Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - Rituals & Practice

The most controversial prayer of the Jewish New Year--what it means, who wrote it, why we say it.

Over forty contributors who span three continents and all major Jewish denominations examine Un'taneh Tokef's theology, authorship, and poetry through a set of lively commentaries. Men and women, scholars and rabbis, artists and poets trace the history of Un'taneh Tokef and connect the prayer to its biblical and rabbinic roots. They wrestle with the personal and community impact of its deeply moving imagery, probe its haunting message of human...

An engaging and sobering look at memorializing in Judaism and why memory--ours and God's--is so central to people.

Through a series of lively introductions and commentaries, over thirty contributors--men and women, scholars, rabbis, theologians and poets, representing all Jewish denominations--examine the history and ideas behind Yizkor, the Jewish memorial service, and this fascinating chapter in Jewish piety.

Featuring the traditional prayers--provided in the original Hebrew and a new and annotated translation--this fourth volume in the Prayers...

Leading scholars and teachers share their favorite texts of the Jewish mystical tradition--many available in English for the first time--and explore why these materials are meaningful and relevant to us today.

In this unique volume, some of Judaism's most insightful contemporary thinkers bring the words of sages past to bear on the present. They explore how we can become closer to God through our relationships with others, our observance at home and our actions in the world, asking:

• What do mitzvot have to do with mysticism?
• Is...

This unique and groundbreaking study moves "beyond the texts" of prayers to carefully study the worshipping community from an anthropological perspective. Hoffman's innovative approach opens up the world of prayer to the academy and the community at large. With the publication of this book, the study of liturgy will never again be the same.

Nineteenth-century Europe saw an unprecedented rise in the number of synagogues. Building a Public Judaism considers what their architecture and the circumstances surrounding their construction reveal about the social progress of modern European Jews. Looking at synagogues in four important centers of Jewish life--London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin--Saskia Coenen Snyder argues that the process of claiming a Jewish space in European cities was a marker of acculturation but not of full acceptance. Whether modest or spectacular, these new edifices most often revealed the limits of...

For nearly four millennia Judaism was essentially a unified religious system based on shared traditions. Despite the emergence of various sub-groups through the centuries such as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Karaites, Shabbateans and Hasadim, Jewry was united in the belief in a providential God who had chosen the Jews as his special people and given them a code of law.

In the modern period, however, the Jewish religion has fragmented into a series of separate denominations with competing ideologies and theological views. Despite the creation of the State of Israel, the Jewish...

Of all Judaic rituals, that of giyyur is arguably the most radical: it turns a Gentile into a Jew - once and for all and irrevocably. The very possibility of such a transformation is anomalous, according to Jewish tradition, which regards Jewishness as an ascriptive status entered through birth to a Jewish mother.

What is the internal logic of the ritual of giyyur, that seems to enable a Gentile to acquire an 'ascribed' identity? It is to this question, and others deriving from it, that the authors address themselves.

Interpretation of a ritual such as giyyur is linked to broad...