You are invited to spend a year with the inspirational words, ideas, and counsel of the great twentieth-century thinker Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, through his meditations on the fifty-four weekly Torah portions and eleven Jewish holidays. A pioneer of ideas and action-teaching that "Judaism is a civilization" encompassing Jewish culture, art, and peoplehood; demonstrating how synagogues can be full centers for Jewish living (building one of the first "shuls with a pool"); and creating the first-ever bat mitzvah ceremony (for his daughter Judith)-Kaplan transformed the landscape of American Jewry. Yet much of Kaplan's rich treasury of ethical and spiritual thought is largely unknown. Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, who studied closely with Kaplan, offers unique insight into Kaplan's teachings about ethical relationships and spiritual fulfillment, including how to embrace godliness in everyday experience, our mandate to become agents of justice in the world, and the human ability to evolve personally and collectively. Quoting from the week's Torah portion, Reuben presents Torah commentary, a related quotation from Kaplan, a reflective commentary integrating Kaplan's understanding of the Torah text, and an intimate story about his family or community's struggles and triumphs-guiding twenty-first-century spiritual seekers of all backgrounds on how to live reflectively and purposefully every day.

This book reveals the social basis for public space use, design and management. The authors - an architect/environmental designer, a landscape architect, an environmental psychologist, and an open space administrator - offer a well-integrated perspective of how to integrate public space and public life. They contend that three critical human dimensions should guide the process of design and management of public space: the users' essential needs, their spatial rights, and the meanings they seek. To develop and explain these three dimensions, the authors draw on the history of public life and public space, evidence from recent social research, and a series of original case studies, all amply illustrated. Public Space offers an innovative approach for adapting the dimensions to the unique social and environmental context of each project.