Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - Rituals & Practice

Leave your loved ones a legacy of blessings, wisdom, gratitude and hope.

"Done right, an ethical will is a gift of love, a way of saying, 'This is what I found gave me satisfaction and gave my life meaning. It animated my relationship to you and to your mother (or father). May it do the same for you. I send this to you with much love.'"
--from the Foreword by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

Ethical wills are precious spiritual documents, windows into the souls of those who write them, and are often a treasured part of a family's history. These "legacy letters" sum up what...

Let the Ten Commandments command your imagination ... and enrich your life.

When the Holy One gave the Torah, no bird chirped, no fowl flew, no ox lowed, not one angel stirred its wing or sang its song. The sea did not roar, creatures did not speak--the whole world was hushed into breathless silence; it was then that the voice went forth: "I am the Lord your God...."
--Exodus Rabba 29:9

Even people who claim not to be "religious" will generally maintain that they do observe the Ten Commandments. Why is it that these ten statements, thousands of years old, continue...

The sukkah, the symbolic ritual home built during the annual Jewish holiday of Sukkot, commemorates the temporary structures that sheltered the Israelites as they journeyed across the desert after the exodus from Egypt. Despite the simple Biblical prescription for its design, the remarkable variety of creative expression in the construction, decoration, and use of the sukkah, in both times of peace and national upheaval, reveals the cultural traditions, political convictions, philosophical ideals, and individual aspirations that the sukkah communicates for its builders and users today....

The sukkah, the symbolic ritual home built during the annual Jewish holiday of Sukkot, commemorates the temporary structures that sheltered the Israelites as they journeyed across the desert after the exodus from Egypt. Despite the simple Biblical prescription for its design, the remarkable variety of creative expression in the construction, decoration, and use of the sukkah, in both times of peace and national upheaval, reveals the cultural traditions, political convictions, philosophical ideals, and individual aspirations that the sukkah communicates for its builders and users today....

This study focuses on the Chronicler's special interest in Levite singers. It takes into consideration the socio-ideological milieu of the Jerusalem temple community in the Persian period and the Mesopotamian elite professional norms and practices that nourished the singers and their music. It also explores the conception of the earthly temple as representative of its heavenly counterpart, and looks at the way in which this shaped the Chronicler's theological frame of reference.

The work is divided into two parts. Part I examines the Mesopotamian scribal-musical background, to which...

On Jewish Folklore spans a half-century of scholarly inquiry by the noted anthropologist and biblical scholar Raphael Patai. He essays collected in this volume, some of which are presented for the first time in English translation, provide a rich harvest of Jewish customs and traditional beliefs, gathered from all over the world and from ancient to modern times.

Among the subjects Dr. Patai investigated and recorded are the history and oral traditions of the now-vanished Marrano community of Meshhed, Iran; cultural change among the so-called Jewish Indians of Mexico; beliefs...