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Promoted Content
FictionEl baile de la abuela muerta (Dead grandma's dance)
by Elina Malamud
A hundred years of history from two branches of a Jewish family, set against the backdrop of Tsarist Russia, from the early 19th century to their migration to Argentina in the early 20th century. It's not just the tradition of the Jews from Eastern Europe, but a vivid portrayal of the characters that inhabited this complex and diverse society of declining nobility, gypsies, and Bolsheviks. Clandestine loves, uprisings, and persecutions are described with nostalgic detail, alongside an unexpected display of Hasidic humor and magic.
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Judaism: life & practiceJanuary 2014Breaking and Mending
A Hassidic Model for Clinical Psychology
by Dr. Baruch Kahana
The book 'Breaking and Mending', written by Baruch Kahana, a clinical psychologist and a researcher of Jewish Kabala and Hassidism, is truly a revolution in the fields of human psychology, even though it is appears to treat classic old texts and contents. The essence of this book is an inspiring meeting between the western psychology, as developed in the 20th century following the theories of Sigmund Freud and his tutors, and the Hassidic spiritual anthropology, a heritage of the great Hassidic Masters – the Ba'al-Shem-Tov, the Maggid of Mezritch, Rabbi Shneor-Zalman of Liadi, Rabbi Nachman of Breslev, and others. In his book, Dr. Kahana surveys and peruses through the developments of modern psychology, and describes the theoretic and clinical crisis that the psychology is going through during the postmodern age. Following that analysis, he suggests the Hassidic psychology as a psycho-therapeutic model, which views the human soul from an utterly inverse angle from that which is customary in the western psychology. Hence, Kahana asserts, the Hassidic psychology can focus on different dimensions of the soul and use a whole different set of treatment tools. The Hassidic psychology is displayed in varied details, through a comprehensive investigation of many Hassidic texts that results in a description of a sophisticated, organized mental and spiritual model. Nonetheless, these old-new psychological tools are not supposed to denounce the achievements of the modern western psychology, but rather to become integrated with them, to enrich them and to complete them, as demonstrated in the book. Dr. Kahana does not only transmit to the reader a general image of the subject; he gives the reader a meticulous description of the ways in which the Hassidic psychology can and should contribute to the more accepted and familiar western treatment. He goes over a series of psychological distresses, complexes and disturbances, as they are described in the DSM and the ICD, and shows how the Hassidic psychology would deal with them differently. A series of stories from Dr. Kahana's clinic brings the book to its end. Through those stories, that are well told and in detail, he demonstrates how Hassidic Psychology actually works. While doing so, Dr. Kahana gives the reader an amazingly organized model of the Hassidic anthropology and psychology in which he arranges the varied sources into one firm theory. Dr. Baruch Kahana is a clinical psychologist and a clinical psychology counselor. He teaches in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Ya'akov Herzog College and in the Rothenberg Center for Jewish Psychology
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PhilosophyJanuary 2015Saving Monotheism
Why the most cruel despotic wars burst out in monotheistic societies
by Prof. Mordechai Rotenberg
In his new book Saving Monotheism, Prof. Rotenberg claims that the answer to the existential question` why the most cruel despotic wars burst out in monotheistic societies, may be found in the fatal distortion of this divine idea which was supposed to unite the believers in one god. Accordingly. Rotenberg divides the world into masculine “raping missionaries” who impose on others their definition of socio-religious norms because They” know what god wants”. However, according to the alternative feminine “conversive” definition of monotheism, people have to seek the invisible god via romantic creative inter human interactions. The feminine romantic model is derived from the biblical story of Ruth the Moabite mother of David’s Kingdom which may be used as a metaphorical pattern for nonviolent social relations. Hence the Ruthian feminine romantic model may disseminate such egalitarian ideas as “my god is your god” and “my people are your people”, because only “women who do not rape” may enhance friendly social relations. For applicable possibilities Rotenberg proposes the “couching” system according to which a potential virtuous in music, sports or a new religion, joins free willingly a romantic training program which is grounded on a dialogic contract between the coach and his novice. The outlined romantic model includes also a new expanded framework for intimacy by rereading the story of the maiden Avishag and the aging King David as an anti phallocentric system for erotic relations. Prof. Mordechai Rotenberg books in English: Author's books in English: Damnation and Deviance: the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Failure, New York: The Free Press, Macmillan 1978. Also published in Japanese, Tokyo: Heibon Sha 1986. New English Edition: New Brunswick, Transaction, 2003. Dialogue with Deviance: The Hasidic Ethic and the Theory of Social Contraction Philadelphia: ISHI Publications 1983. Second edition, University Press of America, 1993. Also published in Portuguese, Brazil, Imago Press, 1999. Hasidic Psychology: Making Space for Others, New Brunswick: Transaction, 2003. Re-Biographing and Deviance: Psychotherapeutic Narrativism and the Midrash New York: Praeger Publishers, 1987. Dia-Logo Therapy: Psychonarration and “PaRDeS” New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991. The “Yetzer”: A Kabbalistic Psychology of Eroticism and Human Sexuality, Northvale: Jason Aronson Inc., 1997. The Trance of Terror: Psycho-religious Funda-MENTALISM, Jerusalem: Rubin Mass Pub. 2006.
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FictionThe Water and the Wine
by Tamar Hodes
Leonard Cohen is at the start of his career and in love with Marianne Jensen, who is also a muse to her ex-husband, Axel. Australian authors George Johnston and Charmian Clift write, drink and fight. It is a hedonistic time of love, sex and new ideas on the Greek island of Hydra. As the island hums with creativity, Jack and Frieda join the artistic community, hoping to mend their broken marriage. However, Greece is overtaken by a military junta and the artists’ idyll is over. In this fictional account of real events, Tamar Hodes explores the destructive side of creativity and the price that we pay for our dreams.
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Trusted Partner
Views of the Moon
Tales for Meditators
by John Richard Sack
In many of the world’s wisdom traditions teaching passes from master to student in the form of short tales, stories that offer various views of the moon and the light it sheds on Truth seekers. Aesop had his fables, Jesus spoke in parables, as did Hindu gurus, Sufi poets, Hasidic Jews and Native-American elders. Their tales are not the moon itself, but fingers pointing to the sky, encouraging seekers to turn for guidance to its light. Short inspirational stories and comments lead readers through the stages of meditation.
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August 2021Jane of Battery Park
by Jaye Viner
Jane is a Los Angeles nurse who grew up in a Christian cult that puts celebrities on trial for their sins. Daniel is a has-been actor whose career ended when the cult family members nearly killed him for flirting with her. Eight years after a romantic meet-cute in Battery Park, both search for someone to fill the gap they imagine the other could’ve filled if given the chance. Jane compulsively goes on dates with every self-professed expert in art, music, and food hoping they will teach her the nuances of the culture she couldn’t access in her youth. Daniel looks for a girlfriend who will accept the disabilities left from the cult attack. A loving woman will prove to Daniel’s blockbuster star brother, Steve, that he’s capable of a supporting role in Steve’s upcoming movie and relaunching Daniel’s career. When a chance encounter unexpectedly reunites them, Jane and Daniel not only see another chance at the love they lost, but an opportunity to create the lives they’ve always wanted. The only question is whether their families will let them.
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PhilosophyJanuary 2013Introduction to the Psychology of Self Contraction (Tsimtsum)
by Prof. Mordechai Rotenberg
Similar to many innovative “life projects”, the discovery of the “tsimtsum” (contraction) psychology emanated from an incidental chain of events. During the sixties, when Prof. Rotenberg was a doctoral student at the University of California in Berkeley, he became immersed in the famous anti Vietnam movement which disseminated from this campus. The anti establishment aura, which imbued this social revolution also seemed to have nourished the anti psychiatric fad which claimed that labeling people as cureless schizophrenics is primarily a stigmatic act of discrimination. Following Max Weber’s sociology of religion Rotenberg then developed a counter thesis arguing that it is the Protestant- Calvinistic theology of deterministic predestination and not an elitist ideology which underlies Western irreversible diagnostic systems in psychiatry. Since the discovery that a hidden theology underlies Western psychology raised considerable controversial disputes among western psychotherapists, Rotenberg felt pressed to uncover the psychology embedded in Jewish theology. As a result, he delved during the subsequent 35 years into Jewish hermeneutic literature in order to develop the Jewish Midrashic and mystic psychological system which he constructed according to the Kabbalistic-Hasidic notion of “tsimtsum”. In the ten books which Rotenberg wrote he subsequently tried to demonstrate how the Kabbalistic theodicy that maintains that God’s voluntary contraction into himself in order to make space for the world of “others”, may serve as an alternative dialogical psychology which differs radically from the prevailing Western Darwinistic psychology of egocentrism.
