Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Judaism - Rituals & Practice

In Contested Rituals, Robin Judd shows that circumcision and kosher butchering became focal points of political struggle among the German state, its municipal governments, Jews, and Gentiles. In 1843, some German-Jewish fathers refused to circumcise their sons, prompting their Jewish communities to reconsider their standards for membership. Nearly a century later, in 1933, another blood ritual, kosher butchering, served as a political and cultural touchstone when the Nazis built upon a decades-old controversy concerning the practice and prohibited it.

In describing these...

In From Epic to Canon, Frank Moore Cross discusses specific issues that illuminate central questions about the Hebrew Bible and those who created and preserved it. He challenges the persistent attempt to read Protestant theological polemic against law into ancient Israel. Cross uncovers the continuities between the institutions of kinship and of covenant, which he describes as -extended kinship.- He examines the social structures of ancient Israel and reveals that beneath its later social and cultural accretions, the concept of covenant--as opposed to codified law--was a vital part...

Compiled by S.Y. Agnon, one of the greatest Hebrew writers of the twentieth century and winner of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature, Days of Awe is the long-acknowledged classic companion to the High Holy Days prayerbook. Here in one volume are readings from the meditations from the Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Zohar, to deepen the spiritual experience of the holiest days of the Jewish year. More than three hundred texts. selected from the vast storehouse of Jewish literature from ancient to modern times, are arranged to follow the order of the synagogue service for the...

"In this book I try to present some answers that have proved helpful to me about the universal human dilemmas of conscience, love, fear, grief, and God-- crucial problems that present themselves in every kind of society, and, I believe, will present themselves as long as man is man." --Joshua Loth Liebman

Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals is the first book-length study of mystical eating practices and experiences in the kabbalah. Focusing on the Jewish mystical literature of late-thirteenth-century Spain, author Joel Hecker analyzes the ways in which the Zohar and other contemporaneous literature represent mystical attainment in their homilies about eating. What emerges is not only consideration of eating practices but, more broadly, the effects such practices and experiences have on the bodies of its practitioners.

Using anthropology, sociology, ritual studies, and gender theory, Hecker...

As anti-semitism finds new followers and Israel makes peace with old enemies, Jews in the modern world face constantly metamorphosizing relationships. From the eighteenth century to the present, unprecedented opportunities have grown up alongside new challenges for the Jewish people. While modern society is permitting Judaism a place, profound questions over Jewish identity are taking shape.

The essays gathered in Judaism in the Modern World address the issue of Jewish persistence amidst changing forms of identity. Exploring a wide range of sources, the essayists examine historical...

How can there by a Jewish culture in today's Germany? Since the fall of the Wall, there has been a substantial increase in the visibility of Jews in German culture, not only an increase in the number of Jews living there, but, more importantly, an explosion of cultural activity. Jews are writing and making films about the central question of Jewish life after the Shoah.

Given the xenophobia that has marked Germany since reunification, the appearance of a new Jewish is both surprising and normalizing. Even more striking than the reappearance of Jewish culture in England after the...