Returning to Tradition


Book Description

An outstanding book, original, well written, and incisive. It will become the point of departure for all other research in the area.-William B. Helmreich, author of The World of the Yeshiva Danzger's volume treats a subject that is both fascinating and complex. Especially noteworthy is his exploration of an inclusionary strain in Orthodox Jewish life that is often overlooked by sociologists and other contemporary observers.-Norman Lamm, Yeshiva University The issues raised in this book are critical for our times.-Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Founding Rabbi, Lincoln Square Synagogue In a clear and lucid style, he examines the reasons for return, the schools established by Orthodox Judaism to deal with this return, and the values and conflicts thus engendered.-Library Journal If one were to select the most important of the books on baalei teshuvah, 'returnees to Judaism, ' the choice would clearly be Danzger's Returning to Tradition. This book goes far beyond the work of Janet Aviad and others. It offers the reader a clear, unified, and comprehensive approach to understanding the world of the baal teshuvah.It is based on many years of careful research into that community, both in Israel and in the United States. The author is intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the group he has chosen to study. He knows where they hang out, what their problems are, and the diversity of backgrounds from which they originate...First rate.-William B. Helmreich, American Jewish Histor




The Return to Judaism


Book Description

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..




Rav Kook


Book Description

DIV The life and thought of a forceful figure in Israel’s religious and political life /div




Return of the Remnant


Book Description

Messianic Judaism is a modern movement with an ancient past. Its resurgence today may hold the key to world redemption. Dr. Michael Schiffman documents the roots of the modern Messianic Jewish movement and explains how Messianic Jews are uniquely positioned by God in their relationship to both the church and the Jewish community to be a bridge of understanding in our day.




All Who Go Do Not Return


Book Description

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.




Ein Yaakov


Book Description

This is the only complete English translation of the classic Jewish text known as Ein Yaakov. Ein Yaakov is a collection of all the agaddah (the non-legal) material of the Talmud, compiled by Rabbi Yaakov ibn Chaviv, the fifteenth century talmudist. Scattered among the more than 2,700 pages of the Talmud, aggadah focuses on the ethical and inspirational aspects of the Torah way of life. Through a wealth of homilies, anecdotes, allegories, pithy sayings, and interpretations of biblical verses, it has been said that the aggadah brings you closer to God and his Torah.




Bewilderments


Book Description

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.




Turbulent Souls:


Book Description

The son of Catholic converts from Judaism chronicles his own return to the Jewish faith after being raised as an altar boy and a devout Christian. Reprint.




Return of the Jew


Book Description

"This book is the result of research carried out over a period of ten years. Most of the fieldwork was performed as part of my doctoral program at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem"--Page 9.




Modern Hebrew Literature


Book Description

"Mendele Mocher Sforim. Shem and Japheth on the train.--Peretz, Y. L. Scenes from Limbo.--Feierberg, M. Z. In the evening.--Ahad Ha-Am. Imitation and assimilation.--Bialik, H. N. The short Friday. Revealment and concealment in language.--Brenner, Y. H. The way out.--Barash, A. At heaven's gate.--Agnon, S. Y. Agunot. The lady and the peddler. At the outset of the day. Forevermore.--Hazaz, H. Rahamim. The sermon.--Yizhar, S. The prisoner.--Amichai, Y. The times my father died.--Oz, A. Before his time.--Yehoshua, A. B. Facing the forests."