Customer Reviews

Rabbis: The Many Faces of Judaism

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Rabbis is a fascinating book that features personal essays from 100 Rabbis of different backgrounds. George Kalinsky's experience as a photographer is evident in the beautiful images he captures on film. It is difficult to get Rabbis to limit their words to one page, but Michael Kress manages to keep their essays concise yet intriguing.

The book is a great resource for anyone interested in learning more about the great Rabbis of today.

WOW... Now you can not only have a rabbi over for coffee, but have a coffee table book of Rabbis! But you know what?? This is FABULOUS. Better than Rebbe trading cards. RABBIS is a unique book about leaders in modern Judaism in Italy, Israel, Spain, Europe and North America. It features portraits of rabbis and essays in their own words. This can be a drawback, since some rabbis discuss their lives and roles, while others shep, well not nachas, but their own agendas. Will you love them all?? Of course not. That's why every two Jews have three shuls. Sometimes those who minister in the trenches are a little (or a lot) peculiar... but there are different strokes (and rabbis) for different folks. They all serve their communities' needs, some large, some very small. Will your rabbi be envious if s/he wasn't included? Probably. The RABBIS span from Alper (a comedian/rabbi) to Zecher and Zecher. There is a Sephardic "Angel" and a Kfar Chabad "Ashkenazi." Rabbi Black is a singing cowboy in Albuquerque, while Rabbi Brooks ministers to African American Jews. Rabbi Yosef Hadana, Chief Rabbi of Ethiopian Jews appears, as does Yitz Greenberg and Lynn Gottlieb. The cover is adorned by Rahamim Banin, a fundraising, kosher restaurateur and Chabad rabbi in Venice, Italy. He is captured in a gondola, while the camera captured Rabbi Paltiel with his very pregnant wife before a large pic of their Rebbe. There are Borchardt of Agudath Israel and Borowitz of HUC; Hartman of Jerusalem and Hausman of Meah Shearim. There are Balfour Brickner and Rachel Cowan of NYC, and Geller and Eger of California. Rabbi Goldstein is in his National Guard uniform, Garborcheik in his IDF uniform, Kass in his NYPD suit, and Potasnik in his FDNY garb. Rabbi Dorff is photographed from a hospital bed. Buchdahl, a Korean American rabbi in Scarsdale writes an excellent essay of discovery, as does Rabbi Tsuruoka. There are Tokayer and Waskow; and Simkha Weintraub is pictured as truly a man of the "cloth." An unshy Tunishy follows a surfing Shifren; while father and son, and father and daughter teams of Hirsch's, Marmur's, Kreitman's, Schneier's, and Schindler's appear. Rabbis Matalon and Bronstein are captured in debate, and Saperstein is captured on Capitol Hill; Menticoff is jogging, while Niles Goldstein is photographed in his martial arts attire on a Manhattan rooftop with a WTC tower in the background. Kleinbaum and Kolodny precede Labeau and Maya Leibovich, while Schorsch follows Rackman and Rozenberg. Upon closer inspection, the photos reveal secrets, whether it is a "770" here, a book "title" there, or a chosen background. Truly an enjoyable look at contemporary Jewish spiritual leaders.

Excellent photos and essays covering the full gamut of Rabbinic life; while we all may wonder why this or that Rabbi was not included, we understand that decisions on balance, etc. needed to have been made to list 'only' 100 individuals. The essays are somewhat uneven, although they had an editor, but most of them are poignant, instructive, and often, quite moving. Wonderful idea for a book.

Every right hand page has a great photograph of a different rabbi complemented by an insightful biography on the facing page. Their stories are interesting as the rabbis run the gamut from Chasidim to converts from other religions, from learned men and women who have devoted their entire lives to religion to a hippie just off a commune. No matter what your faith, this book will hold your interest.

The one-rabbi-to-a-page format makes for a wonderful book for coffee table browsers.

This book was listed as "almost new". It definitely was not! I still gsave it as a gift but was ashamed to do so! No time to reorder or I would have returned it to sender.

I like the format of this work. The personal statement of the rabbi in regard to his own calling, along with the 'photo- portrait' gives a real sense of who each of these people is. I do not particularly like however the 'comprehensiveness' of the volume, and my own personal feeling is that it includes many who I would be reluctant indeed to call 'rabbis'.
But the work is built on a interesting conception, and there is much to learn from it.

There are some serious people portrayed in this collection. And some of these rabbis are both well known and rightfully respected. But the emphasis in this tasteless and pretentious coffee-table production is on the off-beat, the publicity-seeking, the "with-it." The photographs are posed productions -- not a grab-shot in the book. More often than not these portraits convey much more megalomania and narcissism than sirituality. Sorry.

Spiritual Transcendentalism in the New Millennium is a transcendental philosophy by enlightened spiritualists who apply pure logic and reasoning to support the philosophy of the existence of a superior progressive unified spiritual intelligence (God/Allah) instead of interpreting their inspirations with minds that have been predisposed to subconscious conditioning of a Spiritual Existence that necessitates a dominant spiritual presence. Spiritual Transcendentalists have a goal of bringing rationality, logic and common sense into present day religious beliefs.

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