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After the Gulf War and amidst the ongoing “peace process,” this timely book speaks to the need to address the deeper issues of Israel and Palestine—issues that concerned Jews, Arabs, and Christians must face if the legitimate rights of the Palestinians and the moral integrity of the State of Israel are to survive the rush to a “new world order” in the Middle East.
This book was written for the Jew who seeks evidence and proofs that the principal beliefs of Judaism are indeed true. Readable and friendly, inspiring and refreshing, this book presents the main issues of Judaism in depth. It includes compelling evidence to there being a Creator, evidence to the Divine origin of the Torah, to there being a spiritual soul and the World To Come, and Divine guidance throughout Jewish history. It discusses the problems with Evolution, and it deals with the Holocaust and human suffering. It also provides many other sources for further reading, and a glossary of terms. This is a newly adapted edition of the original work, tailored to meet the needs of beginners to Judaism. This volume contains website references and an added appendix on the origins of Christianity and Islam.
Judaism Beyond God presents an innovative secular and humanistic alternative for Jewish identity. It provides new answers to old questions about the essence of Jewish identity, the real meaning of Jewish history, the significance of the Jewish personality, and the nature of Jewish ethics. It also describes a radical and creative way to be Jewish - new ways to celebrate Jewish holidays and life cycle events, a welcoming approach to intermarriage and joining the Jewish people, and meaningful paths to strengthen Jewish identity in a secular age.
BeyondSurvival challenges the current agenda, assumptions, mind-set, and sacred cows of the Jewish establishment, which has largely accepted as a given and become resigned to its communal decline. Instead, BeyondSurvival offers an alternative vision for the Jewish future—a paradigm shift, one in which individuals can find an open and accepting community that joyously and creatively celebrates their sacred way of life. A future in which we can all grow and thrive. BeyondSurvival begins by taking an in-depth look at the obstacles that currently prevent our growth as a people. This is the survival agenda that has served the Jewish community well in the past but now needs to be laid to rest. Change is never easy, but Rabbi Bookman, drawing from his decades of experience as a pulpit rabbi and innovator, shows the reader the path to surmount them. In each successive chapter, BeyondSurvival looks at the opportunities that are in front of us—from active conversion; emerging Jewish communities around the globe; a new understanding of intermarriage; a realigned relationship of mutuality with a pluralistic Israel; a post-modern understanding of Jewish identity; reimagined synagogues and reinvigorated Jewish institutions; and a community that is truly an open door to all. In the afterword, Rabbi Bookman suggests how this can all take shape, positing that a thriving Jewish community can be actualized only when we all thrive. Against all the inertia, resignation, negativity and pessimism that pervades our world, BeyondSurvival is a breath of fresh air, hope, and practical, achievable direction for a bright future that we can create together.
Jews were emancipated at a time when high culture was becoming an integral part of German citizenship. German Jews felt a powerful urge to integrate, to find their Jewish substance in German culture and craft an identity as both Germans and Jews. In this reprint edition, based on the 1983 Efroymson Memorial Lectures given at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, George Mosse argues that they did this by adopting the concept of Bildung-the idea of intellectual and moral self-cultivation-and combining it with key Enlightenment ideas such as optimism about human potential, individualism and autonomy, and a connection between knowledge and morality through aesthetics. Personal friendships could be devoted to common pursuit of Bildung and become a means of overcoming differences, becoming a means for integration into German society. Mosse traces how Jewish artists, writers, and thinkers actively sought to participate in German culture and communicate these ideals through popular culture, scholarship, and political activity. From the historical biographies, novels, and short stories of Stefan Zweig and Emil Ludwig; to the psychoanalysis of Freud, which sought to subject irrationality to reason; to the revolutionary thought of Walter Benjamin-Jews sought to influence a mass political culture that was fast drifting into irrationality. As individualism was subsumed into nationalism, and eventually the German political right's racist version of nationalism, German-Jewish dialogue became more difficult. Jews remained idealistic as German society became less rational, their ideas corresponded less and less to the realities of German life, and they drifted out of the mainstream into an intellectual isolation. Yet out of this German-Jewish dialogue, what had once been part of German culture became a central Jewish heritage. The ideal of cultivating a personal identity beyond religion and nationality, the liberal outlook on society and politics, and the desire to transcend history by stressing what united rather than divided individuals and nations infiltrated Jewish life became an inspiration for many men and women searching to humanize their society and their own lives. Mosse's lectures trace the emergence of a form of Jewishness which resisted cultural ghettoization in favor of the pursuit of that which is universally human.
In this sequel to We Have Reason to Believe, Louis Jacobs examines afresh all the issues involved. He does so objectively but with passion, meeting the objections put forward over the past forty years by critics from the various trends within the Jewish world, both Orthodox and Reform, and inviting a new generation of readers to follow the argument and make up their own minds. More than forty years have passed since Louis Jacobs first published the still-controversial book We Have Reason to Believe, the work which led to his being outlawed by the Orthodox Jewish establishment. In this new book he examines afresh all the issues involved, meeting all the objections put forward from the various trends within the Jewish world so that readers can make up their own minds.
This is an important book which should see the light of day. - Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, Orthodox Union I feel this work will be of great value to the thinking Jew. - Rabbi Yitzhak Rosenbaum, National Jewish Outreach Program There is little doubt in my mind that this encyclopedic work will be an indispensable resource. - Rabbi Tovia Singer, Outreach Judaism, Israel National Radio This book would also be beneficial to non-Jews who wish to know what Judaism thinks of them and their role in creation. - Rabbi Yisroel Fried, Chabad Lubavitch CLICK HERE to go to the author's personal website
The biblical prohibition of images sets Judaism apart, together with Islam, from all other religious systems. This book attempts to explain the reasons for the prohibition - as well as its limits - and then shows how influential it has been in determining aspects of Jewish thinking in relation to such key concepts as holiness, symbolism, mediation between man and God, aesthetics and the role of memory in religion. Why is music the one art to which Judaism is hospitable? Is Judaism a religion of the ear rather than the eye? What is the real issue at stake in the age-old debate between Jerusalem and Athens? How do these issues relate to the iconoclastic movements in Byzantine Christianity and the Reformation? Lionel Kochan makes clear that to the prohibition of the graven image there is more than meets the eye.
There is something deeply problematic about the ways that Jews, particularly in America, talk about “Jewish identity” as a desired outcome of Jewish education. For many, the idea that the purpose of Jewish education is to strengthen Jewish identity is so obvious that it hardly seems worth disputing—and the only important question is which kinds of Jewish education do that work more effectively or more efficiently. But what does it mean to “strengthen Jewish identity”? Why do Jewish educators, policy-makers and philanthropists talk that way? What do they assume, about Jewish education or about Jewish identity, when they use formulations like “strengthen Jewish identity”? And what are the costs of doing so? This volume, the first collection to examine critically the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish identity, makes two important interventions. First, it offers a critical assessment of the relationship between education and identity, arguing that the reification of identity has hampered much educational creativity in the pursuit of this goal, and that the nearly ubiquitous employment of the term obscures significant questions about what Jewish education is and ought to be. Second, this volume offers thoughtful responses that are not merely synonymous replacements for “identity,” suggesting new possibilities for how to think about the purposes and desired outcomes of Jewish education, potentially contributing to any number of new conversations about the relationship between Jewish education and Jewish life.