Healing and the Jewish Imagination: Spiritual and Practical Perspectives on Judaism and Health - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580233147 ISBN 13: 9781580233149

Publisher: Jewish Lights, 2007

Synopsis

Where Judaism and health intersect, healing may begin.

Essential reading for people interested in the Jewish healing, spirituality and spiritual direction movements, this groundbreaking volume explores the Jewish tradition for comfort in times of illness and Judaism's perspectives on the inevitable suffering with which we live.

Pushing the boundaries of Jewish knowledge, scholars, teachers, artists and activists examine the aspects of our mortality and the important distinctions between curing and healing. Topics discussed include:

• The Importance of the Individual
• Health and Healing among the Mystics
• Hope and the Hebrew Bible
• From Disability to Enablement
• Overcoming Stigma
• Jewish Bioethics

Drawing from literature, personal experience and the foundational texts of Judaism, these celebrated thinkers show us that healing is an idea that can both soften us so that we are open to inspiration as well as toughen us―like good scar tissue―in order to live with the consequences of being human.

Contributors:

Rachel Adler, PhD • Rabbi Elliot Dorff, PhD • Arnold Eisen, PhD • Tamara Eskenazi, PhD • Eitan P. Fishbane, PhD • Rabbi Arthur Green, PhD • Tamara M. Green, PhD • Rabbi Peter Knobel, PhD • Adriane Leveen, MSW, PhD • Louis E. Newman, PhD • Rabbi David B. Ruderman, PhD • David I. Schulman, JD • Howard Silverman, MD, MS • Albert J. Winn, MA

About this title

About the Authors

Rabbi William Cutter, PhD, is author of Midrash and Medicine: Healing Body and Soul in the Jewish Interpretive Tradition, and is editor of Healing and the Jewish Imagination: Spiritual Perspectives on Judaism and Health. He has published widely on health and healing. He is former director of the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and professor of modern Hebrew literature and the Steinberg Professor of Human Relations at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.

Rachel Adler, PhD, is professor of Modern Jewish Thought and Feminist Studies
at Hebrew Union College Los Angeles. She is the author of Engendering Judaism:
An Inclusive Theology and Ethics and many articles on feminist approaches to
Jewish theology and Halacha.

Arnold Eisen, PhD, is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and
Religion at Stanford University and chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America. He is the author of numerous books and articles in the area
of modern Jewish thought and practice and has long worked with synagogues and
federations around the country in the effort to revitalize Jewish communities and
find new meaning for Jewish texts and observances. Currently he is at work on a
book entitled Rethinking Zionism. Eisen is married to Adriane Leveen, another
contributor to this volume, and is the father of Shulie (twenty) and Nathaniel
(seventeen).

Tamara Eskenazi, PhD, is professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College–Jewish
Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. She is a reknowned popular lecturer and publishes
her scholarly work in numerous journals and periodicals. She is currently
working on a women's commentary to the Torah and has conducted some of her
most important research on the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

Eitan Fishbane, PhD, a frequent scholar-in-residence and guest speaker at congregations across North America, is assistant professor of Jewish thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary; author of As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist (Stanford University Press); and co-editor of Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections (Jewish Lights).

Eitan Fishbane is available to speak on the following topics:

• Shabbat
• Prayer
• Spirituality
• God and Theology
• Mysticism
• Ethics
• Torah

Reviews

If you are looking for a compassionate how-to for healing, this academic exploration of Jewish texts isn't it. In a ponderous introduction that distinguishes between healing and curing, Cutter, director of the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, says outright that "these pages are intended to be more scholarly than restorative." Essays treat the intersections of literature, philosophy, mysticism, Bible, history, biography, science and contemporary society, and are primarily penned by scholars, teachers, artists and activists who are not involved in hands-on clinical or spiritual aspects of the work. Tamara Green's essay on her personal search for answers to the questions her own illness provoked: "Could I be spiritually healed even if I never got better physically; and if I was not to be cured, what did Adonai [God] expect of me?" Her interpretation of the shattered tablets in the Ark of the Covenant and each individual's responsibility to bring about the repair of the world are beautiful nuggets buried amid pages of academic discourse. But those willing to plow through will find that, as Green concludes, "spiritual healing may be possible, even if we cannot be made whole again." (May)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Jewish Lights
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580233147
• ISBN 13: 9781580233149
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Rabbi William Cutter