A unique memoir that interweaves poetry, narrative, meditation, and social history, A Spiritual Life explores the complex facets of a Jewish woman's spiritual coming-of-age, capturing the emotional and spiritual reality of contemporary Jews as well as religious seekers of all types. From the experiences of early childhood, to the spiritual awakening of a secular adolescent encountering Jewish tradition, to the alternately funny and searing tales of new-found independence, early married life, young motherhood, and midlife, Feld comments with remarkable honesty and clarity on the many stages of spiritual and artistic exploration and growth. Overarching all these accounts is the picture of how the cycle of the Jewish calendar year comes to provide an ever-renewing source of sustenance for the author's deepening spiritual expression.

Based on documentation from various archives, discusses religious and halakhic issues which affected the lives of observant Jews during the Holocaust. Includes chapters on the reactions of rabbis in various towns to reports on the extermination of Jews; the persecution and suffering of rabbis and the rescue of some hasidic rabbis; halakhic rulings in ghettos and camps, e.g. concerning the desire of individual Jews to sacrifice themselves for others; rulings on problems involved in posing as a non-Jew; marriage, prayers, and the sanctification of God's name during the Holocaust; responsa of Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aronzon, a rabbi in Sanniki, Poland, who survived Nazi camps; sermons delivered by Rabbi Kalonimus Kalmish Shapira in the Warsaw ghetto; diaries, memoirs, and letters of survivors.

A fresh account of the medieval mystic, traveling pilgrim, and pioneering memoirist Margery Kempe. This is a new account of the medieval mystic and pilgrim Margery Kempe. Kempe, who had fourteen children, traveled all over Europe and recorded a series of unusual events and religious visions in her work The Book of Margery Kempe, which is often called the first autobiography in the English language. Anthony Bale charts Kempe's life and tells her story through the places, relationships, objects, and experiences that influenced her. Extensive quotations from Kempe's Book accompany generous illustrations, giving a fascinating insight into the life of a medieval woman. Margery Kempe is situated within the religious controversies of her time, and her religious visions and later years put in context. And lastly, Bale tells the extraordinary story of the rediscovery, in the 1930s, of the unique manuscript of her autobiography.