Celebrating the Jewish Year: The Winter Holidays: Hanukkah, Tu B'shevat, Purim

//Celebrating the Jewish Year// is a collection of essays, poems, rituals and prayers surrounding the four major spring and summer Jewish holidays. It looks at Passover, The Omer, Shavuot and Tisha b'Av, and uses modern and classic writers and essayists of the Jewish faith to explain the origin of the holidays, their significance and ways to celebrate them. Essayists include Alan Lew, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco, and a teacher at UC Berkeley. Others are Jewish thinkers and writers like Elie Wiesel, Milton Steinberg, Irving Greenberg and David Wolpe. Well written and collected, //Celebrating the Jewish Year// is an excellent addition to not only a Jewish library, but any religious library interested in seeing the link between the seasons and the holidays that surrounded them in Jewish tradition.

Deftly edited by Janet Greenstein Potter, "Celebrating The Jewish Year: The Winter Holidays" by Rabbi Paul Steinberg (Director of Jewish Studies and Hebrew at the Levine Academy: A Solomon Schechter School in Dallas, Texas) focuses upon three Jewish sacred events: Hanukkah, Tu b'Shevat, and Purim. Drawing from an impressive roster of original sources ranging from Maimonides, to Nachman of Bratzlav, to Theodor Herzle, Rabbi Steinberg provides readers with histories and insights into these Judaic celebrations including the prayers, rituals, and stories associated with each of them. A superb addition to personal, family, school and community library Judaic Studies reference collections, "Celebrating The Jewish Year" is very highly recommended and informative reading that will help the reader to crate a memorable holiday experience for themselves and their loved ones that will be enhanced in both meaning and spirit.