Books about Mitzvahs from Amazon.com

An indispensable, modern-day guide to planning the perfect bar or bat mitzvah, celebrating substance and style

There used to be only two approaches to the bar or bat mitzvah party -- a low-key event that reflects the solemnity of this sacred rite of passage or a big bash that has no connection to the religious service. For many, it was an impossible dilemma. Will a big bash trivialize and overshadow the bar or bat mitzvah experience? Will too much spirituality suck the life out of an otherwise fabulous party?

MitzvahChic is the first book that proves that if you want a truly amazing experience, you can and must have it all! Blending meaningful Jewish elements with high-style contemporary party planning, this inspiring and useful guide will show you how to have the ultimate bar or bat mitzvah -- a profoundly moving service followed by an unforgettable party. The MitzvahChic approach also shows how to honor your child in a big way, rather than reducing him or her to an overused pop culture theme or a single cliché: He's into baseball! She loves horses!

This must-have guide gives advice on the major decisions, the basics of the service, and the party details that really matter. It also features:

• A complete guide to the Torah, including dates and summaries of the portions and supplementary materials
• Eight complete, themed parties, including party favors, decorations, and photographs of sample tables
• A time line to help plan the bar or bat mitzvah up to two years ahead
• Instructions for being MitzvahChic on a budget
• Advice on how to include non-Jewish friends and family members in the ceremony

A practical guide to all things mitzvah from the Torah to the tablecloth, MitzvahChic will help create a beautiful, powerful, resonant, and unforgettable rite of passage..
Price: $200.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A guide to Jewish living, this book is being called "the Jewish Catalog of the 1990s." From lighting Shabbat candles to spending a night in a homeless shelter, this book identifies hundreds of ways to transform daily living into Jewish living..
Price: $12.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The expanded, updated, revised edition of today s most influential book (over 35,000 copies of the first edition in print) about finding core spiritual values in American Jewrys most misunderstood ceremony. Joining explanation, instruction, and inspiration to help parent and child, it offers new insights into bar and bat mitzvah s origins, new ways for non-Jewish parents to participate in their childs barmitzvah ceremony, new resources, and much more. How did bar and bat mitzvah originate? What are the ethics of celebration? How to make the event more spiritually meaningful! An important update to the winner of the 1993 Benjamin Franklin Award for the Best Religion Book published in the United States. A portion of all sales of Putting God on the Guest List is donated by the publisher to MAZON, a Jewish Response to Hunger.
Price: $6.54 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Music May Have Stopped, but the Party’s Never Over.

Bar Mitzvah Disco. Everyone's Invited

Pick up your table card and come be our guest on this journey back to a time when style, music, and lust went hand in hand with a Day-Glo necklace, a pair of Z Cavaricci jeans, and Vuarnet shades. In this parallel universe, tall girls slow-danced with short boys at arm’s length, suburban break-dance pioneers vied with Lionel Richie fanatics for dance-floor space, Aunt Edna came ready to mount an assault on the dessert buffet in her best lime-green polyester pantsuit, and the phrase “the higher the hair, the closer to God” took on a whole new meaning.

With special appearances from:

AJ Jacobs, 99 red balloons, Ben Lee, the California Raisins, a well-intentioned Burt Reynolds impersonator, Jessi Klein, Joel Stein, DJ Squeak E. Clean, members of Foreigner (circa the Agent Provocateur tour), Sarah Silverman, OJ Simpson, Noah Tepperberg, Wendy Spero, the cast of Breakin’, Mark Ronson, Steve Fortgang and southern Florida’s number one Bar Mitzvah band

Bar Mitzvah Disco is an irresistible journey, two parts Fantasy Island to one part Vegas, rife with gorgeous girls, piles of cash, and ungracious thank-you notes presented straight from the source..
Price: $12.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Caroline's mom is Jewish, her dad isn't, and Caroline has never really thought of herself as any religion But when her nana dies and leaves Caroline a Star of David necklace, Caroline begins to wonder about her heritage. If she starts going to synagogue, won't that upset her dad? Should she have a Bat Mitzvah like her best friend, Rachel? Does Caroline want to be Jewish? The more she thinks about it, the more questions she has.

Like Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, this thoughtful and relevant novel traces one girl's journey toward discovering who she is and where she fits in..
Price: $3.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An informative, lighthearted, inspiring, and instructive guide for kids as they embark upon a journey of growth, self-discovery and exploration in preparation for their bar or bat mitzvah

Now updated and expanded, this book engages and inspires in a language young people can understand, to teach them the core spiritual values of Judaism. It explains the biblical origins and history of our ancestors' own rites of passage, and the development of the ceremony to our own day. It introduces kids to both traditional text and midrash to help them understand the real meanings behind the ceremony.

Along with completely updated resources, this new edition includes questions at the end of each chapter to engage kids and let them offer their own thoughts and a special section that helps parents and kids find places to perform acts of tzedakah to honor the event..
Price: $9.52 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Fully engaging in mourning means you will be a different person than before you began."

For those who mourn a death, for those who would help them, for those who face a loss of any kind, Brener teaches us the power and strength available to us in the fully experienced mourning process. Guided writing exercises help stimulate the processes of both conscious and unconscious healing.

"A stunning book! It offers an exploration in depth of the place where psychology and religious ritual intersect, and the name of that place is Truth." --Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
Price: $12.01 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Make Your Own Bar/Bat Mitzvah is using and inspiring guide that takes you step-by-step through the process of creating a very personal and meaningful Bar/Bat Mitzvah. This book offers a joyful and effective planning process that will help you produce a coming of age ritual filled with innovative ideas and sound guidance. Rabbi Goldie Milgram provides an effective, exciting process to help you organize this experience to meet your needs, in particular your studies, mentors, service, Torah talk, party, gifts and expressions of appreciation. Pragmatic and inspiring, this ground-breaking work will help students, families and communities to create healthy and memorably happy bar/bat mitzvah experiences.

Rabbi Goldie Milgram is spearheading the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Institute Initiative, developed under a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and focused upon creating more meaningful and effective ways of preparing students for bar/bat mitzvah. Author of Reclaiming Judaism as a Spiritual Practice: Holy Days and Shabbat, she is Founder and Executive Director of the non-profit educational research and training group, Pnai Yachadut and also runs the highly regarded web site family ReclaimingJudaism.org.

Reb Goldie Milgram is an extraordinary, creative, and wise teacher/mentor/guide/partner in the exploration of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah process. She takes the reader on a multi-dimensioned journey to discover various meaningful traditions and rituals and, in turn, to express them into a spiritually significant celebration. This book is the Bar/Bat Mitzvah's equivalent to What Color Is Your Parachute.
-Peninnah Schram, author, Stories One Generation Tells to Another

Rabbi Goldie Milgram restores relevance and spirituality to the process of becoming bar/bat mitzvah. Her guidance is delivered with great wisdom and compassion. I highly recommend this work.
-David A Cooper, author of God is a Verb.
Price: $10.40 [Notify me when price goes down.]