Rashi’s Daughter, Secret Scholar . Set in 11th-century Troyes, France, “Rashi’s Daughter” tells the story of Joheved, eldest daughter of Salomon ben Isaac, who is known as Rashi – one of the great medieval Jewish Bible commentators. At a time when women traditionally were barred from studying Jewish texts, Rashi secretly teaches first Joheved, then her sister Miriam. By day, Joheved helps in running the household and the family winemaking business, and by night she studies Talmud with her father. As she nears marriageable age, Joheved finds her mind and spirit awakened by religious study, but she must keep her passion for learning and prayer hidden. When she becomes betrothed to Meir ben Samuel, she is forced to choose between marital happiness and being true to her love of the Talmud.Note: This JPS YA title is adapted from the author’s adult title, “Rashi’s Daughters, Book I: Joheved”.
Rashi’s Daughter, Secret Scholar
Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: One Man’s Journey to Rediscover a Jewish Spiritual Tradition . How can a person be generous to the poor when his own bank account is almost empty? Mussar, a thousand-year-old Jewish spiritual tradition, offers answers to this and many other questions regarding the distance between religious ideals and everyday realities, as Alan Morinis explains in Climbing Jacob’s Ladder. Morinis, a Canadian baby boomer who grew up to become a Rhodes Scholar, anthropologist, and film producer, discovered Mussar teachings at the low point of his midlife crisis. After he made some high-flying business deals that crashed, Morinis found reassurance in the Mussar idea that human life is holy and people can improve themselves. And Mussar, a system of ethical discipline conceived by Orthodox Jews to help them meet the demanding requirements of observant life, does seem perfectly designed for readers seeking step-by-step instruction for building or rebuilding their spiritual lives. In Climbing Jacob’s Ladder Morinis tells the story of how he used Mussar to climb back up to holy life and invites readers to come along on his ascent. See details
Gateway to Judaism: The What, How, And Why of Jewish Life . Gateway to Judaism delivers an engaging insider look at the mindset, values, and practices of contemporary traditional Judaism. Rabbi Becher demonstrates that Judaism today is anything but anachronistic rites and disjointed rituals. Rather, his book opens a portal to a vibrant lifestyle that brings joy and meaning to Jewish living. Based on years of answering thousands of challenging inquiries, Becher’s work blends elements of Jewish philosophy and law with an intensely practical explanation of how Jews actually live.
” Gateway to Judaism is a book that will inspire, inform and guide readers in exploring their Jewish heritage. The style is user-friendly and the profound philosophical and ethical teachings of Judaism are clearly presented in an up-to-date, relevant manner. To the question ‘What is Judaism all about?’ this book provides a thoroughly researched, comprehensive and very accessible response .” — Joe Lieberman U.S. Senator
“In today’s challenging world, Jews must understand the how’s and why’s of our identity. This book gives cogent answers. I recommend it highly.” — Natan Sharansky Former Israeli Member of Knesset and Minister Author of Fear No Evil and The Case for Democracy
” Gateway to Judaism is a remarkably thorough and meaningful guide to the Jewish calendar, life cycle and faith. This volume will provide renewed excitement and significance to observances throughout the year .” — Malcolm Hoenlein Executive Vice Chairman, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
” This is what we ’ve been waiting for! Rabbi Becher ’s masterpiece is thoroughly engaging and comprehensive in scope. His presentation and advocacy of a vibrant and pertinent Judaism will capture your imagination and enhance commitment to the Jewish way of life .” — Dr. Florence Neumann Bronfman Center for Jewish Life , 92nd Street Y, New York
“This is a book that I would not hesitate to give to anyone in the U.S. Army as an insightful, inspiring and entertaining guide to Judaism.” — Colonel Ira Kronenberg Chaplain, U.S. Army Reserve
Ecstatic Kabbalah
Ecstatic Kabbalah . Kabbalah—the secret is out! From Madonna’s controversial conversion to the Dalai Lama’s acknowledgment and support, this mystical tradition is gaining unprecedented recognition. But how do we put this powerful and esoteric worldview into practice? With The Ecstatic Kabbalah, Rabbi David Cooper— author of God Is a Verb (100,000 copies sold, Riverhead, 1958), and a renowned leader of the Jewish meditation movement—provides practical exercises on the path toward “mending the soul,” the fundamental Jewish experience that brings union with the Divine. With meditation techniques for both beginning and advanced practitioners, The Ecstatic Kabbalah guides listeners into awareness of the “presence of light” with experiential practices for touching the four worlds of mystical Judaism: • Physical—breath work and mind-body harmonization • Emotional—tone the divine names as an expression of devotion • Mental—learn the histories of these techniques • Spiritual—stabilize your connection with divine presence Finally, the long-sequestered doors of Kabbalah are open to all listeners, as they are invited to dwell in the embrace of the Divine with The Ecstatic Kabbalah’s practices of daily renewal. See details
Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism . A spiritual crisis sent Orthodox rabbi Gershon Winkler to remote regions of the Southwest, where he studied with Native American healers. From them he began to recover the long-lost wisdom of what he calls “Aboriginal Judaism”: the religion’s tribal roots. This book tracks his personal journey and draws from a dazzling mix of sources to detail the surprising connections between two seemingly unrelated religions.
“Jewish shamanism? Jewish sorcery? Jewish magical healing? What would Aunty Fanny say? But it’s all here in Magic of the Ordinary, in which Rabbi Gershon Winkler with wit and wisdom leads us to rediscover the more paganistic and pantheistic mysteries underlying the ancient Hebrew tradition. I highly recommend this book.”
—Andrew Weil, M.D., author of Spontaneous Healing and Eating Well for Optimum Health
“Gershon Winkler’s brilliance shines a light on the buried shamanic practices of Judaism. Magic of the Ordinary is a treasure—I loved it and was deeply inspired by it.”
—Sandra Ingerman, author of Soul Retrieval and Medicine for the Earth See details
Honey from the Rock: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism . Lawrence Kushner describes Honey from the Rock as “an attempt to synthesize some of the world view of classical Jewish mysticism, or Kabbala, with the ordinary life experience of its author.” In the introduction, Kushner also explains that the book “works best, not as a primer on Kabbalah, nor as a glimpse into the private places of a liberal Rabbi, but as a means of enticing the reader to allow a Kabbalistic world view to inform his or her everyday life.” After providing that explanation of his project, Kushner’s book takes flight. He begins: “There is a place as far from here as breathing out is from breathing in. For the word is very near you…. Where life forever holds gentle sway over death, where people are human with the same grace that a willow is a willow, where the struggle and the yearning between male and female is at last resolved. It is, to begin with, all inside us.” There are no false words in this book, no straining logic, no lazy vagueness, no awkward didacticism. Honey from the Rock walks through 10 different “gates” to Jewish mysticism, from the “Wilderness” of preparation for prayer to the “Higher Worlds” of which some are granted glimpses. Each chapter will help clarify your vision a little more and teach you to become a little more present. Each one will also make you smile. See details
Man Is Not Alone
Man Is Not Alone is a profound, beautifully written examination of the ingredients of piety: how man senses God’s presence, explores it, accepts it, and builds life upon it. Abraham Joshua Heschel’s philosophy of religion is not a philosophy of doctrine or the interpretation of a dogma. He erects his carefully built structure of thought upon foundations which are universally valid but almost generally ignored. It was Man Is Not Alone which led Reinhold Niebuhr accurately to predict that Heschel would “become a commanding and authoritative voice not only in the Jewish community but in the religious life of America.” With its companion volume, God in Search of Man, it is revered as a classic of modern theology. See details
An Autobiography
An Autobiography . Brilliant and bedraggled, the picaresque Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon was one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century. Now the definitive English version of Maimon’s remarkable Autobiography, the 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray, is available for the first time in paperback, enhanced with a new introduction by Jewish studies scholar Michael Shapiro.
Wry and spirited, shrewd and unrepentant, Maimon alternated between nomadic destitution and intellectual swordplay among the Jewish elite of Berlin. The son of a petty merchant in Polish Lithuania, Maimon was a child Talmud prodigy who became increasingly antagonistic toward the Jewish establishment and receptive toward the secular philosophies of Spinoza, Hume, Leibnitz, and Kant.
A perpetual outsider, Maimon observed with an equally sharp eye the excesses of his time and the vicissitudes of his own life. Parallel to his own development as a thinker in the company of Moses Mendelssohn and others, Maimon conveys the physically wretched but spiritually vibrant Polish ghetto, the beginnings of Hasidism (which he denounces as antirationalist), and the world of the wealthy Berlin Jewry who enthusiastically embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Combining philosophical discourse with personal anecdotes that shift abruptly from the tragic to the hilarious and back, Maimon’s Autobiography indelibly portrays one man’s devotion to truth on his own terms regardless of the cost to himself or others. See details
Simple Words: Thinking About What Really Matters in Life . Friends, family, love, God, death, faith. These, and others, are deceptively simple words that we use all the time. Do we know what we mean when we use these important words? Do we know what other people mean when they use them? We seldom pause to reflect on these words or to make sure that we understand them, yet we continue to use them, so we misunderstand others and they misunderstand us.
Adin Steinsaltz examines some of the meanings of these powerful words. He transforms each word into a gem, turning it this way, then that, examining it to see more clearly its brilliant facets and what lies beyond them. He challenges us to think deeply about the connotations of these commonplace words, and in so doing, to see that there may be other ways of looking at things that we have taken for granted in our lives. Simple Words is a thought-provoking — and surprising — adventure that may change the way we think, speak, and act. See details
The Complete Artscroll Siddur
The Complete Artscroll Siddur . A Prayer book for our times, it speaks to today’s Jew, relating the thoughts and words of our heritage to the mind and heart of modern, sophisticated Jews.
Includes: The complete Hebrew text completely reset in crisp, modern type Scriptural sources Clear, concise instructions Hebrew subheads New, highly readable English translation of the entire prayer services A clear, inspirational commentary on every prayer, and an introductory overview providing perspective and insight Attractive, clear page layouts Lightweight, easy-to-handle opaque paper Special sections explaining in detail the laws of the prayer service and all special customs and observances Prayer services that are easy for everyone to follow. See details
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