The Contemporary Eruv


Book Description

A comprehensive review of the complex laws of constructing and using an eruv, especially as are applicable to today's neighborhoods. Compiled from many quoted Talmudic and rabbinic sources. Presented in a clear, annotated format. A valuable book for both layman and scholar.




Walking the Line


Book Description

Learning and mastering Hilchot Eruvin is a daunting challenge. Walking the Line: Hilchot Eruvin from the Sources to the Streets sets forth a practical path to conquer this challenge by bringing Hilchot Eruvin to life. The product of over thirty years of experience helping communities design and maintain their eruvin, Rabbi Chaim Jachter demonstrates how the concepts of Hilchot Eruvin are applied in the field. This work is an indispensable guide for anyone interested in eruvin, whether they are learning the masechet, the Halachah, or are simply interested in helping their community create, expand, or maintain its eruv. This volume discusses: The Laws of Creating an Eruv Defining the Four Domains A List of Major Cities Highways, Railroads, & Overpasses Constructing the Tzurot Hapetach The Maximum Size of an Eruv Islands and Waterfronts Introduction to Karpeif, Eruv Chatzeirot, & Sechirat Reshut Karpeif and Bodies of Water Eruv Chatzeirot Considerations Demistifying Atu Rabim Eruvin Infrastructure A Lechi on Every Utility Pole? A Tree as a Lechi Lechi Strength Gud Achit Mechitzta and Lavud A Defense of the "Top-side" Wire The Use of Tachuv in Contemporary Community Eruvin Pitcha B'keren Zavit Case Studies Sagging Wire in the Yeshiva University Eruv Mei'achorei Hakotel in Long Island The Boardwalk Railing in Long Branch, New Jersey The Stringency of the Tevu'ot Shor & the Yale New Haven Eruv The 'All-American' Eruv in Champaign-Urbana The Lechi Under the Cabin Eaves at Camp Ramah Darom The Delatot of Canarsie, London, Mattersdorf, & Oakland Diversity in Eruvin Sephardic Standards for Defining a Reshut Harabim Eruv Standards According to Sephardic Measurements Chabad and Community Eruvin The Modi'in Eruv & Eruvin Standards in the Jewish State The Machmir & the Meikel Making Allowances for Each Other Fighting Price Gouging by Adopting a Lenient Opinion Eruv Maintenance A Community Model for Eruvin Maintenance in Sharon, MA Managing an Eruv Emergency in Cambridge, MA The Friday Afternoon the Rabbi Discovered the Eruv Was Broken Eruv Through the Storm The Proper Way to Challenge Authority During Eruv Inspection Eruv Inspections for Yom Tov Guidelines for Eruvin Maintenance Standards for Competent Inspection of Community Eruvin




Contemporary Halakhic Problems


Book Description




Rupture and Reconstruction


Book Description

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.




Space and Place in Jewish Studies


Book Description

Scholars in the humanities have become increasingly interested in questions of how space is produced and perceived—and they have found that this consideration of human geography greatly enriches our understanding of cultural history. This “spatial turn” equally has the potential to revolutionize Jewish Studies, complicating familiar notions of Jews as “people of the Book,” displaced persons with only a common religious tradition and history to unite them. Space and Place in Jewish Studies embraces these exciting critical developments by investigating what “space” has meant within Jewish culture and tradition—and how notions of “Jewish space,” diaspora, and home continue to resonate within contemporary discourse, bringing space to the foreground as a practical and analytical category. Barbara Mann takes us on a journey from medieval Levantine trade routes to the Eastern European shtetl to the streets of contemporary New York, introducing readers to the variety of ways in which Jews have historically formed communities and created a sense of place for themselves. Combining cutting-edge theory with rabbinics, anthropology, and literary analysis, Mann offers a fresh take on the Jewish experience.




Am I a Jew?


Book Description

What makes someone Jewish? Theodore Ross was nine years old when he moved with his mother from New York City to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Once there, his mother decided, for both personal and spiritual reasons, to have her family pretend not to be Jewish. He went to an Episcopal school, where he studied the New Testament, sang in the choir, and even took Communion. Later, as an adult, he wondered: Am I still Jewish? Seeking an answer, Ross traveled around the country and to Israel, visiting a wide variety of Jewish communities. From “Crypto-Jews” in New Mexico and secluded ultra-devout Orthodox towns in upstate New York to a rare Classical Reform congregation in Kansas City, Ross tries to understand himself by experiencing the diversity of Judaism. Quirky and self-aware, introspective and impassioned, Am I a Jew? is a story about the universal struggle to define a relationship (or lack thereof) with religion.




Image, Action, and Idea in Contemporary Jewish Art


Book Description

Contemporary Jewish art is a growing field that includes traditional as well as new creative practices, yet criticism of it is almost exclusively reliant on the Second Commandment’s prohibition of graven images. Arguing that this disregards the corpus of Jewish thought and a century of criticism and interpretation, Ben Schachter advocates instead a new approach focused on action and process. Departing from the traditional interpretation of the Second Commandment, Schachter addresses abstraction, conceptual art, performance art, and other styles that do not rely on imagery for meaning. He examines Jewish art through the concept of melachot—work-like “creative activities” as defined by the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides. Showing the similarity between art and melachot in the active processes of contemporary Jewish artists such as Ruth Weisberg, Allan Wexler, Archie Rand, and Nechama Golan, he explores the relationship between these artists’ methods and Judaism’s demanding attention to procedure. A compellingly written challenge to traditionalism, Image, Action, and Idea in Contemporary Jewish Art makes a well-argued case for artistic production, interpretation, and criticism that revels in the dual foundation of Judaism and art history.




American Sanctuary


Book Description

This volume examines a diverse set of spaces and buildings seen through the lens of popular practice and belief to shed light on the complexities of sacred space in America. Contributors explore how dedication sermons document shifting understandings of the meetinghouse in early 19th-century Connecticut; the changes in evangelical church architecture during the same century and what that tells us about evangelical religious life; the impact of contemporary issues on Catholic church architecture; the impact of globalization on the construction of traditional sacred spaces; the urban practice of Jewish space; nature worship and Central Park in New York; the mezuzah and domestic sacred space; and, finally, the spiritual aspects of African American yard art.




Visualizing Jews Through the Ages


Book Description

This volume explores literary and material representations of Jews, Jewishness and Judaism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. Gathering leading scholars from within the field of Jewish Studies, it investigates how the debates surrounding literary and material images within Judaism and in Jewish life are part of an on-going strategy of image management - the urge to shape, direct, authorize and contain Jewish literary and material images and encounters with those images - a strategy both consciously and unconsciously undertaken within multifarious arenas of Jewish life from early modern German lands to late twentieth-century North London, late Antique Byzantium to the curation of contemporary Holocaust exhibitions.




The Annotated Passover Haggadah


Book Description

The Annotated Passover Haggadah breaks new ground via the world's most renowned Jewish scholars in providing important analytical, philosophical, and theological perspectives on the seminal event of Jewish consciousness.