first thorough study of a major Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage center and cult mountain, and explores the esoteric and popular traditions of ritual there. The main focus is on the period of the 1940s and '50s, just prior to the 1959 Lhasa uprising and subsequent Tibetan diaspora into South Asia. Huber's work thus documents Tibetan life patterns and cultural traditions which have largely disappeared with the advent of Chinese colonial modernity in Tibet. In addition to the work's documentary content, Huber offers discussion and analysis of the construction and meaning of Tibetan cultural categories of space, place, and person, and the practice of ritual and organization of traditional society in relation to them.

The British explorer Sir Richard F. Burton (1821 90) was a colourful and often controversial character. A talented linguist and keen ethnologist, he worked in India during the 1840s as an interpreter and intelligence officer for General Sir Charles Napier, and published several books about his experiences in 1851 2. He first gained celebrity, however, for his adventurous 1853 trip to Mecca, under the disguise of a pilgrim, which is described in this lively three-volume publication (1855 6). Few Europeans had ever visited the Muslim holy places; one of them was John Lewis Burckhardt, whose 1829 account is also reissued in this series. Volume 2 of Burton's book vividly describes the heat and dangers of the journey to Medina, the behaviour and conversation of the pilgrims from many different tribes and nations, and the mosques, tombs and other sights of the bustling city, complete with traders and beggars.

Based on the best selling book It's a Mitzvah by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, Making a Difference presents both ethical and ritual mitzvot, such as Rodef Shalom, Tzedakah, Kashrut, and Tefillah, as well as practical and creative suggestions on how to observe them. Students study the wisdom of Jewish sacred texts and examine through a Jewish lens who they are, the kind of adults they want to become, and how the mitzvot can help them achieve their goals. Each chapter presents a mitzvah and includes the following writing activities: Self-Portrait (exploring the mitzvah in personal terms) You Don't Say (finding meaning in the wisdom of ancient and modern sages) It's a Dilemma (responses to real-life situations) Mitzvah Journal (a record of each teen's experience of observing the mitzvah) In addition, the book presents the stories of Jewish teens who have made a difference in their communities through mitzvah projects, such as spending a month teaching in Cuba's Jewish community and creating a mural in a children's hospital. The book uses the same dynamic graphics and layout that teens respond to in popular magazines and on websites. More than 130 photographs illustrate and enrich the text. Contents: Getting Connected Taking Action Tzedakah: Giving Justly Rodef Shalom: Peacemaking Shabbat: An Extraordinary Day Ahavat Tziyon: For the Love of Israel Bal Tashhit: Every Day Is Earth Day Kashrut: You Are What You Eat Sh'mirat Habriyut: Be Your Best Friend Bikkur Holim: Reach Out and Touch Someone Kibbud Av Va'em: The Most Difficult Mitzvah? Sh'mirat Halashon: Weigh Your Words Tefillah: An Open Line Talmud Torah: Learning Matters Going Forward Resources

The story of each holiday is presented along with the rituals symbols traditions and legends. Blessings and key vocabulary is taught.

Narasimha is one of the least studied major deities of Hinduism. Furthermore, there are limited studies of the history, thought, and literature of middle India. Lavanya Vemsani redresses this by exploring a range of primary sources, including classical Sanskrit texts (puranas and epics), and regional accounts (sthalapuranas), which include texts, artistic compositions, and oral folk stories in the regional languages of Telugu, Oriya, and Kannada. She also examines the historical context as well as contemporary practice. Moving beyond the stereotypical classifications applied to sources of Hinduism, this unique study dedicates chapters to each region of middle India bringing together literary, religious, and cultural practices to comprehensively understand the religion of Middle India (Madhya Desha). Incorporating lived religion and textual data, this book offers a rich contribution to Hindu studies and Indian studies in general, and Vaishnava Studies and regional Hinduism in particular.