From the author of The Architecture of Happiness , a deeply moving meditation on how we can still benefit, without believing, from the wisdom, the beauty, and the consolatory power that religion has to offer. Alain de Botton was brought up in a committedly atheistic household, and though he was powerfully swayed by his parents' views, he underwent, in his mid-twenties, a crisis of faithlessness. His feelings of doubt about atheism had their origins in listening to Bach's cantatas, were further developed in the presence of certain Bellini Madonnas, and became overwhelming with an introduction to Zen architecture. However, it was not until his father's death -- buried under a Hebrew headstone in a Jewish cemetery because he had intriguingly omitted to make more secular arrangements -- that Alain began to face the full degree of his ambivalence regarding the views of religion that he had dutifully accepted. Why are we presented with the curious choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle and effective rituals and practices for which there is no equivalent in secular society? Why do we bristle at the mention of the word "morality"? Flee from the idea that art should be uplifting, or have an ethical purpose? Why don't we build temples? What mechanisms do we have for expressing gratitude? The challenge that de Botton addresses in his book: how to separate ideas and practices from the religious institutions that have laid claim to them. In Religion for Atheists is an argument to free our soul-related needs from the particular influence of religions, even if it is, paradoxically, the study of religion that will allow us to rediscover and rearticulate those needs.

Toward a Meaningful Life is a spiritual road map for living based on the teachings of one of the foremost religious leaders of our time: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Head of the Lubavitcher movement for forty-four years and recognized throughout the world simply as "the Rebbe," Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in June 1994, was a sage and a visionary of the highest order. Toward a Meaningful Life gives people of all backgrounds fresh perspectives on every aspect of their lives--from birth to death, youth to old a≥ marriage, love, intimacy, and family; the persistent issues of career, health, pain, and suffering; and education, faith, science, and government. We learn to bridge the divisions between accelerated technology and decelerated morality, between unprecedented worldwide unity and unparalleled personal disunity. Although the Rebbe's teachings are firmly anchored in more than three thousand years of scholarship, the urgent relevance of these old-age truths to contemporary life has never been more manifest. At the threshold of a new world where matter and spirit converge, the Rebbe proposes spiritual principles that unite people as opposed to the materialism that divides them. In doing so, he continues to lead us toward personal and universal redemption, toward a meaningful life, and toward God.

There is a tug of war going on for the future of America. At one end of the rope are those who think America is a secular nation; at the other end are those who believe religion is at the root of our country's foundation. In this paperback release of the thought-provoking America's Real War, renowned leader and speaker Rabbi Daniel Lapin encourages America to re-embrace the Judeo-Christian values on which our nation was founded, and logically demonstrates why those values are crucial to America's strength in the new millennium.

A distinguished religious leader's "brilliant, urgent" (The Washington Post) case for reconstructing a shared framework of values. With liberal democracy embattled, our public discourse growing increasingly toxic, family life breaking down, and drug abuse and depression on the rise, many fear what the future holds. In Morality , respected faith leader and public intellectual Jonathan Sacks traces today's crisis to our loss of a strong, shared moral code and our elevation of self-interest over the common good. Sacks leads readers from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment to the present day to show that there is no liberty without morality and no freedom without responsibility, arguing that we all must play our part in rebuilding a common moral foundation. A major work of philosophy, this is an inspiring vision of a world in which we can all find our place and face the future without fear.

"[Of] the 12 well-crafted essays in this volume...the most useful are those dealing with the Holocaust." — Choice "Especially recommended for college-level students of Jewish history and culture." — The Bookwatch This is a critical exploration of the most repercussive topics in modern Jewish history and thought. A sequel to Katz's National Jewish Book Award-winning study, Post-Holocaust Dialogues, this book identifies the main issues in the contemporary Jewish intellectual universe and outlines a larger, more synthetic understanding of contemporary Jewish existence.

The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors reveals the victims' frank and thought-provoking answers to searching questions about their experiences: Was the Holocaust God's will? Was there any meaning or purpose in the Holocaust? Was Israel worth the price six million had to pay? Did the experience in the death camps bring about an avowal of faith? A denial of God? A reaffirmation of religious belief? Did the Holocaust change beliefs about the coming of the Messiah, the Torah, the Jews as the chosen people, and the nature of God? Drawing on the responses of seven hundred survivors, Reeve Robert Brenner reveals the changes, rejections, reaffirmations, doubts, and despairs that have so profoundly affected the faith, practices, ideas, and attitudes of survivors, and, by extension, the entire Jewish people. Many survivors carried their deepest secrets and innermost beliefs silently, from internment to interment. But Brenner's quest provided the impetus for many survivors to end their silence about the past and come forth with their feelings. In poignant vignettes scattered throughout the book, their answers to these profound questions are offered, disclosing ardent, overpowering passions and sensibilities.

2011 Reprint of 1950 Translation by William Turner. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Recommended, both as a fascinating and little-known document in the history of psychology and as a provocative reading of the history of psychology. (Religious Studies Review). Will interest many students of the history of psychoanalysis... Rank's conclusions contribute to present-day controversies about the status of psychoanalysis as a science. (Psychiatric Times ) The first complete English translation of a work that Rank published in 1930. It draws on anthropology, sociology, mythology, religion, philosophy, history, and literature to chart the development of the human psyche... The book's antimaterialistic passion makes it a compelling counterpoint to the stern biology of our own age, and the bounds it sets to what psychoanalysis can claim are justly drawn. (Wilson Quarterly ) Unquestionably Rank's most important work... This new translation is an effort to create a Rank for our millennium... [and it] reads elegantly and comfortably in English... The argument is complex and intricate, consisting of a long historical/ethnographic sweep that takes us from a 'primitive' state, via animism through the Christian or sexual era to the scientific era and modern development of psychology... Along the way we find traces of many of Rank's other brilliant psychological surveys -- the double, Don Juan, heroes' birth myths, the theme of incest -- woven into this massive canvas and viewed on the largest scale... Throughout this book, the grand tapestry is set with some remarkable gems of observation. (Naomi Segal Psychoanalysis and History ) This is the first complete translation of Otto Rank's fascinating text on the nature and history of the concept of the Soul and Will in the psychological history of humankind... a tour de force in vigour, scope and application to many contemporary issues such as sexual behaviors, the nature of dreaming, incest prohibitions and narcissism, to name but a few. (L.R. Edgar Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society ) In his last years, Otto Rank turned his lifetime of thought and learning toward two of the most difficult topics in human history: religion and the soul. The result was this now-classic work, available in this new, very accessible English translation. Unlike many other intellectuals of the twentieth century, Rank maintains a place for the soul rather than dismissing it as a fantasy. The soul and the beliefs about it, he argues, set forth the foundation for psychology, with its complex analyses of consciousness, self-consciousness, and personality. Rank's commentary is not limited to beliefs about individual souls but includes ideas about group souls, sometimes encompassing nations or generations. Rank suggests that it is in expression of group beliefs that the idea of the soul attains its greatest power. What is the soul? Otto Rank treats it as a universal and essential belief for individuals and their societies, constant in function but evolving in form through millennia. To borrow a post-Rankian metaphor, the soul was created in the big bang of irresistible psychological force colliding with immutable biological fact-our will to live forever against death. The collision creates a spark in our individual and social consciousness which through history has become both consolation and inspiration: the immortal soul. All ideologies reflect this phenomenon and modify its expression to suit the era. Otto Rank wrote before the atom bomb or television, both of which alter our perception of death without changing the fact. Rank's introduction of the soul as an essential part of contemporary psychology helps explain a number of perplexing, irrational phenomena in contemporary life.

Bestselling author Richard Elliott Friedman, whose Who Wrote the Bible? was an intriguing took at the origins of the Bible, takes on another momentous theme for the third millennium "to point the way toward a possible final reconciliation of science and religion and to provide the basis for a new moral code acceptable to believers and nonbelievers alike" (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Remarkably readable, this inspiring work explores three interlinking mysteries: the amazing fact that in the Bible God gradually becomes more hidden; the eerie connection between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, who arrived at the idea of "the death of God" almost concurrently -- but independent of one another; and the extraordinary cosmic parallel between the big bang theory and the mystlcism of the Kabbalah. Bible Review hailed this book as "brilliant, an elegant and learned reflection on one of the central mysteries or the Bible and of modern life."

"Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was a prolific scholar, impassioned theologian, and prominent activist who participated in the black civil rights movement and the campaign against the Vietnam War. He has been hailed as a hero, honored as a visionary, and endlessly quoted as a devotional writer. In this sympathetic, yet critical, examination, Shai Held elicits the overarching themes and unity of Heschel's incisive and insightful thought. Focusing on the idea of transcendence - or the movement from self-centeredness to God-centeredness - Held puts Heschel into dialogue with contemporary Jewish thinkers, Christian theologians, devotional writers, and philosophers of religion"--From publisher's website

To solicit these stories, Paul Krassner contacted 250 friends and acquaintances and announced the project in High Times and on the air. Including "The Bust at Ken Kesey's Place, " "How the Yippies Mailed 30,000 Joints to Perfect Strangers, " and "The Acid Trip of a Death Row Prisoner, " these true tales range from funny to bizarre to poignant.

What does it mean to re-vision Torah? "I use the title ReVisions for this book because I want readers both to revise--in the classic definition of reexamine and alter--and to see the text anew, to have a new vision, a 'revision,' of Torah.... It begins with the notion that women see the text differently than men do, ask different questions and bring different answers.... This book is not about rewriting the Torah. It is about rereading it." --from the Introduction Rabbi Elyse Goldstein--woman, rabbi, scholar, and feminist--challenges and defends, rereads and reinterprets the ancient text, revealing to modern readers a way to see Judaism anew, for a new vision--a "revision"--of the Torah. Goldstein boldly brings the Torah into a contemporary context at the same time she honestly reconciles its past.

"The development of this project has taken many years and evolved in many unexpected directions as a result of the advice and feedback from many people. The subject is Darwin's Jews, that is, those Jewish thinkers in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries who have given Darwin a legacy within Jewish history beyond the tragic account of Nazi race theory and eugenics that all too often dominates the discussion of Jews and Darwin. For this reason, as much as any other, it seemed like a worthwhile endeavour. But the identification and selection of the different species of Darwin's Jews has proven to be difficult fieldwork, since there are so many ideological niches and environments for so many varieties of religious and non-religious Jews within the tangled bank of modern Jewish identity. Fortunately, I have not been working alone, and am grateful for the opportunity now to acknowledge the work of others"--

In this authoritative guide to Judaism, respected scholar M. Friedlander provides a comprehensive overview of Jewish history, beliefs, and practices. This book is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of one of the world's oldest and most influential religions. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This essay in the history of ideas seeks to trace the development of creed formation in Judaism from its inception with Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) to the beginning of the sixteenth-century, when systematic attention to the problem disappeared from the agenda of Jewish intellectuals. Dr Kellner describes, analyses, and compares the dogmatic systems of Maimonides, Duran, Crescas, Albo, Bibado, Abravanel, among others. English translations are presented for relevant texts, which, for the most part, have never before been critically edited or translated.

Covenantal Rights is a groundbreaking work of political theory: a comprehensive, philosophically sophisticated attempt to bring insights from the Jewish political tradition into current political and legal debates about rights and to bring rights discourse more fully into Jewish thought. David Novak pursues these aims by presenting a theory of rights founded on the covenant between God and the Jewish people as that covenant is constituted by Scripture and the rabbinic tradition. In doing so, he presents a powerful challenge to prevailing liberal and conservative positions on rights and duties and opens a new chapter in contemporary Jewish political thinking. For Novak, "covenantal rights" are rooted in God's primary rights as creator of the universe and as the elector of a particular community whose members relate to this God as their sovereign. The subsequent rights of individuals and communities flow from God's covenantal promises, which function as irrevocable entitlements. This presents a sharp contrast to the liberal tradition, in which rights flow above all from individuals. It also challenges the conservative idea that duties can take precedence over rights, since Novak argues that there are no covenantal duties that are not backed by correlative rights. Novak explains carefully and clearly how this theory of covenantal rights fits into Jewish tradition and applies to the relationships among God, the covenanted community, and individuals. This work is a profound and provocative contribution to contemporary religious and political theory.

With his typical grace and sparkling wit, Talmudic master and rabbi Steinsaltz explores in these collected essays topics ranging from the nature of Jewish identity and the character of the state of Israel to interpretations of the five megillot (Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther). Included here are two interviews that provide glimpses into the intensity that marks the life and work of this great teacher. Highly recommended. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Every work on Jewish thought and law since the twelfth century bears the imprint of Maimonides. A. N. Whitehead's famous dictum that the entire European philosophical tradition 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato' could equally characterize Maimonides' place in the Jewish tradition. The critical studies in this volume explore how Orthodox rabbis of different orientations--Shlomo Aviner, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Joseph Kafih, Abraham Isaac Kook, Aaron Kotler, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Elhanan Wasserman--have read and provided footnotes to Maimonides in the long twentieth century. How well did they really understand Maimonides? And where do their arguments fit in the mainstream debates about him and his works? Each of the seven core chapters examines a particular approach. Some rabbis have tried to liberate themselves from the influence of his ideas. Others have sought to build on those ideas or expand them in ways which Maimonides himself did not pursue, and which he may well not have agreed with. Still others advance patently non-Maimonidean positions, while attributing them to none other than Maimonides. Above all, the essays published here demonstrate that his legacy remains vibrantly alive today.

Rabbi Jacob Agus' (1911-1986) intellectual production spanned nearly a half century and covered an enormous historical and conceptual range, from the biblical to the modern era. Best known as an important Jewish scholar, he also held important rabbinic, teaching, and public positions. Although born and raised within an orthodox setting, Agus was strongly influenced by American liberalism and his work displayed modernizing sympathies, reservations about nationalism--including some forms of Zionism--and often severe criticisms of kabbalah. Agus crafted a unique, quite American, modernizing vision that ardently sought to remain in touch with the wellsprings of the rabbinic tradition while remaining open to the intellectual and moral currents of his own time.The Essential Agus brings together a sampling of Agus' most important published and unpublished material in one easily accessible volume. It will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers seeking to experience Agus' intellectual legacy.