Judaism and bereavement

Conclusion The Jewish way of death is a simple, thoughtful, ever sensitive set of ritual practices based on faith and guided by the wish to console the bereaved intelligently. Knowledge of it, and the resolve to utilize its wisdom, hold out a ray of light in our blackest moments. It can help us find the path leading out of the valley of shadows.     

Psychotherapy; Its Relation to Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism

Some facets of the relationship between psychotherapy and Judaism are analyzed. The issue of a framework for therapy that is congruent with Jewish biblical and rabbinic sources is examined in detail. The thesis advanced is, that the healing-helping model promulgated by psychotherapeutic theorists and practitioners is amenable to Jewish thought. Some implications of this model are explored. Attention is focused on the issues of inner conflict, self-knowledge, and complexity unique to human behavior. It is argued that these are basic premises fundamental to both depth psychology and Jewish thought. The Jewish and Christian variations of the healing model are compared and analyzed.     

French Calvinism and Judaism

Abstract

Calvin's language against the Jews, as that of the other Reformers, is invariably harsh. Nevertheless, some of his doctrines—the quasi equal status of the two Testaments in matters of faith, but also Original Sin which transformed all human beings, the Jews among them, into sinners—make room for new attitudes: Jews are bad, corrupt and stupid, but Catholics are even worse. Calvin believes that there are still some elected among the Jews. With Beza, this legacy then deepens. Despite variations (millenarianism and irenism, the continually worsening status of the Huguenots), changed attitudes towards the Jews survive in the 17th century, and in the Refuge are reinforced by direct contact with Jews and new conceptions of Jewish history, which in Bayle and Basnage becomes normal human history. Persecutions are not divine punishment, but human evil, and parallelisms between Jewish and Huguenot history become evident. In France's ‘Desert’ clandestine and persecuted Huguenots identify themselves with the captive and persecuted Jews and Jerusalem under siege.