Warm and Welcoming: How the Jewish Community Can Become Truly Diverse and Inclusive in the 21st Century is the first book to tackle institutionalized biases and barriers to inclusion, offering not only stories and context about the issues facing Jews of all backgrounds, but more importantly offering practical and concrete advice that Jewish institutions can implement right away to change how they engage with diverse populations. The book will feature 17 chapters written by some of the most knowledgeable individuals in the Jewish community around the areas of diversity and inclusion. From senior leaders in the field to young innovators who are helping the change the ways that Jewish institutions create community, Warm and Welcoming will offer fresh perspectives, best practices, and new ideas to transform Jewish institutions regardless of their size, resources, or number of years in existence.

In these essays, Donald Wiebe unveils a significant problem in the academic study of religion in colleges and universities in North America and Europe - that studies almost always exhibit a religious bias. To explore this issue, Wiebe looks at the religious and moral agendas behind the study of religion, showing that the boundaries between the objective study of religion and religious education as a tool for bettering society have become blurred. As a result, he argues, religious studies departments have fostered an environment where religion has become a learned or scholarly practice, rather than the object of academic scrutiny. This book provides a critical history of the failure of 20th- and 21st-century scholars to follow through on the 19th-century ideal of an objective scientific study of religious thought and behaviour. Although emancipated from direct ecclesiastical control and, to some extent, from sectarian theologizing, Wiebe argues that research and scholarship in the academic department of religious studies has failed to break free from religious constraints. He shows that an objective scientific study of religious thought and practice is not only possible, but the only appropriate approach to the study of religious phenomena.

This volume addresses the problematic relationship between colonialism and the Bible. It does so from the perspective of the Global South, calling upon voices from Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors address the present state of the problematic relationship in their respective geopolitical and geographical contexts. In so doing, they provide sharp analyses of the past, the present, and the future: historical contexts and trajectories, contemporary legacies and junctures, and future projects and strategies. Taken together, the essays provide a rich and expansive comparative framework across the globe.

The radical Venetian writer Arcangela Tarabotti (1604-1652), compelled against her will to become a nun, is well known for her scathing attacks on patriarchal institutions for forcing women into convents. Convent Paradise (1643), Tarabotti's first published work, instead invites the reader into the cloister to experience not only the trials of enclosure, but also its spiritual joys. In stark contrast to her other works, Convent Paradise aims to celebrate the religious culture that colored every aspect of Tarabotti's experience as a seventeenth-century Venetian and a nun. At the same time, this nuanced exploration of monastic life conveys a markedly feminist spirituality. Tarabotti's meditative portrait of the convent enriches our understanding of her own life and writing, while also providing a window into a spiritual destiny shared by thousands of early modern women. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe - The Toronto Series volume 73

Providers of pastoral healthcare frequently ask hospital ethics committees how to deal with the dying patients of various faiths. Apart from the responsibility to the individuals involved and their religious traditions, there are implications for developing HMO's to develop the proper approaches to sensitive questions.
This book is the result of a conference held at the Creighton University Center for Health Policy among representatives of several religious traditions: the Omaha and Winnebago tribes, Zen Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, the Nation of Islam, Hindus, the Plains Indians and Navahos, Jehovah's Witnesses and Southwestern Hispanics. It was felt that the religious traditions of Catholic and Protestant Churches were reasonably well known and did not need inclusion here at this time.
Each follows a set outline of questions and problems. Among these are each religion's faith perspective on illness and suffering. There was a remarkable consensus on the need to accept suffering in order to grow; the meaning of the afterlife; key terms that should be used in these areas when dealing with a patient; views on visiting the sick, post-mortem preparations and other related questions.
The study is not meant to be all inclusive; rather, it is a promising beginning that touches on a number of important beliefs and approaches of great value to healthcare providers everywhere.

Communication theory provides a compelling way to understand how people of faith can and should work together in today's tumultuous world. In A Communication Perspective on Interfaith Dialogue, fifteen authors present their experiences and analyses of interfaith dialogue, and contextualize interfaith work within the frame of rhetorical and communication studies. While the focus is on the Abrahamic faiths, these essays also include discussion of Hinduism and interracial faith efforts. Each chapter incorporates communication theories that bring clarity to the practices and problems of interfaith communication. Where other interfaith books provide theological, political, or sociological insights, this volume is committed to the perspectives contained in communication scholarship. Interfaith dialogue is best imagined as an organic process, and it does not require theological heavyweights gathered for academic banter. As such, this volume focuses on the processes and means by which interfaith meaning is produced.

The phenomenon of the Cistercian Order occupies a key place in the history of Western culture as it grew to dominate reformed European monasticism in the high middle ages. The transition from the Romanesque to Gothic styles occurred in the twelfth century when the order was expanding most dramatically. With sharp, clean lines, and minimal decor, its architecture was designed to reflect the simplicity and austerity required for this experiment in monastic life. An important reference work, The Cistercian Arts offers insights into a contemplative order that expanded from its modest origins in the Burgundian heartland to encompass six continents. Under the supervision of Terryl Kinder and Roberto Cassanelli, the theological and spiritual aspects and material culture of the Cistercian world are analyzed in depth by more than thirty international specialists in a forty-chapter overview. Music, libraries, water management, metallurgy, farming, liturgical arts, sacred reading, and many other facets of monastic life are traced from the founding of the order in 1098 to the present day. While the Cistercian Order grew to include approximately 1,700 abbeys for men and women, it did not end with the middle ages, and architecture was not its only manifestation. This exquisitely illustrated volume shows how the many arts created by and for Cistercian abbeys continued well beyond the medieval period.