Kosher Emotions

Only by understanding how our emotions work and getting in touch with our feelings, can we really function well as human beings. This work combines insights with Boteach's quirky Jewish humour.

This book is perhaps the most complete scholarly book out today showing that Jesus and Mary were kosher vegetarians! The evidence from the scriptures, the early Church period, the Jewish literature, the mystics, and nutrition indicates that Jesus and Mary were kosher, and also that they were vegetarian. This book proposes that Jesus and Mary were the new Adam and Eve who ate a plant-based diet. They were the first penitents of the Christian era, leading us into a penitential lifestyle, a lifestyle of purification, involving a kosher plant-based diet and fasting. There is evidence from multiple sources that people in the early Church believed that Jesus and Mary and some of the disciples were vegetarians. The monastics have carried on the plant-based practice for centuries.

Drawing from a wealth of psychological and spiritual sources, the authors help us gain a new perspective on how we handle the painful emotions of anger, shame, guilt, and depression

In this provocative and wide-ranging book, Shmuley Boteach makes the case for Kosher Hate, a seemingly paradoxical idea derived from Jewish theological tradition. In this startling and original defense of hatred as a moral response to evil, Boteach challenges the liberal notion that understanding and forgiveness are the appropriate response to evil deeds, arguing that this is merely a secularized version of the misguided Christian teaching—one that many Jews have embraced—that we must “turn the other cheek” and “love our enemies.” Instead, he maintains that it is Godly to hate evil and it is our duty to do everything we can to bring evildoers to justice. While forgiving petty slights is admirable, doing so with mass murder is an abomination. While loving our enemies is noble, this applies to those who steal our parking space or get our promotion at work. It does not apply to God’s enemies, those who engage in genocide and whose murderous ways destroy civilized living.

When What We Know about Jewish Education was first published in 1992, Stuart Kelman recognized that knowledge and understanding would greatly enhance the ability of professionals and lay leaders to address the many challenges facing Jewish education. With increased innovation, the entry of new funders, and the connection between Jewish education and the quality of Jewish life, research and evaluation have become, over the last two decades, an integral part of decision making, planning, programming, and funding.

Jewish Women: Between Conformity and Agency examines the concepts of gender and sexuality through the primary lens of visual and material culture from antiquity through to the present day. The backbone of this transhistorical and transcontextual study is the question of Jewish women’s agency in four different geographical, chronological, and methodological contexts, beginning with women’s dress codes in Roman-Byzantine Syro-Palestine, continuing with rituals of purity in medieval Ashkenaz, worship in papal Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, and ending with marriage and divorce in Israeli film. Each of these explorations is interested in creating a dialogue between the patriarchal legacy of the traditional texts and the chronologically corresponding visual and material culture. The author challenges traditional approaches to the study of Jewish culture by employing tools from art history, archaeology, and film and media studies. In each of these different contexts, there is ample evidence that women—despite persistent overall structural discrimination—have found ways to challenge male constructs of gender norms. Ultimately, these examples from past and present times highlight women’s eminence in shaping Jewish history and culture. Bringing a new interdisciplinary lens to the study of the history of gender and sexuality, the book will be of interest to students and researchers of Jewish history and culture, art history, archaeology, and film studies.

Our culture is showing the cracks of a growing fracture. Soaring divorce rates; a crippled economy that rewards the few and punishes the many; religious-fueled hatred; record rates of depression—the headlines paint a grim picture. We inhabit a society that desperately needs fixing. But as Rabbi Shmuley Boteach reveals in his new book, Renewal, our society can made whole again when we as individuals make the choice to live a life based on values. For too long, conversations about values have been derailed by political movements trying to score points over hot-button issues like gay marriage or abortion. Boteach, one of our wisest and most respected counselors and spiritual experts, reaches deep into our history and into our shared religious legacy to revive the key universal values of Judaism for our struggling world. He presents these age-old ideas as guideposts for the challenges of modern times. These values, whose roots are in the Bible and thousands of years of Jewish spiritual living, can be applied to anyone in the modern world—from Christians and Muslims to atheists and agnostics—who want to renew their existence and recommit themselves to the most precious things in life. Renewal shows everyone how to use the timeless values of the Hebrew Bible and Judaism to live a more fulfilling, modern life. Destiny Unlike the Greeks, who believed that life was scripted from birth, the Jews believe in destiny. In short, they reject the idea of tragic fates and instead champion the individuals’ capacity to create their own destiny through individual choice. Redemption Christians and Muslims emphasize salvation, or the need for man to become spiritual—to refine his character and earn a place in heaven. But Jews believe in world redemption, the capacity for the individuals to make heaven here on earth for,the betterment of the community. Action What you do is more important than what you believe. Good deeds always supersede good dogma. Enlightenment Jews are an infinitely curious people and believe that the great bane of existence—boredom—can only be cured by knowledge. Marriage Marriage refers not just to the institution, but rather the softening of the masculine by exposure to the feminine. A culture that does not know how to respect women is bound to collapse. Struggle It is wrestling with our nature, rather than attaining perfection, that constitutes true righteousness. Everyone is somehow flawed, but righteousness is found in the struggle to do right amid a predilection to act selfishly. Sacred Time Whereas other religions sanctify space, Jewish values privilege special moments. The Sabbath day, the holiest day of the week, provides a time for connecting with family and friends.

A compelling look at the lives of ultra-Orthodox and formerly ultra-Orthodox Jewish women and their use of media technologies to create a new market for music and film Mainstream portrayals of ultra-Orthodox religious women often frame their faith as oppressive: they are empowered only when they leave their community. This book flips this notion on its head. Drawing on six years of fieldwork between New York and Montreal, Jessica Roda examines modern performances on the stage and screen directed by and for ultra-Orthodox women. Their incredibly vibrant Jewish artistic scenes defy stereotypes that paint these women as repressed, reclusive to their shtetl (village), and devoid of creativity and agency. For Women and Girls Only argues that access to technology has completely transformed how ultra-Orthodox women express their way of being religious and that the digital era has enabled them to create an alternative entertainment market outside of the public, male-dominated one. Because expectations surrounding modesty, ultra-Orthodox women do not sing, dance, or act in front of men and the public. Yet, in a revolutionary move, they are creating “women and girls only” spaces onsite and online, putting the onus on men to shield themselves from the content. They develop modest public spaces on the Internet, about which male religious leaders are often unaware. The book also explores the entanglement between these observant female artists and those who left religion and became public performers. The author shows that the arts expressed by all these women offer a means of not only social but also economic empowerment in their respective worlds. For Women and Girls Only is a groundbreaking reversal of mainstream portrayals of ultra-Orthodox religious women, and of those who have left the community yet maintain ties to it. It is the first work to focus on the ultra-Orthodox female art scene in music, film, and dance across North America and on social media.