Scholarship is a very lonely venture—just me and my books.  I often wonder: Does anyone care?  But whenever I go to Limmud, my spirits are buoyed.

http://www.limmudphilly.org/

I just returned from LimmudPhilly—my third Limmud experience, though my first in the US.  (I earlier spoke at the first Limmud held in Cambridge, England, and at the big Limmud in the UK.)  What a blast.  Not only did I enjoy seeing old friends, colleagues, and former students, but I made new friends, and saw that people actually do care about the Bible, which I taught.

My first session was something new for Limmud—a class where knowledge of Hebrew was assumed, so we could look together at some of the Psalms traditionally recited on Friday night at synagogue, trying to figure out why there were chosen as Sabbath psalms.  Given that Hebrew knowledge was expected, I thought I would have a handful of participants—but I had many more, and together we puzzled through parts of Psalms 92 an 93.

Sunday was even more of a surprise—Limmud has many simultaneous sessions, and I was talking about “How the Bible Became the Bible” opposite Ruth Messinger, who was discussing social justice.  I would have gone to Ruth’s session!  I had people sitting on the floor, asking the best questions I had ever been asked after I finished my talk.   There certainly are demographic reasons to be worried about the American Jewish community.  But my experiences at Limmud and other adult Jewish education venues, and the interest in my books The Jewish Study Bible, How to Read the Bible, and How to Read the Jewish Bible, have made me much more optimistic about the Jewish future in America.  We may be decreasing numerically, but there is a solid and growing core who cares in a variety of serious ways about what it means to be Jewish, about who we are as Jews, and about continuing formal and informal Jewish education.  It is this group, who was well-represented at LimmudPhilly, who sit before my mind’s eye as I continue to write on Jewish topics.

Marc Brettler is Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis University.

Jewish Book Council

Dozens of Jewish literary notables were there: Joseph Telushkin, James Kugel, Lawrence Schiffman, Ari Goldman, Alana Newhouse, Yitz and Blu Greenberg, just for starters. Lots of other familiar faces, too, including two former JPS interns Naomi Firestone and Miri Pomerantz Dauber, now with the Jewish Book Council, which hosted the event.

It was quite a night for JPS, with more award winners than any other publisher: Editor Emerita Ellen Frankel and Avi Katz took a prize for the best Illustrated Children’s Book, for their JPS Illustrated Children’s Bible; Paul Steinberg and Janet Greenstein Potter’s Celebrating the Jewish Year: The Spring and Summer Holidays won for best Jewish Family Literature, Judy Klitsner’s Subversive Sequel in the Bible took the award for Scholarship. Frauke von Rohden’s Meneket Rivkah: A Manual of Wisdom and Piety for Jewish Women was a finalist for in the Scholarship category, and Frankel and Katz also were finalists in Jewish Family Literature. Below you can view a slideshow of our winners at the event!

I’m a big fiction fan, so I’ve added Joseph Kertes’ Gratitude: A Novel, the fiction award winner, to my (50+ book!) reading list. If you want to add winners to your reading list, check out wwww.jewishbookcouncil.org and add your comments and suggested book list titles below in response to this posting.

-Carol Hupping, Interim Director

The JPS Tanakh: The Jewish Bible, audio version even makes it easy for you to bring the text wherever you go, and whenever you want. Offered in both MP3 and iTunes download formats you can listen on your iPod or MP3 Player on the road or anywhere on the go.

To celebrate the release of this landmark project, we are offering a special introductory offer – purchase the download of our audio version of the complete JPS Tanakh or Torah and we will send you our Torah eBook FREE of charge!

We could keep going on about how excited we are about this audio Bible, but our Interim Director, Carol Hupping, sums it up best in this recent Q & A session.

Q: How did the Jewish Braille Institute (JBI) and The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) come to partner on the JPS Tanakh: The Jewish Bible, audio version?

A: JPS had wanted an audio version of its Bible for years, but we knew that producing it would be very expensive. We’re talking about 2,000 book pages, about 60 hours of listening time. We had gotten a bid from a commercial audio book producer, but it was much more than we could afford. Then we recalled conversations we’d had with JBI a few years back about publishing a large-print Bible and remembered that they also produced audio books. We asked if they would be interested in collaborating on the project. Indeed they were.

Q: How does this project fit into the new direction JPS is taking?

A: For the last 120 years, JPS has been primarily a publisher of print books. But that’s changing now, because the Internet and handheld devices like smart phones and ebook readers have changed the way people access and use information, and the way many people read books. So, in addition to print, we’re now offering ebooks and also audio, starting with this audio version of the JPS Tanakh, directly through our website and via many other distributors. We want to reach as many people, in as many ways, as possible.

Click here to read the rest of the interview with Carol, as well as a Q & A with JBI President and CEO Ellen Isler and several of the Audio Bible narrators [73K PDF]. Feel free to link to the complete Q&A or to excerpt from it, if you wish.

Also, for more information about the JPS Audio Bible go to http://jewishpub.org/books/audiobible/about-bible.php.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/billhd/

You may think of JPS as just a Jewish book publisher, but it’s so much more. Foremost, JPS is a nonprofit organization committed to bringing quality Jewish books and educational resources to all individuals and institutions interested in past and contemporary Jewish life. But, what if JPS weren’t around to fulfill this priceless mission? Look at just a few of the many treasures we would have missed:

• Eve Bunting’s New York Times’ bestselling Holocaust allegory, Terrible Things, with over 25,000 copies in print and recently added to Holocaust education curriculums around the country.
• Louis Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews, a masterpiece of Jewish literature and an indispensable reference on Midrash.
• The First Jewish Catalog, the quintessential do-it-yourself guide to Jewish ritual, customs, and making Judaism part of our day-to-day lives.
• The revered JPS Tanakh, hailed by Time magazine as, “A landmark of Jewish religious scholarship.”

These are just a few examples of the thousands of titles JPS has published over the past 120 years that have helped to define Jewish culture in America. And, JPS hasn’t done it alone. Did you know that the vast majority of its publications would have never made it to the hundreds of thousands of readers around the world who enjoy them if it wasn’t for the generosity of its donors and members?

It’s clear that a gift to JPS is an investment in the future of Jewish education, community, and culture. It allows JPS to continue publishing top-quality Bible resources and fine works of Jewish scholarship and culture. And it gives you—customers, members, and patrons—the opportunity to contribute to the wealth of Jewish literature and learning and be part of history.

- Michael

Julie Greenfield

It’s been awhile since we’ve brought you a literary roundup, so in honor of Purim we’re bringing you the best of the web devoted to this joyous holiday.

1. The editors at Tablet Magazine have put together a handy guide about the holiday filled with FAQs and fun things to do to enhance your holiday.
2. Looking for a new spin on the Hamentaschen? Ima on and off the Bima has posted some creative recipes. Also, good news for those with gluten allergies, she’s even included arecipe for gluten-free Hamentaschen!
3. If you don’t feel like baking, but are looking for the best Hamentaschen out there, Jewcy has assembled a list of the 5 best Hamentaschen Bakers in America, including Lipkins in the native home of JPS, Philadelphia.
4. Abby Wisse Schachter, associate editor of the New York Post, writes for Commentary Magazine about how feminism and progressive thinking have created a new meaning for the holiday.
5. The Jew & the Carrot has put together a list of healthy and sustainable ways to celebrate Purim. Just because Esther saved the Jews, doesn’t mean you can’t take this time to save the Earth.
6. Check out The Jewish Week’s interview with author Rabbi Yehuda Landy about his book Purim and the Persian Empire: A Historical, Archaeological & Geographical Perspective, which examines archaeological findings from where the Purim story takes place.
7. Though it was yesterday, learn about the Fast of Esther and some other lesser known fast days from our friends at My Jewish Learning.

If you know of any other great Purim blog posts and articles that we forgot to mention, let us know in the comment section. And we would be remiss not to mention JT Waldman’s stunning graphic novelization of the story of Esther:  Megillat Esther.

We hope you all have a Purim Sameach (a happy Purim)!

-Jill

www.flickr.com/photos/rbarenblat

Back when I was a member of BBYO, I was frequently in charge of putting together and leading services. It wasn’t an easy task. When you get a bunch of Jewish teenagers together on the weekend, praying is usually the last thing they want to do. Not only that, but when you’re dealing with Jews from a variety of Jewish educational backgrounds, it can be hard to create a service that everyone is comfortable with. I would make photocopies of common prayers, their English translation, and their transliteration then paste them all together to make one comprehensive prayer packet. We were always trying to spice up services with themes and quotes to make them more fun, only that required more cutting and pasting for each new service.

 Now thanks to BBYO International, there is now a website called Build a Prayer dedicated to creating your own prayer service. There, you can choose which service you would like to plan (Friday Evening, Saturday Morning, Saturday Evening, or Blessing After Meal), which type of service you would like (Traditional, Pluralistic, or Custom), which languages you would like to choose (English, Hebrew, and Transliteration), and which template you want. From there you can select which prayers you want to include and add your own commentary, images, audio, video, etc to personalize your service. With this site, you can now quickly make a custom prayer service for any occasion. It also allows you to browse through services created by other users and to learn more about the purpose for each prayer. For an online tutorial, BBYO has even included this online tutorial:

Don’t be fooled! Just because this site is sponsored by BBYO, doesn’t mean it is just for teens. I encourage you to check it out and play around to create your own personalized and meaningful service!

Let us know in the comments section what other online Jewish educational tools you’ve found helpful.

-Jill

For the most part, Daniel’s ideas are original and pretty novel in my opinion (although he does lend credit where credit is due); and most have something to do with the Internet. All of these ideas were fascinating and though-provoking, but several of them seemed worth creating conversation about.

I encourage you to check out Daniel’s blog for yourself, but in the meantime, here are a few of the ideas that I felt were worth sharing:

1. Open Source Beit Midrash – an online study hall that uses web conferencing and video chatting in order to have multiple people looking at the same page of text, with a teacher guiding a live, video-enabled lecture. This type of website could forever change the study of Jewish texts across the world.
2. Jew It Yourself: The Jewish Catalog 2.0 – This would provide online resources that facilitate self-directed Jewish learning and practice to those who do not affiliate Jewishly in traditional ways or who do not have access to a Jewish education
3. Jewish Book of the Month Club – as an avid reader with a love for learning about the Jewish community, I am obviously a fan of this idea, and am confused as to why this never existed?
4. Jewish Non-Profit Employees Union – a union for the tens of thousands of employees of all non-profit Jewish organizations, ranging from day schools, synagogues, JCC’s, to advocacy groups, with Jewish and non-Jewish employees alike.

These concepts definitely bring a new perspective to the Jewish community table. And with a new Jewish experience just at our fingertips, Daniel’s ideas could potentially be the change the community needs for revitalization.

-Emily

On Friday afternoon, after months of debates over e-book pricing, Amazon drastically pulled all Macmillan (one of the top six American publishing companies) e-books and print books off of their virtual shelves.

Amazon e-books currently sell $9.99, and Macmillan wants to charge between $12.99 and $14.99. Macmillan and other publishers have criticized Amazon for this low price on best-selling e-books, saying the price could potentially hurt hardcover sales.

Just 3 days later, Amazon threw in the towel and agreed to sell Macmillan e-books at their demanded price. Amazon says it had no choice in the matter, having to cede pricing control to Macmillan even though that meant increasing its e-book prices, and therefore decreasing the attractiveness of the Kindle.

Now, let us not forget that up until Tuesday, a publisher like Macmillan had no real alternative if it was unhappy with Amazon’s e-book prices. But when Apple announced its iPad and an upcoming iBook store last week, the e-book landscape changed. Five publishers were announced to be working with Apple, and Macmillan is one of them.

The basic consensus of this weekend’s events is that Amazon was in the wrong, and in many ways. They (allegedly) toyed with antitrust federal laws, stealthily removed Macmillan books in a shady manner, acted not only against Macmillan but against its authors too, and failed to come out with a formal statement (as Macmillan’s CEO did).

Whichever side you’ve decided to take, we cannot deny the role the e-book will play in the future of the publishing industry. But is this faceoff a foreshadowing of what’s to come? And did Amazon mistakenly pave the way for the Apple iPad to take over?

Needless to say, the coming months will surely not be void of excitement in the world of e-books.

-Emily

Lessons learned in these classic books carry as much weight as ever, containing information that, believe it or not, may be directly applicable to our lives today.

Here is a list of JPS works revived in 2010:

1. Judaism as a Civilization by Mordecai Kaplan

This book introduced a new way of looking at Judaism, and is considered the origin of the Reconstructionist Movement. Kaplan felt that all Jews – traditional and liberal, religious and secular – could play a part in this “reconstruction.”

2. Book of Tradition by Abraham ibn Daud (author) and Gerson D. Cohen (translator)

This epic on Jewish history from ancient times to the 12^th century eulogized Spanish Jewry and reminded readers of a once-thriving culture. No one before had ever attempted to write such a broad history of Jewish civilization, and this unique book is one of the first examples of Jewish historiography

3. Genesis: The Beginning of Desire by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Ph.D.

This epic breathes new life into the stories of Adam and Even, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Essau, Rachel, and Joseph. Zornberg brings biblical, midrashic, and literary sources together, illuminating the tensions that grip human beings as they search for an encounter God

4. The Life of Gluckel of Hameln  by Beth-Zion Abrahams

Gluckel of Hameln’s memoir is widely viewed as one of the earliest major works written by a Jewish woman and has become a classic. This JPS book is the only English translation of Gluckel’s story from the original Yiddish and is widely considered the most accurate and complete translation available

5. Modern Poems on the Bible  by David Curzon

This is a collection of imaginative and engaging contemporary responses to the Bible. Guided by the classic rabbinic genre of midrash conceived 1,500 years ago, Curzon chooses poems from Jewish and non-Jewish writers alike and places them besides the biblical passages that were their inspiration.

After all, Albert Einstein once said: “Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best the books of contemporary authors’ looks to me like an extremely nearsighted person who scorns eyeglasses.” We’ve certainly learned a lesson or two from Albert, so perhaps we should take his advice!

-Emily

What is a blog tour, you ask? A blog tour is like a virtual book tour. So instead of going to a library or bookstore to see an author speak, you go to a website on or after the assigned date, and read the author’s interview in the comfort of your own home (or office!) Imagine that – being up close and personal with our winning authors without even leaving your chair!

JPS authors that will be a part of the blog tour are Judy Vida, author of Naomi’s Song (winner of the Sydney Taylor Honor Award in the teen readers category), and Ellen Frankel, author of the JPS Illustrated Children’s Bible (notable Sydney Taylor Book in the category of all ages). The interview with Juda Vida will be posted on The Book Nosher on February 3^rd, 2010. The interview with Ellen Frankel will be posted on the Deo Writer on February 5^th, 2010.

Make sure you tune in to see what our accomplished authors have to say!

-Emily