The Art Of Being Jewish In Modern Times

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The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times

Author : Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812208862
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times by : Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

Download or read book The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times written by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-02-11 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wide-ranging portrayal of modern Jewishness in artistic terms invites scrutiny into the relationship between creativity and the formation of Jewish identity and into the complex issue of what makes a work of art uniquely Jewish. Whether it is the provenance of the artist, as in the case of popular Israeli singer Zehava Ben, the intention of the iconography, as in Ben Shahn's antifascist paintings, or the utopian ideals of the Jewish Palestine Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, clearly no single formula for defining Jewish art in the diaspora will suffice. The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times is the first work to analyze modern Jewry's engagement with the arts as a whole, including music, theater, dance, film, museums, architecture, painting, sculpture, and more. Working with a broad conception of what counts as art, the book asks the following questions: What roles have commerce and politics played in shaping Jewish artistic agendas? Who determines the Jewishness of art and for what purposes? What role has aesthetics played in reshaping religious traditions and rituals? This richly illustrated volume illuminates how the arts have helped Jews confront the various challenges of modernity, including cultural adaptation and self-preservation, economic diversification, and ritual transformation. There truly is an art to being Jewish in the modern world—or, alternatively, an art to being modern in the Jewish world—and this collection fully captures its range, diversity, and historical significance.

Jewish Folk Art

Author : Joy Gottesman Ungerleider
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Folk Art by : Joy Gottesman Ungerleider

Download or read book Jewish Folk Art written by Joy Gottesman Ungerleider and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

For the Love of Being Jewish

Author : Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein
Publisher : For the Love Of
ISBN 13 : 9781600784033
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis For the Love of Being Jewish by : Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein

Download or read book For the Love of Being Jewish written by Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein and published by For the Love Of. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: JUDAISM. Using all 26 letters by rhymes and colorful illustrations, For the Love of Being Jewish explores some of the key concepts of the Jewish religion and heritage in a simple and humorous way. Each letter of the alphabet contains key Jewish words, inspiring quotes, important terminology, and clever caricatures of famous Jewish people. The result is that one of the worlds oldest religions is made accessible and understandable to all. Through the lens of history, culture, ethics, and values, major and minor themes of the Jewish tradition are uncovered in a way that makes us smile, chuckle and think. This lighthearted, factual, and entertaining exploration of the Jewish people is the perfect thing to encourage those of different faiths to learn from each other.

A Short History of the Jewish People

Author : Raymond P. Scheindlin
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195139419
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis A Short History of the Jewish People by : Raymond P. Scheindlin

Download or read book A Short History of the Jewish People written by Raymond P. Scheindlin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the original legends of the Bible to the peace accords of today's newspapers, this engaging, one-volume history of the Jews will fascinate and inform. 30 illustrations.

How to Fight Anti-Semitism

Author : Bari Weiss
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0593136055
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (931 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Fight Anti-Semitism by : Bari Weiss

Download or read book How to Fight Anti-Semitism written by Bari Weiss and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • The prescient founder of The Free Press delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains what we can do to defeat it. “A praiseworthy and concise brief against modern-day anti-Semitism.”—The New York Times On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh, as well as the continued surge of hate crimes against Jews in cities and towns across the country, raise a question Americans cannot avoid: Could it happen here? This book is Weiss’s answer. Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. With its promise of free speech and religion, its insistence that all people are created equal, its tolerance for difference, and its emphasis on shared ideals rather than bloodlines, America has been, even with all its flaws, a new Jerusalem for the Jewish people. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism. No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics as well as the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all. Weiss is one of our most provocative writers, and her cri de coeur makes a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in this uncertain moment. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.

Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Author : European Association for Jewish Studies. Congress
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9789004115583
Total Pages : 726 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (155 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by : European Association for Jewish Studies. Congress

Download or read book Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century written by European Association for Jewish Studies. Congress and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1999 with total page 726 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cursed book. A missing professor. Some nefarious men in gray suits. And a dreamworld called the Troposphere? Ariel Manto has a fascination with nineteenth-century scientists—especially Thomas Lumas and The End of Mr. Y, a book no one alive has read. When she mysteriously uncovers a copy at a used bookstore, Ariel is launched into an adventure of science and faith, consciousness and death, space and time, and everything in between. Seeking answers, Ariel follows in Mr. Y’s footsteps: She swallows a tincture, stares into a black dot, and is transported into the Troposphere—a wonderland where she can travel through time and space using the thoughts of others. There she begins to understand all the mysteries surrounding the book, herself, and the universe. Or is it all just a hallucination? With The End of Mr. Y, Scarlett Thomas brings us another fast-paced mix of popular culture, love, mystery, and irresistible philosophical adventure.

An Inch or Two of Time

Author : Jordan D. Finkin
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271071974
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis An Inch or Two of Time by : Jordan D. Finkin

Download or read book An Inch or Two of Time written by Jordan D. Finkin and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-19 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In literary modernism, time and space are sometimes transformed from organizational categories into aesthetic objects, a transformation that can open dramatic metaphorical and creative possibilities. In An Inch or Two of Time, Jordan Finkin shows how Jewish modernists of the early twentieth century had a distinct perspective on this innovative metaphorical vocabulary. As members of a national-ethnic-religious community long denied the rights and privileges of self-determination, with a dramatically internalized sense of exile and landlessness, the Jewish writers at the core of this investigation reimagined their spatial and temporal orientation and embeddedness. They set as the fulcrum of their imagery the metaphorical power of time and space. Where non-Jewish writers might tend to view space as a given—an element of their own sense of belonging to a nation at home in a given territory—the Jewish writers discussed here spatialized time: they created an as-if space out of time, out of history. They understood their writing to function as a kind of organ of perception on its own. Jewish literature thus presents a particularly dynamic system for working out the implications of that understanding, and as such, this book argues, it is an indispensable part of the modern library.

People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

Author : Dara Horn
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393531570
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (935 download)

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Book Synopsis People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by : Dara Horn

Download or read book People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present written by Dara Horn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

Being Jewish Today

Author : Tony Bayfield
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472962060
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (729 download)

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Book Synopsis Being Jewish Today by : Tony Bayfield

Download or read book Being Jewish Today written by Tony Bayfield and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A deeply humane, learned and personal reflection on Jewish identity' Rowan Williams 'This inspiring book has made me a better Jew, one who understands more, who knows more' Daniel Finkelstein 'This remarkable book takes us on a journey: geographic, historical, cultural, philosophical, political, autobiographical and, yes, religious' Michael Marmot Being Jewish Today gives an account of both the journey of a particular British Jew and the journey of millions of women and men through today's perplexing and difficult world. With honesty and integrity Rabbi Tony Bayfield breaks new ground in exploring the meaning of Jewish identity and its relationship to Jewish tradition and belief. He does so from the perspective of a person fully integrated into the modern Western world. The rigorous questions he asks of his Jewishness, Judaism and the Jewish God are therefore substantially the same as those asked by individuals of all faiths and none. Beginning with an account of the journey of Jewish people and thought from ancient times to the present day, Bayfield goes on to consider Jewish identity, Israel as land and the scourge of anti-Semitism. He then turns to the twin concerns of Torah: Halakhah – practice, and Aggadah – ethics, along with the matter of belief in a world faced with global extinction. Finally, in addressing the manifest injustice of life, Rabbi Bayfield confronts the widely evaded questions of universal suffering and divine inaction. Drawing on key religious and secular thinkers who contribute to the force of his argument, Bayfield's masterful, challenging and urgent book will appeal to all Jews, whether religious or cultural, and to anyone curious about the nature of Judaism and religion today.

Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals

Author : Diana L. Linden
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814339840
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (143 download)

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Book Synopsis Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals by : Diana L. Linden

Download or read book Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals written by Diana L. Linden and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lithuanian-born artist Ben Shahn learned fresco painting as an assistant to Diego Rivera in the 1930s and created his own visually powerful, technically sophisticated, and stylistically innovative artworks as part of the New Deal Arts Project’s national mural program. In Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene author Diana L. Linden demonstrates that Shahn mined his Jewish heritage and left-leaning politics for his style and subject matter, offering insight into his murals’ creation and their sometimes complicated reception by officials, the public, and the press. In four chapters, Linden presents case studies of select Shahn murals that were created from 1933 to 1943 and are located in public buildings in New York, New Jersey, and Missouri. She studies Shahn’s famous untitled fresco for the Jersey Homesteads—a utopian socialist cooperative community populated with former Jewish garment workers and funded under the New Deal—Shahn’s mural for the Bronx Central Post Office, a fresco Shahn proposed to the post office in St. Louis, and a related one-panel easel painting titled The First Amendment located in a Queens, New York, post office. By investigating the role of Jewish identity in Shahn’s works, Linden considers the artist’s responses to important issues of the era, such as President Roosevelt’s opposition to open immigration to the United States, New York’s bustling garment industry and its labor unions, ideological concerns about freedom and liberty that had signifcant meaning to Jews, and the encroachment of censorship into American art. Linden shows that throughout his public murals, Shahn literally painted Jews into the American scene with his subjects, themes, and compositions. Readers interested in Jewish American history, art history, and Depression-era American culture will enjoy this insightful volume.

Palaces of Time

Author : Elisheva Carlebach
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674052544
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Palaces of Time by : Elisheva Carlebach

Download or read book Palaces of Time written by Elisheva Carlebach and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-04 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Palaces of Time resurrects the seemingly banal calendar as a means to understand early modern Jewish life. Elisheva Carlebach has unearthed a trove of beautifully illustrated calendars, to show how Jewish men and women both adapted to the Christian world and also forged their own meanings through time.

The Jew in the Modern World

Author : Paul R. Mendes-Flohr
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195074536
Total Pages : 772 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (745 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jew in the Modern World by : Paul R. Mendes-Flohr

Download or read book The Jew in the Modern World written by Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1995 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last two centuries have witnessed a radical transformation of Jewish life. Marked by such profound events as the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel, Judaism's long journey through the modern age has been a complex and tumultuous one, leading many Jews to ask themselves not only where they have been and where they are going, but what it means to be a Jew in today's world. Tracing the Jewish experience in the modern period and illustrating the transformation of Jewish religion, culture, and identity from the 17th century to 1948, the updated edition of this critically acclaimed volume of primary materials remains the most complete sourcebook on modern Jewish history. Now expanded to supplement the most vital documents of the first edition, The Jew in the Modern World features hitherto unpublished and inaccessible sources concerning the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, women in Jewish history, American Jewish life, the Holocaust, and Zionism and the nascent Jewish community in Palestine on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel. The documents are arranged chronologically in each of eleven chapters and are meticulously and extensively annotated and cross-referenced in order to provide the student with ready access to a wide variety of issues, key historical figures, and events. Complete with some twenty useful tables detailing Jewish demographic trends, this is a unique resource for any course in Jewish history, Zionism and Israel, the Holocaust, or European and American history.

Writing a Modern Jewish History

Author : Susannah Heschel
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300106770
Total Pages : 156 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (67 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing a Modern Jewish History by : Susannah Heschel

Download or read book Writing a Modern Jewish History written by Susannah Heschel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this insightful book, an eclectic and distinguished group of writers explore the Jewish experience in the Americas and celebrate the legacy of Salo Wittmayer Baron (1895-1989), a preeminent scholar who revolutionized the study of Jewish history during his lengthy tenure at Columbia University. Baron's important ideas are reflected throughout these texts, which concern strategies for the continuous identity of a dispersed people. Featured essays discuss the meaning and significance of colonial portraits of American Jews; the history of an extraordinary group of Jews in the remote Amazon; the charitable fairs organized by Jewish women to raise money for various causes in nineteenth-century America; the place of Jews in postmodern American culture; the "Jewish unconscious" of the art critic Meyer Schapiro; and Salo Baron's influence as a historian and teacher. A group of poems by Robert Pinsky accompanies the essays. Together these writings form a dynamic interplay of ideas that encourages readers to think deeply about Jewish history and identity.

Feeling Jewish

Author : Devorah Baum
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300231342
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Feeling Jewish by : Devorah Baum

Download or read book Feeling Jewish written by Devorah Baum and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sparkling debut, a young critic offers an original, passionate, and erudite account of what it means to feel Jewish—even when you’re not. Self-hatred. Guilt. Resentment. Paranoia. Hysteria. Overbearing Mother-Love. In this witty, insightful, and poignant book, Devorah Baum delves into fiction, film, memoir, and psychoanalysis to present a dazzlingly original exploration of a series of feelings famously associated with modern Jews. Reflecting on why Jews have so often been depicted, both by others and by themselves, as prone to “negative” feelings, she queries how negative these feelings really are. And as the pace of globalization leaves countless people feeling more marginalized, uprooted, and existentially threatened, she argues that such “Jewish” feelings are becoming increasingly common to us all. Ranging from Franz Kafka to Philip Roth, Sarah Bernhardt to Woody Allen, Anne Frank to Nathan Englander, Feeling Jewish bridges the usual fault lines between left and right, insider and outsider, Jew and Gentile, and even Semite and anti-Semite, to offer an indispensable guide for our divisive times.

German-Jewish History in Modern Times: Emancipation and acculturation, 1780-1871

Author : Mordechai Breuer
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780231074742
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis German-Jewish History in Modern Times: Emancipation and acculturation, 1780-1871 by : Mordechai Breuer

Download or read book German-Jewish History in Modern Times: Emancipation and acculturation, 1780-1871 written by Mordechai Breuer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This four-volume collective project by a team of leading scholars offers a vivid portrait of Jewish history in German-speaking countries over nearly four centuries. This series is sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute, established in 1955 in Jerusalem, London, and New York for the purpose of advancing scholarship on the Jews in German-speaking lands.

Modern Judaism

Author : John Allen
Publisher : Pantianos Classics
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.R/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Modern Judaism by : John Allen

Download or read book Modern Judaism written by John Allen and published by Pantianos Classics. This book was released on 1816 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Allen's discussion of Judaism dates to 1816; for many years, it was the authoritative history of the Jews from the time of Abraham through to the modern day. When sourcing the information necessary for this account, the author was discerning and meticulous: the history of the Jews is a topic of enormous depth and scope, requiring the use of holy books and written records often centuries or millennia old. Principally he examines the Holy Bible, and in particular the pertinent Old Testament texts, plus the holy books of the Jews such as the Kabbalah and Talmud. Other more esoteric sources include the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Prayer Book. Each chapter of Modern Judaism includes numerous notes, elaborating further and list the relevant passages. Many wide-ranging aspects of Jewish life are covered; such as how to manage births, marriages, deaths, the preparation of food and the care of pregnant women. The ancient temple and its precepts are extensively narrated, that readers comprehend how the Jewish faith changed and evolved as the centuries passed, with rabbis across the ages contributing to the written lore. This reprint reproduces the tables and Hebrew script of the expanded second edition, which was first published in 1830.

Being Jewish

Author : Ari L. Goldman
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743213262
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (432 download)

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Book Synopsis Being Jewish by : Ari L. Goldman

Download or read book Being Jewish written by Ari L. Goldman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2000-09-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasing numbers of Jews are returning to their religious roots in a search for meaning, eager to explore a heritage that is deeply embedded in history and at the same time rapidly changing. But what is Judaism today? And what does it mean -- culturally, spiritually, and ritually -- to be Jewish in the twenty-first century? In Being Jewish, Ari L. Goldman offers eloquent, thoughtful answers to these questions through an absorbing exploration of modern Judaism. A bestselling author and widely respected chronicler of Jewish life, Goldman vividly contrasts the historical meaning of Judaism's heritage with the astonishing and multiform character of the religion today. The result will be a revelation for those already involved with Judaism, and a fascinating introduction for those whose interests are newly minted or rekindled. Taking the reader through the process of discovery -- or rediscovery -- Being Jewish is divided into three sections, each focusing on one of the cycles of human life. Beginning with the traditions associated with the life cycle -- birth, marriage, death -- Goldman moves on to describe the rituals that mark the course of the Jewish year, starting with Rosh Hashanah. Finally, he reflects on the character of the Jewish day, exploring the role of prayer, dietary laws, and ethical behavior. All of these moments, from a minute to a lifetime, take on vibrant meaning in his thoughtful picture. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Being Jewish is Goldman's discussion of the extraordinary variations in how Jews live their Judaism today. He finds a wide variety of practices, between Judaism's branches and within them. For example, a family on Long Island keeps a unique version of kosher: they have three sets of dishes and utensils -- one for meat, one for milk, and one for nonkosher Chinese takeout. While traditional Judaism frowns on such quirky modes of observance, Goldman elevates them. Jews today, he concludes, are "reaching for the holy" in unexpected and innovative ways. These dramatically different ideas about how a Jewish life may be lived suggest how difficult it can be for today's reader to find an objective account of Judaism. And it is precisely Goldman's reporter's eye that sets this book apart. Informed by tradition without embracing any one ideology, this award-winning journalist's probing book moves across the boundaries of modern Judaism to demonstrate how it is lived. While other efforts to tackle these themes are written from the perspective of a particular religious tradition, Being Jewish is the work of a sophisticated observer who describes rather than proscribes. By weaving a complex and compelling commentary on Judaism, this inspiring volume encourages us to find our own place within the tradition and leads us into a deeper understanding not just of the details of the religion but, ultimately, of what it means to be Jewish.