Ani Maamin

Ani Maamin

Author: Joshua Berman

Publisher: Maggid

Published: 2020-02-20

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781592645381

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The Temple

The Temple

Author: Joshua Berman

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1608997766

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When thinking of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem, one often conjures up images of animal sacrifice, pilgrimages to the Holy City on religious festivals, and the High Priest solemnly entering the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. Indeed, each of these observances was a staple of Temple ritual, but it is easy to lose sight of the Temple as it impacted, and impacts, upon the daily life of Jews and their physical and spiritual responsibilities. Building the Temple is not merely one commandment of many; it cannot be examined in isolation. This volume shows how the Temple relates to the notions of Shabbat, the land of Israel, monarchy, Jewish independence and sovereignty, education, justice, covenant, Sinai, the garden of Eden, the Jewish relationship to the gentile world, and the very way the Jew relates to God. From a biblical viewpoint, the Temple is not only the central institution of the ideal Jewish society but also the central concept that binds and organizes all others. The minutiae of the Temple as portrayed in the liturgy and in the Bible often seem tedious and overritualistic. Classical sources of all genres abound to explain a particular passage or a particular rite. This book identifies broad themes that animate the meaning of the Temple, its rites, and the biblical passages that describe it. Details are probed as a larger conceptual whole. Animal sacrifice, particularly problematic to many on moral grounds, is examined in a new and revealing light. Many Torah commandments stand unchanged for all time regardless of historical events. Not so the commandment to erect the Temple. Social, economic, political, and religious currents were integral to the Temple's construction, destruction, and reconstruction. By probing these currents from the Bible's perspective, one can gain insight into the meaning of the times in which we live; we are in a process of rebuilding, even though we are far from redemption.


Created Equal

Created Equal

Author: Joshua Berman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-08-12

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0199832404

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In Created Equal, Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective, considering it as a document of social and political thought. He proposes that the Pentateuch can be read as the earliest prescription on record for the establishment of an egalitarian polity. What emerges is the blueprint for a society that would stand in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East -- Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and the Hittite Empire - in which the hierarchical structure of the polity was centered on the figure of the king and his retinue. Berman shows that an egalitarian ideal is articulated in comprehensive fashion in the Pentateuch and is expressed in its theology, politics, economics, use of technologies of communication, and in its narrative literature. Throughout, he invokes parallels from the modern period as heuristic devices to illuminate ancient developments. Thus, for example, the constitutional principles in the Book of Deuteronomy are examined in the light of those espoused by Montesquieu, and the rise of the novel in 18th-century England serves to illuminate the advent of new modes of storytelling in biblical narrative.


Reflections of an Unconverted Convert

Reflections of an Unconverted Convert

Author: Murray Joseph Haar

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2022-12-19

Total Pages: 119

ISBN-13: 1666730564

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This is the story of Dr. Murray Haar’s odyssey from Jewish tradition to Christianity and back again. As the child of Holocaust survivors, he struggled with questions of God and faith and finally left the religious tradition of his youth behind. He became an ordained Lutheran pastor and professor at a midwestern Lutheran College. Ultimately, through the influence of Elie Wiesel, he found the way back home to the Jewish tradition and community of his birth.


Exiled God and Exiled Peoples

Exiled God and Exiled Peoples

Author: Andrea Fröchtling

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9783825857912

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" ""Exiled God and exiled peoples"" sets out to explore the perceptions of God within a number of forcibly removed communities in South Africa and Jewish survivors of the Shoah, with the latter being predominantly of German origin. It considers rupture in individual and commmunal life-stories as a determining factor in the perception of and the relationship with God and follows the path paved by survivors of apartheid and the Shoah by recalling their topo-logy, their stories about place, displacement and terror and the encapsulated relationship with God in their respective exiles. "


Caitanya Vaisnava Philosophy

Caitanya Vaisnava Philosophy

Author: Dr Ravi M Gupta

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2014-03-28

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1472425510

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In the sixteenth century, the saint and scholar Sri Caitanya set in motion a wave of devotion to Krishna that began in eastern India and has now found its way around the world. Caitanya taught that the highest aim of life is to develop selfless love for God Krishna, the blue-hued cowherd boy who spoke the Bhagavad Gita. Although only a handful of poetry is attributed to Caitanya, his devotional theology was expounded and systematized by his followers in a vast array of poetical, philosophical, and ritual literature. This book provides a thematic study of Caitanya Vaishnava philosophy, introducing key thinkers and ideas in the early tradition, using Sanskrit and Bengali sources that have seldom been studied in English. The book addresses major areas of the tradition, including epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, ethics, and history, and every chapter includes relevant readings from primary sources.


Social Functions of Synagogue Song

Social Functions of Synagogue Song

Author: Jonathan L. Friedmann

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 0739168312

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Social Functions of Synagogue Song: A Durkheimian Approach by Jonathan L. Friedmann paints a detailed picture of the important role sacred music plays in Jewish religious communities. This study explores one possible way to approach the subject of music's intimate connection with public worship: applying sociologist mile Durkeim's understanding of ceremonial ritual to synagogue music. Durkheim observed that religious ceremonies serve disciplinary, cohesive, revitalizing, and euphoric functions within religious communities. Drawing upon musical examples from different composers, regions, periods, rites, and services, Friedmann demonstrates how Jewish sacred music performs these functions.


Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic

Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic

Author: Alexandra Cuffel

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13:

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Cuffel analyzes medieval Jewish, Christian, and Muslim uses of gendered bodily imagery and metaphors of impurity in their visual and verbal polemic against one another. Each group wielded bodily insult as a means of resistance, of inciting violence, and of creating community boundaries.


Zipporah, Wife of Moses

Zipporah, Wife of Moses

Author: Marek Halter

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2005-07-05

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0307238474

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From the internationally bestselling author of Sarah comes the riveting story of the remarkable woman who walked beside Moses. Although she is a Cushite by birth—one of the people of the lands to the south—Zipporah grew up as the beloved daughter of Jethro, high priest and sage of the Midianites. But the color of Zipporah’s skin sets her apart, making her an outsider to the men of her adopted tribe, who do not want her as a wife. Then one day while drawing water from a well, she meets a handsome young stranger. Like her, he is an outsider. A Hebrew raised in the house of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Moses is a fugitive, forced to flee his homeland. Zipporah realizes that this man will be the husband and partner she never thought she would have. Moses wants nothing more than a peaceful life with the Midianites, but Zipporah won’t let Moses forget his past—or turn away from his true destiny. She refuses to marry him until he returns to Egypt to free his people. When God reveals himself to Moses in a burning bush, his words echo Zipporah’s, and Moses returns to Egypt with his passionate and generous wife by his side. A woman ahead of her time, Zipporah leaps from the pages of this remarkable novel. Bold, independent, and a true survivor, she is a captivating heroine, and her world of deserts, temples, and ancient wonders is a fitting backdrop to an epic tale.