Back by popular demand, the classic JPS holiday anthologies remain essential and relevant in our digital age. Unequaled in-depth compilations of classic and contemporary writings, they have long guided rabbis, cantors, educators, and other readers seeking the origins, meanings, and varied celebrations of the Jewish festivals. The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology offers new insight intothe Festival of Ingathering, celebrating the harvest in the land of our ancestors, and the Festival of Rejoicing in the Law, marking the new cycle of public Torah readings, by elucidating the two festivals' background, historical development, and spiritual truths for Jews and humankind. Mining the Bible, postbiblical literature, Talmud, midrashim, prayers with commentaries, and Hasidic tales, the compendium also showcases humor, art, food, song, dance, essays, stories, and poems--including works by Chaim Weizmann, Elie Wiesel, Herman Wouk, S. Y. Agnon, Sholom Aleichem, H. N. Bialik, and Solomon Schechter--truly a rich harvest for the "Season of Our Rejoicing."

Back by popular demand, the classic JPS holiday anthologies remain essential and relevant in our digital age. Unequaled in-depth compilations of classic and contemporary writings, they have long guided rabbis, cantors, educators, and other readers seeking the origins, meanings, and varied celebrations of the Jewish festivals. The Passover Anthology describes the varied experiences of the Jewish Passover throughout the lands and the ages: the story, the many facets of its celebration in the Jewish home and community, the laws and the prayers, the seder plate and the songs, the art and the dances, and--of course--the games. Showcasing modern writings by Winston Churchill, Heinrich Heine, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and others, the volumeis a rich resource that today's reflective readers will not wish to pass over.

Sukkot, festival of the harvest and thanksgiving, culminates the fall cycle of Jewish holidays. Build and decorate a sukkah, eat and sing in it under the stars, remembering the temporary shelters that the Jews built in the desert. Learn about the beautiful traditions of lulav and etrog as observed in the home and synagogue. Immediately following is Simhat Torah, when Jews complete the reading of the Torah for the year and begin the cycle again. Learn the history and customs of the joyous processional - hakafor - in synagogues around the world

This innovative how-to guide and reference book on the Jewish holidays provides a well-rounded foundation for both knowledge and action. Unlike many books of its kind, Celebrate! The Complete Jewish Holidays Handbook is nondenominational and comprehensive in approach. The author includes the historical development, religious importance, and personal significance of each Jewish holy day in a way that is useful to both beginners and those well versed in Jewish practice. The richness and depth of Jewish tradition, with a full range of information on why and how to celebrate, is presented in a lively, warm, and user-friendly manner.

An “important and timely” study of the Jewish holiday’s temporary shelters and the meaning of home (Journal of Folklore Research). The sukkah, the symbolic ritual home built during the annual Jewish holiday of Sukkot, commemorates the temporary structures that sheltered the Israelites as they journeyed across the desert after the exodus from Egypt. Despite the simple Biblical prescription for its design, the remarkable variety of creative expression in the construction, decoration, and use of the sukkah, in both times of peace and national upheaval, reveals the cultural traditions, political convictions, philosophical ideals, and individual aspirations that the sukkah communicates for its builders and users today. In this ethnography of contemporary Sukkot observance, Gabrielle Anna Berlinger examines the powerful role of ritual and vernacular architecture in the formation of self and society in three sharply contrasting Jewish communities: Bloomington, Indiana; South Tel Aviv, Israel; and Brooklyn, New York. Through vivid description and in-depth interviews, she demonstrates how constructing and decorating the sukkah and performing the weeklong holiday’s rituals of hospitality provide unique circumstances for creative expression, social interaction, and political struggle. Through an exploration of the intersections between the rituals of Sukkot and contemporary issues, such as the global Occupy movement, Berlinger finds that the sukkah becomes a tangible expression of the need for housing and economic justice, as well as a symbol of the longing for home. “Berlinger’s rich and nuanced ethnography sheds light on many sukkot from Bloomington to Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, and back to Brooklyn; like the wandering in the Sinai desert, this journey is crucial.” —Journal of American Folklore