Conversion
There are many conversion sites on the web, here are a few that I found helpful
www.convert.org
www.aish.com
www.convertingtojudaism.com
www.becomingajew.org
Types of Judaism
While there are many flavors of Judiasm, the four major Movements are: Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist
www.rj.org This is the site is dedicated to Reform Judaism
www.utj.org This site is dedicated to promoting traditional Judaism
wupj.org/home/index.html This is the online home of Progressive Judaism which is the Israili counterpart to Reform Judaism
www.sephardim.org This site is dedicated to the Sephardic tradition
www.uscj.org This is the online home of Conservative Judaism
Torah & talmud
Two very important teaching tools in Judiasm are the Torah and the Talmud.
Torah is used is to describe the scroll used in services. We call this scroll, which contains the Five Books of Moses, the Sefer Torah. Each Sefer Torah is hand written by a scribe, called a sofer. The text, the books of Numbers, Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus, is exactly the same in each one. A sofer copies every letter by hand onto parchment. If a mistake is made and the sofer is unable to remove it, the whole sheet must be thrown away.
The Talmud, which is the greatest document, next to Torah ever compiled by the Jews, is composed of the Mishnah and the Gemara. Other cultures have so feared the concepts contained in the Talmud that they felt it necessary to burn it. The Mishnah, a code of Laws, was written by Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi around 200 CE. The Gemara was the transcript of the ethical discussion by the Rabbis of the 3rd through 5th centuries CE. Talmud is an oral interpretation of the Torah. After the fall of the Second Temple, the Jewish leaders of the time felt that if they didn’t write the oral Torah down, it would be forgotten. Another part of the oral Torah, the Midrash, was compiled between 3 CE and 1200 CE. The midrash, which contains Halachic and Aggadic materials, is a collection of stories about events that took place in the Torah.
www.sacred-texts.com
web.wt.net
torahsearch.com
Holocaust
In the early 1930’s, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, bringing with him a plan for the systematic extermination of the entire Jewish population. By 1945, over six million Jews had been murdered by Hitler and the Nazis. We can never forget what happened in Europe at the hand of one man and the effect it had on the rest of the world
www.ushmm.org The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC is dedicated to informing the world about the Holocaust and its effects on world Jewry
www.berea.edu
www.holocaustsurvivors.org
www.historyplace.com
www.holocaust-history.org
voices.iit.edu
www.berea.edu
www.nizkor.org
www.berea.edu
www.berea.edu
Jewish history
Beyond the pale
Jewish history
www.stateofisrael.com
www.us-israel.org
Anti-semitism
Anti-Semitism can be explained in many ways. It has many faces and has many voices, some active, some passive. It may be overt or covert. It may be quiet and it may be highly vocal. It rests mainly outside the Jewish community, but may exist within the Jewish community. It comes from people who have never known a Jewish person and those who were raised in Jewish families. It is not the fault of the Jewish communtiy, but the Jewish community should work to lessen its influence on society as a whole. The Jews have been a minority in every country they have lived in with the exception of Israel. Minority status opens people to a variety of negative attitudes from the prevailing majority. When a country has a bad year financially, medically, or politically, its leaders have looked for a scapegoat, and the Jews have frequently born the blame for these misfortunes. In the Middle Ages, the Jews were members of the Berger class, which was responsible for banking, shop keeping, and all buying and selling of goods. Whenever the peasants rebelled, the King would tell them to look at the Jews, since they were the ones who controlled the money supply. He would ostensibly blame the Jews for the financial woes of the working class.
Israel org
The Facts of Israel
www.wiesenthal.com
www.adl.org
www.billwilliams.org
Jewish and Israeli News
www.atljewishtimes.com
www.haaretzdaily.com
www.jpost.com
www.jewishaz.com
www.zwire.com
www.chicagojewishnews.com
www.clevelandjewishnews.com
www.jewishjournal.com
www.thejewishweek.com
www.thejewishadvocate.com
www.thejc.com
www.washingtonjewishweek.com
www.jewishexponent.com
Jewish Links Misc
Sandy's Jewish Links
Hebrew
www.hebrewworld.com
Synagogue's
www.mickveisrael.org Mickve Israel Savannah, Georgia
www.onepaper.com ST-thomas vi
www.brsweb.org Boca Raton
www.ilfordsynagogue.co.uk Ilford england
www.centralsynagogue.org Central NY York
www.uscj.org Lowell, MA
temple.cambridge.ma.us Cambridge MA
templeisrael-ne.org Omaha NE
www.thedowntownsynagogue.or
www.uscj.org shul's of Wisconsin
www.tempbetham.org framingham Mass
www.concentric.net
www.tourosynagogue.com New Orleans
www.tourosynagogue.org Rhode Island
My Jewish Book list
- Steinsaltz Adin,: The Essential Talmud
- CaHill Thomas, : The Gifts of the jews
- Prager Dennis, Telushkin Joseph, : Why the Jews
- Donin Hayim, Halevy: To Be A Jew
- Robinson Goerge: Essential Judaism
- Dimont Max, I : Jews God and History
- Diamant Anita, Cooper Howard, : Living A Jewish Life
