Typically Jewish

Typically Jewish PDF Author: Nancy Kalikow Maxwell
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827617925
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Is laughter essential to Jewish identity? Do Jews possess special radar for recognizing members of the tribe? Since Jews live longer and make love more often, why don't more people join the tribe? "More deli than deity" writer Nancy Kalikow Maxwell poses many such questions in eight chapters--"Worrying," "Kvelling," "Dying," "Noshing," "Laughing," "Detecting," "Dwelling," and "Joining"--exploring what it means to be "typically Jewish." While unearthing answers from rabbis, researchers, and her assembled Jury on Jewishness (Jewish friends she roped into conversation), she--and we--make a variety of discoveries. For example: Jews worry about continuity, even though Rabbi Mordechai of Lechovitz prohibited even that: "All worrying is forbidden, except to worry that one is worried." Kvell-worthy fact: About 75 percent of American Jews give to charity versus 63 percent of Americans as a whole. Since reciting Kaddish brought secular Jews to synagogue, the rabbis, aware of their captive audience, moved the prayer to the end of the service. Who's Jewish? About a quarter of Nobel Prize winners, an estimated 80 percent of comedians at one point, and the winner of Nazi Germany's Most Perfect Aryan Child Contest. Readers will enjoy learning about how Jews feel, think, act, love, and live. They'll also schmooze as they use the book's "Typically Jewish, Atypically Fun" discussion guide.

Typically Jewish

Typically Jewish PDF Author: Nancy Kalikow Maxwell
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827617925
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
Is laughter essential to Jewish identity? Do Jews possess special radar for recognizing members of the tribe? Since Jews live longer and make love more often, why don't more people join the tribe? "More deli than deity" writer Nancy Kalikow Maxwell poses many such questions in eight chapters--"Worrying," "Kvelling," "Dying," "Noshing," "Laughing," "Detecting," "Dwelling," and "Joining"--exploring what it means to be "typically Jewish." While unearthing answers from rabbis, researchers, and her assembled Jury on Jewishness (Jewish friends she roped into conversation), she--and we--make a variety of discoveries. For example: Jews worry about continuity, even though Rabbi Mordechai of Lechovitz prohibited even that: "All worrying is forbidden, except to worry that one is worried." Kvell-worthy fact: About 75 percent of American Jews give to charity versus 63 percent of Americans as a whole. Since reciting Kaddish brought secular Jews to synagogue, the rabbis, aware of their captive audience, moved the prayer to the end of the service. Who's Jewish? About a quarter of Nobel Prize winners, an estimated 80 percent of comedians at one point, and the winner of Nazi Germany's Most Perfect Aryan Child Contest. Readers will enjoy learning about how Jews feel, think, act, love, and live. They'll also schmooze as they use the book's "Typically Jewish, Atypically Fun" discussion guide.

Letters to Josep

Letters to Josep PDF Author: Levy Daniella
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789659254002
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book is a collection of letters from a religious Jew in Israel to a Christian friend in Barcelona on life as an Orthodox Jew. Equal parts lighthearted and insightful, it's a thorough and entertaining introduction to the basic concepts of Judaism.

Feeling Jewish

Feeling Jewish PDF Author: Devorah Baum
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300231342
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
In this sparkling debut, a young critic offers an original, passionate, and erudite account of what it means to feel Jewish—even when you’re not. Self-hatred. Guilt. Resentment. Paranoia. Hysteria. Overbearing Mother-Love. In this witty, insightful, and poignant book, Devorah Baum delves into fiction, film, memoir, and psychoanalysis to present a dazzlingly original exploration of a series of feelings famously associated with modern Jews. Reflecting on why Jews have so often been depicted, both by others and by themselves, as prone to “negative” feelings, she queries how negative these feelings really are. And as the pace of globalization leaves countless people feeling more marginalized, uprooted, and existentially threatened, she argues that such “Jewish” feelings are becoming increasingly common to us all. Ranging from Franz Kafka to Philip Roth, Sarah Bernhardt to Woody Allen, Anne Frank to Nathan Englander, Feeling Jewish bridges the usual fault lines between left and right, insider and outsider, Jew and Gentile, and even Semite and anti-Semite, to offer an indispensable guide for our divisive times.

Jewish Matters

Jewish Matters PDF Author:
Publisher: Feldheim Publishers
ISBN: 9781568711881
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
In this lightweight, Pocketsize book, twenty-three Jewish leaders, thinkers, and educators offer their insights and knowledge on topics as varied as relationships, prayer, mysticism and happiness. These are twenty-three essays worth reading--because being Jewish matters.

The Chosen Few

The Chosen Few PDF Author: Maristella Botticini
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691144877
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein show that, contrary to previous explanations, this transformation was driven not by anti-Jewish persecution and legal restrictions, but rather by changes within Judaism itself after 70 CE--most importantly, the rise of a new norm that required every Jewish male to read and study the Torah and to send his sons to school. Over the next six centuries, those Jews who found the norms of Judaism too costly to obey converted to other religions, making world Jewry shrink. Later, when urbanization and commercial expansion in the newly established Muslim Caliphates increased the demand for occupations in which literacy was an advantage, the Jews found themselves literate in a world of almost universal illiteracy. From then forward, almost all Jews entered crafts and trade, and many of them began moving in search of business opportunities, creating a worldwide Diaspora in the process.

Becoming Jewish

Becoming Jewish PDF Author: Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1796018945
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Becoming Jewish is an engaging, accessible, all-inclusive step-by-step guide to converting to Judaism that introduces readers to finding life's meaning through the evolving religious civilization that is Judaism. Written with humor and heart, readers learn the ins and outs of becoming Jewish and discover the wonder that is the language, literature, history, rituals, food, music, and culture of contemporary Jewish life.

What Does a Jew Look Like?

What Does a Jew Look Like? PDF Author: Keith Kahn-Harris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910170878
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Roads Taken

Roads Taken PDF Author: Hasia R. Diner
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300210191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Between the late 1700s and the 1920s, nearly one-third of the world’s Jews emigrated to new lands. Crossing borders and often oceans, they followed paths paved by intrepid peddlers who preceded them. This book is the first to tell the remarkable story of the Jewish men who put packs on their backs and traveled forth, house to house, farm to farm, mining camp to mining camp, to sell their goods to peoples across the world. Persistent and resourceful, these peddlers propelled a mass migration of Jewish families out of central and eastern Europe, north Africa, and the Ottoman Empire to destinations as far-flung as the United States, Great Britain, South Africa, and Latin America. Hasia Diner tells the story of millions of discontented young Jewish men who sought opportunity abroad, leaving parents, wives, and sweethearts behind. Wherever they went, they learned unfamiliar languages and customs, endured loneliness, battled the elements, and proffered goods from the metropolis to people of the hinterlands. In the Irish Midlands, the Adirondacks of New York, the mining camps of New South Wales, and so many other places, these traveling men brought change—to themselves and the families who later followed, to the women whose homes and communities they entered, and ultimately to the geography of Jewish history.

How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household

How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household PDF Author: Blu Greenberg
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439147604
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Filled with practical advice as well as history, Blu Greenberg's book is a comprehensive guide to the joys and complexities of running a modern Jewish home. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household is a modern, comprehensive guide covering virtually every aspect of Jewish home life. It provides practical advice on how to manage a Jewish home in the traditional way and offers fascinating accounts of the history behind the tradition. In a warm, personal style, Blu Greenberg shows that, contrary to popular belief, the home, and not the synagogue, is the most important institution in Jewish life. Divided into three large sections—"The Jewish Way," "Special Stages of Life," and "Celebration and Remembering"—this book educates the uninitiated and reminds the already observant Jew of how Judaism approaches daily life. Topics include prayer, dress, holidays, food preparation, marriage, birth, death, parenthood, and many others. This description of the modern-yet-traditional Jewish household will earn special regard among the many American Jews who are re-exploring their ties to Jewish tradition. Such Jews will find this book a flexible guide that provides a knowledge of the requirements of traditional Judaism without advocating immediate and complete compliance. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household will also appeal to observant Jews, providing them with helpful tips on how to manage their homes and special insights into the most minute details and procedures in a traditional household. Herself a traditional Jew, Blu Greenberg is nevertheless quite sympathetic to feminist views on the role of women in Jewish observance. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household therefore speaks intimately to women who are struggling to reconcile their identities as modern women with their commitments to traditional Judaism.

Virtually Jewish

Virtually Jewish PDF Author: Ruth Ellen Gruber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520213637
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
The author explores the phenomenon of the Jewish culture in Europe. In this book she askes in what way do non-Jews embrace and enact Jewish culture and for what reasons.