Customer Reviews

The Second Jewish Catalog: Sources and Resources

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I have owned the first book for over thirty years. It has been my go-to source all this time. My copy is all loose sheets, binding long gone, many articles and downloaded supplements incorporated. There is no better foundation for why and how to be Jewish. (Disclaimer: I have almost finished the internet!)

THIS IS A LARGE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION ABOUT JEWISH LIFE, PRESENTED IN AN EASY TO READ/DIGEST WAY. VERY HELPFUL FOR JEWISH NEWLYWEDS, AND FOR COUPLES IN A MIXED MARRIAGE, IN SORTING OUT A JEWISH WAY OF LIFE. EXTREMELY BENEFICIAL FOR THOSE NEW PARENTS/GRANDPARENTS PLANNING A BRIS/BERIT MILAH.

This 1976 book is the follow-up to the 1973 The First Jewish Catalog: A Do-It-Yourself Kit. The editors wrote, "The truth is... we never planned to do another Jewish Catalog. The success of Catalog I and the deluge of requests from you, the reader, for additional information caused us to reconsider. And so we embarked on a second Catalog venture. Midway through, we realized we could not put everything into only one more volume. So we've decided to complete a trilogy, with yet another volume soon to come (The Third Jewish Catalog: Creating Community : With a Cumulative Index to All 3 Catalogs). By now it is common knowledge that Catalog I grew out of the havurah community. In many ways, however, the whole enterprise has moved beyond that community into a community that includes the many people who took Catalog I seriously, yet had never even seen a havurah... It is our hope that ... this new volume will also play a vital role in the movement's future."

There are sections on "Life Cycle," "Study," "Synagogue and Prayer," and "The Arts." Here are some quotations from the book:

"It will certainly seem strange to many people that the origins of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah... are shrouded in mystery, controversy, and scholarly debate. The reason for the lack or precise information is clear. The Bible fails to mention either a Bar Mitzvah celebration or to give any indication that thirteen was considered the demarcation line..." (Pg. 61)
"John Calvin was astonished at not finding any explicit reference to fornication among the sexual prohibitions of the Torah... The halakah, however, in Midrash and Talmud, interprets Leviticus 19:29 ... as referring to consensual relations without benefit of marriage." (Pg. 95)
"Jewish literature remains haunted by the minority opinion, much in the same way that the Jews as a whole remain a minority that haunts the majority." (Pg. 239)
"...it can be hard to make serious Jewish religious discoveries in a synagogue today. That is because most of the regulars in the synagogue near where you live have settled into comfortable patterns of behavior. They are married people looking for areas of stability in a too-complicated world." (Pg. 306)

This is one of those books that simply no longer exists now that the internet is around. It contains ideas and references for various Jewish events. Much of the data is simply no longer accurate, and some seems to be useless in all times. I'm not sure if this book was ever useful except as a starting point for people who knew nothing about Judaism but wanted to "be Jewish" and were to afraid (or didn't know anyone) to ask. Nowadays, even that segment of the population would find this book fairly useless.