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Author: Michael Baum
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666723037
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 122
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Book Description
The book starts by considering mankind's role in the complex ecological system of our planet and then considers the place of mankind in the cosmos while also looking inward at our own microcosm. It then explains how these scientific insights lead to the ontological search for God. The good, the bad, and the ugly sides of religious beliefs are considered and it is suggested that we are looking for "God" in the wrong place. The book then explains a justification for the author's apparent cognitive dissonance of retaining a Jewish identity whilst denying the existence of a God with the attributes of man. The author then argues that we should look for "God" in the infinitely small spaces within ourselves instead of the infinitely large spaces of the universe. His "God" would not mind whether individuals believed in "him" or not, so long as they practiced their life as the author practices his medicine: in a never-ending quest to improve the length and quality of the lives of his patients. This book should improve the reader's knowledge of the philosophers who wrote on the ontology of God. It also rediscovers that Baruch Spinoza had already reached the conclusions of modern-day thinkers more than 350 years ago.
Author: Theodore Ross
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101590165
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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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.
Author: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743267427
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
For too long, Jews have defined themselves in light of the bad things that have happened to them. And it is true that, many times in the course of history, they have been nearly decimated: when the First and Second Temples were destroyed, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, when Hitler proposed his Final Solution. Astoundingly, the Jewish people have survived catastrophe after catastrophe and remained a thriving and vibrant community. The question Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks is, quite simply: How? How, in the face of such adversity, has Judaism remained and flourished, making a mark on human history out of all proportion to its numbers? Written originally as a wedding gift to his son and daughter-in-law, A Letter in the Scroll is Rabbi Sacks's personal answer to that question, a testimony to the enduring strength of his religion. Tracing the revolutionary series of philosophical and theological ideas that Judaism created -- from covenant to sabbath to formal education -- and showing us how they remain compellingly relevant in our time, Sacks portrays Jewish identity as an honor as well as a duty. The Ba'al Shem Tov, an eighteenth-century rabbi and founder of the Hasidic movement, famously noted that the Jewish people are like a living Torah scroll, and every individual Jew is a letter within it. If a single letter is damaged or missing or incorrectly drawn, a Torah scroll is considered invalid. So too, in Judaism, each individual is considered a crucial part of the people, without whom the entire religion would suffer. Rabbi Sacks uses this metaphor to make a passionate argument in favor of affiliation and practice in our secular times, and invites us to engage in our dynamic and inclusive tradition. Never has a book more eloquently expressed the joys of being a Jew. This is the story of one man's hope for the future -- a future in which the next generation, his children and ours, will happily embrace the beauty of the world's oldest religion.
Author: Shlomo Sand
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781686149
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 113
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Book Description
Shlomo Sand was born in 1946, in a displaced person’s camp in Austria, to Jewish parents; the family later migrated to Palestine. As a young man, Sand came to question his Jewish identity, even that of a “secular Jew.” With this meditative and thoughtful mixture of essay and personal recollection, he articulates the problems at the center of modern Jewish identity. How I Stopped Being a Jew discusses the negative effects of the Israeli exploitation of the “chosen people” myth and its “holocaust industry.” Sand criticizes the fact that, in the current context, what “Jewish” means is, above all, not being Arab and reflects on the possibility of a secular, non-exclusive Israeli identity, beyond the legends of Zionism.
Author: Edmond Fleg
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781015472129
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Author: David Dvorkin
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781517373511
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 90
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Book Description
Worldwide, the number of people who call themselves Jews is about 14 million.They may all call themselves Jews, but what they mean by that name varies widely. These self−described Jews range from the most Orthodox, who have submitted themselves entirely to the imagined dictates of an imaginary god, to those who practice various forms of Judaism that are so watered down that they scarcely qualify as a religion, to those who observe no part of Judaism at all other than the celebration of a festival that they may call Hanukkah but that is in reality merely a Judaized version of Christmas.In this short book, I focus on the United States, which until recently had the largest Jewish population in the world−−just under six million self−identified Jews. Although it was recently surpassed by Israel, America arguably still has the most politically, socially, and theologically influential Jewish population in the world. According to a survey conducted in 2013 by the respected Pew Research Center, of those almost six million American Jews, 22% "describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or having no particular religion[.]" In the case of the youngest adult American Jews, the so−called Millennial generation, "32% describe themselves as having no religion and identify as Jewish on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture."This large group of Jews, which is a growing percentage of American Jewry, as the above Millennial number shows, is commonly referred to "secular Jews," although some of them prefer the label "atheist Jews." These are the people I want to discuss in this book.I contend that they are not Jews in any meaningful sense of the word. They may wish to call themselves Jews for a number of emotional reasons, but I call upon them to be intellectually honest and accept that they have ceased to be Jews. They are ex−Jews.The contrary argument is based on the idea encapsulated in the phrase "once a Jew, always a Jew." For the anti−Semite, this phrase is used as a slur. It refers to negative character traits supposedly possessed by all Jews.To Jews who think that there can be such a thing as a secular Jew, the phrase refers to some innate quality, entirely apart from religion, that distinguishes Jews from their non−Jewish neighbors.What is that innate quality? That's the crux of the issue. Let's go hunting for it.
Author: Michael Baum
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666723037
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 122
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Book Description
The book starts by considering mankind's role in the complex ecological system of our planet and then considers the place of mankind in the cosmos while also looking inward at our own microcosm. It then explains how these scientific insights lead to the ontological search for God. The good, the bad, and the ugly sides of religious beliefs are considered and it is suggested that we are looking for "God" in the wrong place. The book then explains a justification for the author's apparent cognitive dissonance of retaining a Jewish identity whilst denying the existence of a God with the attributes of man. The author then argues that we should look for "God" in the infinitely small spaces within ourselves instead of the infinitely large spaces of the universe. His "God" would not mind whether individuals believed in "him" or not, so long as they practiced their life as the author practices his medicine: in a never-ending quest to improve the length and quality of the lives of his patients. This book should improve the reader's knowledge of the philosophers who wrote on the ontology of God. It also rediscovers that Baruch Spinoza had already reached the conclusions of modern-day thinkers more than 350 years ago.
Author: Emil Gustav Hirsch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 68
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Book Description
Author: Theodore Ross
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142180394
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
“I was nine years old when my mother forced me to convert to Christianity….” When Theodore Ross moved from New York City to small-town Mississippi, his mother insisted that the family pretend to not be Jewish. He was sent to an Episcopal school, where he studied the Bible, sang in the choir, and even took communion. As an adult, he abandoned the religious charade, but wondered: Am I a Jew? In search of an answer, Ross immersed himself within communities on the fringes of Jewish identity—“Crypto-Jews,” “Lost Tribes,” the ultra-Orthodox, and more. Filled with humor, curiosity, and sincerity, Am I a Jew? explores America’s riotous religious diversity, and one man’s quest to stake a claim within it.
Author: Theodore Ross
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781101590157
Category : Crypto-Jews
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
'I was nine years old when my mother forced me to convert to Christianity'.' When Theodore Ross moved from New York City to small-town Mississippi, his mother insisted that the family pretend to not be Jewish. He was sent to an Episcopal school, where he studied the Bible, sang in the choir, and even took communion. As an adult, he abandoned the religious charade, but wondered: Am I a Jew' In search of an answer, Ross immersed himself within communities on the fringes of Jewish identity''Crypto-Jews, ' 'Lost Tribes, ' the ultra-Orthodox, and more. Filled with humor, curiosity, and sincerity, Am I a Jew' explores America's riotous religious diversity, and one man's quest to stake a claim within it.
Author: Edmond Fleg
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1473383412
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 120
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Book Description
A delightful book written from a grandfather to his unborn grandchild about life growing up as a Jewish male in an increasingly secular France. Written with warmth and humor this is a real treat of a book.
