Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - Rituals & Practice

Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? How do we get there?...

Searching for happiness in our modern world of stress and struggle is common; finding it is more unusual. This guide explores and explains how to find joy through a time-honored, creative and surprisingly practical approach based on Kabbalah and the teachings of Jewish mystics.

The very core of the Jewish mystical tradition is centered on the belief that if our focus is spiritual, then true appreciation of our lives, and true joy, are possible. Step by step, Finding Joy describes the basis of happiness in the context of Jewish mystical tradition and shows, in an...

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in spirituality and religious texts, as well as an exciting expansion of women's participation and leadership in Jewish life. This unique three-volume collaboration brings together women writers, rabbis and scholars to create the first comprehensive work on Jewish lifecycle that fully includes women's perspectives.

Lifecycles, V. 2 explores the impact that biblical texts have on our lives and the impact our lives have on those texts. It delves into the human themes found both in the first five books of the Bible, and in women s...

"According to the Hebrew Bible, God made the world with words. God just spoke and the world became reality. (The Aramaic for 'I create as I speak' is avara k'davara, or in magician s language, abracadabra.) ... This does not protect words from the numbing effects of overuse in any religious tradition.... We need to dust off the words, shake away the accretions, wonder again about what they originally might have meant and enable ourselves to live in the word."
from the Introduction

With creativity and poetry (and occasional heresy) Kushner dusts off thirty...

"Life makes warriors of us all.
To emerge the victors, we must arm
ourselves with the most potent of weapons.
That weapon is prayer."
--Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

The "gentle weapon" of prayer can ease the soul and strengthen the heart, while bringing us closer to God and to a deeper understanding of ourselves.

Two hundred years after he lived, the warm insights and generous wisdom of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) continue to be a source of comfort for those in search of an uplifting perspective on life.

"When you pray, hold...

Techniques explained by the masters--for today's spiritual seeker

Meditation is designed to give you direct access to the spiritual. Whether it's through deep breathing during a busy day, listening to the quiet after turning off the car radio, chanting in prayer or ten minutes of visualization exercises each morning, meditation takes many forms. But it is always a personal method of centering our spiritual self.

Meditation has long been practiced in the Jewish community as a powerful tool to transcend words, personality and ego and to directly experience the divine....

"The old must be made new, and the new must be made sacred." --Rav Avraham Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Israel From the author of the best-selling Living Judaism, here is an introduction to Judaism that is easy to read and easy to use as a guide to embracing the spiritual practices that make everyday life sacred within the Jewish tradition. Rabbi Wayne Dosick deftly and sweetly shows us how to rediscover and renew authentic Jewish spiritual beliefs and practices--prayer and meditation, rituals and observances, songs, stories and dance. This is a bold and visionary conception of Judaism's...

"Why me?" Why do we suffer? How can we heal?

"Spiritual suffering must be differentiated from physical pain, although the two are intertwined in such a way that it is nearly impossible to distinguish one from the other. We suffer spiritually when we do not grow from our illness, when we do not learn from the experience of physical and emotional pain."
--from the Introduction

Too many of us faced with bodily illness, whether our own or that of a loved one, feel lost as to what to do or how to handle it.

Grounded in the spiritual traditions of Judaism, this...