The Chutzpah Imperative: Empowering Today's Jews for a Life That Matters [Hardcover]

Reconnect with Judaism's most important contribution to humanityand redeem our world.

The gift of Judaism is an understanding of what it means to be a human beingwhat we can do, what we can hope for, how we can live with purpose, what is expected of us. It is a celebration of human freedom, human possibility and human responsibility. Judaism is a way to live a heroic life, to construct a life devoted to values that are eternal, values of ultimate significance. The reward of a Jewish life is walking the world with a profound faith that you matter, your life matters, your dreams matter. I call thischutzpah.

from the Introduction

In this clarion call for a new way to do Judaism, award-winning spiritual leader Rabbi Edward Feinstein urges us to recover this message of Jewish self-empowermentor chutzpahto reshape our world. He walks us through the history of chutzpahfrom the early chapters of Genesis, Jewish biblical law and the Rabbis of the Talmud to the mystics of medieval Spain and the European Hasidic tradition, Zionism and post-Holocaust thought. By showing us the ever-presence of chutzpah in Judaism he reveals the inner story of the Jewish People's soul as well as the meaning that Judaism's deepest purpose and most precious treasure has for us today.

Foreword xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction
The Wicked Child's Question xv

Chapter One
How to Argue with God and Win 1

Chapter Two
The Road to Eden 22

Chapter Three
Jews Gone Wild 40

Chapter Four
The World Stands on Three Pillars 54

Chapter Five
Returning to the Garden 77

Chapter Six
Like a Fiddler on the Roof 119

Epilogue
The Horizon of Human Possibility 147

Notes 153

Suggested Reading 156

Beautiful, provocative, evocative & delivered by one of the greală