Judaism Without Tribalism
Judaism Without Tribalism

Author: Rabbi Rami Shapiro

Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing

Published: 2022-06-14

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1948626667

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"Judaism Without Tribalism is a blessing, a much-needed challenge, and a deep well of wisdom and sanity." —Natalie Goldberg This book investigates Judaism at its best—and sanest. It strips away outdated and harmful beliefs that have accrued over the centuries and returns to the essential truths that are too-often ignored in favor of tradition, tribal identity, or the claims of the powerful. The result is a vibrant Judaism for the 21st century and beyond—a Judaism that draws deeply from history and scripture yet addresses the unmet needs of the present and the future. It is a Judaism that is open and accessible to everyone. Judaism without tribalism is a call to be a light unto the nations, and a blessing to all the people of the earth. It is a Judaism free from legalism and tribalism—a Judaism that refuses to serve patriarchy and power. Written by one of today's most respected—and most unconventional—Jewish thinkers, Judaism Without Tribalism is a manifesto, an invitation to completeness, and a call for inner and outer spiritual revolution. It is also a deeply practical guide to living authentically, breath by breath and day by day.

Judaism Without Tribalism
Judaism Without Tribalism

Author: Rabbi Rami Shapiro

Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing

Published: 2022-06-14

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9781948626651

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Judaism at its best. A return to its essential truths that are too-often ignored in favor of the claims of tradition.

The Thirteenth Tribe
The Thirteenth Tribe

Author: Arthur Koestler

Publisher:

Published: 2014-05

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9781939438188

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This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry. To the general reader the Khazars, who flourished from the 7th to 11th century, may seem infinitely remote today. Yet they have a close and unexpected bearing on our world, which emerges as Koestler recounts the fascinating history of the ancient Khazar Empire. At about the time that Charlemagne was Emperor in the West. The Khazars' sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain. Thereafter the Khazars found themselves in a precarious position between the two major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the triumphant followers of Mohammed. As Koestler points out, the Khazars were the Third World of their day. They chose a surprising method of resisting both the Western pressure to become Christian and the Eastern to adopt Islam. Rejecting both, they converted to Judaism. Mr Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research.

Transcendental Judaism
Transcendental Judaism

Author: David L. Lieberman

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-06-12

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 1666758663

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Is it really possible to connect with God? Can we find spirituality in Judaism? The answer to both these questions is yes. Traditionally, Judaism teaches that we connect with God through the performance of the commandments, the mitzvot (from the Aramaic word tzavta meaning connection). But what if we are not mitzvah-observant in the traditional ways? Can we still experience a palpable closeness to God and have a sense that we are all connected as one? To this question, our sages also answer yes. Through the meditative quieting of the mind, we can directly experience that "still small voice." It is the awesome voice of infinite intelligence that created and upholds our world with compassion and justice. When we repeatedly experience it, we enliven its qualities into our lives; we "walk in God's ways." When we do so, we uplift not only ourselves, but the world around us.

Jewish Megatrends
Jewish Megatrends

Author: Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, PhD

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2013-01-15

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1580237207

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Visionary solutions for a community ripe for transformational change—from fourteen leading innovators of Jewish life. "Jewish Megatrends offers a vision for a community that can simultaneously strengthen the institutions that serve those who seek greater Jewish identification and attract younger Jews, many of whom are currently outside the orbit of Jewish communal life. Schwarz and his collaborators provide an exciting path, building on proven examples, that we ignore at our peril." —from the Foreword The American Jewish community is riddled with doubts about the viability of the institutions that well served the Jewish community of the twentieth century. Synagogues, Federations and Jewish membership organizations have yet to figure out how to meet the changing interests and needs of the next generation. In this challenging yet hopeful call for transformational change, visionary leader Rabbi Sidney Schwarz looks at the social norms that are shaping the habits and lifestyles of younger American Jews and why the next generation is so resistant to participate in the institutions of Jewish communal life as they currently exist. He sets out four guiding principles that can drive a renaissance in Jewish life and gives evidence of how, on the margins of the Jewish community, those principles are already generating enthusiasm and engagement from the very millennials that the organized Jewish community has yet to engage. Contributors—leading innovators from different sectors of the Jewish community—each use Rabbi Schwarz's framework as a springboard to set forth their particular vision for the future of their sector of Jewish life and beyond.

Suicide of the West
Suicide of the West

Author: Jonah Goldberg

Publisher: Crown Forum

Published: 2020-01-14

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 110190495X

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent argument that America and other democracies are in peril because they have lost the will to defend the values and institutions that sustain freedom and prosperity. Now updated with a new preface! “Epic and debate-shifting.”—David Brooks, New York Times Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle. As Americans we are doubly blessed, because the radical ideas that made the miracle possible were written not just into the Constitution but in our hearts, laying the groundwork for our uniquely prosperous society. Those ideas are: • Our rights come from God, not from the government. • The government belongs to us; we do not belong to it. • The individual is sovereign. We are all captains of our own souls, not bound by the circumstances of our birth. • The fruits of our labors belong to us. In the last few decades, these political virtues have been turned into vices. As we are increasingly taught to view our traditions as a system of oppression, exploitation, and privilege, the principles of liberty and the rule of law are under attack from left and right. For the West to survive, we must renew our sense of gratitude for what our civilization has given us and rediscover the ideals and habits of the heart that led us out of the bloody muck of the past—or back to the muck we will go.

Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism
Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism

Author: Sarah Imhoff

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2017-03-13

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0253026369

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An examination of how early twentieth-century American Jewish men experienced manhood and presented their masculinity to others. How did American Jewish men experience manhood, and how did they present their masculinity to others? In this distinctive book, Sarah Imhoff shows that the project of shaping American Jewish manhood was not just one of assimilation or exclusion. Jewish manhood was neither a mirror of normative American manhood nor its negative, effeminate opposite. Imhoff demonstrates how early twentieth-century Jews constructed a gentler, less aggressive manhood, drawn partly from the American pioneer spirit and immigration experience, but also from Hollywood and the YMCA, which required intense cultivation of a muscled male physique. She contends that these models helped Jews articulate the value of an acculturated American Judaism. Tapping into a rich historical literature to reveal how Jews looked at masculinity differently than Protestants or other religious groups, Imhoff illuminates the particular experience of American Jewish men. “There is so much literature—and very good scholarship—on Judaism and gender, but the majority of that literature reflects an interest in women. A hearty thank you to Sarah Imhoff for writing the other half of the story and for doing it so elegantly.” —Claire Elise Katz, author of Levinas and the Crisis of Humanism “Invariably lucid and engaging, Sarah Imhoff provides a secure foundation for how religion shaped American masculinity and how masculinity shaped American Judaism in the early twentieth century.” —Judith Gerson, author of By Thanksgiving We Were Americans: German Jewish Refugees and Holocaust Memory

Choosing Life after Tragedy
Choosing Life after Tragedy

Author: Anson Hugh Laytner

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-09-08

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 1666770507

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A wave of disease and death in his immediate family led Rabbi Anson Laytner to question much of what he had learned about the meaning of suffering, the value of petitionary prayer, and the role of God in human life. As he struggled to deal with his grief and doubts, he gradually found a way forward. His spiritual healing process took him from intense grief to a renewed appreciation of life—and resulted in this book, a work of creative theology some eighteen years in the making. Choosing Life After Tragedy is written for people who struggle with the subjects of suffering, divine providence, God, and prayer; people who are looking for honest, thoughtful, provocative—and occasionally humorous—theological reflections, but no easy answers. Laytner intersperses his penetrating theological reflections with pertinent episodes from his life because, for him, theology is personal and experience-based. Trained as a liberal rabbi, Laytner riffs on Jewish themes to offer a universal message of hope in the face of suffering and loss, and of mutual support based on humanity’s various teachings of lovingkindness. This book will challenge you; it will sometimes amuse you; but you will not remain unmoved.

That Precious Strand of Jewishness That Challenges Authority
That Precious Strand of Jewishness That Challenges Authority

Author: Leon Rosselson

Publisher: PM Press

Published: 2017-07-01

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 1629633984

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“For my parents and grandparents, Jewish identity, in religion, culture and language, was a given. Not so for me. I’m not religious, not a Zionist, so in what consists my Jewishness? Is a love of chopped liver and a belief that chicken soup cures all ills enough? And does it matter? This is the story of my search for answers. It is an argument with myself, with song lyrics to embellish the argument.” Like so many of those others in Britain of Jewish lineage, songwriter and award-winning folk singer Leon Rosselson is descended from antecedents who fled pogroms in eastern Europe. Pertinently, he questions what being a Jew means—is it adherence to Judaism as a religion, an ethnicity, a citizen of Israel, or someone who eats “chicken soup with knedlach”? He describes clearly and with historical insight how any concept of “Jewishness” can involve all of those things and more. In his own life, he has decided to pick and choose from this tradition and history and build on what he deems to be the progressive, humane, and universalist values of that Jewish background. Rosselson is a strong supporter of Palestinian rights, seeing in the victimization of Palestinians by the state of Israel parallels with historical Jewish persecution. He concludes this short essay by stating: “I share with the growing number of Jews in the diaspora who place solidarity with the oppressed above demands of tribalism and with those in Israel who dare to stand against the powers that be.”

Toward a Holy Ecology
Toward a Holy Ecology

Author: Ellen Bernstein

Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing

Published: 2024-02-20

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 1958972207

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The Song of Songs is among the most accessible of all biblical books. It is also the most deeply ecological text of the canon, yet few people are aware of the Song’s ecological message. The intention of Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in the Age of Climate Crisis is to illuminate that message. Today there is such urgency around our many earth crises—so much brokenness—that we need a vision of wholeness and an ecological language that can help inspire, soothe and reinvigorate us, and bring us together regardless of our various affiliations and ideologies. The Song offers both ecological language and a vision. It sets the natural world before us with intensity and beauty, bidding us to savor it with all of our senses so that we may return to the world with the renewed clarity, love and energy necessary to work toward a healthy future for the earth and all her inhabitants. The Song is a particularly powerful book since it never utters the name of the divine, yet is a deeply spiritual work that may reach people who are interested in matters of the sacred, but prefer to steer clear of God language and conventional religious ideas. In both the Jewish and Christian worlds, where many people are disengaging from religion altogether, the Song—with its universal themes of love, justice and the integrity of nature—may help open the door to the possibilities which religion has to offer. Toward a Holy Ecology: Reading the Song of Songs in an Age of Climate Crisis seeks to engage a wide readership including all people who love the earth and its inhabitants, outdoor enthusiasts, spiritual seekers, poets, feminists, and students of the humanities, religion and ecology.