Modern Musar

Author : Geoffrey D. Claussen
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2022-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780827618879

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Modern Musar by Geoffrey D. Claussen Pdf

How do modern Jews understand virtues such as courage, humility, justice, solidarity, or love? In truth: they have fiercely debated how to interpret them. This groundbreaking anthology of musar (Jewish traditions regarding virtue and character) explores the diverse ways seventy-eight modern Jewish thinkers understand ten virtues: honesty and love of truth; curiosity and inquisitiveness; humility; courage and valor; temperance and self-restraint; gratitude; forgiveness; love, kindness, and compassion; solidarity and social responsibility; and justice and righteousness. These thinkers--from the Musar movement to Hasidism to contemporary Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Humanist, and secular Jews--often agree on the importance of these virtues but fundamentally disagree in their conclusions. The juxtaposition of their views, complemented by Geoffrey Claussen's pointed analysis, allows us to see tensions with particular clarity--and sometimes to recognize multiple compelling ways of viewing the same virtue. By expanding the category of musar literature to include not only classic texts and traditional works influenced by them but also the writings of diverse rabbis, scholars, and activists--men and women--who continue to shape Jewish tradition, Modern Musar challenges the fields of modern Jewish thought and ethics to rethink their boundaries--and invites us to weigh and refine our own moral ideals.

Author : Geoffrey D. Claussen
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 518 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2022-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780827618886

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Modern Musar by Geoffrey D. Claussen Pdf

How do modern Jews understand virtues such as courage, humility, justice, solidarity, or love? In truth: they have fiercely debated how to interpret them. This groundbreaking anthology of musar (Jewish traditions regarding virtue and character) explores the diverse ways seventy-eight modern Jewish thinkers understand ten virtues: honesty and love of truth; curiosity and inquisitiveness; humility; courage and valor; temperance and self-restraint; gratitude; forgiveness; love, kindness, and compassion; solidarity and social responsibility; and justice and righteousness. These thinkers—from the Musar movement to Hasidism to contemporary Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Humanist, and secular Jews—often agree on the importance of these virtues but fundamentally disagree in their conclusions. The juxtaposition of their views, complemented by Geoffrey Claussen’s pointed analysis, allows us to see tensions with particular clarity—and sometimes to recognize multiple compelling ways of viewing the same virtue. By expanding the category of musar literature to include not only classic texts and traditional works influenced by them but also the writings of diverse rabbis, scholars, and activists—men and women—who continue to shape Jewish tradition, Modern Musar challenges the fields of modern Jewish thought and ethics to rethink their boundaries—and invites us to weigh and refine our own moral ideals.

Author : Alan T. Levenson,Roger C. Klein
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Judaism
ISBN : 9780742546066

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An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers by Alan T. Levenson,Roger C. Klein Pdf

Highlighting well-known Jewish thinkers from a very wide spectrum of opinion, the author addresses a range of issues, including: What makes a thinker Jewish? What makes modern Jewish thought modern? How have secular Jews integrated Jewish traditional thought with agnosticism? What do Orthodox thinkers have to teach non-Orthodox Jews and vice versa? Each chapter includes a short, judiciously chosen selection from the given author, along with questions to guide the reader through the material. Short biographical essays at the end of each chapter offer the reader recommendations for further readings and provide the low-down on which books are worth the reader's while. Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers represents a decade of the author's experience teaching students ranging from undergraduate age to their seventies. This is an ideal textbook for undergraduate classes.

Author : Dafna Nissim,Vered Tohar
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2023-12-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9783111243894

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Blurred Boundaries and Deceptive Dichotomies in Pre-Modern Texts and Images by Dafna Nissim,Vered Tohar Pdf

This collection of essays focuses on the way blurred boundaries are represented in pre-modern texts and visual art and how they were received and perceived by their audiences: readers, listeners, and viewers. According to the current understanding that opposing cognitive categories that are so common in modern thinking do not apply to pre-modern mentalities, we argue that individuals in medieval and pre-modern societies did not necessarily consider sacred and secular, male and female, real and fictional, and opposing emotions as absolute dichotomies. The contributors to the present collection examine a wide range of cultural artifacts – literary texts, wall paintings, sculptures, jewelry, manuscript illustrations, and various objects as to what they reflect regarding the dominant perceptual system – the network of beliefs, worldviews, presumptions, values, and norms of viewing/reading/hearing different from modern epistemology strongly predicated on the binary nature of things and people. The essays suggest that analyzing pre-modern cultural works of art or literature in light of reception theory can lead to a better understanding of how those cultural products influenced individuals and impacted their thoughts and actions.

Author : Shaul Magid
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2023-08-08
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780691254692

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Meir Kahane by Shaul Magid Pdf

The life and politics of an American Jewish activist who preached radical and violent means to Jewish survival Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, declaring that Jews must protect themselves by any means necessary. He immigrated to Israel in 1971, where he founded KACH, an ultranationalist and racist political party. He would die by assassination in 1990. Shaul Magid provides an in-depth look at this controversial figure, showing how the postwar American experience shaped his life and political thought. Magid sheds new light on Kahane’s radical political views, his critique of liberalism, and his use of the “grammar of race” as a tool to promote Jewish pride. He discusses Kahane’s theory of violence as a mechanism to assure Jewish safety, and traces how his Zionism evolved from a fervent support of Israel to a belief that the Zionist project had failed. Magid examines how tradition and classical Jewish texts profoundly influenced Kahane’s thought later in life, and argues that Kahane’s enduring legacy lies not in his Israeli career but in the challenge he posed to the liberalism and assimilatory project of the postwar American Jewish establishment. This incisive book shows how Kahane was a quintessentially American figure, one who adopted the radicalism of the militant Left as a tenet of Jewish survival.

Author : Anne C. Dailey,Lital Levy,Martin Kavka
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2023-09-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9781512824315

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Unsettling Jewish Knowledge by Anne C. Dailey,Lital Levy,Martin Kavka Pdf

Spanning the fields of literature, history, philosophy, and theology, Unsettling Jewish Knowledge adopts a fresh approach to the study of Jewish thought and culture. By creatively foregrounding the role of emotions, senses, and the imagination in Jewish experience, the book invites readers to consider what it means for Jewish identity and experience to be constituted outside the frameworks of reasoned thought and inquiry. The collection's eight essays offer innovative and provocative approaches to a diverse array of topics including modern Jewish-Christian relations, the book of Isaiah, contemporary Jewish fiction, and philosophical meditations on Jewish law. Their bold interpretations of Jewish texts and histories are centered on questions of faith, loss, prejudice, and enchantment--and the darker implications of these questions. The book's essays also illuminate the importance of desire as a key motivating force in the pursuit of knowledge. Weaving together insights from several disciplines, Unsettling Jewish Knowledge challenges us to grapple with the unexpected, the unconventional, and the uncomfortable aspects of Jewish experience and its representations. Contributors: Anne C. Dailey, John Efron, Yael S. Feldman, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Martin Kavka, Lital Levy, Shaul Magid, Eva Mroczek, Paul E. Nahme, Eli Schonfeld, Shira Stav.

Author : Hillel Goldberg
Publisher : KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 1982
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0870687093

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Israel Salanter, Text, Structure, Idea by Hillel Goldberg Pdf

Author : Marc B. Shapiro
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
Page : 445 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2022-03-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781800858466

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Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy by Marc B. Shapiro Pdf

Compellingly and authoritatively written, this biography illuminates the dilemmas that Europe’s Jews have faced over the past century. The discussion of the inner struggles of one of twentieth-century Judaism’s most enigmatic religious leaders—a figure who became a central ideologue of modern Orthodoxy despite his traditional training in a Lithuanian yeshiva—elucidates many institutional and intellectual phenomena of the Jewish world, and especially in pre-war Europe, that have so far received little attention.

Author : Vered Tohar
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2023-11-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780814347058

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The Hebrew Folktale in Premodern Morality Literature by Vered Tohar Pdf

Recontextualizing early modern Musar folktales to reveal a new reading of premodern Jewish texts.

Author : Barry L. Schwartz
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2023-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780827619067

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Open Judaism by Barry L. Schwartz Pdf

Open Judaism offers a big-tent welcome to all Jews and Judaism. It is at once an invitation to the spiritually seeking Jew, a clarion call for a deeply pluralistic and inclusive Judaism, and a dynamic exploration of the remarkable array of thought within Judaism today. In honest, engaging language Barry L. Schwartz, a practicing rabbi and writer, presents traditional, secular-humanistic, and liberal Jewish views on nine major topics--God, soul, Torah, halakhah, Jewish identity, inclusion, Israel, ethics, and prayer. Teachings from many of Judaism's greatest thinkers organically reveal and embellish foundational ideas of Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, and Humanistic Judaism. The conclusion sets forth core statements of belief in Judaism for believers, atheists, and agnostics, thereby summarizing the full spectrum of thought and enabling readers to make and act on their own choices.

Author : Noam Sachs Zion
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 663 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2021-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780827618725

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Sanctified Sex by Noam Sachs Zion Pdf

Sanctified Sex draws on two thousand years of rabbinic debates addressing competing aspirations for loving intimacy, passionate sexual union, and sanctity in marriage. What can Judaism contribute to our struggles to nurture love relationships? What halakhic precedents are relevant, and how are rulings changing? The rabbis, of course, seldom agree. Underlying their arguments are perennial debates: What kind of marital sex qualifies as ideal--sacred self-control of sexual desire or the holiness found in emotional and erotic intimacy? Is intercourse degrading in its physicality or the highest act of spiritual/mystical union? And should women or men (or both) wield ultimate say about what transpires in bed? Noam Sachs Zion guides us chronologically and steadily through fraught terrain: seminal biblical texts and their Talmudic interpretations; Talmud tales of three unusual rabbis and their marital bedrooms; medieval codifiers and mystical commentators; ultra-Orthodox rabbis clashing with one another over radically divergent ideals; and, finally, contemporary rabbis of varied denominations wrestling with modern transformations in erotic lifestyles and values. Invited into these sanctified and often sexually explicit discussions with our ancestors and contemporaries, we encounter innovative Jewish teachings on marital intimacy, ardent lovemaking techniques, and the art of couple communication vital for matrimonial success.

Author : Samuel J. Kessler,George Y. Kohler
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2023-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780827615137

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Modern Jewish Theology by Samuel J. Kessler,George Y. Kohler Pdf

Modern Jewish Theology is the first comprehensive collection of Jewish theological ideas from the pathbreaking nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, featuring selections from more than thirty of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the era as well as explorations of Judaism's identity, uniqueness, and relevance; the origin of ethical monotheism; and the possibility of Jewish existentialism. These works--most translated for the first time into English by top scholars in modern Jewish history and philosophy--reveal how modern Jewish theology developed in concert with broader trends in Jewish intellectual and social modernization, especially scholarship (Wissenschaft des Judentums), politics (liberalism and Zionism), and religious practice (movement Judaism and the struggles to transcend denominational boundaries). This anthology thus opens to the English-language reader a true treasure house of source material from the formative years of modern Jewish thought, bringing together writings from the very first generations, who imagined biblical and rabbinic texts and modern scientific research would produce a synthetic view of God, Israel, and the world. A general introduction and chapter introductions guide students and nonspecialists through the key themes and transformations in modern Jewish theology, and extensive annotations immerse them in the latest scholarship.

Author : Yakir Englander
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2021-10-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781725287310

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The Male Body in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Theology by Yakir Englander Pdf

How does Ultra-Orthodox Jewish literature describe the male body? What does the body represent? What is the ideal male body? This book is a philosophical-theological exploration of the different images of the male body in Ultra-Orthodox literature since the holocaust. The body is not incidental to this community but is the axis by which it tries to understand its meaning and its role in life. In the first part of the book, Yakir Englander explains the "problem of the body" and the different ways that Ultra-Orthodox theology deals with it. These different and even contradictory voices can teach the reader about the shifting of ideas inside Ultra-Orthodox thought in the last decades. The second part of the book focuses on the image of the ideal body and describes how the rabbis train their bodies to reach ultimate form.

Author : Hillel Goldberg
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 70 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1972
Category : Musar movement
ISBN : STANFORD:36105029300022

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Musar Anthology by Hillel Goldberg Pdf

Author : Jack Wertheimer
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 411 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780814792612

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The Modern Jewish Experience by Jack Wertheimer Pdf

This essential resource offers guidance for educators to expand the teaching repertoire on a range of issues in modern Jewish history, culture, religion, and Society.