The memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly mapless world Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her husband and her faith. After years of trying to silence the voice inside her that said she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own to discover what she does believe and who she really is. This will mean forging a new way of life not just for herself, but for her children, who are struggling with what the divorce and her new status as "not Orthodox" mean for them. This is a memoir about what it means to decide to heed your inner compass at long last. To free the part of yourself that has been suppressed, even if it means walking away from the only life you've ever known. Honest and courageous, Tova takes us through her first year outside her marriage and community as she learns to silence her fears and seek adventure on her own path to happiness.

Profound and often raucously funny, Kamenetz's quirky tale carries him from a conversation with the Dalai Lama (in which he valiantly "contravened forty-six years of my own noisy cultural conditioning" to keep from stepping on the silence) to breaking matzah with him a year later at a Passover seder for Tibetan freedom. Along the way he learns kabbalah poolside at the Beverly Hilton, meditates in a T-shirt shop with Baton Rouge's three resident Tibetan Buddhists, observes the Sabbath in a plastic tent with Jewish addicts and cons in an inter-city slum, and "calls out" to God with new-Hasidic abandon while racing down the San Bernadino freeway. Stalking Elijah teaches at every step of the path how to celebrate the Jewish tradition in the context of feminism, contemporary science, and interfaith dialogue.

When compiler Jerome Charyn first read Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, a world of letters opened up to him. It was his first exposure to the full potential of language, rendered breathlessly. In those pages he felt the terror and delight and buzz and ceaseless clatter of the inside of a hornet's head. Here, he shares with us nineteen stories, including one from Augie March, that evoke similar feelings of passion and pain and joy. Selected from some of America's most celebrated Jewish writers, as well as a few lesser known ones, Inside the Hornet's Head is a moving, daring, appealing, and indispensable work.

"America is the model of modernity, and the American Jewish experience of modernity is in some ways paradigmatic of that of modern man. One dilemma of modernity is: What of tradition? Of the experience of the past? For the Jew it is this: how to mediate between the claims of classical Judaism, the work of ages of faith, archaic, supernatural, sacred, and the equally ineluctable demands of contemporaneity, secularity, unbelief, and worldliness? What happens to religion beyond the age in which men take ritual for reality and myth for granted, tell as fact the stories meant to convey the essential structure of being in highly symbolic form and to reveal the truth of life? What happens to their imaginative life? How do they mediate between the claim of contemporaneity and the demands of their vast inheritance of institutions, rituals, myths and theologies, social and cultural patterns, derived from the archaic age? Clearly, that inheritance remains very present in the modern world. But what of that presence? Is it a wraith or an augury?"-From the Preface.

Continuing the adventures of the lovable "fools" of Helm begun in "The Wise Men of Helm", this book is illustrated with whimsical drawings. These humorous stories are just right for children.

Here is a book of spiritual adventure. From the miracle at the Red Sea to the miracle of waking up this morning, this intriguing book introduces young people to a way of spiritual thinking to last a lifetime. Kushner, whose award-winning books have brought spirituality to life for countless adults, here reveals the essence of Judaism in a way kids can understand and enjoy. Easy to read and imaginatively illustrated by the author, The Book of Miracles helps young people make--and treasure--the connections between religion, spirituality and everyday life. For parents to read to their children, for children to read to their parents, The Book of Miracles encourages kids' awareness of their own spirituality, and shows young people how to use Judaism as a foundation on which to build their lives.

Product Description Once a notorious hippie, Sammuel Himmelhoch joins a Hassidic sect of penitents in Jerusalem and becomes a Master of the Return, guiding fellow converts to the teachings of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslay From Publishers Weekly In Mara, Reich, herself the scion of a rabbinical family, took aim at the mores of American Orthodox Jewry. Here, she casts her sly, sardonic eye upon those at the opposite end of the spectrum, so to speakIsraeli penitents. With vigor, irreverence and devastating accuracy, she limns a flock of zany zealots, intoxicated by the rarefied Hassidism of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav. These cultists, former hippies who are now "high on the One Above," are at once delightfully absurd in their revival, even invention, of bizarre customs (such as the paramount pilgrimage to Rabbi Nahman's Ukranian grave to terminate "nocturnal emissions"); poignant in their misguided, miseducated search for identity and redemption; as self-indulgent in their expiation as they once were in their passions; and alarming in their patent misogyny, racism, deceit, self-righteousness and extreme messianic political agenda. In Reich's hands, plot and character development are sacrificed to an extravagant religious and social parody cum cautionary tale. The penitents remain symbolic figuresas exemplified by an elderly midwife, whose name, Shifra-Puah, evokes her righteous colleagues from the biblical book of Exodus who disobeyed the pharaonic decree to murder male newborns, and Avraham Ger, whose surname, Hebrew for convert, proclaims his adoption of Judaism. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Samuel Himmelhoch was once lighting effects man for notorious rock groups, his wife Ivriya rode horses bare-breasted in Rosh Pina, and Sora Katz was the former Pam Buck of Macon, Georgia, but now they are all members of an extreme Hassidic sect, living together in the Moslem quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Described with affection and great insight, the riotous adventures of these sincere but sometimes misguided penitents easily mix the supernatural with human events. Reich pinpoints absurdity and self-righteousness beautifully, as when Reb Lev Luria pontificates in gematria (talmudic numeric equivalents) derived from his newly donated computer. An arrestingly comtemporary treatment of Jewish spirituality and renewal. Highly recommended. Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is Shabbos..." (Exodus 20;9-10) The sages explain that each and every day's labor has a special connection to the upcoming Shabbos. My Jewish Days of the Week is a fun-filled journey toward the best day of all. It begins with a family Sunday spent in the garden, a busy Monday spent at school, and ends with Thursday grocery shopping and Friday cooking and cleaning. All week long, the characters prepare for the experience of ushering in and observing Shabbos. The catchy rhymes and old-world illustrations portray everyday life as a joyous adventure for toddlers. Naturally, Shabbos itself is given top billing as: a go-to-shul and walking day a story-telling, talking day a friend and neighbor meeting day a yummy challah-eating day! The text is set in a large clear font, and a glossary explains any words that may be unfamiliar to some of the readers. As an added bonus, a beautiful chart at the end of the book reviews all the days of the week in both English and Hebrew.