Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1620320134 ISBN 13: 9781620320136

Publisher: Cascade Books, 2013

Synopsis

Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives invites readers into the lives of twenty women for whom Jewish language and texts provide a lens for understanding their experiences. The authors don't just use religious words (texts, theologies, or liturgies) like a cookbook. Instead they serve readers something closer to a real meal, prepared with love and intention. Each essay shares one piece of its writer's heart, one chapter of experience as refracted through the author's particular Jewish optic. The authors write about being daughters, mothers, sisters, partners, lovers, and friends. They share their experiences of parenting, infertility, and abortion. One describes accompanying her young husband through his life-threatening illness. Another tells of her daughter's struggle with an eating disorder. Still another reflects on long decline of a parent with Alzheimer's. All these writers wrestle with Jewish texts while growing as rabbis, as feminists, and as interfaith leaders. They open their hearts and minds, telling when Jewish tradition has helped make meaning and, on occasion, when it has come up empty. The results are sometimes inspiring, sometimes provocative. Readers will find new insights into God, into Judaism, and into themselves.

About this title

About the Author:

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, who works for the Reform movement as a congregational consultant, edited ''Lesbian Rabbis'' (2001) and ''The Open Door'' (2002).

Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer is the founding director of the Department of Multifaith Studies and Initiatives at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She is the author of ''Parenting as a Spiritual Journey'' (1998).

Review:

''This book is a beautiful, profound, and deeply touching addition to the body of spiritual writing that heals and reveals ourselves to us in our full humanity. Nothing moves me more than women telling the truth about their real lives their families, relationships, choices, inspirations, losses, transformation, survival, their histories and their immersion in the now. And these writers are a stunning gathering of women, a quilt of rich, wise voices.''
--Anne Lamott, author of ''Traveling Mercies''

''When I put this wonderful and wise book down (having read it straight through), I felt an unusual feeling: stirred up, but contemplatively so. Chapters of the Heart is for anyone who wants to find the holy in the ordinary, for anyone who wants to read the sacred texts of her own life with more attentiveness, more generosity, and more curiosity.''
--Lauren F. Winner, author of ''Girl Meets God''

''I have long encouraged women to share their journeys toward holiness; Chapters of the Heart brings together a remarkable circle of women who share their Jewish wisdom with insight and humor, taking their place in the tradition of sacred storytelling.''
--Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, Jewish Renewal Movement

''This marvelous collection reminds me how much I have learned (and am still learning) from my Jewish sisters. Thank you for sharing your stories and wisdom with us.''
--Marie M. Fortune, FaithTrust Institute

''This book brings together extraordinary explorers of life who mix truth, courage, wisdom, grace, surprise, delight, and love in a magic alchemy. . . . Read this book and you will be enlightened, enchanted, and enlivened, and you will feel blessed to be living in an era of such teachers.''
--Rabbi Irwin Kula, National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership --Wipf and Stock Publishers

About this edition

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1620320134
• ISBN 13: 9781620320136
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 226
• Editor: Elwell Sue Levi