There are plenty of significant days on the Chabad calendar. This chronicle of those days is filled with the momentous events and the dynamic personalities that formed and shaped the 300 year-old movement. It also describes figures not so well-known and incidents that may not be considered earth-shaking, but add a deeper dimension to our understanding. This is a fascinating anecdotal history of the movement that has captured the hearts and raised the spirits of great masses of Jews and brought them back to the joyous observance of their faith. Includes 97 images and photographs. Also available with a deluxe slipcase cover.
“The most comprehensive to date treatment of these precious artifacts of the Holocaust’s Jewish efforts to maintain religious observations and identity.” —Choice Calendars map time, shaping and delineating our experience of it. While the challenges to tracking Jewish conceptions of time during the Holocaust were substantial, Alan Rosen reveals that many took great risks to mark time within that vast upheaval. Rosen inventories and organizes Jewish calendars according to the wartime settings in which they were produced—from Jewish communities to ghettos and concentration camps. The calendars he considers reorient views of Jewish circumstances during the war and show how Jews were committed to fashioning traditional guides to daily life, even in the most extreme conditions. In a separate chapter, moreover, he elucidates how Holocaust-era diaries sometimes served as surrogate Jewish calendars. All in all, Rosen presents a revised idea of time, continuity, the sacred and the mundane, the ordinary and the extraordinary even when death and destruction were the order of the day. Rosen’s focus on the Jewish calendar—the ultimate symbol of continuity, as weekday follows weekday and Sabbath follows Sabbath—sheds new light on how Jews maintained connections to their way of conceiving time even within the cauldron of the Holocaust. “Rosen demonstrates the relationship between time and meaning, between meaning and holiness, between holy days and the divine presence―all of which came under assault in the Nazis’ effort to kill Jewish souls before destroying Jewish bodies.” —David Patterson, author of Along the Edge of Annihilation: The Collapse and Recovery of Life in the Holocaust Diary
Like a friendly elder chasid at one's elbow, this translation of Sefer Haminhagim is a welcome guide to the customs of Chabad with regard to the practice of mitzvot throughout the year.
Between 1941 and 1945, the years of cataclysm for European Jewry, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe published a remarkable monthly journal entitled Hakeriah Vehakedusha Reading and Holiness. A collection of discourses from this journal is published here for the first time in English translation. Many of the discourses have as their central theme the concepts of self-sacrifice for G-d and the Jewish people, repentance and strengthening the observance of Torah and Mitzvot. The Rebbe often speaks of the lessons to be learned from the earth-shattering events of that time and their connection to the coming of Mashiach. They were written for a broad audience and are accessible even to those who have never studied Chasidic philosophy.The two volumes include explanatory footnotes, a glossary of Hebrew terms, a general index and, in the second volume, an index of quotations and references for Volumes 1 and 2.
Current today as when originally provided, this volume is a collection of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's counsel to the bereaved whether responding to a widow struggling to explain her husband's death to her children, or to a community whose school was teh target of a terrorist attack, th eRebbe provided support and solace to individuals and commujnities explaining loss and tragedy, guiding them toward the hope for a brighter future.
A concise and illuminating narrative provides glimpses of the true stature of this modest woman. Far more than a passive observer, the Rebbetzin was often an active participant in the events that shook the very foundations of Jewish life. Her biography is an account of the trials and triumphs of the Lubavitcher movement during those tumultuous times. The first of a series, this elegantly presented booklet is enhanced by 18 illustrations, charts and maps including to rare photographs of the Rebbetzin in her youth.
In the tradition of The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs and Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler comes Abigail Pogrebin’s My Jewish Year, a lively chronicle of the author’s journey into the spiritual heart of Judaism. Although she grew up following some holiday rituals, Pogrebin realized how little she knew about their foundational purpose and contemporary relevance; she wanted to understand what had kept these holidays alive and vibrant, some for thousands of years. Her curiosity led her to embark on an entire year of intensive research, observation, and writing about the milestones on the religious calendar. Whether in search of a roadmap for Jewish life or a challenging probe into the architecture of Jewish tradition, readers will be captivated, educated and inspired by Abigail Pogrebin’s My Jewish Year.
A beloved contemporary classic, Holy Days is a personal account of New York's Hasidic community, its beliefs, its mysteries, and its encounter with secularism in the present age. Combining a historical understanding of the Hasidic movement with a journalist's discerning eye, Harris captures in rich detail the day-to-day life of this traditional and often misunderstood community. Harris chronicles the personal transformation she experienced as she grew closer to the largely hidden men and women of the Hasidic world.
