Book of Jewish Sacred Practices [Paperback]

Irwin Kula (Author), Vanessa L. Ochs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2009

Discover how to make virtually any moment in your day a significant part of a meaningful Jewish life.

As we have discovered, and as our sages have long known, there is no experience in the life of a Jew that cannot be marked in Jewish ways. The book you hold in your hands is the result of the kinds of rituals we have sculpted together over the years. It is not a prayer book or even a compendium of obligatory Jewish rituals. Rather, it is a source for all to use creatively. --from the Introduction

Decades of experience by CLAL--The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in connecting spirituality with daily life come together in this one comprehensive handbook. In these pages, you have access to teachings that can help to sanctify almost any moment in your day.

Offering a meditation, a blessing, a profound Jewish teaching, and a ritual for more than one hundred diverse everyday events and holidays, this guide includes sacred practices for:

*Lighting Shabbat candles
*Blessing your parents
*Running a marathon
*Visiting the sick
*Building a sukkah
*Seeing natural wonders
*Moving into a new home
*Saying goodbye to a beloved pet
*Making a shiva call
*Traveling...and much more

Drawing from both traditional and contemporary sources, The Book of Jewish Sacred Practices will show you how to make more holy any moment in your daily life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers who want to create significance out of ordinary as well as remarkable moments will find an invaluable resource in this guidebook from CLAL the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. There's a ritual to mark almost every possible occasion, from the mundane (making a list of things to do) to the sublime (falling in love). Organizing a room becomes a symbolic act of repair, of bringing order to a chaotic world. Quitting smoking, running a marathon, honoring a teacher, sending a child to college, mourning a pet these experiences that until now have not been addressed by Jewish tradition receive a new sanctity as they serve as potential "tools for awakening and self-transformation." The contributing rabbis and scholars from every denomination of Judaism also try to renew rituals that may have become routine, like lighting Sabbath candles or cleaning the house for Passover. "What we get from each moment ultimately depends on the attention (kavanah) we give to those moments," writes rabbi and editor Kula, CLAL's president. More than 100 occasions are classified into 11 sections: everyday life; parents and children; relationships; special moments; healing; life and death; learning; leadership and communal life; Israel; tzedakah; and holy days. Each event includes a meditation, a ritual, blessings and teachings drawn from biblical or rabbinic texts. This traditional Jewish framework should appeal to Jewish readers; non-Jewish readers may also enjoy the inclusive and thought-provoking approach, which does not require giving up or adopting new religious beliefs.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

-Rabbi Irwin Kula is president of CLAL--The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a leading voice for religious pluralism in the Jewish community. A sought-after speaker, he was named by the PBS program Religion & Ethics Newsweekly as one of the "10 People to Watch" helping to shape the American spiritual landscape. Fast Company magazine listed him as one of the seventeen new economy leaders, and Forward newspaper named him one of the top fifty Jewish leaders in America. He received his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Vanessa L. Ochs, Ph.D., is a senior associate at CLAL, and is the Ida and Nathan Kolodiz Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia, and associate professor of religious studies. A recipient of a fellowship in creative writing from the National Endowment of the Arts, she is the author of Words on Fire: One Woman's Journey into the Sacred and Safe and Sound: Protecting Your Child in an Unpredictable World.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: LongHill Partners, Inc. (August 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580231527
• ISBN-13: 978-1580231527
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #469,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Vanessa L. Ochs is the author of Inventing Jewish Ritual (JPS), winner of a 2007 National Jewish Book Award. Her other books include Sarah Laughed, The Jewish Dream Book (with Elizabeth Ochs), The Book of Jewish Sacred Practices (edited with Irwin Kula), Words on Fire: One Woman's Journey into the Sacred, and Safe and Sound: Protecting Your Child In An Unpredictable World. For her writing, she was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts.


Dr. Ochs is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia where she teaches courses in Judaism, anthropology of religion, Jewish feminism, and spiritual writing. Ochs earned her B.A. in Drama and French from Tufts University, an M.F.A. in Theater from Sarah Lawrence College, and Ph.D. in Anthropology of Religion from Drew University.

She lives and gardens in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband, theologian Peter Ochs; they are the parents of two grown daughters, Elizabeth Ochs and Juliana Ochs Dweck and grandparents of Harry and Emma Dweck.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anything and Everything Can Be Ritualized and Blessed!, January 23, 2003

By 

Jason A. Miller "Rabbi Jason Miller" (rabbijason.com) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Book of Jewish Sacred Practices (Paperback)

Have you ever wondered what your birthday would be like without a cake, candles, gifts, or a birthday song? These are examples of rituals that we associate with the anniversary of our birth. Think about how many events in our lives we have ritualized. Thanks to Hallmark, most of these events include a greeting card.

In Judaism, we mark life's milestones with ritual. We bring babies into the fold with a naming ceremony. We are called up to the Torah for an aliyah on our wedding anniversary. We visit the graves of our loved ones before holidays. We crave ritual, and we seek new and different ritual acts for different occasions - imagine if we only recited the shehechiyanu for every milestone in our lives, how would we make
that event stand apart?

CLAL - the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership (full disclosure: I served an internship at CLAL in 2001) has been adding occasions to the list of ritualized events for several years, and now these sacred practices have been compiled into book form. While the book contains many of the acts that are already in the Jewish canon of ritual (e.g. fasting on Yom Kippur, Counting the Omer, and Studying Torah on Shavuot), the contributors, who are all CLAL faculty, put a new spin on these events. So, while we might have found putting up a sukkah to be a very ritualized act, chock-full of religious symbolism, this book offers a way to bring out the significance of taking our sukkah down at the end of the holiday.

Indeed, many of you have sent your children off to college or on a summer trip to Israel, and perhaps you would have liked to mark the occasion with a blessing or meditation. This book transforms these actions into sacred acts. Upon successfully quitting smoking, CLAL recommends reciting the blessing, "Blessed is the One who frees those who are held captive."

A meditation for starting to workout begins "each extra step on the treadmill or the Stairmaster, each lap in the pool or around the track, each turn of the pedal, each lift of the weights, each stretch of muscles long out of use... in each bead of sweat and panting breath I praise You-with all my bones. For each event included in the book, the sacred practice of a meditation, blessing, ritual, and teaching is included. The chapters are usefully divided by category (parents and children, relationships, special moments, healing, learning, etc.).

Many will undoubtedly find new rituals for which they have been wanting, such as saying good-bye to a beloved pet or honoring a teacher at the end of the year. However, it might never have occurred to anyone to recite a blessing or learn a piece of rabbinic text before preparing a family recipe or taking on a volunteer role in the community, but each of these new rituals helps us bring a bit more holiness into the seemingly mundane actions of our daily lives.

If each of us can find one new aspect of our lives to sanctify and make more meaningful through the aid of this book, then it is a most worthy and enriching addition to our bookshelves.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must For the Bookshelf of Every Spiritual Jew, November 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Book of Jewish Sacred Practices (Paperback)

This book is really great for anyone interested in discovering new ways to celebrate not only the regular holidays, but also the sacred that can be found in everyday life. The way it is organized, readers can use the blessings just as written, or with the helpful background information, readers can create their own religious practices. A definite must for anyone interested in connecting to their Jewish inherited tradition both intellectualy and spiritually.