Carol Ochs

This book explains the process of spiritual guidance, encourages us to seek it out, and helps prepare those who feel called to become spiritual guides. Drawing from their personal and professional experience, as well as a rich array of traditional Jewish sources, Dr. Carol Ochs and Rabbi Kerry M. Olitzky explore what Judaism has to say about the spiritual journey and the ways in which spiritual guidance can help us open more fully to God's presence in our lives. Using the Book of Exodus, the Song of Songs, and the psalms as roadmaps-and sharing stories of contemporary Jews engaged in their own spiritual explorations-Ochs and Olitzky explore prayer as a relationship with God, listening as a key to recognizing all that is holy, and discernment as a way to distinguish the real from the apparent. The hardcover edition of Jewish Spiritual Guidance was first published in 1997 by Jossey Bass.

In this powerful book, Carol Ochs shows us how to develop a personal theology by examining our life stories, learning to recognize God at work in them, and bringing them into conversation with Torah. Using timeless biblical texts as lenses to see the present, she helps us understand who we are and who God is for us by exploring the tightly interwoven basic elements of our lives--our love, suffering, work, bodies, prayer, community, and experiences of death. Through the process of seeing our experiences in relation to Biblical stories, we begin to recognize our lives as part of the ongoing story of the Jewish people--as Torah. This insight allows us to see these experiences as meaningful, not accidental, and opens us to recognizing God's power in and through all that happens to us. Rather than a collection of random events, our lives are part of the Jewish people's ongoing adventure. Armed with our personally shaped theology, we can face this adventure of living in the vanguard of history with awareness and confidence.

Written by an acclaimed scholar to enrich and complete the vision offered by traditional Western spirituality, Women and Spirituality demonstrates that women, as women, have a valuable contribution to make to religion. This new edition is revised and updated in light of thirteen years of feminism, including new biblical role models and a new chapter on women's special relationship to time. Prodding readers to pay attention to their own experiences, Ochs challenges traditional religious concepts such as solitary struggle, otherworldliness, and the spiritual journey to a distant goal, and shows how women's spirituality focuses on relationships with others, commitment to this world, and engagement with the present.