The Way Into the Varieties of Jewishness

This fifth volume in The Way Into... series examines the many ways that the Jewish tradition has approached differences in religious and cultural orientation and practices among Jewish people, from ancient times to the present controversy over "Who is a Jew?"The Way Into Varieties of Jewishness explores some of the major questions that have challenged individual Jews and Jewish communities to examine what it means to be a Jew. If Jewishness is a faith, what does it mean to be a secular Jew? If it is an ethnicity, what does it mean to convert into it -- or out of it?The struggles and compromises between different movements of Judaism in earlier centuries -- such as the schools of Hillel and Shammai two millennia ago, or the mystics and the rationalists of medieval Europe -- may shed light on the complicated relationships among today's traditional and liberal Jewish movements.