The Book of Customs: A Complete Handbook for the Jewish Year

In Europe from the 16th to the 19th centuries, popular""books of customs ""brought Judaism down to the level of ""Every Jew."" These books dealt with holidays, life-cycle rituals, weekly Sabbaths and daily prayers. Written in Yiddish, they were illustrated with woodcuts that showed how to observe the rituals and liturgies that composed day-to-day Judaism. Kosofsky, who stumbled upon one of these books while an undergraduate at Harvard, adapts several such guides for modern usage here, including all of the original woodcuts. (He also reproduces the title page from a 1593 edition that promises to teach readers""how to live like a good person"" and boasts its superiority to all previous versions.) Kosofsky's book is interesting both as a history lesson--12 of the woodcuts depict monthly farming activities, for example, showing how agricultural Jewish life was a few centuries ago--and a spiritual guide for modern readers. As Kosofsky demonstrates, a""book of customs"" does as good a job today of""helping its readers feel comfortable and competent in the Jewish world"" as it did hundreds of years ago.