Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality

Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality PDF Author: Ellen M. Umansky
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584657309
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
The only comprehensive volume of Jewish women's spiritual writing from the sixteenth century to the present

Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality

Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality PDF Author: Ellen M. Umansky
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584657309
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
The only comprehensive volume of Jewish women's spiritual writing from the sixteenth century to the present

FOUR CENTURIES OF JEWISH WOMEN'S SPIRITUALITY.

FOUR CENTURIES OF JEWISH WOMEN'S SPIRITUALITY. PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality

Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality PDF Author: Ellen M. Umansky
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780756784355
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Umansky and Ashton have woven together a multiplicity of international voices, revealing the great variety of spiritual paths that modern Jewish women have taken. Contributors include Rebecca Gratz, Emma Lazarus, Amy Eilberg, Marcia Falk, Blu Greenberg, Kadya Molodowsky, and Judith Plaskow, among others.

Rebecca Gratz

Rebecca Gratz PDF Author: Dianne Ashton
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814326664
Category : Jewish religious education of children
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This is the first in-depth biography of Rebecca Gratz (1781-1869), the foremost American Jewish woman of the nineteenth century. Perhaps the best-known member of the prominent Gratz family of Philadelphia, she was a fervent patriot, a profoundly religious woman, and a widely known activist for poor women. She devoted her life to confronting and resolving the personal challenges she faced as a Jew and as a female member of a prosperous family. In using hundreds of Gratz's own letters in her research, Dianne Ashton reveals Gratz's own blend of Jewish and American values and explores the significance of her work. Informed by her American and Jewish ideas, values, and attitudes, Gratz created and managed a variety of municipal and Jewish institutions for charity and education, including America's first independent Jewish women's charitable society, the first Jewish Sunday school, and the first American Jewish foster home. Through her commitment to establishing charitable resources for women, promoting Judaism in a Christian society, and advancing women's roles in Jewish life, Gratz shaped a Jewish arm of what has been called America's largely Protestant "benevolent empire." Influenced by the religious and political transformations taking place nationally and locally, Gratz matured into a social visionary whose dreams for American Jewish life far surpassed the realities she saw around her. She believed that Judaism was advanced by the founding of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society and the Hebrew Sunday School because they offered religious education to thousands of children and leadership opportunities to Jewish women. Gratz's organizations worked with an inclusive definition of Jewishness that encompassed all Philadelphia Jews at a time when differences in national origin, worship style, and religious philosophy divided them. Legend has it that Gratz was the prototype for the heroine Rebecca of York in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, the Jewish woman who refused to wed the Christian hero of the tale out of loyalty to her faith and father. That legend has draped Gratz's life in sentimentality and has blurred our vision of her. Rebecca Gratz is the first book to examine Gratz's life, her legend, and our memory.

Voices of the Matriarchs

Voices of the Matriarchs PDF Author: Chava Weissler
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807036174
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for 1998 With Voices of the Matriarchs, Chava Weissler restores balance to our knowledge of Judaism by providing the first look at the Yiddish prayers women created during centuries of exclusion from men's observance. In Weissler's hands, these prayers (called thkines) open a new window into early modern European Jewish women's lives, beliefs, devotion, and relationships with God.

The Coming of Lilith

The Coming of Lilith PDF Author: Judith Plaskow
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807036235
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This first collection of Judith Plaskow's essays and short writings traces her scholarly and personal journey from her early days as a graduate student through her pioneering contributions to both feminist theology and Jewish feminism to her recent work in sexual ethics. Accessibly organized into four sections, the collection begins with several of Plaskow's foundational essays on feminist theology, including one previously unavailable in English. Section II addresses her nuanced understanding of oppression and includes her important work on anti-Judaism in Christian feminism. Section III contains a variety of short and highly readable pieces that make clear Plaskow's central role in the creation of Jewish feminism, including the essential "Beyond Egalitarianism." Finally, section IV presents her writings on the significance of sexual ethics to the larger project of transforming Judaism. Intelligently edited with the help of Rabbi Donna Berman, and including pieces never before published, The Coming of Lilith is indispensable for religious studies students, fans of Plaskow's work, and those pursuing a Jewish education.

Hanukkah in America

Hanukkah in America PDF Author: Dianne Ashton
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479858951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Explores the ways American Jews have reshaped Hanukkah traditions across the country In New Orleans, Hanukkah means decorating your door with a menorah made of hominy grits. Latkes in Texas are seasoned with cilantro and cayenne pepper. Children in Cincinnati sing Hanukkah songs and eat oranges and ice cream. While each tradition springs from its own unique set of cultural references, what ties them together is that they all celebrate a holiday that is different in America than it is any place else. For the past two hundred years, American Jews have been transforming the ancient holiday of Hanukkah from a simple occasion into something grand. Each year, as they retell its story and enact its customs, they bring their ever-changing perspectives and desires to its celebration. Providing an attractive alternative to the Christian dominated December, rabbis and lay people alike have addressed contemporary hopes by fashioning an authentically Jewish festival that blossomed in their American world. The ways in which Hanukkah was reshaped by American Jews reveals the changing goals and values that emerged among different contingents each December as they confronted the reality of living as a religious minority in the United States. Bringing together clergy and laity, artists and businessmen, teachers, parents, and children, Hanukkah has been a dynamic force for both stability and change in American Jewish life. The holiday’s distinctive transformation from a minor festival to a major occasion that looms large in the American Jewish psyche is a marker of American Jewish life. Drawing on a varied archive of songs, plays, liturgy, sermons, and a range of illustrative material, as well as developing portraits of various communities, congregations, and rabbis, Hanukkah in America reveals how an almost forgotten festival became the most visible of American Jewish holidays.

The Merit of Our Mothers

The Merit of Our Mothers PDF Author: Tracy G Klirs
Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press
ISBN: 0878201513
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
For many centuries Jewish prayer was so dominated by its male creators and male readers that the Jewish woman's role in prayer seems to have been all but obliterated. Yet Jewish women have always prayed and, before prayer became standardized into a formal liturgy, Israelite women offered up spontaneous petitions and hymns to God as freely as did men. While they may not have been able to help constitute a minyan, and while many did not know Hebrew or Aramaic, women produced and used material for prayer at home. The Yiddish tkhines had its origin in a form of supplicatory prayer in the Talmud, whose original intent was to allow for individual private devotion during the standard prayer service. The private Yiddish prayers and devotions for Jewish women continued to use this term. They emerged in the world of premodern Ashkenazic Jewry and represent one of the richest and least-known forms of Jewish religious literature. Because modern sensibility seemed to reject them, and because Yiddish was quickly forgotten by second and third generation Jews in the West, they have been sadly neglected. Although a few have been individually translated into English, this is the first bilingual anthology ever to appear. The prayers in this volume are characterized by a highly personal and intimate style and mark occasions in the religious calendar, such as the Tkhine for the Blessing of the New Moon, as well as occasions in the life of a woman, such as the Tkhine for a Mother who Leads Her Child to Kheyder for the First Time. The tkhines are of great appeal and value to those who wish to hear the voices of Jewish women in history, study Yiddish literature and culture, or create new expressions of spirituality.

Unsettled

Unsettled PDF Author: Melvin Konner
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142196320
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
Far reaching, intellectually rich, and passionately written, Unsettled takes the whole history of Western civilization as its canvas and places onto it the Jewish people and faith. With historical insight and vivid storytelling, renowned anthropologist Melvin Konner charts how the Jews endured largely hostile (but at times accepting) cultures to shape the world around them and make their mark throughout history—from the pastoral tribes of the Bronze Age to enslavement in the Roman Empire, from the darkness of the Holocaust to the creation of Israel and the flourishing of Jews in America. With fresh interpretations of the antecedents of today's pressing conflicts, Unsettled is a work whose modern-day reverberations could not be more relevant or timely.

The Blackwell Companion to Judaism

The Blackwell Companion to Judaism PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470758007
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
This Companion explores the history, doctrines, divisions, and contemporary condition of Judaism. Surveys those issues most relevant to Judaic life today: ethics, feminism, politics, and constructive theology Explores the definition of Judaism and its formative history Makes sense of the diverse data of an ancient and enduring faith