Inspiring, practical information and advice to enrich a Jewish spiritual life with traditional rituals and practices. Each chapter explores a different ritual or practice in depth and explains the why, what, and how to do it. Contents: Tefillin; Tallit and Tallit Katan; Kashrut; Shabbat; Daily Prayer; Talmud Torah; Blessings throughout the Day; Covering the Head; Upon Rising and Going to Bed; Mikvah.

This is a collection of quotes and excerpts from generations of great Kabbalists, including Rav Yehuda Ashlag, author of the Sulam [Ladder] commentary of The Book of Zohar. This compilation reveals the spiritual concepts of Kabbalah in every realm of human life, using poignant and thought-provoking passages with accurate references from authentic Kabbalistic sources as well as the greatest Kabbalists of all time. A student or a spiritual searcher can use this book as compass in their quest to find true spirituality. The quotes from Gems of Wisdom: words of the great Kabbalists from all generations will become an indispensable source book the reader will constantly revisit and utilize. It is a priceless gift to any person who is a kabbalah student or wishes to explore this age old wisdom.

Contains references to works published between 1960-1985 about Jewish women and sexuality, sexual attitudes and behaviors of American Jews, and sexual norms and attitudes within the Jewish tradition. Excludes works about Israeli women, spouse abuse, and pornography. Includes introductory essays and references arranged under thirteen topics, e.g., aging and sexuality. Miscellaneous addenda. Author index.

This book examines the nature and extent of changes in communal structures and self-definition among Jews and Christians in Germany during the century before the Reformation. It argues that Christian community was restructured along civic and religious lines resulting in the development of a local sacred society that integrated material and spiritual well being into a moral and legal society, stressing the common good and internal peace, while Jewish community, given a variety of factors, came to be defined through regional communal structures and moral and legal discourse that allowed for broader geographical communal identity. Bell draws from a variety of German, Latin, and Hebrew sources and takes into consideration several methods and viewpoints of studying history.

In rethinking the events of the Holocaust years, the author wonders at what the Jewish people have become and what we can make of what we know and have experienced.

Keepers of the Motherland is the first comprehensive study of German and Austrian Jewish women authors. Dagmar Lorenz begins with an examination of the Yiddish author Glikl Hamil, whose works date from the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and proceeds through such contemporary writers as Grete Weil, Katja Behrens, and Ruth Kl_ger. Along the way she examines an extraordinary range of distinguished authors, including Else Lasker-Sch_ler, Rosa Luxemburg, Nelly Sachs, and Gertrud Kolmar. ø Although Lorenz highlights the author?s individualities, she unifies Keepers of the Motherland with sustained attention to the ways in which they all reflect upon their identities as Jews and women. In this spirit Lorenz argues that ?the themes and characters as well as the environments evoked in the texts of Jewish women authors writing in German resist patriarchal structures. The term ?motherland,? defining the domain of the Jewish woman?s native language, regardless of political or ethnic boundaries, is juxtaposed with the concept ?fatherland,? referring to the power structures of the nation or state in which she resides.? Lorenz describes a vital, diverse, and largely dissident literary tradition?a brilliant countertradition, in effect, that has endured in spite of oppression and genocide. Combining careful research with inspired synthesis, Lorenz provides an indispensable work for students of German, Jewish, and women?s writings.

For a woman, Rahel Levin Varnhagen (1771-1833) occupied a unique place in German intellectual history. Heidi Tewarson gives us a rich account of Varnhagen's intellectual community and her writings which led to her reputation as a leading intellectual of her era--a champion of literary figures and movements, of human rights, and of Enlightenment values. 17 illustrations.