Mipeninei Noam Elimelech

How do modern Jews understand virtues such as courage, humility, justice, solidarity, or love? In truth: they have fiercely debated how to interpret them. This groundbreaking anthology of musar (Jewish traditions regarding virtue and character) explores the diverse ways seventy-eight modern Jewish thinkers understand ten virtues: honesty and love of truth; curiosity and inquisitiveness; humility; courage and valor; temperance and self-restraint; gratitude; forgiveness; love, kindness, and compassion; solidarity and social responsibility; and justice and righteousness. These thinkers--from the Musar movement to Hasidism to contemporary Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Humanist, and secular Jews--often agree on the importance of these virtues but fundamentally disagree in their conclusions. The juxtaposition of their views, complemented by Geoffrey Claussen's pointed analysis, allows us to see tensions with particular clarity--and sometimes to recognize multiple compelling ways of viewing the same virtue. By expanding the category of musar literature to include not only classic texts and traditional works influenced by them but also the writings of diverse rabbis, scholars, and activists--men and women--who continue to shape Jewish tradition, Modern Musar challenges the fields of modern Jewish thought and ethics to rethink their boundaries--and invites us to weigh and refine our own moral ideals.

In the shtetl young boys were sent to cheder to learn Jewish prayers and study from the Torah. Their teacher was called a melamed. Girls, however, remained at home. Their days were filled with household chores and young siblings to care for. This story is based on the true story of my mother Gita (Gitel) Aron, a"h, and her brother Yitschak (Izzy) Aron, a"h, who lived with their family in the 1920s in a shtetl called Miory in Poland. My mother was the only girl in the Miory cheder. She and her brother were young adults during the Holocaust and survived in the forests of Poland as brave partisans. There were no other survivors from their family. After WW II both brother and sister sailed to America and settled in New York. They remained very close throughout their lives and raised remarkable families. May the voices of the children and parents who read this story of Gitel and Izzy be a tribute to their legacy.

"These wide-ranging conversations cover hours of discussions between two Torah scholars who come from different backgrounds, yet share the ability to consider the complexity of life [...] Among the topics addressed in the book are the religious experience of Torah study, the relationship to universal and humanist ideals, attitudes to Zionism and the State of Israel, feminism and Torah study for women, relationships with the secular community, and the renewal of Jewish law in the Jewish State"--

Basic manual, based on the teachings of the Rambam (Maimonides) and other Chachamim about what, how and when to eat, applied to our days.The Rambam Diet (Maimonides)

Preservation of life in an HMO dominated society . . . the modern scourge of cynicism . . . tension between Torah life and a bottom line society . . . the ever-popular lecturer and writer knows what bothers people and he finds these issues in the wellsprings of Torah.