by Mose ben Baru Almosnino (2004)
"Moses ben Baruch Almosnino was born in Salonika c. 1518 to an important family from Huesca exiled by the order of explusion in 1492, his death occurred sometime after 1580. A rabbi and leader of the Salonika community, Almosnino was twice its emissary to the sultan, and as renowned preacher and scholar, received support from the Duke of Naxos, Yosef ha-Nasi, and his mother, Dona Gracia Mendes." "Addressed to his nephew, Moshe Garcon, Almosnino divides his Regimiento de la vida (Salonika, 1564) into three parts, each prescribing behaviors, activities, and attitudes proper to a given stage in an individual's physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth, and each correlating with what Almosnino terms one of the three worlds or "times of the soul." In content and plan, the Regimiento is a rabbinic interpretation fo Aristotle's Ethics, and relies on other ethical, medical, philosophical, and religious authorities, especially Avicenna's Canon, biblical and rabbinical writings, and Maimonides' Law of Character Traits, Eight Chapters, and Guide. The edition here also includes Almosnino's treatise on dreams, Tratado de los suenyos, which was originally bound with the Regimiento." "The book's chief audience is Hispanists, but scholars of Jewish studies will also find it interesting because it embodies a unique record of the ethical and intellectual panorama of first generation Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire."--BOOK JACKET.
Steven L. Jacobs
This book addresses the faith of a member of the "Second Generation" - the offspring of the original survivors of the Shoah. It is a re-examination of those categories of faith central to the Jewish Religious Experience in light of the Shoah: God, Covenant, Prayer, Halakhah and Mitzvot, Life-Cycle, Festival Cycle, Israel and Zionism, and Christianity from the perspective of a child of a survivor.
Daniel Gordis
At a time when Americans are turning to alternative forms of spiritual fulfillment, Rabbi Daniel Gordis finds what many are looking for in the context of a several-thousand-year-old religion. God Was Not in the Fire argues that Jewish life does merit serious attention. It is Judaism's insistence on asking life's most important questions (which helps us define precisely who and what we are) that enables it to play an enriching role in our lives. Because Judaism maintains that we feel God's presence through the experiences of daily life, the author takes us through the traditions of ritual, prayer, study, mitzvah, and ethics. Gordis illustrates that by developing a relationship with God through Judaism, one can achieve the heightened sense of self essential for finding connectedness, continuity, and, ultimately, transcendence and spirituality. It is not, Gordis argues, through blind faith that Jews come to understand the world and their place in it, but through "spiritual discipline" and a ceaseless round of investigations that a sense of belonging is attained. . A why-to rather than a how-to, God Was Not in the Fire suggests that the religion of one's youth can deepen in adult life. It can give us, if we search to understand it, the most powerful way we know of expressing our humanity.
Noach Dzmura
While the Jewish mainstream still argues about homosexuality, many transgender and gender-variant people sit in the congregation, marry under the chuppah, and create Jewish families. Balancing on the Mechitza gives voice to this movement in Jewish culture.
Leora Batnitzky
"Leora Batnitzky argues that Rosenzweig's redirection of German-Jewish ethical monotheism anticipates and challenges contemporary trends in religious studies, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, theology, and biblical studies." "Drawing on Rosenzweig's view that Judaism's ban on idolatry is the crucial intellectual and spiritual resource available to respond to the social implications of human finitude, Batnitzky interrogates idolatry as a modern possibility."--BOOK JACKET.