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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Judaism
You'll find everything you need to know about being Jewish in this indispensable, revised and updated guide to the religious traditions, everyday practices, philosophical beliefs, and historical foundations of Judaism. What happens at a synagogue service? What are the rules for keeping kosher? How do I light the Hanukah candles? What is in the Hebrew Bible? What do the Jewish holidays signify? What should I be teaching my children about being Jewish? With the first edition of Essential Judaism, George Robinson offered the world the accessible compendium that he sought when he rediscovered his Jewish identity as an adult. In his "ambitious and all-inclusive" (New York Times Book Review) guide, Robinson illuminates the Jewish life cycle at every stage and lays out many fascinating aspects of the religion-the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, the evolution of Hasidism, and much more-while keeping a firm focus on the different paths to living a good Jewish life in today's world. Now, a decade and a half later, Robinson has updated this valuable introductory text with information on topics including denominational shifts, same-sex marriage, the intermarriage debate, transgender Jews, the growth of anti-Semitism, and the changing role of women in worship, along with many other hotly debated topics in the contemporary Jewish world and beyond. The perfect gift for a Bar/Bat Mitzvah or anyone thinking about conversion-this is the ultimate companion for anyone interested in learning more about Judaism, the kind of book its readers will revisit over and over for years to come.
Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900), founder of the major institutions of Reform Judaism in America, was a man of his time-a pioneer in a pioneer's world. When he came to America from his childhood Bohemia in 1846, he found fewer than 50,000 Jews and only two ordained rabbis. With his sense of mission and tireless energy, he set himself to tailoring the vehicle of Reform Judaism to meet the needs of the growing Jewish community. Wise strove for unity among American Jews, and for a college to train rabbis to serve them. The establishment of Hebrew Union College (1875) was the crowning achievement of his life. His quest for unity also led him to draw up an American Jewish prayer-book, Minhag America, to found the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and to edit two weeklies; their editorials, breathing fire and energy, were no less important in his quest for leadership. Here as elsewhere, it was his persistence that won him the war where his impetuosity lost him many battles. Professor Temkin's writing captures the vigour of Wise's personality and the politics and concerns of contemporary Jewish life and leadership in America. Based primarily on material in the American Jewish Archives of the Hebrew Union College, this biography is a lively portrait of a rabbi whose singular efforts in many fields made him a pivotal figure in the naturalization of the Jew and Judaism in the New World. The book was first published in hardback in 1992 under the title Isaac Mayer Wise: Shaping American Judaism.
This book begins by arguing that early Greek reflection on the afterlife and immortality insisted on the importance of the physical body whereas a wealth of Jewish texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism and early (Pauline) Christianity understood post-mortem existence to be that of the soul alone. Changes begin to appear in the later New Testament where the importance of the afterlife of the physical body became essential, and such thoughts continued into the period of the early Church where the significance of the physical body in post-mortem existence became a point of theological orthodoxy. This book will assert that the influx of Greco-Romans into the early Church changed the direction of Christian thought towards one which included the body. At the same time, the ideological and polemical thrust of an eternal tortuous afterlife for the wicked became essential.
A study of the death and mourning practices of the founders of Judaism - the Rabbis of late antiquity. The text examines the earliest canonical texts - the Misnah, the Tosefta, the Midrashim and the Talmud of the Land of Israel. It outlines the rituals described in these texts, from preparation for death to reburial of bones and the end of mourning. David Kraemer explores the relationships between the texts and interprets the rituals to uncover the beliefs which informed their foundation. He discusses the material evidence preserved in the largest Jewish burial complex in antiquity - the catacombs at Beth Shearim. Finally, the author offers an interpretation of the Rabbis' interpretations of death rituals - those recorded in the Babylonian Talmud.
Compiled by two internationally renowned experts, and with over 600 wide-ranging and informative entries, The Routledge Dictionary of Judaism provides the reader with an invaluable reference aid to all areas of the religion. Topics covered include: *The religion's forms and history *Its institutions, religious practices and life cycle rites *Key texts and people, symbols and holy days *An understanding of theological terms, doctrine and philosophy.
The central aim of this collection is to trace the presence of Jewish tradition in contemporary philosophy. This presence is, on the one hand, undeniable, manifesting itself in manifold allusions and influences - on the other hand, difficult to define, rarely referring to openly revealed Judaic sources. Following the recent tradition of Levinas and Derrida, this book tentatively refers to this mode of presence in terms of "traces of Judaism" and the contributors grapple with the following questions: What are these traces and how can we track them down? Is there such a thing as "Jewish difference" that truly makes a difference in philosophy? And if so, how can we define it? The additional working hypothesis, accepted by some and challenged by other contributors, is that Jewish thought draws, explicitly or implicitly, on three main concepts of Jewish theology, creation, revelation and redemption. If this is the case, then the specificity of the Jewish contribution to modern philosophy and the theoretical humanities should be found in - sometimes open, sometimes hidden - fidelity to these three categories. Offering a new understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology, this book is an important contribution to the fields of Theology, Philosophy and Jewish Studies.
Emmanual Levinas (1906-1995) is acknowledged as one of the great Jewish thinkers of the 20th century, yet during his lifetime he refused the label "Jewish philosopher", insisting that he was a philosopher "tout court". This book explores the relationship between Levinas' ethical philosophy and his understanding of Judaism. The first chapter focuses on the "face-to-face" or "ethical relation" as it is presented in "Totality and Infinity". Subsequent chapters are concerned with showing how this quasi-phenomenological account of the ethical relation provides the orientation of his major texts, the significance of key terms in Levinas' discourse - particularly "humanism", "God" and "Judaism" - is clarified. Finally, the author examines the writings that constitute Levinas' most distinctive contribution to Jewish thought - his talmudic commentaries.
In this volume, contributors consider the ways that Jewish communities and users of new media negotiate their uses of digital technologies in light of issues related to religious identity, community and authority. Digital Judaism presents a broad analysis of how and why various Jewish groups negotiate with digital culture in particular ways, situating such observations within a wider discourse of how Jewish groups throughout history have utilized communication technologies to maintain their Jewish identities across time and space. Chapters address issues related to the negotiation of authority between online users and offline religious leaders and institutions not only within ultra-Orthodox communities, but also within the broader Jewish religious culture, taking into account how Jewish engagement with media in Israel and the diaspora raises a number of important issues related to Jewish community and identity. Featuring recent scholarship by leading and emerging scholars of Judaism and media, Digital Judaism is an invaluable resource for researchers in new media, religion and digital culture.
Joseph Weiss (1918-69) showed a single-minded commitment to identifying and describing the mystical element in hasidism and to unravelling the spiritual and historical meaning of the hasidic movement. The studies collected here are still quoted in every serious study of hasidism. Joseph Dan's Introduction, written specially for this paperback edition, examines Weiss's scholarship both in the context of subsequent scholarly research and in the light of the resurgence of hasidism since the Second World War. He concludes that many of Weiss's detailed, perceptive, and empathetic studies are as relevant to understanding developments in the contemporary hasidic world as they are for understanding the emergence and growth of hasidism in the eighteenth century.
This comprehensive book provides a lucid introduction to Rabbinic
Judaism, defined as the Judaism built on the story of God's
revelation to Moses of the Torah at Sinai.
Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner study the points of comparisons and
contrast between formative Christianity and Judaism. By identifying
three categories of authority in each of the two religious worlds,
they show how they have both worked in compelling or failing to get
someone to do a given action.
Transforming Literature into Scripture examines how the early textual traditions of ancient Israel - stories, laws, and rituals - were transformed into sacred writings. By comparing evidence from two key collections from antiquity - the royal library at Nineveh and the biblical manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls - the book traces the stabilisation of textual traditions in the ancient Near East towards fixed literary prototypes. The study presents a new methodology which enables the quantification, categorisation and statistical analysis of texts from different languages, writing systems, and media. The methodology is tested on wide range of text genres from the cuneiform and biblical traditions in order to determine which texts tend towards stabilised forms. Transforming Literature into Scripture reveals how authoritative literary collections metamorphosed into fixed ritualised texts and will be of interest to scholars across Biblical, Judaic and Literary Studies.
This superb collection of writings comes as a tribute to one of the
leading scholars of Judaic Studies in our century, Alexander
Altmann, and to the Institute of Jewish Studies, which he founded.
His former students and colleagues present essays which touch upon
the many areas of Professor Altmann's interests. The studies range
from early rabbinic mystical texts to contemporary theological
investigations. The majority of the articles explore leading
figures and issues in medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy
and mysticism.
"Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls" explores the evidence about the different uses of time-measurement in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish texts. James C. VanderKam examines the pertinent texts, their sources and the different uses to which people put calendrical information in the Christian world. He argues that the scrolls indicate that a dispute about the correct calendar for dating festivals was one of the principal reasons for the separation of the authors of the scrolls from Jewish society. |
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