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Millions of African Christians who consider themselves genealogical descendants of one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel—in other words, Jewish by ethnicity, but Christian in terms of faith—are increasingly choosing a religious affiliation that honors both of these identities. Their choice: Messianic Judaism. Messianic adherents emulate the Christians of the first century, observing the Jewish commandments while also affirming the salvational grace of Yeshua (Jesus). As the first comparative ethnography of such "fulfilled Jews" on the African continent, this book presents case studies that will enrich our understanding of one of global Christianity’s most overlooked iterations.
This volume explores the processes that led several modern Jewish leaders – rabbis, politicians, and intellectuals – to make radical changes to their ideology regarding Zionism, Socialism, and Orthodoxy. Comparing their ideological change to acts of conversion, the study examines the philosophical, sociological, and psychological path of the leaders’ transformation. The individuals examined are novelist Arthur Koestler, who transformed from a devout Communist to an anti-Communist crusader following the atrocities of the Stalin regime; Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, who moved from the New Left to neoconservative, disillusioned by US liberal politics; Yissachar Shlomo T...
How Jews use media to connect with one another has consequences for Jewish identity, community, and culture. These essays consider how different media shape actions and project anxieties, conflicts, and emotions, and how Jews and Jewish institutions harness, tolerate, or resist media to create their ethnic and religious social belonging.
The contemporary phenomenon of people’s attraction to Judaism around the world is remarkable. Additionally, millions of people who are not of Jewish descent are increasingly identifying themselves as Jews or are converting. In this volume, scholars and practitioners from a wide variety of disciplines explore multiple sources and meanings of this new shaping of modern Jewish identities in Africa, the United States, and India.
One of the most striking contemporary religious phenomena is the world-wide fascination with Judaism. Traditionally, few non-Jews converted to the Jewish faith, but today millions of people throughout the world are converting to Judaism and are identifying as Jews or Israelites. In this volume, leading scholars of issues related to conversion, Judaising movements and Judaism as a New Religious Movement discuss and explain this global movement towards identification with the Jewish people, from Germany and Poland to China and Nigeria.
BeyondSurvival challenges the current agenda, assumptions, mind-set, and sacred cows of the Jewish establishment, which has largely accepted as a given and become resigned to its communal decline. Instead, BeyondSurvival offers an alternative vision for the Jewish future—a paradigm shift, one in which individuals can find an open and accepting community that joyously and creatively celebrates their sacred way of life. A future in which we can all grow and thrive. BeyondSurvival begins by taking an in-depth look at the obstacles that currently prevent our growth as a people. This is the survival agenda that has served the Jewish community well in the past but now needs to be laid to rest. C...
A New York Times Bestseller A leading public intellectual’s timely reckoning with how Jews can and should make sense of their tradition and each other. What does it mean to be a Jew? At a time of worldwide crisis, venerable answers to this question have become unsettled. In To Be a Jew Today, the legal scholar and columnist Noah Feldman draws on a lifelong engagement with his religion to offer a wide-ranging interpretation of Judaism in its current varieties. How do Jews today understand their relationship to God, to Israel, and to each other—and live their lives accordingly? Writing sympathetically but incisively about diverse outlooks, Feldman clarifies what’s at stake in the choice ...
Chaim Potok was a world-class writer and scholar, a Conservative Jew who wrote from and about his tradition and the conflicts between observance and acculturation. With a plain, straightforward style, his novels were set against the moral, spiritual, and intellectual currents of the twentieth century. This collection aims to widen the lens through which we read Chaim Potok and to establish him as an authentic American writer who created unforgettable characters forging American identities for themselves while retaining their Jewish nature. The essays illuminate the central struggle in Potok’s novels, which results from a profound desire to reconcile the appeal of modernity with the pull of traditional Judaism. The volume includes a memoir by Adena Potok and ends with Chaim Potok’s “My Life as a Writer,” a speech he gave at Penn State in 1982. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Victoria Aarons, Nathan P. Devir, Jane Eisner, Susanne Klingenstein, S. Lillian Kremer, Jessica Lang, Sanford E. Marovitz, Kathryn McClymond, Hugh Nissenson, Adena Potok, and Jonathan Rosen.