Books published by Ben Yehuda Press

Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken ancient Jewish mystical text and transformed it into a contemporary guide for meditative practice. In Return to the Place, Rabbi Hammer guides the reader through the story of creation as the ancient text of the Sefer Yetzirah draws readers in and invites them to become participants in the book's vibrant incantations, bringing the Creator's sacred energy into the world.The Sefer Yetzirah is a creation story like none other, describing the creation of the world in cryptic, mystical, poetic text. Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken a fresh look at this text that scholars believe goes back to the sixth century CE, embracing this text with healing intention.Through guided meditations at each step along the way, Rabbi Hammer allows readers to dig deeply into the text to experience the potential power of these ancient writings. Hammer builds a thought-provoking bridge from the past to the present-translating the text and focusing on its key aspects to give readers a relevant focus for contemplation.Advance Praise¿"Sefer Yetzirah has been called the foundational text of Jewish mysticism, but despite many scholarly attempts to explain it, readers still find its language baffling and its message indecipherable. Now Rabbi Jill Hammer has clarified the text for us all. Without ruining its mystery, she reveals its cosmic vision of 'space, time, and body-soul.' Beyond this, she has created a new-ancient meditative practice based on this mystical masterpiece. Her superb achievement is a gift for all of us!"-Dr. Daniel Matt, author of The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism"A tour de force -at once scholarly, whimsical, deeply poetic, and eminently accessible. Hammer combines translation, commentary, and meditations with her uniquely seasoned sensibility, one that balances feminine and masculine, sensual and philosophical."-Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, author of The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women's Wisdom"Rabbi Hammer, one of the most original religious guides of our time, opens up for us a text that has fascinated mystics and philosophers for more than a millennium - and yet has remained deeply mysterious. Return to the Place shows us that the Sefer Yetzirah is a 'doorway into the deep structure of creation'-with the power to transform the cosmos as well as each person's most intimate experience." -Dr. Nathaniel Berman, author of Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar"Like its subject, the mysterious Book of Creation, Return to the Place brilliantly defies categorization. It is a detailed commentary, a bold spirit-guide, and a valuable work of scholarship. It is both audacious and perspicacious. And no one could have written it but Rabbi Dr. Jill Hammer." -Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson, author of Everything is God: The Radical Path of Non-Dual Judaism

Beside Still Waters: A Journey of Comfort and Renewal is a book for mourners, for those who will someday become mourners, and for those anticipating their own journey out of this life. It offers liturgy both classical and contemporary for different stages along the mourner's path, from prayers for healing (even when "cure" may be out of reach) and prayers to recite before dying, to prayers for every stage of mourning: from aninut (the time between death and burial), to shiva(the first week of mourning), to shloshim (the first month), the culmination of the first year, yahrzeit (death-anniversary) and yizkor (times of remembrance).This volume features traditional words alongside renewed and renewing interpretations and variations. It contains complete liturgies for shiva accompanied by resonant new translations, evocative readings, and complete transliteration. It also contains prayers for a variety of spiritually difficult circumstances (miscarriage, stillbirth, suicide, when there is no grave to visit, mourning an abusive relationship, and more).In the trans-denominational spirit of Jewish renewal, Beside Still Waters is for individuals and communities across the Jewish spiritual spectrum.

Presented in the form of letters from a rabbi to his sons, Why Israel (and its Future) Matters) makes the case to Jewish millennials that they need Israel as a source of pride, connection, and Jewish renewal, and Israel needs them for the liberal values that they can bring to the Zionist enterprise.

This book collects some of the best Humanistic Judaism liturgy from leaders, thinkers, and clergy from across the movement and over the past half-century. The liturgical pieces within can augment existing holiday observances (Shabbat, Passover, Hanukkah, etc.) and life-cycle ceremonies (baby namings, b'nai mitzvahs, weddings, etc.), and can serve as the core around which to build new services or ceremonies. It can be used in communities large and small, and in individual homes. Most of all, it can help people, by providing the right words at the right times to foster joy and remembrance, reflection and celebration, awe and appreciation. The 50th anniversary of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, the movement's community-organizing body, is an auspicious occasion to share these liturgical highlights and find in them inspiration for new Jewish and humanistic expressions in the years ahead!

Tel Aviv is the only home Charlie, the child of a Filipino guest worker, has known but although he tries hard to fit in, he sometimes feels like an outsider.

Beside Still Waters: A Journey of Comfort and Renewal is a book for mourners, for those who will someday become mourners, and for those anticipating their own journey out of this life. It offers liturgy both classical and contemporary for different stages along the mourner's path, from prayers for healing (even when "cure" may be out of reach) and prayers to recite before dying, to prayers for every stage of mourning: from aninut (the time between death and burial), to shiva(the first week of mourning), to shloshim (the first month), the culmination of the first year, yahrzeit (death-anniversary) and yizkor (times of remembrance).This volume features traditional words alongside renewed and renewing interpretations and variations. It contains complete liturgies for shiva accompanied by resonant new translations, evocative readings, and complete transliteration. It also contains prayers for a variety of spiritually difficult circumstances (miscarriage, stillbirth, suicide, when there is no grave to visit, mourning an abusive relationship, and more).In the trans-denominational spirit of Jewish renewal, Beside Still Waters is for individuals and communities across the Jewish spiritual spectrum.

Scripture Windows provides step-by-step exercises that introduce educators, lay people, and men and women of the pulpit to a revolutionary way of involving individuals in the study of sacred stories. In this carefully designed guide to the practice of Bibliodrama, students of all faiths learn how to step into the Biblical text and create midrash as a process of improvisation.Scripture Windows represents a distillation of a process of biblical study and is the official "how to" manual used at the Institute for Contemporary Midrash training seminars. Scripture Windows will appeal to those interested in the application of dramatic methods to the teaching of Bible-as well as anyone seeking fresh approaches to the teaching of Bible to students young and old.

It's the perpetual question: Are we there yet? We've probably asked and answered it countless times. But impatience can cloud the real question: Where are we right now? Are We There Yet? shows a way to turn travel into a spiritual practice.From the Gully to the Crossroads-walking, driving, flying-Rabbi Shefa Gold shares her experience and insight on travel and helps us reexamine our natural inclination to focus on our destinations-both physical and spiritual.Ride along with her on her many journeys-some mundane, some mysterious, and a few near miraculous-and discover the joy of what can happen when you stop worrying about there and focus on here.Are We There Yet? lets you tap into the potential of each journey-starting with the first step.

In The Tao of Solomon, Rabbi Rami Shapiro unravels the golden philosophical threads of wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes, reweaving the vibrant book of the Bible into a 21st century tapestry. Shapiro explores the timeless truth that we are merely a drop in the endless river of time, and reveals a path to finding personal and spiritual fulfillment even as we embrace our impermanent place in the universe.The Tao of Solomon is not a new translation of Ecclesiastes; rather, it is a re-visioning of the sacred text that acknowledges that the only constant in life is change, that nothing lasts forever, and that only by releasing our hold on permanence can we finding personal peace.

"Shabbat arrives as usual,dressed in silkwith her hair and make-upbeautifully arranged."So begins The Sabbath Bee by Wilhelmina Gottschalk, which updates the millenia-old genre of Jewish Sabbath poetry for today's world."Torah, say our sages, has seventy faces. As these prose poems reveal, so too does Shabbat. Here we meet Shabbat as familiar housemate, as the child whose presence transforms a family (sometimes in ways that outsiders can't understand), as a spreading tree, as an annoying friend who insists on being celebrated, as a child throwing water balloons, as a woman, as a man, as a bee, as the ocean… Through the lens of these deft, surprising, moving prose poems, all seventy of Shabbat's faces shine."Rachel Barenblat, author, The Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah and Texts to the Holy

Born of thoroughly assimilated Jewish parents, Peter Pitzele journeys back from his various odysseys in alternative faiths to search out the roots of his own birthright. In discovering and claiming just what that means to him, he plants his focus firmly in the biblical book of Genesis. Here he finds the first articulation of those mythic paradigms that will form in time the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Here are "the fathers' wells," the deep and difficult source texts for our imagination of God.Pitzele's approach to Genesis is personal and pluralistic. He reads not only with a detailed knowledge of the tales, but with the imagination of a psychodramatist. Scripture for him is full of dramatic possibility and psychological truth. The great cast of archetypal figures - Adam, Eve, Cain, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph - are given a fuller dimension in his rendering of their stories. Woven throughout are slices of Pitzele's own personal history, demonstrating the relationship between myth and experience, between the profound images of the Western spiritual tradition and the life of a man who wrestles with his roles as father, husband, son, and brother.In the spirit of conservation, Pitzele seeks to clarify the wells of our spiritual inheritance. His journey of exploration and self-discovery has an immediacy for any of us grappling to find meaning and relevance in the gifts of the past. His purpose is not merely to retell but to re-animate our foundational stories and to bring them to bear on our own lives.This anniversary edition features a new introduction from Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD.