A Shabbat Reader: Universe of Cosmic Joy

by Dov Peretz Elkins (Editor)

Share the rich Sabbath experiences of a diverse group of prominent Jewish thinkers. Noted author and anthologist Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins has mined every vein of Jewish experience to produce a collection of spiritual essays, poetry, and meditations on the transcendent meaning of the seventh day. He culls from a wealth of sources ranging from the traditional to the radical, including among his forty selections works by Sue Levi Elwell, Blu Greenberg, Lawrence Kushner, Michael Lerner, Alicia Suskin Ostriker, W. Gunther Plaut, Gershom G. Scholem, and Elie Wiesel. Sections of the collection explore Shabbat in Classical Texts, Shabbat as the Ultimate Mitzvah, Jews Celebrate Shabbat, and Shabbat in Modern Thought.

Genres: Jewish, Judaism

226 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1999

Reviews

[Jeffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

An Hasidic rabbi once said that a truly Jewish home is like a plush bed on a cold night: first you warm it up, then it warms you up. Of Shabbat, we might say the same: a little bit of preparation goes a long way. If you're a Jew and the Sabbath means little to you, but you'd like it to mean more, this uneven collection of essays, poems, and prayers might serve usefully as a primer to your preparations. To be sure, it's not a 'how-to' manual. At their best the various pieces serve as something of a scene-setter, spawning an appreciation of Shabbat's ambrosial magic.

Dov Peretz Elkins appears to have made his selections with an eye toward a heterodox audience of mostly secular Jews, tropes of social justice figure prominently throughout; those inclusions that do portray orthodox observance sometimes feel like historical set pieces. Blu Greenberg's warm personal essay Shabbat invites the kind of acute envy that the Brady Bunch did for many a latchkey kid from a single parent home in the 1980s. The same could be said of Gavriel and Pamela Goldman's Shabbat on Middle Mountain. In addition to Elkins' thoughtful Introduction, I would recommend the contributions of Norman Frimer, Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Ilana Nava Kurshan, Michael Lerner, and Arthur Waskow . Your favorite pieces will likely be those that align with notions of Judaism that you bring to the book. (C) Jeffrey L. Otto, December 31, 2018