Being Jewish today : confronting the real issues / Tony Bayfield.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bayfield, Tony, 1946- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews--Identity.

Jews.

Jews--Social conditions.

Zionism.

Orthodox Judaism.

Judaism--Doctrines.

Judaism.

Physical Description:

ix, 365 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London : New York : Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019.

Summary:

"...gives an account of both the journey of a particular British Jew and the journey of millions of women and men through today's perplexing and difficult world. With honesty and integrity Rabbi Tony Bayfield breaks new ground in exploring the meaning of Jewish identity and its relationship to Jewish tradition and belief. He does so from the perspective of a person fully integrated into the modern Western world. The rigorous questions he asks of his Jewishness, Judaism and the Jewish God are therefore substantially the same as those asked by all faiths and none." -- inside front jacket flap.

Contents:

Part 1 Being Both Jew And Jewish Today: You Can't Ignore The Context p. 5

1 The particular journey p. 7

Section 1 The journey: less a rooted than a routed People p. 8

Section 2 Characteristics of the journey p. 28

2 The shared context p. 39

Section 1 Environment and terrain p. 39

Section 2 The Jewish contribution p. 47

Section 3 The environment today p. 54

Part 2 Being A Jew Today: Identity And Peoplehood p. 71

3 Israel as People p. 73

Section 1 Identity: inner and outer definitions of who is a Jew p. 75

Section 2 Identity: women and the scandal of patriarchy p. 88

Section 3 Identity: power and oppression within p. 93

Section 4 Identity: the mistake of the mamzer p. 97

Section 5 Identity: chosenness - still valid or objectionable in the light of modernity? p. 98

Section 6 Identity: and secularity - People, culture but no God p. 101

4 Israel as Land p. 105

Section 1 Clinging to the Land in the face of exile p. 107

Section 2 Modern political Zionism and the end of exile p. 111

Section 3 The untold story: Mizrahi Jews from Arab lands p. 122

Section 4 Britain and independence p. 123

Section 5 Five inalienable rights p. 128

Part 3 Judaism Today: Light And Weight p. 135

5 Torah: Judaism's unique selling point p. 137

Section 1 The Sefer Torah (Scroll) p. 137

Section 2 Not one Torah but a Dual Torah p. 142

Section 3 The Torah is itself interpretation p. 155

Section 4 Dark texts and liberation p. 159

Section 5 Sefer Torah, Dual Torah, Jewish teaching p. 163

6 Covenant theology: Halakhah, law p. 165

Section 1 Covenant p. 165

Section 2 Mitzvot: the terms of the Covenant p. 174

Section 3 Halakhah p. 178

7 Covenant theology: Aggadah, ethics p. 195

Section 1 Rabbinic ethics p. 195

Section 2 Prophetic ethics p. 205

Section 3 Catastrophe and crisis p. 212

Section 4 A post-modern Jewish ethics p. 217

Part 4 Jewish Faith Today: God, Suffering And Silence p. 227

8 Fragments after the devastation p. 229

Section 1 Before deciding p. 230

Section 2 At Leo Baeck College p. 232

Section 3 Through dialogue to the heart of darkness p. 240

Section 4 The German tradition p. 253

9 My God, my God - what kind of God are you? p. 259

Section 1 A challenging tradition p. 259

Section 2 What can we say about God? p. 265

Section 3 Reasoning about God p. 274

Section 4 Experiencing God p. 282

10 Life beyond death: Individual survival and messianic hope p. 289

Section 1 Individual survival p. 289

Section 2 Jewish survival, messianism and the goal of the journey p. 299.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 327-350) and index.

ISBN:

9781472962089

1472962087

OCLC:

1079846248