Sins of Omission: The Jewish Community Reaction to Domestic Violence

In a congregation of devoted worshippers gathered for Shabbat services at the local synagogue, it may be difficult to accept how many wives go home with their husbands to ongoing physical and emotional abuse. In Sins of Omission, author Carol Goodman Kaufman offers a compelling investigation of the Jewish community's reaction - or nonreaction - to domestic violence. Concerned with the sins of the community more than the sins of the abuser, Goodman Kaufman finds that the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis and community leaders are not doing enough and are not informed enough to help the abused women in their congregations get the support, protection, and guidance they need. Through her many insightful interviews with survivors of abuse, rabbis, and lay community leaders, the author takes a hard look at the Jewish community, its rules, regulations, and followers, and discovers the ways in which it helps and hinders victims of abuse.

Kindle edition available.

The Shame Borne in Silence: Spouse Abuse in the Jewish Community

The myth that Jews do not abuse their spouses must be shattered! Now for the first time, a direct address to the problem of spouse abuse in the Jewish community! We can no longer permit ourselves to deny the existence of this terrible crime. The time has come to confront the truth and to take definitive steps to end this violation of all that judaism stands for. A leading Rabbi and Psychiatrist, with striking candor, firmness and compassion, reveals what may have been closely kept dark secrets in many Jewish families, and offers urgently needed advice and direction. Twerski has written more than 20 books to date, including Life's Too Short; I'd Like To Call For Help But I Don't Know The Number; Waking Up Just In Time; When Do The Good Things Start?; Generation To Generation: Personal Recollections Of A Chassidic Legacy; Let Us Make Man: Self-Esteem Through Jewishness.

Love and Violence: Marriage as Metaphor for the Relationship between YHWH and Israel in the Prophetic Books

Love and Violence offers a critical reading of the marriage metaphor in Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Lamentations, Isaiah, and the book of the Twelve Prophets as a means to depict the relationship between God and Israel established in the gender assumptions of the Bible.

It examines the tension between the use of the marriage metaphor in ancient Israel and contemporary perspectives, and aids in the discovery, naming, and alleviation of violence, and its consequences, in Scripture and modern-day life.