Jew Vs. Jew

Jew Vs. Jew PDF Author: Samuel G. Freedman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684859459
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
At a time when Jews in the United States appear more secure and successful than ever, Freedman maintains that cultural and religious differences are tearing apart their community.

Jew Vs. Jew

Jew Vs. Jew PDF Author: Samuel G. Freedman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684859459
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Get Book

Book Description
At a time when Jews in the United States appear more secure and successful than ever, Freedman maintains that cultural and religious differences are tearing apart their community.

Jew Vs. Jew

Jew Vs. Jew PDF Author: Samuel G. Freedman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684859440
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
At a time when Jews in the United States appear more secure and successful than ever, Freedman maintains that cultural and religious differences are tearing apart their community.

Jew Vs Jew

Jew Vs Jew PDF Author: Samuel G. Freedman
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781416578000
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
At a time when American Jews should feel more secure and cohesive than ever, civil war is tearing apart their community. Congregations, neighborhoods, even families are taking sides in battles about Jewish identity and Jewish authenticity. The conflict pits fundamentalist against secularist, denomination against denomination, even liberal against conservative within each branch of Jewry. Jew vs. Jew tells the story of how American Jewry has increasingly -- and perhaps terminally -- broken apart in the last forty years. Jew vs. Jew stretches in time from 1960 to 2000. It travels the country from Florida to New England, from Los Angeles to the Catskills in New York, from Cleveland to Denver, and it also crosses the ocean to Israel to show how tensions within the Jewish state inflame those among American Jews. The flash-points range from conversion standards to the role of women, from the peace process in Israel to the sexual climate on an Ivy League campus. But behind them all, as Samuel Freedman writes, lie common causes. First, far from unifying American Jews, Israel now divides them on both political and religious grounds. Second, neither America nor the larger world presents Jews with a single enemy against whom to coalesce. Third, and most important, nothing in the Jewish history of persecution, oppression, and exile prepared the Chosen People for the challenge posed by America, the challenge of being absorbed into a tolerant and diverse nation, being accepted so thoroughly that the intermarriage rate tops 50 percent. Jew vs. Jew introduces readers to memorable places and characters. Freedman describes one of the final summers at a Labor Zionist camp in the Catskills whose brand of secular Jewishness is becoming obsolete because Zionism succeeded in creating Israel. He tells the story of Orthodox and Reform Jews in a Cleveland suburb who are fighting about the construction of several synagogues -- and, on a deeper level, about whether unity or pluralism ought to be the goal of Jewish life. He portrays a Florida Jew so violently opposed to the Oslo peace accords that he planted a bomb in a synagogue where Shimon Peres was speaking. He tells about a Los Angeles congregation that spent three years debating whether or not to honor the Biblical matriarchs in its liturgy.We come to know the Long Island neighbors who cannot tolerate sharing even a property line because their versions of Jewish identity are so irreconcilably different. Jew vs. Jew is a work of vigorous reporting, lucid writing, and intellectual curiosity. And even as it chronicles an embittered and polarized community, it refuses to take sides or pass judgment. Instead, with compassion and acuity, Jew vs. Jew bears witness.

American Judaism

American Judaism PDF Author: Jonathan D. Sarna
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300190395
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
Jonathan D. Sarna's award-winning American Judaism is now available in an updated and revised edition that summarizes recent scholarship and takes into account important historical, cultural, and political developments in American Judaism over the past fifteen years. Praise for the first edition: "Sarna . . . has written the first systematic, comprehensive, and coherent history of Judaism in America; one so well executed, it is likely to set the standard for the next fifty years."--Jacob Neusner, Jerusalem Post "A masterful overview."--Jeffrey S. Gurock, American Historical Review "This book is destined to be the new classic of American Jewish history."--Norman H. Finkelstein, Jewish Book World Winner of the 2004 National Jewish Book Award/Jewish Book of the Year

The Big Jewish Book for Jews

The Big Jewish Book for Jews PDF Author: Ellis Weiner
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101457112
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
A hilarious compendium of traditional wisdom, recipes, and lore from the authors of the bestselling Yiddish with Dick and Jane. Modern Jews have forgotten cherished traditions and become, sadly, all- too assimilated. It's enough to make you meshugeneh. Today's Jews need to relearn the old ways so that cultural identity means something other than laughing knowingly at Curb Your Enthusiasm- and The Big Jewish Book for Jews is here to help. This wise and wise-cracking fully-illustrated book offers invaluable instruction on everything from how to sacrifice a lamb unto the lord to the rules of Mahjong. Jews of all ages and backgrounds will welcome the opportunity to be the Jewiest Jew of all, and reconnect to ancestors going all the way back to Moses and a time when God was the only GPS a Jew needed.

To Be a Jew

To Be a Jew PDF Author: Hayim H. Donin
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541618149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The classic guide to the ageless heritage of Judaism Embraced over many decades by hundreds of thousands of readers, To Be a Jew offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to traditional Jewish laws and customs as they apply to daily life in the contemporary world. In simple and powerful language, Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin presents the fundamentals of Judaism, including the laws and observances for the Sabbath, the dietary laws, family life, prayer at home and in the synagogue, the major and minor holidays, and the guiding principles and observances of life, such as birth, naming, circumcision, adoption and conversion, Bar-mitzvah, marriage, divorce, death, and mourning. Ideal for reference, reflection, and inspiration, To Be a Jew will by greatly valued by anyone who feels that knowing, understanding, and observing the laws and traditions of Judaism in daily life is the essence of what it means to be a Jew.

Religion Or Ethnicity?

Religion Or Ethnicity? PDF Author: Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Can someone be considered Jewish if he or she never goes to synagogue, doesn't keep kosher, and for whom the only connection to his or her ancestral past is attending an annual Passover seder? In Religion or Ethnicity? fifteen leading scholars trace the evolution of Jewish identity. The book examines Judaism from the Greco-Roman age, through medieval times, modern western and eastern Europe, to today. Jewish identity has been defined as an ethnicity, a nation, a culture, and even a race. Religion or Ethnicity? questions what it means to be Jewish. The contributors show how the Jewish people have evolved over time in different ethnic, religious, and political movements. In his closing essay, Gitelman questions the viability of secular Jewishness outside Israel but suggests that the continued interest in exploring the relationship between Judaism's secular and religious forms will keep the heritage alive for generations to come.

Did Jew Know?

Did Jew Know? PDF Author: Emily Stone
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452129576
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
An addictively readable mix of practical information, fun facts and figures, and amusing trivia about Jewish life. This witty handbook serves up a hearty stew of all things Jew. Did Jew Know is filled with fun, surprising, and informative facts about all aspects of Jewish life. Need to know about all those second-tier holidays no one ever celebrates? We’ve got you covered. Curious about kosher laws and Kabbalah? Have no fear. Join us for a history of the Jewish people from Saul to Seinfeld, a rundown of bubbe-approved nosh, and details about the Jewish invention of . . . everything. Packed with infographics, quizzes, and charts, this handy primer is perfect for cocktail conversation, sharing facts around the Seder table, or celebrating the unlikely triumphs of the Chosen People.

Jew

Jew PDF Author: Cynthia M. Baker
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813573866
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Jew. The word possesses an uncanny power to provoke and unsettle. For millennia, Jew has signified the consummate Other, a persistent fly in the ointment of Western civilization’s grand narratives and cultural projects. Only very recently, however, has Jew been reclaimed as a term of self-identification and pride. With these insights as a point of departure, this book offers a wide-ranging exploration of the key word Jew—a term that lies not only at the heart of Jewish experience, but indeed at the core of Western civilization. Examining scholarly debates about the origins and early meanings of Jew, Cynthia M. Baker interrogates categories like “ethnicity,” “race,” and “religion” that inevitably feature in attempts to define the word. Tracing the term’s evolution, she also illuminates its many contradictions, revealing how Jew has served as a marker of materialism and intellectualism, socialism and capitalism, worldly cosmopolitanism and clannish parochialism, chosen status, and accursed stigma. Baker proceeds to explore the complex challenges that attend the modern appropriation of Jew as a term of self-identification, with forays into Yiddish language and culture, as well as meditations on Jew-as-identity by contemporary public intellectuals. Finally, by tracing the phrase new Jews through a range of contexts—including the early Zionist movement, current debates about Muslim immigration to Europe, and recent sociological studies in the United States—the book provides a glimpse of what the word Jew is coming to mean in an era of Internet cultures, genetic sequencing, precarious nationalisms, and proliferating identities.

The Price of Whiteness

The Price of Whiteness PDF Author: Eric L. Goldstein
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
What has it meant to be Jewish in a nation preoccupied with the categories of black and white? The Price of Whiteness documents the uneasy place Jews have held in America's racial culture since the late nineteenth century. The book traces Jews' often tumultuous encounter with race from the 1870s through World War II, when they became vested as part of America's white mainstream and abandoned the practice of describing themselves in racial terms. American Jewish history is often told as a story of quick and successful adaptation, but Goldstein demonstrates how the process of identifying as white Americans was an ambivalent one, filled with hard choices and conflicting emotions for Jewish immigrants and their children. Jews enjoyed a much greater level of social inclusion than African Americans, but their membership in white America was frequently made contingent on their conformity to prevailing racial mores and on the eradication of their perceived racial distinctiveness. While Jews consistently sought acceptance as whites, their tendency to express their own group bonds through the language of "race" led to deep misgivings about what was required of them. Today, despite the great success Jews enjoy in the United States, they still struggle with the constraints of America's black-white dichotomy. The Price of Whiteness concludes that while Jews' status as white has opened many doors for them, it has also placed limits on their ability to assert themselves as a group apart.