Torah from the Years of Wrath
Torah from the Years of Wrath

Author: Henry Abramson

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 138755932X

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Discovered in the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira's wartime writings exemplify the faith of Hasidic Jewry under the unimaginable conditions of the Nazi occupation. Published in 1960 under the Hebrew title Aish Kodesh, the notes of Rabbi Shapira's weekly Sabbath sermons and annotations have been studied by pious Hasidim and secular academics alike, seeking his answers to the searing theological questions posed by the war. Why do the righteous suffer? Where was God during the Holocaust? Torah from the Years of Wrath provides a new and essential scholarly contribution by placing Rabbi Shapira's writings in their immediate historical context.

Torah from the Years of Wrath 1939-1943
Torah from the Years of Wrath 1939-1943

Author: Henry Abramson

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9781975983727

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Torah from the Years of Wrath provides a new and essential scholarly contribution by placing Rabbi Shapira’s writings in their immediate historical context. Using a wide variety of primary sources, Abramson situates the sermons within the daily experience of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, demonstrating that Rabbi Shapira’s often enigmatic discourses contained veiled messages—opaque to later readers, but readily understood by his congregants at the time—that related directly to the traumatic events endured by his Hasidim. Abramson’s reconstruction of the micro-history of the Ghetto reveals that Rabbi Shapira’s work represents a sustained act of spiritual heroism, helping his followers place their individual tragedies within the cosmic meta-history of the Jewish people, as expressed in the Torah itself.

Sacred Fire
Sacred Fire

Author: Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira

Publisher: Jason Aronson

Published: 2002-08-22

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1461630568

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Sacred Fire: Torah from the Years of Fury (1939-1942) consists of commentaries on each weekly Torah portion. It also includes a number of lengthy sermons delivered on the major Jewish Festivals as well as a few discourses alluding to people loved and lost. Because writing is not permitted on the Sabbath, these "words of Torah" were transcribed from memory, after the Sabbath or festival had ended. Although the pages of Sacred Fire are not stained with the names of its author's tormentors, there are numerous references to historical events through which parallels can be drawn. Rabbi Shapira often refers, for example, to the binding of Isaac and the martyrdom of Rabbi Akiba. Sacred Fire forms a religious, spiritual response to the Holocaust that speaks from the heart of the darkness. In doing so, it may well form the basis for what could one day become Judaism's formal liturgical response to the events that occurred during those years of fury.

A Prayer for the Government
A Prayer for the Government

Author: Henry Abramson

Publisher: Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Discusses the experiment in Jewish autonomy in Ukraine that began with the February democratic revolution in Russia, showing how common interests between Ukrainians and Jews, especially intellectuals, led to political rights for Jews. However, the experiment was a disastrous failure. One of the reasons was the failure to stem extensive pogroms in Ukraine. In contrast to the traditional post-1927 view that has considered the Ukrainian government as the instigator of most of the pogroms, concludes that Petlyura was responsible, by default, for not doing enough to stop the hooligans, while Jewish political leaders bore some responsibility for failure to agree on Jewish self-defense.

Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment
Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment

Author: Daniel Chanan Matt

Publisher: Paulist Press

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780809123872

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This is the first translation with commentary of selections from The Zohar, the major text of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. This work was written in 13th-century Spain by Moses de Leon, a Spanish scholar.

A Letter in the Scroll
A Letter in the Scroll

Author: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2004-04-16

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780743267427

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The author traces series of philosophical and theological ideas that Judaism has created and shows how they are still relevant in our time.

Pledges of Jewish Allegiance
Pledges of Jewish Allegiance

Author: David Ellenson

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2012-01-18

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0804781036

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Since the late 1700s, when the Jewish community ceased to be a semiautonomous political unit in Western Europe and the United States and individual Jews became integrated—culturally, socially, and politically—into broader society, questions surrounding Jewish status and identity have occupied a prominent and contentious place in Jewish legal discourse. This book examines a wide array of legal opinions written by nineteenth- and twentieth-century orthodox rabbis in Europe, the United States, and Israel. It argues that these rabbis' divergent positions—based on the same legal precedents—demonstrate that they were doing more than delivering legal opinions. Instead, they were crafting public policy for Jewish society in response to Jews' social and political interactions as equals with the non-Jewish persons in whose midst they dwelled. Pledges of Jewish Allegiance prefaces its analysis of modern opinions with a discussion of the classical Jewish sources upon which they draw.

The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism
The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism

Author: Geoffrey W. Dennis

Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0738709050

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How are alchemy, astrology, magic, and numerology related to Jewish mysticism? The fabulous, miraculous, and mysterious are all explored in this comprehensive reference to Jewish esotericism-the first of its kind! From amulets and angels to the zodiac and zombies, the "Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism" features over one thousand alphabetical entries. Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis offers a much-needed culmination of Jewish occult teachings that includes significant stories, mythical figures, practices, and ritual objects. Spanning the Bible, the Midrash, Kabbalah, and other mystical branches of Judaism, this well-researched text is meant to trigger insight, spark inspiration, and illuminate one of the oldest esoteric traditions still alive today.

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.