Seducing The Rabbi

Linguistics professor Aviva Goldberg takes on a challenge from her two best friends to seduce thirty men in the next year. She's been spinning her wheels somewhat anyway since her cycling geek squeeze, Alan, left town... This is a hilarious novel and far more edgy and intellectual than chick lit.

The legend of Lilith is undoubtedly the most fantastic of all ancient rabbinic myths. According to lore, God created her from dust alongside Adam. However, Lilith was a failed mate. She was not animated by the breath of God like Adam. Rather she was preemptively animated by a Satanic mist which erupted from the ground. Lilith rebelled against Adam and became the infamous Serpent who deceived Eve and caused Adam to fall. Therefore, God established eternal enmity between the Serpent Lilith and Eve and between their seed. Lilith's seed would bruise the heel of Eve's promised seed, Messiah, but Eve's seed would revive to crush Lilith’s head. This book reveals 23 Biblical evidences that prompted ancient rabbis to conclude the various elements of Lilith's legend. It also explains how her legend is completely consistent with traditional Judaic / Christian teachings on the Bible's redemptive message. Her legend solves many ancient Biblical mysteries, such as why the Serpent bears seed like Eve.

"One who is strengthened by God professes himself to be an utter fool by human standards, because he despises the wisdom men strive for."--Thomas Aquinas "Go and do likewise. . . ."--Luke 10:37 Missiologist Michael Frost is looking for the real Jesus--the man who didn't care what people thought, worked on the Sabbath, touched the unclean, ate with sinners, and generally contradicted what was acceptable to the leadership of his day. He's searching for the Jesus who embodies all the characteristics of the ancient tradition of the holy foolish paradigm as described and commended by Paul, the church fathers, and the medieval saints. And he finds him. . . . Saintly fools prefer life out in the open in the secular world, intentionally make themselves conspicuous, and consistently defy rules set by society. Frost directs our minds and hearts to the greater story of Jesus. He reminds us that following the Savior is rarely safe--and that Christ will continue to redraw our blueprint of what's right and what's righteous; and will persist in calling us to take the alternative, dangerous, ridiculous road walked by wise fools down through the centuries of the church. A much-needed and longed-for challenge to emergent, contemporary, and traditional gatherings and churches alike.

It was only when Jewish writers gave up on the lofty Enlightenment ideals of progress and improvement that the Yiddish novel could decisively enter modernity. Animating their fictions were a set of unheroic heroes who struck a precarious balance between sanguinity and irony that author Miriam Udel captures through the phrase “never better.” With this rhetorical homage toward the double-voiced utterances of Sholem Aleichem, Udel gestures at these characters’ insouciant proclamation that things had never been better, and their rueful, even despairing admission that things would probably never get better. The characters defined by this dual consciousness constitute a new kind of protagonist: a distinctively Jewish scapegrace whom Udel denominates the polit or refugee. Cousin to the Golden Age Spanish pícaro, the polit is a socially marginal figure who narrates his own story in discrete episodes, as if stringing beads on a narrative necklace. A deeply unsettled figure, the polit is allergic to sentimentality and even routine domesticity. His sequential misadventures point the way toward the heart of the picaresque, which Jewish authors refashion as a vehicle for modernism—not only in Yiddish, but also in German, Russian, English and Hebrew. Udel draws out the contours of the new Jewish picaresque by contrasting it against the nineteenth-century genre of progress epitomized by the Bildungsroman. While this book is grounded in modern Jewish literature, its implications stretch toward genre studies in connection with modernist fiction more generally. Udel lays out for a diverse readership concepts in the history and theory of the novel while also explicating the relevant particularities of Jewish literary culture. In addressing the literary stylistics of a “minor” modernism, this study illuminates how the adoption of a picaresque sensibility allowed minority authors to write simultaneously within and against the literary traditions of Europe.

Why do decent people do shameful things? While media attention focuses on the misbehavior of the rich and famous, every day, thousands of ordinary people make choices for which they suffer humiliation, emotional pain, and loss. They can hide behind the cloak of anonymity and their stories are rarely told. Such was the case of Jonathan Feldman, a respected sixty-nine-year-old businessman. Since childhood, Jonathan has had an ongoing relationship with what Dr. Carl Jung would call his shadoweverything that is repressed, undeveloped, and denied in ones self. For Jonathan, this darker alter ego is the famous actor he had aspired to become. Jonathans shadow manifests as an apparitional entity co-existing as the antagonist, snidely debating with Jonathan as he wrestles with his options, cleverly influencing him to make a series of bad choices. And if Jonathan isnt careful, his shadow could ultimately lead him into planning his final exit. As he did with A Particle of God, author Teddy Bart probes one of lifes enigmas through the journey toward self-discovery of Jonathan Feldman.

This one-volume guide to a healthy congregation combines the wisdom of a rabbi with the expertise of an organizational development consultant to demonstrate the power of positive relationships and show how to avoid some of the common traps that can lead to serious conflict. Using the life of the synagogue as its central illustration, this book gives vital lessons for congregations of any faith on how to be a healthy community of believers. Leaders and congregants alike are shown how to incorporate all their gifts for the creation and support of a healthy faith community. Synagogue life is considered through case studies—struggles over what to do with an endowment fund, a social action committee that no one joins, changing a worship service time, clergy transitions—which are examined for what they reveal about the struggles of congregations and their leaders to create healthy institutions. Each chapter integrates organizational theory and faith values in the pursuit of a deeper understanding of synagogue life. For non-Jewish congregations, the book offers rich insights into Hebrew texts and culture and the common elements between synagogue and church life. This House We Build enables both clergy and members to learn more deeply about creating and sustaining communities of faith in the course of inevitable transitions and everyday challenges.

This book suggests several methods with which rabbinic sources can be approached in order to obtain information about women's history. It is the first feminist book about rabbinic literature which treats the latter as a historical source. It contains many examples and discusses for the first time many sources relevant for the issue of women in rabbinics.