Bøger udgivet af Hakodesh Press

Jewish sacred text is often misconstrued as purporting a view of God as wrathful and vengeful, demanding the administration of retributive justice through a series of immutable laws. It is a widely held belief that it was Christianity, and in particular the figure of Jesus Christ which brought love, kindness and mercy to the forefront of ethical behavior. Relying on examples taken from the Hebrew Bible, from Talmud and Midrash, this book shows that the ethical life sanctified in Jewish sacred texts is grounded in notions of interdependency and compassion. The book argues that the foundational moral principles of Jewish sacred text are in fact antecedent to and commensurate with what has become known through the work of psychologist Carol Gilligan as ¿care ethics¿ or ¿feminist ethics.¿ Listening to women discuss and evaluate moral dilemmas in a register of empathy and responsibility, Gilligan challenged the reigning construction of fairness and justice as the pinnacles of moral reasoning. Jews are called upon to be a holy people. What that means is to be a people who practice empathy and care, where the primacy of relationship is embedded in concepts of justice and compassion.

American efforts to restrict immigration from 1850¿s to the xenophobic US Immigration Act of 1923, which essentially stopped Immigration the US until post World War II. The reader sees the rise of xenophobic groups: Ku Klux Klan, Eugenics movement, Numerous Xenophobic groups. Subject matter includes: Nativism; The First Jewish Immigrants to the United States; German-Jewish Immigration ¿ 1820-1880; Immigration Act of 1875; The Great Russian Jewish Immigration in 1881-1914; Pahlen Commission in 1894; Hepburn Congressional investigation, 1890; The Immigration Act of 1891; Anti-German Antipathy; Anti-Catholic Antipathy; Italian American Bias; Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907; The Immigration Act of 1907; 1911 Congressional Testimony; Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1921; Eugenics Movement; Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1924; Effects of Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1924.

Being a Jew in the 21st Century presents new challenges. Jews are part of a globalised world. We are no longer a ghettoised people, unless we choose to self-impose a ghetto. Thus we are challenged with how to properly bring our Jewish ethics and values to bear on our interaction with a world full of different peoples. As Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner writes in her foreword, ¿Rabbi Goldsmith knows that the task of Jews is to improve, heal, transform the world and he calls on us to play our part in this work, human work, Jewish work, God's work.¿ Thirty-Six Words is a collection of short pieces drawn from the author's over twenty years of preaching and writing as a Reform Rabbi. They consider Jewish ethics, global concern, memory and texts, ritual, society and thought for Jews who embrace today's world. The book includes an index to all the Jewish texts cited, together with an extensive glossary for the reader who needs help with Jewish terminology. It is intended for the general reader, Jewish or not, who wants a book of thinking around 21st Century Judaism which can be read meaningfully in short bursts. * Cover illustration: Miriam Goldsmith.

Experiences of the divine, the sacred, and the holy, in nature and in the everyday unfolding of life, have inspired poets and spiritual seekers throughout the ages. Such poetic distillations, preserved in Jewish sacred literature in the Psalms, the lyrically erotic Song of Songs, the mystical visions of the prophets, and other ancient writings, form the bedrock of the traditional Jewish prayer liturgy. They give us tastes of the essence of religious experience, which Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel has described as "radical amazement" ¿ sheer wonder at the astonishing variety, beauty, awesomeness, ugliness, and fearsomeness of this cosmos. In Unbounded Heart Rabbi Diane Elliot shares encounters with traditional Jewish liturgy and sacred text, as well as with life's ordinary moments, seen through the lens of wonder and awe. Here each prayer becomes a poem, each poem a prayer meant to awaken eyes and ears, hearts and hands to "thisness," the mysterious and sacred Presence that radiates through all existence.