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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian religions > Judaism > General
From the acclaimed author of Foreskin's Lament, a memoir of the author's attempt to escape the biblical story he'd been raised on and his struggle to construct a new story for himself and his family.
Shalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York: the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and a violent, overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can't so easily escape: a story. The story. One indelibly implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called "Feh."
Yiddish for "Yuck."
FEH follows Auslander's midlife journey to rewrite that story, a journey that involves Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Arthur Schopenhauer, GHB, Wolf Blitzer, Yuval Noah Harari, and a pastor named Steve in a now-defunct church in Los Angeles.
Can he move from feh to merely meh? Can he even dream of moving beyond that? Auslander's recounting of his attempt to exorcize the story he was raised with-before he implants it onto his children and/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him-isn't sacred. It is more-than-occasionally profane. And like all his work, it is also relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt, and fearlessly provocative.
This book offers a fresh look at the status of the scribe in
society, his training, practices, and work in the biblical world.
What was the scribe's role in these societies? Were there rival
scribal schools? What was their role in daily life? How many
scripts and languages did they grasp? Did they master political and
religious rhetoric? Did they travel or share foreign traditions,
cultures, and beliefs? Were scribes redactors, or simply copyists?
What was their influence on the redaction of the Bible? How did
they relate to the political and religious powers of their day? Did
they possess any authority themselves? These are the questions that
were tackled during an international conference held at the
University of Strasbourg on June 17-19, 2019. The conference served
as the basis for this publication, which includes fifteen articles
covering a wide geographical and chronological range, from Late
Bronze Age royal scribes to refugees in Masada at the end of the
Second Temple period.
The Jewish practice of bar mitzvah dates back to the twelfth
century, but this ancient cultural ritual has changed radically
since then, evolving with the times and adapting to local
conditions. For many Jewish-American families, a child's bar
mitzvah or bat mitzvah is both a major social event and a symbolic
means of asserting the family's ongoing connection to the core
values of Judaism. Coming of Age in Jewish America takes an inside
look at bar and bat mitzvahs in the twenty-first century, examining
how the practices have continued to morph and exploring how they
serve as a sometimes shaky bridge between the values of
contemporary American culture and Judaic tradition. Interviewing
over 200 individuals involved in bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies,
from family members to religious educators to rabbis, Patricia Keer
Munro presents a candid portrait of the conflicts that often emerge
and the negotiations that ensue. In the course of her study, she
charts how this ritual is rife with contradictions; it is a private
family event and a public community activity, and for the child, it
is both an educational process and a high-stakes performance.
Through detailed observations of Conservative, Orthodox, Reform,
and independent congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Munro
draws intriguing, broad-reaching conclusions about both the current
state and likely future of American Judaism. In the process, she
shows not only how American Jews have forged a unique set of bar
and bat mitzvah practices, but also how these rituals continue to
shape a distinctive Jewish-American identity.
The fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries were truly an Age of
Secrecy in Europe, when arcane knowledge was widely believed to be
positive knowledge that extended into all areas of daily life, from
the economic, scientific, and political spheres to the general
activities of ordinary people. So asserts Daniel Jutte in this
engrossing, vivid, and award-winning work. He maintains that the
widespread acceptance and even reverence for this "economy of
secrets" in premodern Europe created a highly complex and sometimes
perilous space for mutual contact between Jews and Christians.
Surveying the interactions between the two religious groups in a
wide array of secret sciences and practices-including alchemy,
cryptography, medical arcana, technological and military secrets,
and intelligence-the author relates true stories of colorful
"professors of secrets" and clandestine encounters. In the process
Jutte examines how our current notion of secrecy is radically
different in this era of WikiLeaks, Snowden, et al., as opposed to
centuries earlier when the truest, most important knowledge was
generally considered to be secret by definition.
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