Serial sold to the Sunday Times Magazine

Known as "the queen of the platform," Ernestine Rose was more famous than her women's rights co-workers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. By the 1850s, Rose had become an outstanding orator for feminism, free thought, and anti-slavery. Yet, she would gradually be erased from history for being too much of an outlier: an immigrant, a radical, and an atheist. In The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter, Bonnie S. Anderson recovers the unique life and career of Ernestine Rose. The only child of a Polish rabbi, Ernestine Rose rejected religion at an early age, successfully sued for the return of her dowry after rejecting an arranged betrothal, and left her family, Judaism, and Poland forever. In London, she became a follower of socialist Robert Owen and met her future husband, William Rose. Together they emigrated to New York in 1836. In the United States, Ernestine Rose rapidly became a leader in movements against slavery, religion, and women's oppression and a regular on the lecture circuit, speaking in twenty-three of the thirty-one states. She challenged the radical Christianity that inspired many nineteenth-century women reformers and yet, even as she rejected Judaism, she was both a victim and critic of antisemitism, as well as nativism. In 1869, after the Civil War, she and her husband returned to England, where she continued her work for radical causes. By the time women achieved the vote, for which she tirelessly advocated throughout her long career, her pioneering contributions to women's rights had been forgotten. The Rabbi's Atheist Daughter restores Ernestine Rose to her rightful place in history and offers an engaging account of her international activism.

An indispensable "how-to" guide for creating lasting memories and special ceremonies as you welcome your new Jewish daughter. When a son is born, every Jewish parent knows what ceremony will welcome him into the community and signal his part in the Jewish people--the brit milah. What to do when a girl is born? How can you welcome your new daughter in a truly Jewish way, and celebrate your joy with family and friends? In the past, parents who wanted a simchat bat (celebration of a daughter) ceremony for their new daughter often had to start from scratch. Finally, this first-of-its-kind book gives families everything they need to plan the celebration. History & Tradition--The roots of simchat bat in Jewish tradition, how it has evolved and how the past can be used to bring today's dynamic ceremonies to life. A How-to Guide--New and traditional ceremonies, complete with prayers, rituals, handouts to copy and step-by-step instructions for creating your own unique ceremony. Planning the Details--What to call your daughter's welcoming ceremony, when and where to have it, setting it up, how long it should be, how to handle the unexpected, how to prepare a program guide and more. Ideas & Information--Practical guidelines for planning the event, and special suggestions and resources for families of all constellations.

In this honest, daring, and compulsively readable memoir, Reva Mann paints a portrait of herself as a young woman on the edge—of either revelation or self-destruction. Ricocheting between extremes of rebellion and piety, she is on a difficult but life-changing journey to inner truth. The journey began with an unhappy childhood in a family where religion set the tone and deviations from it were not allowed. But Reva, a granddaughter of the head of the Rabbinic Council of Israel and daughter of a highly respected London rabbi, was a wild child and she rebelled, spiralling into a whirlwind of sex and drugs by the time she reached adolescence. As a young woman, however, Reva had a startling mystical epiphany that led her to a women’s yeshivah in Israel, and eventually to marriage to the devoutly religious Torah scholar who she thought would take her to ever greater heights of spirituality. But can the path to spiritual fulfillment ever be compatible with the ecstasies of the flesh or with the everyday joys of intimacy and pleasure to which she is also strongly drawn? With unflinching candor, Reva shares her struggle to carve out a life that encompasses all the impulses at war within herself. An eye-opening glimpse into the world of the ultra-Orthodox and their elaborately coded rituals for eating, sleeping, bathing, and lovemaking, as well as a deeply personal rumination on identity, faith, and self-acceptance, this is at its heart a universal story. For those of any faith who have grappled with their own spiritual longings, and for anyone fascinated by traditional religion and its role in modern society, Reva Mann’s chronicle of a journey toward redemption is an unforgettable read.

In the ruins of once-mighty Ephesus, site of the Temple of Artemis, a twenty-first century archeological team discovers the earliest known papyrus of the Gospel According to Mark. Sealed with it are instructions for a woman's burial, signed "The Rabbi's Daughter." The Rabbi's Daughter is an historical novel that takes us back to the years of Emperor Nero. Peter and Paul have been executed in Rome. The Community of Jesus' Way is struggling. With the help of his cousin Barnabas, Mark is compiling an account of the good news of Jesus. The two men come to Ephesus to interview Mary, who lives in the hills above the metropolis. They say their mission is to discover details about Jesus' early life. But soon it becomes apparent that their visit may have a very different purpose. The Rabbi's Daughter will give all readers a new appreciation and understanding of Mary, an extraordinary woman.

"An engrossing account of the appeal of religious orthodoxy to formerly secular women, many of them once feminist, radical members of the counterculture. . . . This outstanding work of scholarship reads with the immediacy of a novel." Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, author of Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order Debra Kaufman writes about ba'alot teshuva women who have returned to Orthodox Judaism, a form of Judaism often assumed to be oppressive to women. She addresses many of the most challenging issues of family, feminism, and gender. Why, she asks, have these women chosen an Orthodox lifestyle? What attracts young, relatively affluent, well-educated, and highly assimilated women to the most traditional, right-wing, patriarchal, and fundamentalist branch of Judaism? The answers she discovers lead her beyond an analysis of religious renewal to those issues all women and men confront in public and private life. Kaufman interviewed and observed 150 ba'alot teshuva. She uses their own stories, in their own words, to show us how they make sense of the choices they have made. Lamenting their past pursuit of individual freedom over social responsibility, they speak of searching for shared meaning and order, and finding it in orthodoxy. The laws and customs of Orthodox Judaism have been formulated by men, and it is men who enforce those laws and control the Orthodox community. The leadership is dominated by men. But the women do not experience theologically-imposed subordination as we might expect. Although most ba'alot teshuva reject feminism or what they perceive as feminism, they maintain a gender consciousness that incorporates aspects of feminist ideology, and often use feminist rhetoric to explain their lives. Kaufman does not idealize the ba'alot teshuva world. Their culture does not accommodate the non-Orthodox, the homosexual, the unmarried, the divorced. Nor do the women have the mechanisms or political power to reject what is still oppressive to them. They must live within the authority of a rabbinic tradition and social structure set by males. Like other religious right women, their choices reinforce authoritarian trends current in today's society. Rachel's Daughters provides a fascinating picture of how newly orthodox women perceive their role in society as more liberating than oppressive.

To teach observance of the three women's commandments--the laws of challah, Sabbath candles, and menstrual separation--in a systematic and impersonal manner, Rabbi Benjamin Slonik (ca. 1550-1620) harnessed the relatively new technology of printing and published a how-to pamphlet for women in the Yiddish vernacular. Fram transcribes, translates, and analyzes Slonik's pamphlet and presents a treasure trove of information about the place and roles of women in late sixteenth-century Polish-Jewish society.

Osnat was born five hundred years ago – at a time when almost everyone believed in miracles. But very few believed that girls should learn to read. Yet Osnat's father was a great scholar whose house was filled with books. And she convinced him to teach her. Then she in turn grew up to teach others, becoming a wise scholar in her own right, the world's first female rabbi! Some say Osnat performed miracles – like healing a dove who had been shot by a hunter! Or saving a congregation from fire! But perhaps her greatest feat was to be a light of inspiration for other girls and boys; to show that any person who can learn might find a path that none have walked before.

**WINNER of the 2018 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the 2018 Sophie Brody Medal for achievement in Jewish literature** **2018 Natan Book Award Finalist** **Finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies ** The Wall Street Journal: "There is humor and heartbreak in these pages...Ms. Kurshan immerses herself in the demands of daily Talmud study and allows the words of ancient scholars to transform the patterns of her own life." The Jewish Standard:“Brilliant, beautifully written, sensitive, original." The Jerusalem Post:"A beautiful and inspiring book. Both religious and secular readers will find themselves immensely moved by [Kurshan's] personal story.” American Jewish World: “So engrossing I hardly could put it down.” At the age of twenty-seven, alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce,Ilana Kurshan joined the world’s largest book club, learning daf yomi, Hebrew for“daily page” of the Talmud, a book of rabbinic teachings spanning about six hundredyears. Her story is a tale of heartache and humor, of love and loss, of marriageand motherhood, and of learning to put one foot in front of the other by turningpage after page. Kurshan takes us on a deeply accessible and personal guided tourof the Talmud. For people of the book—both Jewish and non-Jewish—If All theSeas Were Ink is a celebration of learning, through literature, how to fall in loveonce again.