A Probing and Powerful Look at the Role You Play in Shaping Your Relationship with God "No matter how hard we look, the God of Israel cannot be seen. Looking is not seeing, and seeing God is not like seeing an apple. It is much more like making a medical diagnosis on the basis of looking at a complex set of symptoms. Each of the symptoms is a dot. We can look at the dots and still miss the pattern." --from Part I The Torah is replete with references to hearing God but precious few references to seeing God. Seeing is complicated. What we look for and see are traces of God's presence in the world and in history, but not God. In order to identify those traces as reflections of divine presence, we need to re-examine how we see, what we see, and how we interpret that information. In this challenging and inspiring look at the dynamics of the religious experience, award-winning author and theologian Neil Gillman guides you into a new way of seeing the complex patterns in the Bible, history, and everyday experiences and helps you interpret what those patterns mean to you and your relationship with God. Examining faith and doubt, revelation and law, suffering and redemption, Gillman candidly deconstructs familiar biblical moments in order to help you develop and refine your own spiritual vision, so that you are able to discern the presence of God in unanticipated ways.

The book of Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on the condition that he and all his male descendents must be circumcised. For thousands of years thereafter, the distinctive practice of circumcision served to set the Jews apart from their neighbors. The apostle Paul rejected it as a worthless practice, emblematic of Judaism's fixation on physical matters. Christian theologians followed his lead, arguing that whereas Christians sought spiritual fulfillment, Jews remained mired in such pointless concerns as diet and circumcision. As time went on, Europeans developed folklore about malicious Jews who performed sacrificial murders of Christian children and delighted in genital mutilation. But Jews held unwaveringly to the belief that being a Jewish male meant being physically circumcised and to this day even most non-observant Jews continue to follow this practice. In this book, Leonard B. Glick offers a history of Jewish and Christian beliefs about circumcision from its ancient origins to the current controversy. By the turn of the century, more and more physicians in America and England--but not, interestingly, in continental Europe--were performing the procedure routinely. Glick shows that Jewish American physicians were and continue to be especially vocal and influential champions of the practice which, he notes, serves to erase the visible difference between Jewish and gentile males. Informed medical opinion is now unanimous that circumcision confers no benefit and the practice has declined. In Jewish circles it is virtually taboo to question circumcision, but Glick does not flinch from asking whether this procedure should continue to be the defining feature of modern Jewish identity.

Sherwin B. Nuland—best-selling author of How We Die —focuses his surgeon’s eye and writer’s pen on this greatest of rabbis, most intriguing of Jewish philosophers, and most honored of Jewish doctors. Moses Maimonides was a Renaissance man before there was a Renaissance: a great physician, a dazzling Torah scholar, a daring philosopher. Eight hundred years after his death, his notions about God, faith, the afterlife, and the Messiah still stir debate; his life as a physician still inspires; and the enigmas of his character still fascinate. Nuland's portrait of Maimonides that makes his life, his times, and his thought accessible to the general reader as they have never been before.

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"Every day," writes Rabbi Meir Kahane, "the Arabs of Israel move closer to becoming a majority. Are we [Israel] committed to national suicide? Should we allow demography, geography, and democracy to push Israel closer to the abyss? According to Rabbi Kahane, Israel can only be sustained by a permanent Jewish majority and a small, insignificant, and placid Arab minority. But the Arab population continues to grown quantitatively and qualitatively. They feel no ties for a state that breathes Jewishness. They mockingly accept moneys from the National Insurance Institute for medical services, tuition, and social welfre; yet they pay little or no tax. Even worse, they openly vow to destroy the Jewish state - not with bullets or bombs, but with the democratic vote. Is there a solution? Rabbi Kahane insists, "Yes." In this explosive manifesto Rabbi Kahane sets forth the only plan to save Israel. Israeli Arabs would be given the options of accepting noncitizenship, leaving willingly with compensation, or being forcibly expelled without compensation. Controversial? Yes. Could the Arabs be convinced to leave? "We will not come to the Arabs to request, argue, or convince," says Kahane. "For Jews and Arabs in Israel there is only one answer - separation. Jews in their land, Arabs in theirs. Separation. Only separation." They Must Go was written in 1980 while Rabbi Meir Kahane was jailed in Ramle Prison by the Israeli government under an unprecedented administrative detention order that imprisoned him without a trial, without his being informed of any specific charge, and without opportunity to know or to question any alleged evidence or witness. His crime: his philosophy concerning the danger that exists to the state of Israel by the very presence of its large and growing Arab population. Rabbi Kahane's ideas were suppressed, twisted, defamed, and subjected to emotional and hysterical diatribes by people who were too frightened to consider them intelligently or to debate them intellectually. Is there a time bomb ticking away relentlessly in the Holy Land? Can Arabs and Jews ultimately coexist in a Jewish-Zionist state? Rabbi Kahane's only answer: "They Must Go."

"W. Gunther Plaut is one of Reform Judaism's most acclaimed twentieth-century rabbis and scholars. He is a gifted writer and intellectual whose ideas garner devotees throughout the world. Eight Decades: The Selected Writings of W. Gunther Plaut is a selection of his previously published articles and essays. They include discussions on history, biblical topics, literature and linguistics, theological questions, moral and social issues, perspectives on Reform Judaism, legal issues, and Israel. First published in magazines as diverse as Maclean's, Atlantic, Commentary, Reconstructionist, Ontario Medical Review, Hebrew Union College Annual, and many others, each essay carries a unique message that is still relevant today, Eight Decades is a fitting companion to One Voice: The Selected Sermons of W. Gunther Plaut, published in 2007 on the occasion of his ninety-fifth birthday."--Jacket

This is the first book to explore the effect of genetic research on the Lemba Judaising community of Southern Africa and the phenomenon of Israelite identity. The science of genetics as relayed by the media is perceived by laymen as being irreproachably objective 'hard science': its disinterested 'scientific' findings appear immensely impressive and may therefore act as a powerful catalyst for change. In this case, an oral tradition cherished by many of the Lemba that they are of Jewish origin appears to be supported by recent DNA testing, which has deeply affected the narrative and religious identity of the group and the way the tribe is perceived in the Western world. International in appeal, this topical text brings together cutting-edge research on the social, cultural and ethical implications of genetics and the study of Judaising movements across the world. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of Jewish history, genetic anthropology, race and ethnicity studies, and religious and cultural studies.

When King Philip VI expelled the Jews in 1306, some 100,000 men, women, and children were driven from royal France into the neighboring lands of Spain, Provence, Italy, and North Africa. The great expulsion of 1306 was arguably one of the most traumatic moments of medieval Jewish history and would prove to be the harbinger of a series of recalls and expulsions, local and general, culminating in King Charles VI's expulsion decree of 1394. Despite the upheavals of the fourteenth century, the literary productivity of Jews was astonishing. Yet there are few direct references to the catastrophic events of 1306, even in Jewish liturgical and historiographic texts, where one would expect to find them. In No Place of Rest , Susan Einbinder coaxes out the literary traces of this traumatic expulsion. Why did the memory of this proud and vibrant Jewish community fade from historical memory? Where do its remnants reside among later communities and readers? From the lyrics of the supposed "Jewish troubadour" Isaac HaGorni to medical texts and astronomical charts, Einbinder studies a range of writings she reveals to be commemorative. Her careful readings uncover the ways in which medieval Jews asserted their identity in exile and, perhaps more important, helped to preserve or efface their history.

This book is the first to examine closely the interaction between Jewish culture, medicine, and science during Europe's age of 'scientific revolution'. Most students of Jewish history have treated the period from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries as a mere extension of the Jewish Middle Ages, a time when the Jewish world was cut off from intellectual developments in the Christian world. The eminent scholar David Ruderman here argues, however, that during this era Jewish culture and society became increasingly aware of medical and scientific advances, and that a new Jewish scientific discourse evolved that had significant repercussions for Jewish religious concerns.