In “Surviving Your Bar/Bat Mitzvah”, Cantor Matt Axelrod provides a practical, humorous guide for Jewish students and their families as they prepare for their "big day." Breezy and friendly yet reassuring and focused, Axelrod easily cuts through the fear and stress that teens often feel in the months leading up to their bar or bat mitzvah. In addition to helping the student prepare for the bar or bat mitzvah by walking the reader through the service...

PMA Best Religion Book of the Year! The inspiring guide to spiritual celebration used in hundreds of congregations-Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist-revised and expanded! "Parents and their children acutely feel the social pressures that surround bar and bat mitzvah. But they want to feel the spiritual promise of the event, the pull of the divine, and the knowledge that they are participating in an event that has meaning both in the ancient...

A step-by-step guide to cultivating volunteers who thrive within the Jewish community. We can never forget that volunteering is a two-way street. Volunteers must be motivated, but volunteer organizations also need to maximize volunteer satisfaction. Blaming one or the other for the failures prevalent today in the world of Jewish volunteering helps no one. The search is for a win-win strategy. Cultivating successful volunteers in the twenty-first century...

How do you describe a sublime being like Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche, the simile of a diamond and its' different qualities come closest to fulfilling that difficult task. As is stated, “the quality and value of a diamond is judged on five fundamental criteria: Carat, color, clarity, cut, and confidence.” Confidence here is having a certificate of value, Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche, has several of these: A recognized, incarnate Lama, the son of a great...

Exploring how visual media presents claims to Jewish authenticity, Imagining Jewish Authenticity argues that Jews imagine themselves and their place within America by appealing to a graphic sensibility. Ken Koltun-Fromm traces how American Jewish thinkers capture Jewish authenticity, and lingering fears of inauthenticity, in and through visual discourse and opens up the subtle connections between visual expectations, cultural knowledge, racial belonging,...

In today's multicultural society, we are increasingly likely to meet and become friends with people from different religious backgrounds, and to find ourselves attending an unfamiliar ceremony. When this happens, there can be few of us who know exactly what to expect, or are confident about how to behave. This chapter from Do I Kneel or Do I Bow? will tell you everything you need to understand and take part in a Hindu ceremony. Armed with this basic...

Due to the rapid advances in the medical field, existing books on Jewish medical ethics are quickly becoming outdated and irrelevant. Jewish Guide to Practical Medical Decision-Making seeks to remedy that by presenting the most contemporary medical information and rabbinic rulings in an accessible, user-friendly manner. Rabbi Weiner addresses a broad range of medical circumstances such as surrogacy and egg donation, assisted suicide, and end of life...

Burt Jones developed a friendship with a Muslim student from Morocco while in college. Knowing little about his friend's religion, Burt asked for help to understand the Islamic faith. He gained an elementary frame of reference regarding Arabic terminology, word pronunciation, and what is socially and religiously acceptable. This led to a continuation of studying Islam and to this book. "The major focus of this work is to show the effect Islam...

Chakras are energy helms of light that actually receive, accomplish, regulate and emit energy. They always attach the emotional, physical and divine energy within you to the divine and higher-dimensional loveliness around you. From the view of spiritual and healing development, each chakra is a sole and a perfect reflection of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Like discrete and multifaceted computer disks, chakras include a wealth...

This book will help you to appreciate the wisdom of the world's oldest monotheistic religion; to understand what it means to be a Jew; to recognize the key Jewish festivals and the different aspects of Jewish practice and belief; to avoid faux pas in conversation, in travelling and in personal relationships. Judaism is the world's oldest monotheistic religion. While the number of its adherents has always been small, its principles and ethics have...