Death in Jewish Life
Title | Death in Jewish Life PDF eBook |
Author | Stefan C. Reif |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Pages | 354 |
Release | 2014-08-27 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 3110377489 |
Jewish customs and traditions about death, burial and mourning are numerous, diverse and intriguing. They are considered by many to have a respectable pedigree that goes back to the earliest rabbinic period. In order to examine the accurate historical origins of many of them, an international conference was held at Tel Aviv University in 2010 and experts dealt with many aspects of the topic. This volume includes most of the papers given then, as well as a few added later. What emerges are a wealth of fresh material and perspectives, as well as the realization that the high Middle Ages saw a set of exceptional innovations, some of which later became central to traditional Judaism while others were gradually abandoned. Were these innovations influenced by Christian practice? Which prayers and poems reflect these innovations? What do the sources tell us about changing attitudes to death and life-after death? Are tombstones an important guide to historical developments? Answers to these questions are to be found in this unusual, illuminating and readable collection of essays that have been well documented, carefully edited and well indexed.
What Happens After I Die?
Title | What Happens After I Die? PDF eBook |
Author | Rifat Sonsino |
Publisher | Behrman House Publishing |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 1990 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 9780807403563 |
This book deals with many questions relating to Judaism's view of afterlife, drawing on textual sources, medieval thought, mystical literature, and contemporary writes from each denomination of Judaism.
Jewish Views of the Afterlife
Title | Jewish Views of the Afterlife PDF eBook |
Author | Simcha Paull Raphael |
Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield |
Pages | 528 |
Release | 2019-04-15 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 153810346X |
In the third edition of Jewish Views of the Afterlife, Rabbi Simcha Paull Raphael walks readers through the Jewish tradition of the afterlife while providing insights into spiritual care with dying and grieving individuals and families.
The Jewish Body
Title | The Jewish Body PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Jütte |
Publisher | University of Pennsylvania Press |
Pages | 345 |
Release | 2020-11-27 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0812297652 |
An encyclopedic survey of the Jewish body as it has existed and as it has been imagined from biblical times to the present That the human body can be the object not only of biological study but also of historical consideration and cultural criticism is now widely accepted. But why, Robert Jütte asks, should a historian bother with the Jewish body in particular? And is the "Jewish body" as much a concept constructed over the course of centuries by Jews and non-Jews alike as it is a physical reality? To comprehend the notion and existence of a Jewish body, he contends, one needs to look both at the images and traits that have been ascribed to Jews by themselves and others, and to the specific bodily practices that have played an important role in creating the identity of a religious and cultural community. Jütte has written an encyclopedic survey of the Jewish body as it has existed and as it has been imagined from biblical times to the present, often for anti-Jewish purposes. He examines the techniques for caring for the body that Jews acquire in childhood from parents and authority figures and how these have changed over the course of a more than 2000-year history, most of it spent in exile. From consideration of traditional body stereotypes, such as the so-called Jewish nose, to matters of gender and sexuality, sickness and health, and the inevitable end of the body in death, The Jewish Body explores the historical foundations of the human physis in all its aspects.
The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions
Title | The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions PDF eBook |
Author | Hillel Levine |
Publisher | Plunkett Lake Press |
Pages | 317 |
Release | 2019-08-17 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN |
Written by a sociologist and a journalist, The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions recounts the death of a Boston community once home to 90,000 Jews residing among African-Americans and white ethnics. The frightening personal testimonies and blatant evidence of manipulated housing prices illustrate how inadequate government regulation of banks can contribute to ethnic conflict and lives destroyed. “There were no winners,” the authors warn. Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon believe that their findings may be true for American cities in general. Had we learned from what went wrong in Boston — blockbusting by a group of banks, federal programs promoting mortgages to people unable to afford them, real estate brokers seeking quick profits —, perhaps the 2008 nationwide real estate meltdown could have been anticipated. The lessons from this book are essential for students of ethnic relations and urban affairs. “This candid, disturbing, and highly readable book recounts how Boston’s working-class Jewish neighborhoods were transformed into economically devastated black ghettoes.” — The New Yorker “Bankers and real-estate brokers still shape the dynamics of daily life in our fragile urban neighborhoods. Levine and Harmon movingly capture the human side of this often destructive process in their story of redlining and blockbusting in Boston during the 1960s. But their book is more than history. It is a lesson about how to understand and improve our cities and neighborhoods, today and in the future.” — Raymond L. Flynn, Mayor of Boston, President, U.S. Conference of Mayors “Levine and Harmon are sympathetic to the goals of racial integration but are indignant over the brutality and unfairness that accompanied these orchestrations. Bankers and politicians are indicted here by elaborate court evidence and by supplementary research cited by the authors, who use their insiders’ passion (Harmon was born and raised in Dorchester) and professional expertise to forever preserve the corned-beef flavor of old Blue Hill Avenue. As much an elegiac memory book of old Jewish Boston as a searing indictment against her killers.” — Kirkus Reviews “Combines the rigor of good scholarship with the obsessive curiosity of good journalism” — J. Anthony Lukas, Author of Common Ground “What keeps a community alive? What are the social and historical forces that shape or stifle its aspirations? When does a community soar and when does it yield to resignation? These and other questions take on an urgency of their own in Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon’s perceptive, brilliant, and disturbing inquiry.” — Elie Wiesel, University Professor and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Boston University “Levine and Harmon have written a prophetic indictment of the real estate speculation and elite indifference that, along with black crimes, destroyed Boston’s most vibrant Jewish neighborhoods. Have the courage to take their terrible journey; you will not return unchanged!” — Jim Sleeper, Author of The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York “This engagingly written and brilliantly illuminating portrait of the destruction of a vibrant Jewish community radically revises our understanding of the process of neighborhood change. The authors also break new ground in portraying the critical role of social class in American life and the powerful, if unconscious, class bias of Jewish communal leaders.” — Charles E. Silberman, Author of A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today
Two Powers in Heaven
Title | Two Powers in Heaven PDF eBook |
Author | Segal |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 337 |
Release | 1977-12 |
Genre | Architecture |
ISBN | 9004667482 |
In this study of the rabbinic heretics who believed in Two Powers in Heaven, Alan Segal explores some relationships between rabbinic Judaism, Merkabah mysticism, and early Christianity. Two Powers in Heaven was a very early category of heresy. It was one of the basic categories by which the rabbis perceived the new phenomenon of Christianity and one of the central issues over which Judaism and Christianity separated. Segal reconstructs the development of the heresy through prudent dating of the stages of the rabbinic traditions. The basic heresy involved interpreting scripture to say that a principal angelic or hypostatic manifestation in heaven was equivalent to God. The earliest heretics believed in two complementary powers in heaven, while later heretics believed in two opposing powers in heaven. Segal stresses the importance of perceiving the relevance of rabbinic material for solving traditional problems of New Testament and gnostic scholarship, and at the same time maintains the necessity of reading those literatures for dating rabbinic material. Please note that Two Powers in Heaven was previously published by Brill in hardback, ISBN 90 04 05453 7 (no longer available).
When a Jew Dies
Title | When a Jew Dies PDF eBook |
Author | Samuel C. Heilman |
Publisher | Univ of California Press |
Pages | 288 |
Release | 2001 |
Genre | Family & Relationships |
ISBN | 9780520219656 |
This account of the traditional customs that are practiced when a Jewish person dies provides an anthropological perspective on Jewish rites of mourning, and explains the cultural meaning behind Jewish practices and traditions.