Accounting for Judaism in the Study of American Messianic Judaism
... in America has grown from a handful of house churches to a network of hundreds of
synagogues and congregations. Mainline American Judaism has unanimously rejected
the argument that Jews who believe in Jesus continue to be members of the Jewish
community or that their religion is a form of contempora ...
Yom Kippur - Sept. 23, 2015
... On the eve of Yom Kippur the community
joins at the synagogue. Men put on prayer
shawls (not usually worn in the evenings).
Then as the night falls the cantor begins the
"Kol Nidre", it is repeated 3 times, each time
in a louder voice. The Kol Nidre emphasizes
the importance in keeping vows, as viol ...
Hanukkah - Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
... light the candle marking the night, there will always be one more candle
lit than the day you are celebrating.) The candles are lit each evening at or
after sunset. The candle lighting is accompanied by the reciting or singing
of specific blessings. Following the candle lighting each evening, it is ...
Chapter 2 The challenge of modernity
... outstanding expression of the encounter between Judaism and modernity – Reform Judaism –, one tends
to be influenced by some common views on Dutch Jewry. It is important to be aware of them. For
example, the question whether Dutch Jews did keep up with modernity tends to be answered in the
negative ...
Jewish feelings, Jewish practice?
... • Maintaining social ties with other members of the community generally constitutes an
important component in the participants’ lives. Nevertheless, participants expressed
how certain situations or being in the presence of specific groups could cause them to
cast doubts on their Jewish identity. Me ...
Nathan Glazer`s American Judaism
... histories,4 and Glazer wanted no part of these celebratory studies.
Instead, his monograph maintained a conspicuous academic distance
between author and subject, signaled by cautionary lines such as ‘‘many
things will be said that may hurt Jews’’5—warning readers that his goal
was not to shore up th ...
Messiah vs. Mashiach - Toby`s Learning Emporium
... Some of Judaism's greatest minds have cursed those who try to predict the time of the
mashiach's coming, because errors in such predictions could cause people to lose faith in
the messianic idea or in Judaism itself. This actually happened in the 17th century, when
Shabbatai Tzvi claimed to be the m ...
Calendar of Main Jewish Religious Observances and Resource Guide
... remembrance will vary from year to year. Even though the dates of the Jewish religious observances will be
different each year, they will always be observed in the same season. The Jewish Sabbath (Shabbat) begins
each week on Friday at sunset and ends Saturday at nightfall (approximately one hour af ...
jewish concepts
... asked : Do you not know that this nation is downtrodden and afflicted, subjected to many ills, liable to varied penalties for disobedience
to the precepts of the Torah? . . . If he persists, he takes a ritual bath
and submits to circumcision . . ." (Yevamoth 47a) .
Both male and female applicants be ...
Introduction to Judaism
... 5. Ethical Values and the
Formation of the Person
• What does it mean to be a good Jew? A
good person?
• Where do ethics come from?
• How do celebrations of milestones
(lifecycle events) contribute to the
formation of the individual?
• How have Jewish ethics/values
changed over time?
Lecture 1
...
Introduction to the UMJC
... tremendous inroads among the Jewish people. Indeed a first century Jerusalem follower of
Messiah might easily have imagined that the time of restoration promised by Israel’s prophets
was at hand. Thousands of Jewish people were coming to teshuvah or repentance, recommitting
themselves to the God of ...
The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
... search for more information and learned Jews who search for new
insights; and non-Jews who wish to understand the underlying visions of Judaism and who may find that it resonates in their own religious living.
It is a privilege to be able to write at such a unique moment in our
people's history. The ...
*TRADITION, JUDAISM, AND THE JEWISH RELIGIONƒ *IN
... Israel), synonymously with Torah (a euphemism for the Jewish d
religion). They are less likely to refer to Judaism ©© but when
they do, they mean Torah and ”masoret•. In other words, all the
terms are basically identical although they do evoke somewhat
different images. But Tradition, we must recall ...
Text - Association of Jewish Libraries
... only one component of it. Jews do not have to abandon their intellect to practice Judaism. God
should be interpreted as a force or process in the universe, the power that makes for salvation,
not as a supernatural being. Mitzvot and Torah are not God-given, but because the rituals and
prayers of the ...
Denominations in Judaism
... synagogues in Israel, and each time its members had attempted to worship at the
Wall with men and women together it had been attacked. On Shavuot two years
earlier, ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students had rained soiled diapers on the minyan.
Two months after that, on Tisha b'Av, the police had shoved an ...
Why was the Torah given to us in the wilderness?
... dissuade them nor encourage them (Midrash Rut Rabati 2:17), but ask them: “What
did you see to make such a choice? Do you not know we are a people that has been
brutalized and downtrodden and unpopular, and our ways are very different from the
ways of the rest of the world?” We do this in order to t ...
1 JEWISH CIVILIZATION BETWEEN RISE
... We do not know when men became aware that history was not a repetition of
identical events, but a sequence of different periods, some good and some bad.
Neither do we know when men began to believe that they lived once in a “Golden
Age”, which was better than their own age. The Ancient World thought ...
Creativity and Cultural Influence in Early Jewish
... law has been the focus of scholarly discussion only fairly recently. A
cultural analysis approach to law asks "how to talk about and interpret
law in cultural terms." s According to Austin Sarat and Jonathan
Simon, cultural analysis has traditionally been "associated with 'softer'
research tradition ...
Judaism
... A Torah scroll is very expensive; the average cost is about $25,000. In most institutions,
it is not possible to have a Torah Scroll, but it is appropriate for the contract rabbi to
bring the Torah for special occasions. When a quorum of Jews requests a Torah scroll, it
is appropriate to ask a synag ...
Defining Judaism: Accounting for “Religions” in
... own definitional purposes. When early Christians used the term “Judaism,”
they did so to help define themselves—“Judaism,” as they understood it,
was necessary for them to tell the story of Christianity. These Christian
definitions of Judaism ultimately had an impact on Jewish selfunderstandings, an ...
Rationalization and Apologia: The Intellectual
... disputed passage, b. Baba Kamma 38a, states that if a Canaanite ox gores an
Israelite damages must be paid, but damages need not be paid if an Israelite ox
gores a Canaanite—an expression of the fundamentally ethnocentric ethics of
the Talmud that has figured in anti-Semitic writing in modern times ...
Eliezer Berkovits, Theologian of Zionism
... For this reason, Berkovits argues, Judaism has always understood its
central mission to be the creation of an exemplary community, and not just
exemplary individuals. Such a community dedicates its entire public existence, as well as the efforts of the individuals who live in it, towards a higher,
di ...
Self-hating Jew
Self-hating Jew or self-loathing Jew is a pejorative term used for a Jewish person that holds antisemitic views. The concept gained widespread currency after Theodor Lessing's 1930 book Der Jüdische Selbsthass (""Jewish Self-hatred""), which tries to explain the prevalence of Jewish intellectuals inciting antisemitism with their extremely hateful view toward Judaism. Jewish self-hate has been described as a neurotic reaction to the impact of antisemitism by Jews accepting, expressing, and even exaggerating the basic assumptions of the anti-Semite. The term became ""something of a key term of opprobrium in and beyond Cold War-era debates about Zionism"". Similar accusations of being uncomfortable with one's Jewishness were already being made by groups of Jews against each other before Zionism existed as a movement.According to academic author W. M. L. Finlay, the expression ""self-hating Jew"" ""is often used rhetorically to discount Jews who differ in their lifestyles, interests or political positions from their accusers"". Finlay, a member of the Psychology Department at University of Surrey, distinguishes between ""Jewish antisemitism"" and ""Jewish self-hatred,"" arguing that while the literature is full of examples of Jews who espoused antisemitism with statements dangerous and damning to all Jews, ""whether this amounts to self-hatred is not easy to assess."" Usage of self-hatred can also designate dislike or hatred of a group to which one belongs. The term has a long history in debates over the role of Israel in Jewish identity, where it is used against Jewish critics of Israeli government policy. Alvin H. Rosenfeld, an academic author who does not use the term self-hatred, dismisses such arguments as disingenuous, referring to them as ""the ubiquitous rubric 'criticism of Israel,'"" stating that ""vigorous discussion of Israeli policy and actions is not in question."" Alan Dershowitz limits the term self-hatred to extreme Jewish anti-Zionists who""despise anything Jewish, ranging from their religion to the Jewish state,"" saying it does not apply to all ""Israel-bashers."" The academic historian Jerald Auerbach uses the term Jewish self-loathing to characterize ""Jewswho perversely seek to bolster their Jewish credentials by defaming Israel.""The cultural historian Sander Gilman has written, ""One of the most recent forms of Jewish self-hatred is the virulent opposition to the existence of the State of Israel."" He uses the term not against those who oppose Israel's policy, but against Jews who are opposed to Israel's existence. The concept of Jewish self-hatred has been described by Antony Lerman as ""an entirely bogus concept"", one that ""serves no other purpose than to marginalise and demonise political opponents"", who says that is used increasingly as a personal attack in discussions about the ""new antisemitism"". Ben Cohen criticizes Lerman saying no ""actual evidence is introduced to support any of this."" Lerman recognizes the controversy whether extreme vilification of Israel amounts to anti-Semitism and says that antisemitism can be disguised as anti-Zionism, which is the concern of Rosenfeld and Gilman addressed above.The sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz reserves the term for Jews who pose a danger to the Jewish community, using ""Jewish self-hater"" to describe the court Jew ""who validates the slander (against Jews) as he attempts to curry the favor of masters and rulers."" The historian Bernard Wasserstein prefers the term ""Jewish anti-Semitism,"" which he says was often termedJewish self-hatred. He asks, ""Could a Jew be an anti-Semite?"" And responds, many Jews have ""internalized elements of anti-Semitic discourse, succumbed to what Theodore Hamerow has called psychological surrender."" Wasserstein goes on to say that self-hating Jews, ""afflicted by some form of anti-Semitism were not so much haters of themselves as haters of 'other' Jews.""