The Hebrew Priestess
The Hebrew Priestess

Author: Jill Hammer

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781934730461

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It has been barely 40 years since rabbinical seminaries began ordaining women as rabbis. But women have played a role in Jewish religious leadership from the days of the Bible and even before. Miriam the Prophetess and Deborah the Judge are just the two most prominent of these women, most of whose names are lost to history. The Hebrew Priestess tells the stories of these women, often reading between the lines of the Bible and Talmud to rediscover the women that rabbinic editors tried to erase. The authors bring a unique vantage point: They are founders of the Kohenet Institute, which trains Jewish women as religious leaders - as Hebrew priestesses. They believe the spiritual gifts of Jewish women cannot be incorporated into Judaism unless women explore the Divine through their own lens. The Kohenet Institute offers an embodied, ecstatic earth-based approach to Jewish spiritual practice and leadership. The Hebrew Priestess weaves together a careful examination of historical antecedents of these new priestesses, along with the personal experiences of women who embarked on this new path of Jewish priestesshood. The Hebrew Priestess delineates 13 models of spiritual leadership - among them prophetess, weaver, drummer, shrinekeeper, midwife, mother, maiden, witch, and fool - and shows how each model was manifest in ancient times, its continuation through Jewish history, and how women in our day are following that path. Finally, it shows how you can incorporate part of that path into your own life. Ambitious, erudite, practical, and deeply personal, the Hebrew Priestsess offers a deep connection to Jewish history and to profound holy experiences today. "A very readable and much-needed book " --Starhawk "An extraordinary and amazing work." -Alicia Ostriker "A book to savor." --Max Dashu "The articulation of my dreams and longings." -Rabbi Shefa Gold "Read this book, but don't stop there-live it as well " -Rabbi Rami Shapiro

The Jewish Book of Days
The Jewish Book of Days

Author: Jill Hammer

Publisher: Jewish Publication Society

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0827610130

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Throughout the ages, Jews have connected legends to particular days of the Hebrew calendar. Abraham's birth, the death of Rachel, and the creation of light are all tales that are linked to a specific day and season. The Jewish Book of Days invites readers to experience the connection between sacred story and nature's rhythms, through readings designed for each and every day of the year. These daily readings offer an opportunity to live in tune with the wisdom of the past while learning new truths about the times we live in today. Using the tree as its central metaphor, The Jewish Book of Days is divided into eight chapters of approximately forty-five days each. These sections represent the tree's stages of growth--seed, root, shoot, sap, bud, leaf, flower, and fruit--and also echo the natural cadences of each season. Each entry has three components: a biblical quote for the day; a midrash on the biblical quote or a Jewish tradition related to that day; and commentary relating the text to the cycles of the year. The author includes an introduction that analyzes the different months and seasons of the Hebrew calendar and explains the textual sources used throughout. Appendixes provide additional material for leap years, equinoxes, and solstices. A section on seasonal meditations offers a new way to approach the divine every day.

The Path of the Priestess
The Path of the Priestess

Author: Sharron Rose

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2003-01-08

Total Pages: 569

ISBN-13: 1594775575

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A guide for personal exploration of the path to the divine feminine and the spiritual power of women. • Reveals the essential role of women in creating and maintaining the psychic/energetic/emotional landscape of society. • Explores feminine roles and the archetypal model of the Great Goddess from both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. • Includes exercises, meditations, and visualizations drawn from ancient techniques to assist women with their spiritual awakening and self-realization. The Path of the Priestess takes readers on a journey deep into the heart of the feminine experience. It describes the author's years of first-hand experience in the ancient arts of Tantra, Dzogchen, and Indian and Egyptian temple dance and healing, as well as her research into the feminine principle in the mystic teachings of the Alchemists, Hebrew Kabbalists, and Christian Gnostics. Beginning with an analysis of the basic issues and frustrations inherent in contemporary society's conditioning of and expectations for women, readers travel back in time to the age of the great temples, schools, and sacred societies in which women still held and transmitted the spiritual light that nourished all of civilization. Through its mythic and historic tales, descriptions of sacred ritual practices, and teachings on the Goddess traditions, The Path of the Priestess provides contemporary women with the means to enter this time-honored path. In keeping with the experientially based teaching methods of these traditions, it also offers exercises and visualizations designed to align women with the powerful, sensuous, and loving energies of the most profound feminine role model that shaped and preserved culture and society--the Great Goddess.

Divination, Magic, and Healing
Divination, Magic, and Healing

Author: Ronald H. Isaacs

Publisher: Jason Aronson

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780765799517

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To find more information on Rowman & Littlefield titles, please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

Between Worlds
Between Worlds

Author: J. H. Chajes

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0812221702

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After a nearly two-thousand-year interlude, and just as Christian Europe was in the throes of the great Witch Hunt and what historians have referred to as "The Age of the Demoniac," accounts of spirit possession began to proliferate in the Jewish world. Concentrated at first in the Near East but spreading rapidly westward, spirit possession, both benevolent and malevolent, emerged as perhaps the most characteristic form of religiosity in early modern Jewish society. Adopting a comparative historical approach, J. H. Chajes uncovers this strain of Jewish belief to which scant attention has been paid. Informed by recent research in historical anthropology, Between Worlds provides fascinating descriptions of the cases of possession as well as analysis of the magical techniques deployed by rabbinic exorcists to expel the ghostly intruders. Seeking to understand the phenomenon of spirit possession in its full complexity, Chajes delves into its ideational framework—chiefly the doctrine of reincarnation—while exploring its relation to contemporary Christian and Islamic analogues. Regarding spirit possession as a form of religious expression open to—and even dominated by—women, Chajes initiates a major reassessment of women in the history of Jewish mysticism. In a concluding section he examines the reception history of the great Hebrew accounts of spirit possession, focusing on the deployment of these "ghost stories" in the battle against incipient skepticism in the turbulent Jewish community of seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Exploring a phenomenon that bridged learned and ignorant, rich and poor, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, Between Worlds maps for the first time a prominent feature of the early modern Jewish religious landscape, as quotidian as it was portentous: the nexus of the living and the dead.

Return to the Place
Return to the Place

Author: Jill Hammer

Publisher:

Published: 2020-09-07

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9781934730065

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Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken ancient Jewish mystical text and transformed it into a contemporary guide for meditative practice. In Return to the Place, Rabbi Hammer guides the reader through the story of creation as the ancient text of the Sefer Yetzirah draws readers in and invites them to become participants in the book's vibrant incantations, bringing the Creator's sacred energy into the world. The Sefer Yetzirah is a creation story like none other, describing the creation of the world in cryptic, mystical, poetic text. Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken a fresh look at this text that scholars believe goes back to the sixth century CE, embracing this text with healing intention. Through guided meditations at each step along the way, Rabbi Hammer allows readers to dig deeply into the text to experience the potential power of these ancient writings. Hammer builds a thought-provoking bridge from the past to the present-translating the text and focusing on its key aspects to give readers a relevant focus for contemplation. Advance Praise "Sefer Yetzirah has been called the foundational text of Jewish mysticism, but despite many scholarly attempts to explain it, readers still find its language baffling and its message indecipherable. Now Rabbi Jill Hammer has clarified the text for us all. Without ruining its mystery, she reveals its cosmic vision of 'space, time, and body-soul.' Beyond this, she has created a new-ancient meditative practice based on this mystical masterpiece. Her superb achievement is a gift for all of us!" -Dr. Daniel Matt, author of The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism "A tour de force -at once scholarly, whimsical, deeply poetic, and eminently accessible. Hammer combines translation, commentary, and meditations with her uniquely seasoned sensibility, one that balances feminine and masculine, sensual and philosophical." -Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, author of The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women's Wisdom "Rabbi Hammer, one of the most original religious guides of our time, opens up for us a text that has fascinated mystics and philosophers for more than a millennium - and yet has remained deeply mysterious. Return to the Place shows us that the Sefer Yetzirah is a 'doorway into the deep structure of creation'-with the power to transform the cosmos as well as each person's most intimate experience." -Dr. Nathaniel Berman, author of Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar "Like its subject, the mysterious Book of Creation, Return to the Place brilliantly defies categorization. It is a detailed commentary, a bold spirit-guide, and a valuable work of scholarship. It is both audacious and perspicacious. And no one could have written it but Rabbi Dr. Jill Hammer." -Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, author of Everything is God: The Radical Path of Non-Dual Judaism

Jewish Magic and Superstition
Jewish Magic and Superstition

Author: Joshua Trachtenberg

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-10-08

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0812208331

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Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.

Daily Kabbalah
Daily Kabbalah

Author: Gershon Winkler

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2011-10-25

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1583944796

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From sorcery to animal totems, buzzard feathers to hawk spirits, talking trees to magical stones, sacred circles to healing rituals, the Kabbalah brings readers a rich body of ancient wisdom that has been long neglected and even longer misunderstood. The Kabbalah celebrates a quality of consciousness that enables one to experience magic in the ordinary, miracles in the natural course of events, and spirituality in the physical. Its roots are as old and rich as most aboriginal shamanic traditions, sharing in common with many of them the belief that all of creation is alive, from animals and plants to the sun and the moon.The uniqueness of this book lies in its selections from this rare tradition of Jewish mystery wisdom. Culled from ancient and medieval Hebraic and Aramaic sources, much of this material has been hidden in dusty archives or obscure translations. These short selected readings are intended as contemplative, inspirational, and even entertaining extracts. As short as a few lines or as long as a page, they are translated and paraphrased here to render them accessible to readers of all backgrounds and spiritual paths.