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Brings popular cinema and Jewish religious texts into a meaningful dialogue. Movies and Midrash uses cinema as a springboard to discuss central Jewish texts and matters of belief. A number of books have drawn on films to explicate Christian theology and belief, but Wendy I. Zierler is the first to do so from a Jewish perspective, exploring what Jewish tradition, text, and theology have to say about the lessons and themes arising from influential and compelling films. The book uses the method of inverted midrash: while classical rabbinical midrash begins with exegesis of a verse and then introduces a mashal (parable) as a means of further explication, Zierler turns that process around, be...
Hava Shapiro is among the nearly forgotten Jewish women writers who sought acceptance in Jewish literary circles of the last century. Born in Slavuta (modern-day Ukraine) in 1878, she published works of fiction, memoir, literary criticism, and journalism, including a volume of short fiction and a scholarly monograph on the Czech leader Masaryk. Her handwritten diary—the first known diary to be kept by a woman in Hebrew—evokes not only the momentous events of her day but also the experiences of women like herself who failed to follow the dictates of Jewish tradition and aspired to roles beyond those of wife and mother. In “To Tread New Ground”: Selected Writings of Hava Shapiro, edito...
A feminist study of the beginnings of modern Hebrew women's writing.
"The authors of this collection, comprising leading scholars, journalists, entertainers, and religious leaders, were asked to examine the idea of truth from a variety of Jewish textual and disciplinary perspectives-biblical, rabbinic, liturgical, scientific, and artistic. The volume's intention is to hold out the hope that deep, thoughtful teaching from some of the world's leading Jewish voices might lead not to deeper understanding not just of Jewish texts, but of the nature and accessibility of truth itself"--
Jewish Feminism: What Have We Accomplished? What Is Still to Be Done? “When you are in the middle of the revolution you can’t really plan the next steps ahead. But now we can. The book is intended to open up a dialogue between the early Jewish feminist pioneers and the young women shaping Judaism today.... Read it, use it, debate it, ponder it.” —from the Introduction This empowering anthology looks at the growth and accomplishments of Jewish feminism and what that means for Jewish women today and tomorrow. It features the voices of women from every area of Jewish life—the Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox and Jewish Renewal movements; rabbis, congregational leaders, artists, writers, community service professionals, academics, and chaplains, from the United States, Canada, and Israel—addressing the important issues that concern Jewish women: Women and Theology Women, Ritual and Torah Women and the Synagogue Women in Israel Gender, Sexuality and Age Women and the Denominations Leadership and Social Justice
The most controversial prayer of the Jewish New Year—what it means, who wrote it, why we say it. Over forty contributors who span three continents and all major Jewish denominations examine Un'taneh Tokef’s theology, authorship, and poetry through a set of lively commentaries. Men and women, scholars and rabbis, artists and poets trace the history of Un’taneh Tokef and connect the prayer to its biblical and rabbinic roots. They wrestle with the personal and community impact of its deeply moving imagery, probe its haunting message of human mortality, and reflect on its call for sanctity, transformation and renewal. Prayers of Awe: A multi-volume series designed to explore the High Holy ...
Throughout the ages, Jews have connected legends to particular days of the Hebrew calendar. Abraham's birth, the death of Rachel, and the creation of light are all tales that are linked to a specific day and season. The Jewish Book of Days invites readers to experience the connection between sacred story and nature's rhythms, through readings designed for each and every day of the year. These daily readings offer an opportunity to live in tune with the wisdom of the past while learning new truths about the times we live in today. Using the tree as its central metaphor, The Jewish Book of Days is divided into eight chapters of approximately forty-five days each. These sections represent the t...
Before 1985, depictions of ultra-Orthodox Jews in popular American culture were rare, and if they did appear, in films such as Fiddler on the Roof or within the novels of Chaim Potok, they evoked a nostalgic vision of Old World tradition. Yet the ordination of women into positions of religious leadership and other controversial issues have sparked an increasingly visible and voluble culture war between America's ultra-Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, one that has found a particularly creative voice in literature, media, and film. Unpacking the work of Allegra Goodman, Tova Mirvis, Pearl Abraham, Erich Segal, Anne Roiphe, and others, as well as television shows and films such as A Price Above Rubies, Nora L. Rubel investigates the choices non-haredi Jews have made as they represent the character and characters of ultra-Orthodox Jews. In these artistic and aesthetic acts, Rubel recasts the war over gender and family and the anxieties over acculturation, Americanization, and continuity. More than just a study of Jewishness and Jewish self-consciousness, Doubting the Devout will speak to any reader who has struggled to balance religion, family, and culture.
“As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile,” S. Y. Agnon declared at the 1966 Nobel Prize ceremony. “But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.” Agnon’s act of literary imagination fueled his creative endeavor and is explored in these pages. Jerusalem and the Holy Land (to say nothing of the later State of Israel) are often two-faced in Agnon’s Hebrew writing. Depending on which side of the lens one views Eretz Yisrael through, the vision of what can be achieved there appears clearer or more distorted. These themes wove themselves into the...
Finalist, 2023 National Jewish Book Award Winners in Women’s Studies In Women Writing Jewish Modernity, 1919–1939, Allison Schachter rewrites Jewish literary modernity from the point of view of women. Focusing on works by interwar Hebrew and Yiddish writers, Schachter illuminates how women writers embraced the transgressive potential of prose fiction to challenge the patriarchal norms of Jewish textual authority and reconceptualize Jewish cultural belonging. Born in the former Russian and Austro‐Hungarian Empires and writing from their homes in New York, Poland, and Mandatory Palestine, the authors central to this book—Fradl Shtok, Dvora Baron, Elisheva Bikhovsky, Leah Goldberg, and ...