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This category contains 49 posts

A GPS for the Soul

REVIEWED BY ADENA BERKOWITZ
Who by Fire, Who by Water — Un’taneh Tokef, edited by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010, 253 pp, $24.99.

Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah by Louis E. Newman, PhD, foreword by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, preface by Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010, 224 pp, $24.99.

Marriage and Family

Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature by Gail Labovitz, Rowman and Littlefield, 2009, 289 pp, $50.00.
Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism by Dvora E. Weisberg, Brandeis University Press, 2009, 246 pp, $70.00.
Reviewed by Leonard Gordon
Kristina Grish’s confident assertion in Boy Vey! The Shiksa’s Guide to Dating Jewish Men, that Jewish [...]

Discovering a Global Jewish World

Reviewed by Abram Sterne
Far From Zion: In Search of a Global Jewish Community, by Charles London, William Morrow, 2009, 320 pp, $25.99
I am troubled by Charles London’s latest book, Far from Zion: In Search of a Global Jewish Community. The award-winning journalist,  activist, and author of One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in [...]

The Physics of Belief

God According to God: A Physicist Proves We Have Been Wrong About God All Along, Gerald L. Schroeder (256 pages, HarperOne, New York, 2009, $25.99)
Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World, David W. Nelson (300 pages, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2005, $24.99)
Reviewed by Andrea Wershof Schwartz

Danger, Everywhere

Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East by Martin Indyk (Simon & Schuster, New York, 512 pages, 2009, $28)
The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power by David Sanger (Harmony Books, 498 pages, 2009, $33.00)
Reviewed by David Twersky

Creative Collaborations

The Necessary Revolution: How individuals and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world; Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, Sara Schley (New York: Doubleday, 2008, $29.95, 416 pp)
Reviewed by Joseph Reimer

The Trouble with Boys

Peg Tyre (Crown Publishing, 2008, 320 pp, $24.95)
Reviewed by Max Klau

Ostrich Feathers and Global Commerce

Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce
Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Yale University Press, 2008, 256 pp, $30)
Reviewed by Shulamit Reinharz

Interpreting Torah

Whose Torah?: A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism
Torah Queeries: Reading the Bible Through a Bent Lens
Reviewed by Mara Benjamin

Birds and Life

The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature by Jonathan Rosen Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 336 pages, $24
Reviewed by Haim Watzman

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UPCOMING NEXT MONTH: Counting Jews

  • Ruth Gavison on trends in Israeli demographics
  • Ted Sasson on the significance of a growing Orthodoxy
  • Ruhama Weiss on the advantages of not knowing how many we are
  • Noam Pianko on notions of joining the "people" rather than the religion
  • Roundtable on asking good questions
  • Richard Hirsh on Sephirat Ha-Omer
  • Len Saxe on the relationship between changing population size and communal resources