מסילת ישרים
מסילת ישרים

Author: Mosheh Ḥayim Lutsaṭo

Publisher: Feldheim Publishers

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 9781583307281

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A completely redone version of a treasured classic. This newly translated volume, complete with facing Hebrew-English text and shoulder captions for clarity, revitalizes the study of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's classic ethical work. The Path of the Just has long been regarded as the crown-jewel of mussar study. The Gaon of Vilna constantly kept a copy of Mesillas Yesharim at his side, and yet the piercing wisdom of the Ramchal is just as relevant to our own lives. The author gently guides the reader through various levels of character refinement, shining a beacon of life on the path to perfection.

The Path of the Upright
The Path of the Upright

Author: Moshe Ḥayyim Luzzatto

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781568214276

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The classic text that focuses on the talmudic perspective of the Jewish path to holiness. Bilingual edition (Hebrew and English).

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto

Author: Yirmeyahu Bindman

Publisher: Jason Aronson

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13:

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In 1727, while immersed in kabbalistic speculations, Luzzatto claimed to have heard the voice of a maggid - a divine power inclined to reveal heavenly secrets to human beings. Henceforth, the revelations of the maggid served to comprise future kabbalistic writings, only a few of which survived and were published.

Rupture and Reconstruction
Rupture and Reconstruction

Author: Haym Soloveitchik

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2021-09-10

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 1800857861

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The essay that forms the core of this book is an attempt to understand the developments that have occurred in Orthodox Jewry in America in the last seventy years, and to analyse their implications. The prime change is what is often described as ‘the swing to the right’, a marked increase in ritual stringency, a rupture in patterns of behaviour that has had major consequences not only for Jewish society but also for the nature of Jewish spirituality. For Haym Soloveitchik, the key feature at the root of this change is that, as a result of migration to the ‘New Worlds’ of England, the US, and Israel and acculturation to its new surroundings, American Jewry—indeed, much of the Jewish world— had to reconstruct religious practice from normative texts: observance could no longer be transmitted mimetically, on the basis of practices observed in home and street. In consequence, behaviour once governed by habit is now governed by rule. This new edition allows the author to deal with criticisms raised since the essay, long established as a classic in the field, was originally published, and enables readers to gain a fuller perspective on a topic central to today’s Jewish world and its development.

שערי תשובה
שערי תשובה

Author: Rabbeinu Yonah

Publisher: Feldheim Publishers

Published: 1967

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9780873065467

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The classic work on repentance and religious conduct. For anyone seeking the true path to repentance and reconnection with G-d, this incisive guide is essential. With vowelized Hebrew and English translation. Pocket edition

The Jewish Moral Virtues
The Jewish Moral Virtues

Author: Eugene B. Borowitz

Publisher: Jewish Publication Society

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780827606647

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The Jewish Moral Virtues is a book of musar - practical ethical wisdom applied to contemporary life. In form and purpose, it is parallel to William Bennett's bestselling Book of Virtues. Authors Borowitz and Schwartz synthesize traditional scholarship from a wide range of Jewish sources with personal insights into modern ethical dilemmas. Traditionally, Jewish ethical teachers have been concerned with law or general guidance for a good life, i.e., virtue, rather than philosophical meditations upon specific issues. This collection is structured upon the twenty-four virtues selected by a thirteenth-century Roman Jew, Yehiel ben Yekutiel, including trustworthiness, lovingkindness, compassion, generosity, charity, humility, and pure-heartedness, among others, and expands to include wisdom from the ancient rabbis, medieval philosophers, and Yehiel's successors over the past seven centuries.

In Search of the Holy Life
In Search of the Holy Life

Author: Ira Stone

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2019-03-06

Total Pages: 81

ISBN-13: 1532069812

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We began our Mussar journey by following the practice instituted by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter in Lithuania in the nineteenth century: a Mussar practice characterized by discipline and kibbush (restraint) as a path to self-improvement. We turned our inward-facing journeys outward and applied Mussar’s principles to the way we treated other people in our everyday lives. We would focus on the small but critical moments of human interaction and connection that make up our days and undergird our relationships. This prescription had the potential to serve as an antidote to the narcissism and isolation of our age, and in doing so, it could recast the very definition of the Divine for a contemporary audience.

Beruria the Tannait
Beruria the Tannait

Author: Dalia Hoshen

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13:

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"This work deals with the religious enigma of Beruria, the only female scholar mentioned in Talmudic literature. Although a well-known figure to educated readers, her scholarship has not been thoroughly investigated. Because Beruria was better known for her femininity than her literacy, many doubted her scholarship. Some maintain that she never existed, except in the imagination and libido of the Rabbis. The book fully exposes her character and her teachings with an atypical theological perspective of individual status. Comparing Beruria's philosophical model in the Talmudic literature to her portrayal in the post-Talmudic, the book indicates a crisis in Jewish culture, which circles around the differentiation of the sociological versus theological perspective of individual status in general, particularly of women."--BOOK JACKET.

Shadal on Exodus
Shadal on Exodus

Author: Daniel A. Klein

Publisher:

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 9780997820577

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Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865), known by his Hebrew acronym Shadal, was the leading Italian Jewish scholar of the 19th century. A linguist, educator, and religious thinker, he devoted his talents above all to the interpretation of the Bible. As a master of Hebrew grammar and usage, he focused on the plain meaning of the text. Although he was a devout believer in the divinity, unity, and antiquity of the Torah, Shadal approached the text in a remarkably free spirit of inquiry, drawing upon a wide variety of sources, ancient and contemporary, Jewish and non-Jewish. As a result, his interpretations may strike even the modern reader as fresh and novel. Among the highlights of Shadal's Exodus (Shemot) commentary are his view of the Ten Plagues as nature-based phenomena that nevertheless contained supranatural qualities, his discerning literary analysis of the Song of the Sea, and his daring willingness--despite his acceptance of rabbinic halakhah in practice--to look behind the Rabbis' interpretation of the book's legal sections and examine their literal meanings. Shadal's treatment of Exodus, as well as the other books of the Torah, consisted of his Italian translation of the text and his Hebrew-language commentary. Here, for the first time, is an all-English version of both the text translation and the unabridged commentary, the first complete edition of Shadal's Exodus since its original publication in 1872. The translator-editor has supplied explanatory notes and a list identifying the sources cited.