Why do we sing Aishes Chayil on Friday night? What did Shlomo Hamelech – King Solomon – mean with this twenty-two verse poem that concludes Sefer Mishlei, the book of Proverbs? Is it only a tribute to the Jewish Woman or is there more? Would you be surprised to learn that there so are many deep levels of meaning – so many hidden secrets - behind every passage, every word, every letter? Now, for the first time, you can learn of the beauty of this timeless message, with this remarkable new book, “The Aishes Chayil Song.” Embark on a magical journey to unlock the meaning in every verse, as you join Rabbi Yosef Tropper, a noted author, speaker and educator, as he takes us through new discoveries you will enjoy on every page. What are the foundations of a Jewish Home? What traits did our illustrious mothers possess? How can I learn to appreciate life and live a more rewarding experience? What practical lessons can I learn from the women in Tanach and Jewish women of today? How can I become a greater person? The Aishes Chayil Song will shed much light and inspiration on all of these topics.
The #MeToo movement is a global phenomenon. Several Christian organizations have been engaging with issues of abuse against women in places like Africa and Asia. Much of this happens among internally displaced or external refugees. I was reared in a New Delhi slum, and saw much of the horrors of human trafficking among the low caste and outcaste people among whom I lived. These kinds of atrocities against girls and women--internally displaced refugees--rightly raises much anger. Are there solutions? My students and leaders of several organizations have asked me to write a biblical response to issues raised by the #MeToo movement and the global horror of sexual trafficking of girls and women. This book provides a biblical response to issues raised by the #MeToo movement--questions that I have had for many years, going back to my childhood days in that New Delhi slum. My thesis is that women experienced these abuses in ancient societies in very heinous ways. This is seen clearly in ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, and Roman etc. religions. I argue that the Bible sets out to counter attitudes and religious practices of sexual abuse against women. The Bible is the original #MeToo movement.
Opens up the traditional Jewish prayer book as a spiritual resource....This groundbreaking new series involves us in a personal dialogue with God, history and tradition, through the heritage of prayer. "The prayer book is our Jewish diary of the centuries, a collection of prayers composed by generations of those who came before us, as they endeavored to express the meaning of their lives and their relationship to God. The prayer book is the essence of the Jewish soul." Framed with beautifully designed Talmud-style pages, commentaries from many of today's most respected Jewish scholars from all movements of Judaism examine Shabbat at home from the perspectives of ancient Rabbis and modern theologians, as well as feminist, halakhic, Talmudic, linguistic, biblical, Chasidic, mystical, and historical perspectives. My People's Prayer Book is a momentous multi-volume series that opens up the traditional Jewish prayer book (the Siddur) as a spiritual resource. Commentaries by respected teachers from all perspectives of the Jewish world provide the spiritual messages that make up the Siddur. Sometimes awe-striking, sometimes surprising, but always deeply spiritual, My People’s Prayer Book is a gateway to the riches that the heritage of prayer offers us in our worship, and in our lives. The seventh volume celebrates Shabbat as a central family ritual, tracing the development of this loosely structured liturgy from early prayer books that draw on the classical rabbinic era, through medieval Jewish practice and the influence of Lurianic mysticism. Pausing to explore the key moments that mark this sacred time —Erev Shabbat with Kiddush, Kiddusha Rabbah, and Motsa’ei Shabbat with Havdalah—Shabbat at Home captures the joy of this holy day’s prayers, blessings, and z’mirot (table songs), emphasizing the renewal of home liturgy in Jewish life and reinforcing the importance of Shabbat in the Jewish conception of time. Vol. 7—Shabbat at Home features the traditional Hebrew text with a new translation that lets people know exactly what the prayers say. Introductions explain what to look for in the prayers, and how to truly use the commentaries to find meaning in the prayer book. Commentaries from eminent scholars and teachers from all movements of Judaism examine Shabbat at Home from the viewpoints of ancient Rabbis and modern theologians, as well as a myriad of other perspectives. Even those not yet familiar with the prayer book can appreciate the spiritual richness of Shabbat at Home. My People’s Prayer Book enables all worshipers, of any denomination, to create their own connection to 3,000 years of Jewish experience with the world and with God. Each volume of My People’s Prayer Book provides a new translation of the authentic Hebrew text, with diverse and exciting commentaries to the traditional liturgy, written by many of today’s most respected scholars and teachers from all perspectives of the Jewish world. This stunning work, an empowering entryway to the spiritual revival of our times, enables all of us to claim our connection to the heritage of the traditional Jewish prayer book. It helps rejuvenate Jewish worship in today’s world, and makes its power accessible to all.
New York Times Bestseller. With just the right mixture of humor and insight, compassion and incredulity, A Year of Biblical Womanhood is an exercise in scriptural exploration and spiritual contemplation. What does God truly expect of women, and is there really a prescription for biblical womanhood? Come along with Evans as she looks for answers in the rich heritage of biblical heroines, models of grace, and all-around women of valor. What is "biblical womanhood" . . . really? Strong-willed and independent, Rachel Held Evans couldn't sew a button on a blouse before she embarked on a radical life experiment--a year of biblical womanhood. Intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans decides to try it for herself, vowing to take all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible for a year. Pursuing a different virtue each month, Evans learns the hard way that her quest for biblical womanhood requires more than a "gentle and quiet spirit" (1 Peter 3:4). It means growing out her hair, making her own clothes, covering her head, obeying her husband, rising before dawn, abstaining from gossip, remaining silent in church, and even camping out in the front yard during her period. See what happens when a thoroughly modern woman starts referring to her husband as "master" and "praises him at the city gate" with a homemade sign. Learn the insights she receives from an ongoing correspondence with an Orthodox Jewish woman, and find out what she discovers from her exchanges with a polygamist wife. Join her as she wrestles with difficult passages of scripture that portray misogyny and violence against women.
This book explores a systematic bias in translating the Bible and in interpreting its teachings, which suggests that men are inherently suited to be leaders in the home, church, and community, while it is God’s plan for women to submit to men’s leadership. This erroneous understanding of the Bible has been promoted by certain influential evangelical Christian leaders in order to push back the growing influence of feminist attitudes, the expansion of women’s leadership roles, and the increase in egalitarian relationships among evangelicals in English-speaking North America. Written in a down-to-earth, engaging way, this book will appeal to young women searching the Bible for guidance on women’s roles in relationships and in the church. It highlights the dynamic roles played by women in the narratives of Old and New Testament and in the work of Bible translation. Built on a solid framework of biblical and linguistic scholarship, this book will also be of interest to Bible scholars and to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of what the Bible actually says in its original languages.
Meet Shira Gordon, her wonderful family and her charming friend Dawn Gruber in this trilogy, chock full of adventure, fun and lots of challenges.--Adapted from description at http://www.feldheim.com.
There have been numerous publications in the last decades on the Bible in literature, film, and art. But until now, no reference work has yet appeared on the Bible as it appears in Western music. In The Bible in Music: A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More, scholars Siobhán Dowling Long and John F. A. Sawyer correct this gap in Biblical reference literature, providing for the first time a convenient guide to musical interpretations of the Bible. Alongside examples of classical music from the Middle Ages through modern times, Dowling Long and Sawyer also bring attention to the Bible’s impact on popular culture with numerous entries on hymns, spirituals, musicals, film music, and contemporary popular music. Each entry contains essential information about the original context of the work (date, composer, etc.) and, where relevant, its afterlife in literature, film, politics, and liturgy. It includes an index of biblical references and an index of biblical names, as well as a detailed timeline that brings to the fore key events, works, and publications, placing them in their historical context. There is also a bibliography, a glossary of technical terms, and an index of artists, authors, and composers. The Bible in Music will fascinate anyone familiar with the Bible, but it is also designed to encourage choirs, musicians, musicologists, lecturers, teachers, and students of music and religious education to discover and perform some less well-known pieces, as well as helping them to listen to familiar music with a fresh awareness of what it is about.
HH Rabbi Nachman's birth already set the stage for the modern era, e.g. a mere few years after he was born in 1772, America declared independence. Many of his teachings speak more directly to the man of our present time and society than to the shtetel (small town) Jews who were his followers. E.g. Rabbi Nachman revealed that everyone has an aspect of monarchy even if it is only over his family, or on a subliminal paradigm, this teaching was readily understood by his followers, but it was somewhat theoretical being that they were so destitute they could barely have seen real manifestation of this principle. Today, even the less well off, can clearly see how they wield various privileges and amenities that would have been special even for a monarch of those times. With the changing times, also came changing attitudes, social climate, and personal truths, convictions, ideas, and prerogatives. Rabbi Nachman had to prepare the world for this transition, and he did so by revealing the highest and deepest teachings which are the root of everything that plays out in the world. Anyone that looks at a lesson from Rabbi Nachman will see reflections of what is going on that very moment in his own life. Yet, even still, Rabbi Nachman saw that his followers were not adjusting properly and sufficiently. He saw their struggles and how they grappled with forces far superior than them. Even his awesome teachings were not providing his followers with the necessary perspective and life knowledge that they needed so desperately in order to transcend the narrow confines of ideology that were trapping them and leaving them helpless to the wanton desires of the helpless. As a final last resort Rabbi Nachman found the solution, he would reveal timeless stories, stories that would recreate the perception of the workings of the world, the listener would be reborn into new consciousness and awareness, and would be impassioned to forever seek renewal and true vitality. These stories are called Stories of Ancient Years, corresponding to the Divine Countenance of Attik Yoamin (see book of Daniel), the countenance of the Ancient of Years, which subliminally transcends all of the ordinary chain of events manifested in the Divine Providence, a bridge to cognizance of what is utterly beyond. On the one hand, these legendary tales are completely unfathomable in their scope and import, they are allusions to the most deep and esoteric Divine secrets, and yet on the other hand, they are filled with practical morals and life lessons which any reader can easily glean and gain. To this day no one has merited to completely understand the root and intrinsic meaning of the stories in their rightful context, yet multitudes of people have gained phenomenal new insights through these stories, the stories literally open up gates to greater perspicacity and cognizance. The stories have captured the attention and fascination of even the most secular scholars, they have been translated into different languages, and they are studied in universities throughout the world. Rabbi Nachman said that even the minutest detail of the stories is extremely critical, and unfortunately most of the translations are fraught with the literary license an author has to set down his own perspective, which in this case is undoubtedly very damaging. This translation was done painstakingly to capture as best as possible the exact translation and nuance, even following the order of the original verbiage, and often favoring the original Yiddish in which Rabbi Nachman delivered the stories. In more recent times, one of Rabbi Nachman's followers, Rabbi Yisroel Dov Odesser, underwent a phenomenal course of events which themselves proved to be the mechanism of transition and development of Breslov, and are understood to be a clear aspect of Stories of Ancient Times, and thus some of his stories are fittingly included in this volume as well as are many other stories from Na Nach Nachma Nachman MeUman.
