The Return to Judaism

The Return to Judaism

Author: Sandra Cumings Malamed

Publisher: Daniel & Daniel Publishers

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781564745040

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During the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, many Jews were forcibly converted to the Catholic faith. These Conversos, as they were called, were required to give up their religion, their traditions, and in some cases even their names. During the 1990s, historian Sandra Malamed conducted a series of probing interviews with people of Spanish and Portuguese descent across the country and abroad, who considered themselves Christians or even non-believers, but who nonetheless practiced various Jewish traditions-often without knowing where the traditions came from. When she explained to them what these customs were all about, they were fascinated to learn that Judaism might be part of their families' history. Malamed made it clear that the interview was not an exercise to convert them, but rather to give them a chance to know their own heritage and to be able to pass it on to their children. For although their Jewish identity may have been taken away from them more than five hundred years ago, they still had a right to know their origins and their heritage. Includes timelines, glossary, bibliography, and index, 85 b&w photographs..


All Who Go Do Not Return

All Who Go Do Not Return

Author: Shulem Deen

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 155597337X

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A moving and revealing exploration of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and one man's loss of faith Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world—only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression—turning on the radio—is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs, until, several years later, his faith unravels entirely. Now a heretic, he fears being discovered and ostracized from the only world he knows. His relationship with his family at stake, he is forced into a life of deception, and begins a long struggle to hold on to those he loves most: his five children. In All Who Go Do Not Return, Deen bravely traces his harrowing loss of faith, while offering an illuminating look at a highly secretive world.


Jewish Views of the Afterlife

Jewish Views of the Afterlife

Author: Simcha Paull Raphael

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-04-15

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 153810346X

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Originally published in 1994, Jewish Views of the Afterlife is a classic study of ideas of afterlife and postmortem survival in Jewish tradition and mysticism. As both a scholar and pastoral counselor, Raphael guides the reader through 4,000 years of Jewish thought on the afterlife by investigating pertinent sacred texts produced in each era. Through a compilation of ideas found in the Bible, Apocrypha, rabbinic literature, medieval philosophy, medieval Midrash, Kabbalah, Hasidism and Yiddish literature, the reader learns how Judaism conceived of the fate of the individual after death throughout Jewish history. In addition, this book explores the implications of Jewish afterlife beliefs for a renewed understanding of traditional rituals of funeral, burial, shiva, kaddish and more. This newly released twenty-fifth anniversary edition presents new material on little-known Jewish mystical teachings on reincarnation, a chapter on “Spirits, Ghosts and Dybbuks in Yiddish Literature”, and a foreword by the renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Arthur Green. Both historical and contemporary, this book provides a rich resource for scholars and laypeople and for teachers and students and makes an important Jewish contribution to the growing contemporary psychology of death and dying.


Becoming a Jew

Becoming a Jew

Author: Maurice Lamm

Publisher: Jonathan David Pub

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 9780824603502

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Describes the odyssey of the convert to the Jewish faith, introducing the laws and traditions of Judaism, its life cycle events and holidays, and its ideals and values


What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew about Judaism

What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew about Judaism

Author: Robert Schoen

Publisher: Stone Bridge Press, Inc.

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1611729475

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"From the Sabbath to circumcision, from Hanukkah to the Holocaust, from bar mitzvah to bagel, how do Jewish religion, history, holidays, lifestyles, and culture make Jews different, and why is that difference so distinctive that we carry it from birth to the grave?" This accessible introduction to Judaism and Jewish life is especially for Christian readers interested in the deep connections and distinct differences between their faith and Judaism, but it is also for Jews looking for ways to understand their religion--and explain it to others. First released in 2002 and now in an updated edition.


Letters to Josep

Letters to Josep

Author: Levy Daniella

Publisher:

Published: 2016-03-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789659254002

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This book is a collection of letters from a religious Jew in Israel to a Christian friend in Barcelona on life as an Orthodox Jew. Equal parts lighthearted and insightful, it's a thorough and entertaining introduction to the basic concepts of Judaism.


Spiritual Judaism

Spiritual Judaism

Author: David Ariel

Publisher: Hyperion

Published: 1998-09-16

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780786863068

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In the first comprehensive guide of its kind, a noted Judaic scholar applied Jewish spiritual principles to daily life.


Bewilderments

Bewilderments

Author: Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Publisher: Schocken

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0805212515

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Through the magnificent literary, scholarly, and psychological analysis of the text that is her trademark, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg tackles the enduring puzzlement of the book of Numbers. What should have been for the Israelites a brief journey from Mount Sinai to the Holy Land becomes a forty-year death march. Both before and after the devastating report of the Spies, the narrative centers on the people's desire to return to slavery in Egypt. At its heart are speeches of complaint and lament. But in the narrative of the book of Numbers that is found in mystical and Hasidic sources, the generation of the wilderness emerges as one of extraordinary spiritual experience, fed on miracles and nurtured directly by God: a generation of ecstatic faith, human partners in an unprecedented conversation with the Deity. Drawing on kabbalistic sources, the Hasidic commentators depict a people who transcend prudent considerations in order to follow God into the wilderness, where their spiritual yearning comes to full expression. Is there a way to integrate this narrative of dark murmurings, of obsessive fantasies of a return to Egypt, with the celebration of a love-intoxicated wilderness discourse? What effect does the cumulative trauma of slavery, the miracles of Exodus, and the revelation at Sinai have on a nation that is beginning to speak? In Bewilderments, one of our most admired biblical commentators suggests fascinating answers to these questions.


Basic Judaism

Basic Judaism

Author: Milton Steinberg

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 1947

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780156106986

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The classic, essential guide to the beliefs, ideals and practices that form the historic Jewish faith.


An Island Called Home

An Island Called Home

Author: Ruth Behar

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0813541891

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This is the story of the author's return to learn about and meet the people who are keeping Judaism alive in Cuba today.