Customer Reviews

Liberal Judaism at Home: The Practice of Modern Reform Judaism

5 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

My Rabbi required this book for his conversion students, and I found it to be the most informative, concise book about our fundamental beliefs concerning birth, death, marriage, holidays, and other major events. This book gives a broad view of the fundamental tenents of Reform without being oversimplified. It delves into the ethical considerations of major life occurences, and often contrasts Reform practice with Orthodox, explaining the difference between the two. I highly recommend it to anyone converting to Reform Judaism, or anyone searching for the 'how' and 'why' of the faith.

This was an interesting book. For anyone who wants to get an understanding between the Reform and orthodox movements, it is recommended. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it gives a very good outline of the beliefs of Reform Judaism as opposed to Orthodox Judaism without being judgmental in any way.

Surprisingly, this book is literally riddled with errors in its portrayal of Orthodox Judaism. Its claims about Orthodox practice are so inaccurate as to be comical at times. Indeed, had even a single Orthodox Jew reviewed the manuscript before its publication, he or she would have spotted egregious errors on almost every page of the work.For example, the author claims that Orthodox Jews do not drink champagne on Passover, that they do not wear garments that have sheep and goat wool mixed in them, that they leave every garment they fashion incomplete so as to remember the destruction of the Temple, that they use grafted citrons on the Festival of Sukkot for the mitzvah of Lulav and Etrog, that they do no not wear anything made of leather on their bodies on Yom Kippur, that they arrange the completion of a Talmudic Tractate (siyum) on the Fast of Esther in order to exempt themselves from the fast, all of which are simply and utterly false. I would not recommend relying on this book for any of the information it provides regarding Orthodox Judaism, and, by extension, I would ignore any contrasts drawn in the book between Orthodox and Reform practice, since they are frequently based on the inaccurate data with which the author was unfortunately working.

Don't waste your time with this!