Reinstating The Divine Woman In Judaism

Author : Jenny Kien
Publisher : Universal-Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9781581127638
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism written by Jenny Kien and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A GODDESS FOR WOMEN'S PRAYERS Goddesses in ancient religions were particularly significant for women's physical, social and spiritual well-being. Yet, the Divine Woman was discarded by the monotheistic religions. Arguing her importance for women, the author proposes returning the Divine Woman to Judaism. Textual, archeological and historical analysis reveal how the Canaanite Great Goddess Asherah played a major role as Jahweh's consort in the religion of biblical Judah and Israel. The author shows how this goddess has not entirely disappeared from modern Judaism - her analysis of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the story of Tamar and Judah reveals many traces of Asherah's worship and myths still in the Bible. The development of the menorah and the kabbalistic Tree of Life from Asherah's religious symbolism further illustrate the goddess' profound effect on Judaism. These findings are of great relevance for present-day feminist Judaism. Reintroducing the Divine Woman to Judaism may stimulate new ways of approaching biblical texts, religious practice and yearly festivals - ways that preserve their connection with Jewish tradition but also empower women.

Author : Rabbi Leah Novick
Publisher : Quest Books
ISBN 13 : 0835631168
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book On the Wings of Shekhinah written by Rabbi Leah Novick and published by Quest Books. This book was released on 2014-07-07 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One effect of rising interest in the Kabbalah is a renewed focus on the Shekhinah, Judaism's divine feminine principle. Written with warmth and clarity, On the Wings of Shekhinah interweaves historical views of this concept with thoughtful quotes and guided meditations. Rabbi Leah Novick offers healing strategies for both Jews and non-Jews disaffected by rigid gender roles. Awareness of the Shekhinah’s energy within and around us helps bring hope to a planet afflicted by war, violence, and environmental abuse — this book shows how to find and use that energy.

Author : Tamar Ross
Publisher : UPNE
ISBN 13 : 9781584653905
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Expanding the Palace of Torah written by Tamar Ross and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2004 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanding the Palace of Torah offers a broad philosophical overview of the challenges the women's revolution poses to Orthodox Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism's response to those challenges. Writing as an insider (herself an Orthodox Jew), Ross seeks to develop a theological response that fully acknowledges the male bias of Judaism's sanctified texts, yet nevertheless provides a rationale for transforming that bias in today's world without undermining their authority. She proposes an approach to divine revelation -- the theological heart of traditional Judaism -- which she calls "cumulativism." This approach is based on a conflating of strict boundaries between text and its interpretation, or divine intent and the evolution of human understanding. Book jacket.

Author : Susan de-Gaia
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1440848505
Total Pages : 993 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Encyclopedia of Women in World Religions [2 volumes] written by Susan de-Gaia and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-11-16 with total page 993 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reference offers reliable knowledge about women's diverse faith practices throughout history and prehistory, and across cultures. Across the span of human history, women have participated in world-building and life-sustaining cultural creativity, making enormous contributions to religion and spirituality. In the contemporary period, women have achieved greater equality, with more educational opportunities, female role models in public life, and opportunities for religious expression than ever before. Contemporaneously with this increased visibility, women are actively and energetically engaging with religion for themselves and for their communities. Drawing on the expertise of a range of scholars, this reference chronicles the religious experiences of women across time and cultures. The book includes sections on major religions as well as on spirituality, African religions, prehistoric religions, and other broad topics. Each section begins with an introduction, followed by reference entries on specialized subjects along with excerpts from primary source documents. The entries provide numerous suggestions for further reading, and the book closes with a detailed bibliography.

Author :
Publisher : Turner Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 1594735921
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Embracing the Divine Feminine written by and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than ancient erotic love poetry, this celebration of the human relationship with Wisdom can be a companion for your own spiritual journey. The Song of Songs is the Hebrew Bible's deeply erotic poem of love, sexual yearning and consummation. Holding it sacred yet troubled by its thinly veiled eroticism, Jews and Christians for millennia have read the Song of Songs as an allegory of God’s love for Israel—the classic Jewish understanding—or Jesus’s love for his Church—the classic Christian understanding. This fresh translation restores the Song’s eroticism and interprets it as a celebration of the love between the Divine Feminine and the contemporary spiritual seeker. Scholar and award-winning teacher Rami Shapiro renders this ancient love song as Lady Wisdom offering seekers physical and spiritual intimacy with her so that they might awaken to and participate wisely in the unity of God, woman, man and nature. His intriguing facing-page commentary provides historical, religious and spiritual insights from Christian and Jewish wisdom traditions as well as clear comparisons to other translations. Now you can understand the poetry, beauty, genius and mystery of the Song of Songs with no previous knowledge of the Hebrew Bible or wisdom literature. Compelling in its novelty and accessible in its presentation, this version of the Song of Songs will beckon you more deeply into Jewish-Christian sacred texts while offering you wisdom teachings and practices rooted in but not limited to religion.

Author : Lynn Picknett
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1591433711
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When God Had a Wife written by Lynn Picknett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the tradition of goddess worship in early Judaism and how Jesus attempted to restore the feminine side of the faith • Provides historical and archaeological evidence for an earlier form of Hebrew worship with both male and female gods, including a 20th-century discovery of a Hebrew temple dedicated to both Yahweh and the warrior goddess Anat • Explores the Hebrew pantheon of goddesses, including Yahweh’s wife, Asherah, goddess of fertility and childbirth • Shows how both Jesus and his great rival Simon Magus were attempting to restore the ancient, goddess-worshipping religion of the Israelites Despite what Jews and Christians--and indeed most people--believe, the ancient Israelites venerated several deities besides the Old Testament god Yahweh, including the goddess Asherah, Yahweh’s wife, who was worshipped openly in the Jerusalem Temple. After the reforms of King Josiah and Prophet Jeremiah, the religion recognized Yahweh alone, and history was rewritten to make it appear that it had always been that way. The worship of Asherah and other goddesses was now heresy, and so the status of women was downgraded and they were blamed for God’s wrath. However, as Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince reveal, the spiritual legacy of the Jewish goddesses and the Sacred Feminine lives on. Drawing on historical research, they examine how goddess worship thrived in early Judaism and included a pantheon of goddesses. They share new evidence for an earlier form of Hebrew worship that prayed to both male and female gods, including a 20th-century archaeological discovery of a Hebrew temple dedicated to both Yahweh and the goddess Anat. Uncovering the Sacred Feminine in early Christianity, the authors show how, in the first century AD, both Jesus and his great rival, Simon Magus, were attempting to restore the goddess-worshipping religion of the Israelites. The authors reveal how both men accorded great honor to the women they adored and who traveled with them as priestesses, Jesus’s Mary Magdalene and Simon’s Helen. But, as had happened centuries before, the Church rewrote history to erase the feminine side of the faith, deliberately ignoring Jesus’s real message and again condemning women to marginalization and worse. Providing all the necessary evidence to restore the goddess to both Judaism and Christianity, Picknett and Prince expose the disastrous consequences of the suppression of the feminine from these two great religions and reveal how we have been collectively and instinctively craving the return of the Sacred Feminine for millennia.

Author : Mary Ann Beavis
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317385551
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christian Goddess Spirituality written by Mary Ann Beavis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph focuses on "Christian Goddess Spirituality" (CGS), the phenomenon of (mostly) women who combine Christianity and Goddess Spirituality, including Wicca/Witchcraft. Mary Ann Beavis’s study provides ethnographic data and analysis on the lived religious experience of CGS practitioners, drawing on interviews of over 100 women who self-identify as combining Christianity and Goddess spirituality. Although CGS also has implications for Goddess Spirituality and related traditions (e.g., Neopaganism, Wicca), here, CGS is considered primarily as a phenomenon within Christianity. However, the study also shows that the fusion of Christian and Goddess spiritualties has had an impact on non-Christian feminist spirituality, since Goddess-worshippers have often constructed Christianity as the diametrical opposite and enemy of the Goddess, to the point that some refuse to admit the possibility that CGS is a valid spiritual path, or that it is even possible. In addition, biblical, Jewish and Christian images of the divine such as Sophia, Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and even Mary Magdalene, have found their way into the "Pagan" Goddess pantheon. The main themes of the study include: overlaps and differences between Christian feminist theology and CGS; the routes to CGS for individual practitioners, and their beliefs, practices and experiences; proto-denominational classifications ("spiritual paths") within CGS; CGS thealogy (Christian discourse about the female divine); and the future of CGS in social scientific and ecclesiological context. Christian Goddess Spirituality will be of interest to scholars of religion, especially those with interests in women and religion, feminist spiritualities, feminist theology/thealogy, alternative spiritualities, New Religious Movements, and emergent Christianities.

Author : Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
Publisher : Turner Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 1580236502
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book New Jewish Feminism written by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish Feminism: What Have We Accomplished? What Is Still to Be Done? “When you are in the middle of the revolution you can’t really plan the next steps ahead. But now we can. The book is intended to open up a dialogue between the early Jewish feminist pioneers and the young women shaping Judaism today.... Read it, use it, debate it, ponder it.” —from the Introduction This empowering anthology looks at the growth and accomplishments of Jewish feminism and what that means for Jewish women today and tomorrow. It features the voices of women from every area of Jewish life—the Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox and Jewish Renewal movements; rabbis, congregational leaders, artists, writers, community service professionals, academics, and chaplains, from the United States, Canada, and Israel—addressing the important issues that concern Jewish women: Women and Theology Women, Ritual and Torah Women and the Synagogue Women in Israel Gender, Sexuality and Age Women and the Denominations Leadership and Social Justice

Author : Jenny Kien
Publisher : Universal-Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9781581125986
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Battle Between the Moon and Sun written by Jenny Kien and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Woman's mysterious bleedings in time with moon cycles were first seen as the human embodiment of the cosmic mysteries of birth, death and rebirth and served as the basis for time-keeping. With the rise of absolute kingships in the Ancient Near East, authority shifted from women and goddesses to men and gods. The male sun displaced the cycling moon as dominant deity. This conflict between the moon and sun estranged women from the cosmic dance and led to their social marginalization. Spiritual imagery became solar, an exclusive and masculine imagery recognizing only one truth and demonizing all else. Incorporated into Judaism and Christianity, this imagery became an integral part of Western culture. The history of the Jewish and Christian calendars show how women were excluded from time-keeping, further marginalizing them. This eliminated the natural world from time-keeping, adding to our alienation from nature. To end the Battle between the Moon and Sun a new spiritual imagery must replace the current solar form. The history of the Battle shows that redeveloping the old female lunar imagery could help restore social inclusiveness and a reverence for life.

Author : Tirzah Firestone
Publisher : Zondervan
ISBN 13 : 0061832979
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Receiving written by Tirzah Firestone and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly respected rabbi, therapist, and teacher restores women's spiritual lineage to Judaism and empowers women to reclaim their rightful connection to Jewish teachings, Kabbalah, and to their own spiritual wisdom.