The sacred stories of the Torah, the sacred holidays of the Jewish year and the sacred Mitzvot of the Biblical Commandments converge in this volume to form a single, unified whole: a way of Jewish living; a way of rendezvousing again and again with the benevolent, single Force that brought the universe, the Jewish People and each and every one of us into being; the Force that that we call God.
Judaism is often taught, to adults and children alike, as a series of discrete parts: Stories, Holidays, Values, Traditions, rarely, are the dots connected so that one understands the relationship of these individual parts to each other. Even more rarely does one discover the underlying philosophy or theology that holds them all together.
Rendezvous with God attempts to connect those dots and makes sense of Judaism’s unifying philosophy. It shows how God’s seven revelations to the Jewish People, as told in the Biblical narrative, shaped the order of the Biblical Holidays and infused them with their content and meaning. These seven rendezvous with God in our “honeymoon” year as a free people are relived and re-experienced through these holidays, each and every year. They constitute the core of the Jewish calendar cycle. Moreover, these seven key Biblical events which the holidays celebrate and commemorate are so foundational in Jewish experience that they also give rise to the many key ethical and ritual traditions that enrich Jewish life throughout the year.
The sacred stories of the Torah, the sacred holidays of the Jewish year and the sacred Mitzvot of the Biblical Commandments converge in this volume to form a single, unified whole: a way of Jewish living; a way of rendezvousing again and again with the benevolent, single Force that brought the universe, the Jewish People and each and every one of us into being; the Force that that we call God.
Judaism is often taught, to adults and children alike, as a series of discrete parts: Stories, Holidays, Values, Traditions, rarely, are the dots connected so that one understands the relationship of these individual parts to each other. Even more rarely does one discover the underlying philosophy or theology that holds them all together.
Rendezvous with God attempts to connect those dots and makes sense of Judaism’s unifying philosophy. It shows how God’s seven revelations to the Jewish People, as told in the Biblical narrative, shaped the order of the Biblical Holidays and infused them with their content and meaning. These seven rendezvous with God in our “honeymoon” year as a free people are relived and re-experienced through these holidays, each and every year. They constitute the core of the Jewish calendar cycle. Moreover, these seven key Biblical events which the holidays celebrate and commemorate are so foundational in Jewish experience that they also give rise to the many key ethical and ritual traditions that enrich Jewish life throughout the year.
