The Seductions of Pilgrimage explores the simultaneously attractive and repellent, beguiling and alluring forms of seduction in pilgrimage. It focuses on the varied discursive, imaginative, and practical mechanisms of seduction that draw individual pilgrims to a pilgrimage site; the objects, places, and paradigms that pilgrims leave behind as they embark on their hyper-meaningful travel experience; and the often unforeseen elements that lead pilgrims off their desired course. Presenting the first comprehensive study of the role of seduction on individual pilgrims in the study of pilgrimage and tourism, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, cultural geography, tourism, heritage, and religious studies.

Both Jews and non-Jews alike have many misconceptions of Jewish teachings and practices. Some seemingly unusual statements about Jewish teachings and practices are actually true, whereas some apparently reasonable and popularly believed statements are false. Many statements regarding Jewish teachings and practice are partly true and partly false, requiring a more nuanced explanation of the true situation. In 850 Intriguing Questions about Judaism: True, False, or In Between, Ronald L. Eisenberg explores a wide range of Jewish teachings and practices, discussing the degree to which they are true, false or a bit of both. Offered in question-and-answer format, readers are invited to explore with the author what they really know about Jewish life, history, holidays, and scripture. Eisenberg tackles all sorts of topics, from artificial insemination to organ donation and euthanasia, second day festivals in the Diaspora to the why really sound the shofar, from what the ner tamid signifies to Jewish "rules of war." Throughout, Eisenberg takes a nuanced approach to his topics, laying the groundwork for a useful survey of what we ought to know better about Jews, Judaism, and Jewish teachings and practices. This is perfect reference work for anyone curious about Judaism, Jewish life, and Jewish history, and who has ever wondered what the real answer was to the many questions they might have had.

Ascetic practices are a common feature of religion in Japan, practiced by different religious traditions. This book looks at these ascetic practices in an inter-sectarian and inter-doctrinal fashion, in order to highlight the underlying themes common to all forms of asceticism. It does so by employing a multidisciplinary methodology, which integrates participant fieldwork - the author himself engaged extensively in ascetic practices - with a hermeneutical interpretation of the body as the primary locus of transmission of the ascetic 'embodied tradition'. By unlocking this 'bodily data', the book unveils the human body as the main tool and text of ascetic practice. This book includes discussion of the many extraordinary rituals practiced by Japanese ascetics.

Blessed Are You: A Comprehensive Guide to Jewish Prayer offers the layperson, in a nonacademic, simple (but not simplistic) style, a one-volume, encyclopedic presentation of virtually every aspect of prayer in Judaism. Rabbi Jeffrey M. Cohen explores his subject from every angle: he looks at the historical development of prayer, the role of the synagogue, the specific rituals connected to prayer, important Jewish legal topics, the theology that is expressed through prayer, and the texts that are used. Rabbi Cohen covers his subjects by taking three routes. First, he presents a fascinating historical treatment of prayer, from its earliest origins to the most recent developments, and addresses such topics as when Jewish prayer became standardized and why. The second section of Blessed Are You explains the theology of Jewish prayer: Why do people pray? Does God answer prayer? Can we believe that the Almighty actually changes His mind as a result of our prayerful requests? The book's third section is a guided tour of the synagogue and its personnel, with enlightening discussions of the role of the rabbi, the ways in which one becomes a rabbi, and what being a rabbi really means. Rabbi Cohen also discusses the important ritual objects found in the synagogue, and he includes a description of each detail in the arrangement of the synagogue sanctuary. Rabbi Cohen, a well-known and highly regarded British rabbi, has been teaching the subject of prayer in Judaism for a few decades. His experience has enabled him to write a remarkably thorough, easy-to-understand, 'user-friendly' guide to one of the pivotal activities of Jewish life. It is no wonder that both the present and former chief rabbis of Great Britain have praised this volume in superlative terms.

The Hindu-derived meditation movement, The Art of Living (AOL), founded in 1981 by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in Bangalore, has grown into a global organization which claims presence in more than 150 countries. Stephen Jacobs presents the first comprehensive study of AOL as an important transnational movement and an alternative global spirituality. Exploring the nature and characteristics of spirituality in the contemporary global context, Jacobs considers whether alternative spiritualities are primarily concerned with individual wellbeing and can simply be regarded as another consumer product. The book concludes that involvement in movements such as AOL is not necessarily narcissistic but can foster a sense of community and inspire altruistic activity.

Mecca is the heart of Islam. It is the birthplace of Muhammad, the direction towards which Muslims turn when they pray and the site of pilgrimage which annually draws some three million Muslims from all corners of the world. Yet Mecca's importance goes beyond religion. What happens in Mecca and how Muslims think about the political and cultural history of Mecca has had and continues to have a profound influence on world events to this day. In this captivating book, Ziauddin Sardar unravels the significance of Mecca. Tracing its history, from its origins as a 'barren valley' in the desert to its evolution as a trading town and sudden emergence as the religious centre of a world empire, Sardar examines the religious struggles and rebellions in Mecca that have powerfully shaped Muslim culture. Interweaving stories of his own pilgrimages to Mecca with those of others, Sardar offers a unique insight into not just the spiritual aspects of Mecca - the passion, ecstasy and longing it evokes - but also the conflict between heritage and modernity that has characterised its history. He unpeels the physical, social and cultural dimensions that have helped transform the city and also, though accounts of such Orientalist travellers as Richard Burton and Charles Doughty, the strange fascination that Mecca has long inspired in the Western imagination. And, ultimately, he explores what this tension could mean for Mecca's future. An illuminative, lyrical and witty blend of history, reportage and memoir, this outstanding book reflects all that is profound, enlightening and curious about one of the most important religious sites in the world.

Animism is an important part of many religions - from Shinto, Hinduism and Buddhism to Paganism and a range of indigenous religions - which connects the spiritual and material and holds that humans might not be unique in possessing souls or in being intentional agents. Over recent decades, research into animism has broadened its scope to consider, at one end, the vibrant roles of objects in human lives and, at the other, the possible similarities between humans and other species. "The Handbook of Contemporary Animism" brings together an international team of scholars to examine the full range of animist worldviews and practices. The Handbook opens with an examination of recent approaches to animism. This is followed by evaluations of ethnographic, cognitive, literary, performative, and material culture approaches as well as advances in activist and indigenous thinking about animism. "The Handbook of Contemporary Animism" invites readers to think creatively and critically about the world around us and will be invaluable to students and scholars of Religion, Sociology and Anthropology.

Judah ben Joseph Moscato (c.1533-1590) was one of the most distinguished rabbis, authors, and preachers of the Italian-Jewish Renaissance. The book Sefer Nefusot Yehudah belongs to the very centre of his important homiletic and philosophical oeuvre. Composed in Mantua and published in Venice in 1589, the collection of 52 sermons addresses the subject of the Jewish festivals, focussing on philosophy, mysticism, sciences and rites. This and subsequent volumes will provide a critical edition of the original Hebrew text, accompanied by an English translation.

Volume 1 of Two Liturgical Traditions, surveyed the origins and growth of Christian and Jewish liturgy from the first century of the common era until our time. This second volume The Changing Face of Jewish and Christian Worship in North America, follows up with an examination of the recent revolution in Jewish and Christian liturgies. The book reflects the particular role of North America in the worldwide experiment in liturgical renewal.

Author Kristen Johnson Ingram was photographing Native American dancers at an Oregon pow-wow when an official tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to stop taking pictures. "This is the prayer the dancer is doing," he explained. For people of faith, Ingram realized, there are many forms of prayer besides the ones we speak with our lips: Devout Jews bow while reading Torah; Episcopalians stand, sit, or kneel in church; exuberant Christians raise their arms; and mystics of all denominations walk while murmuring the Jesus Prayer. As Christians, we can use our entire bodies to praise God, transforming simple acts like hearing music, looking at shafts of sunlight, or walking in the woods into acts of prayer that celebrate God's presence in everyday life. Beyond Words is a book for spiritual adventurers who seek new ways to pray. Readers can put into practice the concepts they find here, making the book not just a source of inspiration but a springboard to action that deepens their prayer lives and draws them closer to God. Kristen Johnson Ingram is the author of more than twenty books, including Wine at the End of the Feast: Embracing Spiritual Change as We Age. She is also a writing instructor and a licensed preacher in the Episcopal Church.

Sanskrit Debate: Vasubandhu's 'Vimsatika' versus Kumarila's 'Niralambanavada' illustrates the rules and regulations of classical Indian debate literature (pramanasastra) by introducing new translations of two Sanskrit texts composed in antithesis to each other's tradition of thought and practice. In the third century CE, Vasubandhu, a Buddhist philosopher-monk, proposed that the entire world of lived experience is a matter of mind only through his Vimsatika (Twenty Verses). In the seventh century CE, Kumarila, a Hindu philosopher-priest, composed Niralambanavada (Non-Sensory Limit Debate) to establish the objective reality of objects by refuting Vasubandhu's claim that objects experienced in waking life are not different from objects experienced in dreams. Kumarila rigorously employs formal rules and regulations of Indian logic and debate to demonstrate that Vasubandhu's assertion is totally irrational and incoherent. Vimsatika ranks among the world's most misunderstood texts but Kumarila's historic refutation allows Vimsatika to be read in its own text-historical context. This compelling, radically revolutionary re-reading of Vimsatika delineates a hermeneutic of humor indispensable to discerning its medicinal message. In Vimsatika, Vasubandhu employs the form of professional Sanskrit logic and debate as a guise and a ruse to ridicule the entire enterprise of Indian philosophy. Vasubandhu critiques all Indian theories of epistemology and ontology and claims that both how we know and what we know are acts of the imagination.

The Western image of Tibet as a sacred land is in many ways a mythical construction. But the Tibetans themselves have traditionally mapped out their land in terms of areas of sacred space, and pilgrimage, ensuring a high degree of mobility within all classes of Tibetan society. Pilgrims travelled to local, regional, and national centres throughout recorded Tibetan history. In recent years, pilgrimage has resumed in areas where it had been forbidden by the Chinese authorities, and has now become one of the most prominent religious expressions of Tibetan national identity. In this major new work, leading scholars of Asian pilgrimage traditions discuss historical and contemporary aspects of pilgrimage within the Tibetan cultural world. Myths and legends, material conditions, textual sources, a modern pilgrim's impressions, political and economic influences, biographies and contemporary developments - all these and many other issues are examined here. The result is an informative and often entertaining work which contributes greatly to our knowledge of the history and culture of Tibet as well as the wider issues of religious power and practice.

Social Functions of Synagogue Song: A Durkheimian Approach by Jonathan L. Friedmann paints a detailed picture of the important role sacred music plays in Jewish religious communities. This study explores one possible way to approach the subject of music s intimate connection with public worship: applying sociologist Emile Durkeim s understanding of ceremonial ritual to synagogue music. Durkheim observed that religious ceremonies serve disciplinary, cohesive, revitalizing, and euphoric functions within religious communities. Drawing upon musical examples from different composers, regions, periods, rites, and services, Friedmann demonstrates how Jewish sacred music performs these functions.

The first book to cover the fascinating story of Jewish pilgrimage from its mythic beginnings to current times. The history and breadth of Jewish pilgrimage traditions is rich and varied. Here the authors tell the fascinating, and sometimes harrowing, story of Jewish pilgrimage from the beginnings of Judaism to the present time. They trace the history of Jewish pilgrimage and show how the repeated cycles of exile and return to Israel serve the Jews as a kind of pilgrimage in reverse. This lively account is sure to appeal to anyone interested in religious pilgrimage, tourism, and travel. From Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, to the tombs of King David, Rachel, and Joseph, from Galilee to Curacao, Jewish pilgrims seek out spiritual transcendence, a return to their roots, communion with those who have gone before, and connection to their common heritage as they visit holy shrines, important synagogues around the world, Nazi death camps, and the graves of leaders, among other places. But what makes these places holy? And what purpose do the pilgrimages serve? How has recent unrest in the Middle East contributed to, or detracted from, modern Jewish pilgrimage and its future? comprehensive historical overview of Jewish pilgrimage. It includes photographs of sites discussed in the book. It is the first book that looks exclusively at Jewish pilgrimage in its entirety. It also considers the current situation in the Middle East and the current state of Jewish pilgrimage.

Demonstrates that Buddhists appropriated the practice, vocabulary, and ideology of sacrifice from Vedic religion, and discusses the relationship of this sacrificial discourse to ideas of karma in the Pali canon and in early Buddhism.

Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) never completed his Doctoral thesis on prayer. Yet his scarcely mentioned introduction (Books I and II) of 176 pages and privately printed in 1909, can be seen as some of his most important work. His argument that much of prayer is a social act will be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists and theologians. Here, the first English translation to be published, is preceded by a general introduction by W.S.F.Pickering and finally a specific commentary on Mauss's use of ethnographic material.

Bodh Gaya in the North Indian state of Bihar has long been recognized as the place where the Buddha achieved enlightenment. This book brings together the recent work of twelve scholars from a variety of disciplines - anthropology, art history, history, and religion - to highlight their various findings and perspectives on different facets of Bodh Gaya's past and present. Through an engaging and critical overview of the place of Buddha's enlightenment, the book discusses the dynamic and contested nature of this site, and looks at the tensions with the on-going efforts to define the place according to particular histories or identities. It addresses many aspects of Bodh Gaya, from speculation about why the Buddha chose to sit beneath a tree in Bodh Gaya, to the contemporary struggles over tourism development, education and non-government organizations, to bring to the foreground the site's longevity, reinvention and current complexity as a UNESCO World Heritage monument. The book is a useful contribution for students and scholars of Buddhism and South Asian Studies.

Exploring what does and what does not constitute pilgrimage, Redefining Pilgrimage draws together a wide variety of disciplines including politics, anthropology, history, religion and sociology. Leading contributors offer a broad range of case studies from a wide geographical area, exploring new ways of approaching pilgrimage beyond the classical religious model. Re-thinking the global phenomenon of pilgrimages in the 21st century, this book offers new perspectives to redefine pilgrimage.

Objects of worship are an aspect of the material dimension of lived religion in South Asia. The omnipresence of these objects and their use is a theme which cuts across the religious traditions in the pluralistic religious culture of the region. Divine power becomes manifest in the objects and for the devotees they may represent power regardless of religious identity.

This book looks at how objects of worship dominate the religious landscape of South Asia, and in what ways they are of significance not just from religious perspectives but also for the social life of the region. The contributions to the book show how these objects are shaped by traditions of religious aesthetics and have become conceptual devices woven into webs of religious and social meaning. They demonstrate how the objects have a social relationship with those who use them, sometimes even treated as being alive. The book discusses how devotees relate to such objects in a number of ways, and even if the objects belong to various traditions they may attract people from different communities and can also be contested in various ways.

By analysing the specific qualities that make objects eligible for a status and identity as living objects of worship, the book contributes to an understanding of the central significance of these objects in the religious and social life of South Asia. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Religious Studies and South Asian Religion, Culture and Society.

Going beyond the more usual focus on Jerusalem as a sacred place, this book presents legal perspectives on the most important sacred places of the Mediterranean. The first part of the book discusses the notion of sacred places in anthropological, sociological and legal studies and provides an overview of existing legal approaches to the protection of sacred places in order to develop and define a new legal framework. The second part introduces the meaning of sacred places in Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought and focuses on the significance and role that sacred places have in the three major monotheistic religions and how best to preserve their religious nature whilst designing a new international statute. The final part of the book is a detailed analysis of the legal status of key sacred places and holy cities in the Mediterranean area and identifies a set of legal principles to support a general framework within which specific legal measures can be implemented. The book concludes with a useful appendix for the protection of sacred places in the Mediterranean region. Including contributions from leading law and religion scholars, this interesting book will be valuable to those in the fields of international law, as well as religion and heritage studies.

Thinking Jewish Culture in America argues that Jewish thought extends our awareness and deepens the complexity of American Jewish culture. This volume stretches the disciplinary boundaries of Jewish thought so that it can productively engage expanding arenas of culture by drawing Jewish thought into the orbit of cultural studies. The eleven contributors to Thinking Jewish Cultures, together with Chancellor Arnold Eisen s postscript, position Jewish thought within the dynamics and possibilities of contemporary Jewish culture. These diverse essays in Jewish thought re-imagine cultural space as a public and sometimes contested performance of Jewish identity, and they each seek to re-enliven that space with reflective accounts of cultural meaning. How do Jews imagine themselves as embodied actors in America? Do cultural obligations limit or expand notions of the self? How should we imagine Jewish thought as a cultural performance? What notions of peoplehood might sustain a vibrant Jewish collectivity in a globalized economy? How do programs in Jewish studies work within the academy? These and other questions engage both Jewish thought and culture, opening space for theoretical works to broaden the range of cultural studies, and to deepen our understanding of Jewish cultural dynamics. Thinking Jewish Culture is a work about Jewish cultural identity reflected through literature, visual arts, philosophy, and theology. But it is more than a mere reflection of cultural patterns and choices: the argument pursued throughout Thinking Jewish Culture is that reflective sources help produce the very cultural meanings and performances they purport to analyze.