Through hundreds of published and unpublished sources, Alex J. Novikoff traces the evolution of disputation from its ancient origins to its broader influence in the scholastic culture and public sphere of the High Middle Ages.
A groundbreaking study on the impact of Jewish day schools in the lives of parents and children. Beyond the walls of their synagogues, Jewish adults are creating religious meaning in new and diverse ways in a range of unconventional sites. In Back to School, authors Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor argue that the Jewish day school serves as one such site by bringing adults and children together for education, meeting, study, and worship-like ceremonies. Pomson and Schnoor suggest that day school functions as a locus of Jewish identity akin to the Jewish streets or neighborhoods that existed in many major North American cities in the first half of the twentieth century. Back to School began as an ethnographic study of the Paul Penna Downtown Jewish Day School (DJDS) in Toronto, a private, religiously pluralistic day school that balances its Jewish curriculum with general studies. Drawing on a longitudinal study at DJDS, and against the backdrop of a comparative study of two other Toronto day schools as well as four day schools from the U.S. Midwest, Pomson and Schnoor argue that when parents choose Jewish schools for their children they look for institutions that satisfy not only their children's academic and emotional needs but also their own social and personal concerns as Jewish adults. The authors found an uncommon degree of involvement and engagement on the part of the parents, as genuine friendships and camaraderie blossomed between parents, faculty, and administrators. In addition, the authors discovered that parents who considered themselves secular Jews were introduced to or reacquainted with the depth and meaning of Jewish tradition and rituals through observing or taking part in school activities. Sitting on the cusp between the disciplines of education and the sociology of contemporary Jewish life, Back to School offers important policy implications for how Jewish day schools might begin to re-imagine their relationships with parents. Jewish parents, Jewish studies scholars, as well as researchers of educational and social trends will enjoy this evocative volume.
A study of American Jewish chaplains in displaced persons' camps after World War II, Rekindling the Flame provides a historical analysis of the survivors' impact on American Jewish chaplains and indirectly on American Jewry. This critical and controversial study examines not only the adequacy of the response by the U.S. government and military to the survivors, but also the American Jewish response. Grobman concludes that the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee the Jewish organization most responsible for providing aid to the survivors, did not adequately respond. Rekindling the Flame is based on several sources including chaplains' reports and other records; oral interviews with chaplains, their assistants, American soldiers, and Holocaust survivors; diaries and personal correspondence of chaplains; and archives in the United States, Israel, and Europe.
The new concept of preemptive wars has generated much debate, and controversy, on each side of the divide. What impact could it have in aggravating world instability? Is it acceptable? Is it even moral or legal? Many reports and statements are presented and discussed, as to why the war on Iraq was launched, the occupation of that country, and the quagmire of post-war in Iraq that we hear about almost daily! America's good will amongst our friends has been squandered, and its foreign policy, according to many outsiders, has been uneven and capricious. Thus, in recent debates it has been suggested by some, that this indeed has caused civil unrest in many parts of the world, and may have actually increased terrorism. Many knowledgeable persons have argued that trumpeting democracy at the point of a gun, through violence, has not worked well in the past; and the US is doing more of the same. This is tragic! We have not learned much from the lessons of history -- some of the social experiences are presented both for the developed nations, and those less fortunate: the overall economy, education, health care, poverty and discrimination, pollution, injustices and civil rights, the enormous expenditures on the military and on weapons of destruction, the precarious state of democracy etc., as well as proposals to strengthen the UN. The sources for these collected data include, politicians, newscasters, writers, guest speakers, lecturers, and other personalities, in newspapers, magazines on television, and on the Internet. The search continues for that elusive peace in our world today, and especially in the Middle East. The role of America in the general scheme of things needs to be better defined; as many have stated that we have been following the wrong path.
With the publication of The Community of the Beautiful, Professor Garcia-rivera joins the ranks of major theologians in the United States; and in the true spirit of mestizaje, his work not only endows Hispanic-American theology with new depth of insight, but it also enriches theologically the entire Church. It simultaneously advances both Hispanic American and Euro-American theology by setting those two cultural and theological traditions into a remarkable creative and speculative dialogue.
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