Halacha and Contemporary Society


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Contemporary Halakhic Problems


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Rupture and Reconstruction


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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.




Food a Halachic Analysis


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Equality Lost


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This book demonstrates how to interpret Halacha in regard to women in the age of feminism, the conversion to Judaism of children in non-observant homes, and the killing of captured terrorists.




Contemporary Orthodox Judaism's Response to Modernity


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Rabbi Freundel in 31 essays summarizes Orthodox Jewish teaching on a variety of issues.




Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy


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Compellingly and authoritatively written, this biography illuminates the dilemmas that Europe’s Jews have faced over the past century. The discussion of the inner struggles of one of twentieth-century Judaism’s most enigmatic religious leaders—a figure who became a central ideologue of modern Orthodoxy despite his traditional training in a Lithuanian yeshiva—elucidates many institutional and intellectual phenomena of the Jewish world, and especially in pre-war Europe, that have so far received little attention.




The Jewish Woman in Contemporary Society


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Reflectson and Listens to Jewish Womenin The U.S. and Great Britianin all their differenct contexts, religious and wordly, and asks, what does it mean to be a Jewish woman today?




Judaism and Disability


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Judaism and Disability delves into all of the ancient texts and their explications, including the Tanach, the Hebrew acronym for the Jewish Bible, the Mishnah, considered the foundation of rabbinic literature, and the Bavli, the Babylonian Talmud. Instead of imposing a contemporary consciousness upon these archaic works, this carefully researched book presents their viewpoints as written, in an effort to understand why they expressed the sensibilities that they did.




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