This study introduces a genuine, provocative religious vocabulary into the discourse on Modernist art and literature. Mulman looks at key texts and figures of the Modern period, including Henry Roth, Amedeo Modigliani, James Joyce, and Art Spiegelman, revealing a significant engagement with the rituals of Jewish observance and the structure of Talmudic interpretation. While critics often view the formal experimentation of High Modernism as a radical departure from conventional beliefs, this book shows that these aspects of Modernist art are deeply entwined with, and indebted to, the very traditions that they claim to be writing against. As such, the book offers a unique and truly multidisciplinary approach to Modernist studies and a cogent analysis of the ways in which spirituality informs artistic production.

Arguing for a Fullness of Life, Rabbi Dr. Gordon documents the case for Modern Orthodoxy a fostering of cultural breadth, yet true to the Halakhah. Rabbi Menachem-Martin Gordon treats us to a wonderful array of essays on important issues of Jewish life such as feminism and universalism which serves as a fine exposition of Modern Orthodoxy Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin

Andrew Louth introduces us to twenty key Orthodox thinkers from the last two centuries. The colorful characters, poets and thinkers included range from Romania, Serbia, Greece, England, France and also include exiles from Communist Russia. The book concludes with an illuminating chapter on Metropolitan Kallistos and the theological vision of the Philokalia.

Compellingly and authoritatively written, this biography illuminates the dilemmas that Europe’s Jews have faced over the past century. The discussion of the inner struggles of one of twentieth-century Judaism’s most enigmatic religious leaders—a figure who became a central ideologue of modern Orthodoxy despite his traditional training in a Lithuanian yeshiva—elucidates many institutional and intellectual phenomena of the Jewish world, and especially in pre-war Europe, that have so far received little attention.

Dispatches on nationalism and religion As an insider to church politics and a scholar of contemporary Orthodoxy, Cyril Hovorun outlines forms of political orthodoxy in Orthodox churches, past and present. Hovorun draws a big picture of religion being politicized and even weaponized. While Political Orthodoxies assesses phenomena such as nationalism and anti-Semitism, both widely associated with Eastern Christianity, Hovorun focuses on the theological underpinnings of the culture wars waged in eastern and southern Europe. The issues in these wars include monarchy and democracy, Orientalism and Occidentalism, canonical territory, and autocephaly. Wrought with peril, Orthodox culture wars have proven to turn toward bloody conflict, such as in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Accordingly, this book explains the aggressive behavior of Russia toward its neighbors and the West from a religious standpoint. The spiritual revival of Orthodoxy after the collapse of Communism made the Orthodox church in Russia, among other things, an influential political protagonist, which in some cases goes ahead of the Kremlin. Following his identification and analysis, Hovorun suggests ways to bring political Orthodoxy back to the apostolic and patristic track.

"Orthodox Christianity reveals the unbroken truth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from the time of Pentecost to the new millennium and beyond. Orthodoxy is increasingly valued among Christians for its depth of spirituality and theology, its commitment to prayer, and the beauty of its liturgy. But the Orthodox Church's reputation for clinging to tradition often gives the impression that it has no message for contemporary society.This book brings together twelve lay and ordained Orthodox writers, who provide profound and fascinating insights into the role and mission of the Church in today's world. While prayer and worship are considered the highest callings of all believers, the issues covered here range far more widely, including family life and bereavement, ecology and consumerism, politics, medical ethics and psychology"--Cover.

Modern Orthodox Judaism offers an extensive selection of primary texts documenting the Orthodox encounter with American Judaism that led to the emergence of the Modern Orthodox movement. Many texts in this volume are drawn from episodes of conflict that helped form Modern Orthodox Judaism. These include the traditionalists’ response to the early expressions of Reform Judaism, as well as incidents that helped define the widening differences between Orthodox and Conservative Judaism in the early twentieth century. Other texts explore the internal struggles to maintain order and balance once Orthodox Judaism had separated itself from other religious movements. Zev Eleff combines published documents with seldom-seen archival sources in tracing Modern Orthodoxy as it developed into a structured movement, established its own institutions, and encountered critical events and issues—some that helped shape the movement and others that caused tension within it. A general introduction explains the rise of the movement and puts the texts in historical context. Brief introductions to each section guide readers through the documents of this new, dynamic Jewish expression.

Far from simply vanishing in the face of modernity, Orthodox Jews in the United States today are surviving and flourishing. Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, both distinguished scholars of Jewish studies, have joined forces in this pathbreaking book to articulate this vibrancy and to characterize the many faces of Orthodox Jewry in contemporary America. Who are these Orthodox Jews? How have they survived, what do they believe and practice and how do they accommodate the tension between traditional Jewish and modern American values? Drawing on a survey of more than one thousand participants, the authors address these questions and many more. Heilman and Cohen reveal that American Jewish Orthodoxy is not a monolith by distinguishing its three broad varieties: the "traditionalists," the "centrists," and the "nominally" orthodox. To illuminate this full spectrum of orthodoxy the authors focus on the "centrists," taking us through the dimensions of their ritual observances, religious beliefs, community life, and their social, political, and sexual attitudes. Both parochial and cosmopolitan, orthodox and liberal, these Jews are characterized by their dualism, by their successful involvement in both the modern Western world and in traditional Jewish culture. In painting this provocative and fascinating portrait of what Jewish Orthodoxy has become in America today, Heilman and Cohen's study also sheds light on the larger picture of the persistence of religion in the modern world.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays about early modern Germany addresses the tensions, both fruitful and destructive, between normative systems of order on the one hand, and a growing diversity of practices on the other. Individual essays address crucial struggles over religious orthodoxy after the Reformation, the transformation of political loyalties through propaganda and literature, and efforts to redefine both canonical forms and new challenges to them in literature, music, and the arts. Bringing together the most exciting papers from the 2005 conference of Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär, an international research and conference group, the collection offers fresh comparative insights into the terrifying as well as exhilarating predicaments that the people of the Holy Roman Empire faced between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Contributors include: Claudia Benthien, Robert von Friedeburg, Markus Friedrich, Claire Gantet, Susan Lewis Hammond, Thomas Kaufmann, Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, Benjamin Marschke, Nathan Baruch Rein, and Ashley West.

This book breaks with three common scholarly barriers of periodization, discipline and geography in its exploration of the related themes of heresy, magic and witchcraft. It sets aside constructed chronological boundaries, and in doing so aims to achieve a clearer picture of what ‘went before’, as well as what ‘came after’. Thus the volume demonstrates continuity as well as change in the concepts and understandings of magic, heresy and witchcraft. In addition, the geographical pattern of similarities and diversities suggests a comparative approach, transcending confessional as well as national borders. Throughout the medieval and early modern period, the orthodoxy of the Christian Church was continuously contested. The challenge of heterodoxy, especially as expressed in various kinds of heresy, magic and witchcraft, was constantly present during the period 1200-1650. Neither contesters nor followers of orthodoxy were homogeneous groups or fractions. They themselves and their ideas changed from one century to the next, from region to region, even from city to city, but within a common framework of interpretation. This collection of essays focuses on this complex.