Movements Books - Page 12

Zen Buddhism and Hasidism

Jacob Teshima

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Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Buddhism -> Zen

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this work Jacob Yuroh Teshima juxtaposes two religions whose origins are completely different: Zen Buddhism and Hasidic Judaism. The purpose of this comparative study is not to determine which religion is superior, but rather to compare their functional equivalents. After presenting backgrounds of the two religions, Dr. Teshima examines the Zen Buddhist practice of "zazen" and Hasidism's "devequth", or meditation on God. He then discusses how each religion comes to terms with the major obstacle in the practice of comtemplation: distracting thoughts. Teshima compares conceptions of man offered by the two religions, making clear their fundamental differences concerning the nature of selfhood and source of fulfillment. The study concludes with an examination of how the two religions come to terms with the insecurity of life and what it is that gives life meaning and significance. Contents: Introduction to Zen Buddhism and Hasidism; "Zazen" and "Devequth"; The Problem of "Strange Thoughts"; Annihilating Selfhood and Attaining Ecstasy; The Concept of Man; Insecurity of Life: The Hasidic Approach to Exile and the Zen Approach to Birth and Death.

The World of Orthodox Judaism

Eli W. Schlossberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Outstanding! Interesting! Thorough! Highly recommended!! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

A wonderful book for someone who wants to learn more about the life and customs of an Orthodox Jew. The book answered many questions that I've had and explained the Orthodox practices very well. I learned a great deal from this book and I really enjoyed reading it. I would highly recommend it.

Informative, valuable introduction 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Being curious about the requirements inherent in Orthodox Judaism, this slim volume looked like a good starting point for my research. It didn't let me down. Mr. Schlossberg has done a great job covering so much ground in such a short book. I especially appreciated the humanity and humor the author brings to the various discussions, especially the explanation of what makes food kosher. While I'd hoped that this book might have provided a little more coverage of the differences of observance among the Orthodox, this book is both a good quick reference and a good read.

Editorial Review:

This book is a friendly, engaging explanations of the traditions and lifestyles of Orthodox Jews. Informative for both Jews and non-Jews, Eli W. Schlossberg draws on personal experiences as an Orthodox Jew active in the international business world to answer the most commonly asked questions people have about religious Jewish life. The World of Orthodox Judaism is a concise resource for anyone interested in learning more about the customs and standards of Orthodox Jewish life.

Eliyahu's Branches: The Descendants of the Vilna Gaon (Of Blessed and Saintly Memory) and His Family

Chaim Freedman

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Despite All Odds: The Story of Lubavitch

Edward Hoffman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

An overview of Chabad 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Chabad is a mystical movement started in Belarus, or white russia about 250 years ago or so. It started when Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi wrot the Tanya and copyrighted it and attracted his followers compsosed mostly of the peasant class in the area.
Today, Chabad and Satmar are the 2 largest chasidic organizations. My rift with Chabad happened because the gavirs of the community confided in me that the world doesn't work the way it is detailed in their mystical books. And that's a direct quote from Shea Hecht when I butted heads with him some 27 years ago over my beliefs in Jesus Christ. Other people in the movement also confided in me that "it's just a good lie".
I believe that the world needs to be based on truth and not on lies. Chabad's leaders know they are pulling the wool over the heads of the flock. It's like my father always used to say, "the flock gets fleeced".
After the Rebbe passed on I called a hotline that Chabad set up to help nurse people wounds and move on. The person noticed that I knew alot about the movement. He told me the new "messianic contender" was Rabbi Pam. I have extensive contacts that told me that the late Rabbi Pam was scared stiff after what happened in Chabad.
By the way the quote I referred to in my review of "Confessions of a Jewish Cultbuster" was from 1 Corinthians 15:12. About Jesus resurrection from the dead. Let's just say that I believe he didn't die on the cross and let it be at that.

Aesthetics of Renewal: Martin Buber's Early Representation of Hasidism as Kulturkritik (Women in Culture and Society)

Martina Urban

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Editorial Review:

Martin Buber’s embrace of Hasidism at the start of the twentieth century was instrumental to the revival of this popular form of Jewish mysticism. Hoping to instigate a Jewish cultural and spiritual renaissance, he published a series of anthologies of Hasidic teachings written in German to introduce the tradition to a wide audience. In Aesthetics of Renewal, Martina Urban closely analyzes Buber’s writings and sources to explore his interpretation of Hasidic spirituality as a form of cultural criticism. For Buber, Hasidic legends and teachings were not a static, canonical body of knowledge, but were dynamic and open to continuous reinterpretation. Urban argues that this representation of Hasidism was essential to the Zionist effort to restore a sense of unity across the Jewish diaspora as purely religious traditions weakened—and that Buber’s anthologies in turn played a vital part in the broad movement to use cultural memory as a means to reconstruct a collective identity for Jews. As Urban unravels the rich layers of Buber’s vision of Hasidism in this insightful book, he emerges as one of the preeminent thinkers on the place of religion in modern culture.

Chassidic Perspectives: A Festival Anthology

Menachem M. Schneerson, Alter B. Metzger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

To hear or read a discourse from the Lubavitcher Rebbe is to undertake an adventure. Challenged and encouraged to move to a higher level, we are transported to new locations.

Time and again a discourse will be set in motion by a seemingly simple tension, a practical provision to be developed and solved. Once in motion, however, the discussion leads us into fresh perspectives, carefully constructed answers and new questions, until we climb rung by rung to the most elevated of vantage points. From here, as we survey the ground beneath us in its widest of contexts, the initial question is not only resolved but also reveals the starting point of a major spiritual search.

These talks are addressed with relentless clarity to the contemporary Jewish condition. Their implicit starting-point is the darkness of a world in which spiritually, moral conviction, and the divine purpose of creation seem almost beyond reach. Their tacit faith is that through a gradual and supportive process, we can be led from the present moment of confusion to the timeless lucidity of Torah.

The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York

Anthony Bianco

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Details of a lost culture and a lost business empire 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The book discusses in great detail the Reichmann family's role both in Jewish culture over the last couple hundred years and in the real estate developement business over the last 40 or so years.

The part I liked the best was the descriptions of 18th and 19th century Jewish life in the "oberland"(sp?) of Hungary. A lost culture, thanks not only to the Nazis but also to Jewish Emancipation.

In a way, it is inspirational, as it shows how one family managed to integrate a healthy, traditional religious expression with philanthropy and business acumen. It also shows that you cannot understand what makes that family "tick" without understanding the rich culture and religion of orthodox jewishness.

The greatest strength of this book, in my opinion, is that it is a _history_ of the family and its business, religious, philanthropic, and cultural dealings. It isnt the hagiography that so many business biographies in the popular press tend to be.

Editorial Review:

The Reichmanns' astonishing saga began in Hungary and swept through Austria, France, and North Africa before achieving apotheosis in Canada, where the secretive, ultra-orthodox Jewish family founded Olympia & York Development, the greatest real estate empire in the world at its peak in the 1980s. The company's collapse into bankruptcy in 1992 is a modern cautionary tale of biblical proportions, rendered by business journalist Anthony Bianco in lavish detail backed by formidable research. Interviews with various family members enable the author to plumb personalities as well as profit motives; their decision to cooperate is justified by his careful fairness.

On Being a Jew: A Brief Presentation of Jewish Practices and Belief Which, Being Written As a Dialogue in Defense of Tradition, Might Otherwise Be C

James L. Kugel

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The Outreach and Membership Idea Book

URJ-CCAR Commission on Outreach and Synagogue Community

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Editorial Review:

The all-new Outreach and Membership Idea Book features 19 award-winning programs from synagogues across North America. Learn how these congregations have succeeded in recruiting, integrating, and retaining members and in reaching out to the unaffiliated and intermarried, and apply the lessons to your own synagogue.

New York's Jewish Jews: The Orthodox Community in the Interwar Years (The Modern Jewish Experience)

Jenna Weissman Joselit

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

one small error 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I read this book a few years ago and have recently had the opportutnity to perue through it once again. It is a well written and cogent piece of scholarship. It is however a little lacking in it's treatment of the very vocal right wing of Orthodox Jewry during the relevant period, and is thus not a comprehensive study. There is also one factual error which I wish to point out and correct. In chapter one of the book the author states that Cantor Zawel Kwartin was cantor in Temple Beth El in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Kwartin was not the cantor in Beth El, an Orthodox synagogue, but was the cantor on Comgregation Emauel, a conservative temple in the same neighborhood. The chazanim at Beth El were: Jacob Rappaport, Mordechai Hershman, Berele Chagy, Moshe Kousevitsky, Sol Zim, Moshe Stern, Rueven Blum, and curently, Ben-Zion Miller.

The birth of American modern Orthodoxy 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

An interesting study of modern Orthodoxy in the 1920s. In those days, Orthodox Jews tended to be less ritually strict than today, especially in affluent areas like New York's Upper East Side. Most Orthodox children attended public schools, and some rabbis discouraged the casual wearing of yarmulkes outside synagogue.

In the 1940s and 1950s, a tidal wave of haredi refugees from Eastern Europe (as well as the loss of more moderate congregants to Conservative Judaism) turned Orthodoxy towards a much more traditional posture.

And yet much of early modern Orthodoxy has survived today and even been adopted by more traditional elements among American Jewry: English-language sermons, day schools combining secular and Jewish education, outreach to less observant Jews.

Some of these steps were quite controversial at the time: for example, early in the century the constitution of one Orthodox shul provided that all members had to be Sabbath-observant, a rule overturned by a rabbi who said "Our job is to take non-Sabbath observers and to make them Sabbath observers." When Orthodox rabbis started to preach in English (as opposed to Yiddish), one eminent rabbi that it was better to leave a synagogue than to listen to an English-language sermon, asserting "If these practices will not cease, there is no hope for the continuance of the Jewish religion." But today, aggressive outreach and English-language sermons are common even among Hasidim.