Judaism For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013932102
ISBN 978-1-118-40751-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-46016-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-46018-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-46019-1 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
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About the Authors
Rabbi Ted Falcon, Ph.D., one of the pioneers of Jewish spirituality within the Reform Jewish context, was ordained in 1968 from the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received a doctorate from the California School of Professional Psychology in 1975. He is a nationally recognized lecturer and teacher, and the author of A Journey of Awakening: A Guide for Using the Kabbalistic Tree of Life in Jewish Meditation. Since 2001, Rabbi Falcon has worked with Pastor Don Mackenzie and Imam Jamal Rahman, together known as the Interfaith Amigos. With them he has authored Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-Opening, Hope-Filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi, and an Imam, and Religion Gone Astray: What We Found at the Heart of Interfaith. Rabbi Falcon founded Makom Ohr Shalom, a Synagogue for Jewish Meditation in Los Angeles, and Bet Alef Meditative Synagogue in Seattle. He is a speaker, a writer, and a spiritual therapist in private practice.
David Blatner is an award-winning, best-selling author of 15 books on a wide range of topics—from aviation to digital imaging to the number pi (π). Known for his easy-to-read and humorous style of writing about difficult subjects, Blatner is a Seattle-based writer whose books have sold over a half-million copies and have been translated into 14 languages. He has presented seminars in North America, Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and can be found online at 63p.com. Mr. Blatner has been a Jew his whole life.
Dedication
Ted: For my grandchildren, Ezra and Veronica, with much love.
David: To my mother, Barbara, who always encouraged me
Authors’ Acknowledgments
Remember the adage “Never trust a book by its cover”? Well, this cover has our names on it, but that only tells part of a much bigger story. We’d like to thank our many teachers, friends, family, and supporters (some of whom fall into more than one of those categories).
First, we’ve got to give a hand to our wives, Ruth Neuwald Falcon and Debra Carlson, whose patience and love made this grueling process bearable. Thanks, too, to the lead technical reviewer from the first edition, Rabbi Harry Zeitlin, whose wise and kind availability never failed to offer two interpretations when we had room for only one. We also relied on the wise and helpful comments of Rabbi Yossi Liebowitz and Arielle Vale.
Similarly, dozens of others — such as David Morgenstern and Gabe Harbs — contributed facts and figures that helped immeasurably. Thanks, too, to Rabbi Rami Shapiro and Aaron Shapiro, our great technical editors for this second edition. This book couldn’t have been produced without considerable caffeine (Ted drinks decaf) from Seattle’s Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. Many thanks to our agent, Reid Boates, and to the folks at Wiley, including Tracy Boggier and our excellent editor, Jennifer Moore.
David: I’d like to thank David Weinstein (and his family) for dragging me to shul as a child to eat great food, as well as Lawrence Horwitz, Mordy Golding, and Glenn Fleishman for their inspiration, kind words, and help along the way. Thanks, too, to my sons Gabriel and Daniel, who love learning alongside me. And great thanks go to my coauthor, Ted, whose profound, open-hearted teaching helped me see Judaism in a new way.
Ted: I would like to thank my teachers and my students (who are often the same people) over the years, and especially my communities in Seattle and in Los Angeles, who taught me what it means to be a rabbi. My work as one of the Interfaith Amigos has deepened my appreciation for the wisdom of Judaism while at the same time celebrating the truths of other traditions, and I am grateful for the presence of Pastor Don Mackenzie and Imam Jamal Rahman in my life. And I continue to be deeply grateful for the expertise, the humor, the wisdom, and the friendship of my coauthor, David Blatner.