The Many Faces of Judaism: Yesterday and Today is the first popular book in Russian language on the subject of different trends and movements in Judaism. A need for such a book is very high. Since the Soviet Union broke-up, hundreds of thousand of the former-USSR Jews immigrated to Israel and to the USA and Canada. No one of them knew about conservative or reform movements, and almost no one had a good knowledge about Pharisees, Essens, Karaites, Persian Jews and other prominent historical Jewish movements and communities. Since the collapse of Soviet system we face a revival of religious feelings and interests among the Russian Jews and we need to help to develop these feelings. The present book is dedicated to this purpose.
All major movements, communities and sects of Judaism are described in a simple easy-reading fashion. Special chapters describe some sects, which found their inspiration in Torah but failed to find the place within Judaism itself (like Samaritans or the Russian sect of Subbotniks). The book describes amazing history of Judaism in medieval kingdom of Khazaria and development of Jewish community in Central Asia.
The second part of the book gives a picture of modern communities like Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements. Russian readers will discover for themselves such prominent thinkers as Solomon Shechter or Mordekhai Kaplan.
English
Russian
