Fred Reiss, EdD

Fred Reiss, Ed.D

Fred Reiss is a retired educator and a freelance  writer based in Winchester, California.

His books, available on Amazon, include:

* Public Education in Camden, N.J.: From Inception to Integration

* Reclaiming the Messiah

* Sepher Yetzirah: The Book that Started Kabbalah

* The Comprehensive Jewish and Civil Calendars: 2001-2240.

* The Jewish Calendar: History and Inner Workings

* The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars: A Parallel Jewish and Civil Calendar from 1899 to 2050 With Parashiyyot and Haftarot and Candle-Lighting Times for Selected Cities 

Antisemitism and the Courts Probed in New Book

In Courtroom Trials in Jewish History, attorney and Jewish-community activist Esther Zaretsky offers an eclectic collection of stories about Jews who, in a broad sense, have had their day in court, courts representing justice at its worst, verdicts driven by antisemitism and anti-Israeli hatred. The title is somewhat of a misnomer, as there are no depositions or testimonies; no exhibits or closing arguments. Rather, Zaretsky provides the backstory leading up to the trial, the verdict, emphasizing how the “courts fail to affirm society’s most precious values of justice, equality, morality, and the preservation of human rights,” and its aftermath—we get to hear the rest of the story. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East, USA

Extricating Oneself from the Muddy Middle

Each of us hears an internal voice, it talks to us every day. For some, this voice repeats the harmful and disheartening comments made by parents, teachers, siblings, and friends. It reminds us of our failures and insecurities. This voice, according to Rabbi Shimshon Frankel, a clinical psychologist with more than a quarter century of experience, and author of The Wisdom of Getting Unstuck, is your Antagonist, and “when we start to identify ourselves with the negative messages that it delivers, we’re bound to start experiencing a heightened degree of discomfort, emptiness, pain, and tension.” [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish Religion, Lifestyles

A Modern Look Into the Hebrew Bible

Tanakh, the all-inclusive Hebrew word for the Bible—Torah, Prophets, and Writings—holds many problems and puzzles: What does an infrequently used biblical Hebrew word actually mean? Does the Bible describe true historical fact, or just fantasy? What is the origin of particular prayers? Attorney and independent biblical researcher Mitchell First, in his newest book Links to Our Legacy, continues his mission to find lost meanings and correct inaccurate historical accountings. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish Religion

Jewish Folk Remedies from the Pale of Settlement

Wait, it’s not the chicken soup, it’s the herbs that count! Eastern European Jewry, particularly those living in the area known as “The Pale of Settlement,” on the western side of the Dnieper River, in present-day Ukraine, whose history there began in the Middle Ages, have a “long and distinguished canon dedicated to the healing process,” a research area unfortunately ignored, by-and-large, by sociological scholars. Cohen and Siegel, in their joint venture Ashkenazi Herbalism, describe the history and role of plants and herbs employed by Ashkenazi folk-healers, piecing together sparse, fragmented sources, and weaving them into an engaging story. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, International, Jewish History, Science, Medicine, & Education

Author Adopts Maimonides’ Principles as True Judaism

Emuna is the Hebrew word for faith, and in his newest book, 13 Principles of Emuna, Rabbi Lazer Brody passionately reexamines Maimonides thirteen assertions, ranging from the fervent belief in one God to acknowledging the future resurrection of the dead and the coming of the Messiah, through a traditional orthodox-Jewish frame of reference. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish Religion

Can a Robot be Jewish-Jewish-Jewish?

Beginning in 2005, Nadine Epstein, current editor of Moment Magazine, a well-respected Jewish publication since its founding in 1975 by the late Elie Wiesel and Leonard Fein, initiated an “Ask the Rabbi” column, distinguishing itself from other similar columns by asking not one, but many rabbis to respond. “Ask the Rabbi” column seeks advice from rabbis across the full spectrum of Jewish thought and theology – including, Humanist and Independent Judaism on the left, through Reform and Conservative, and on to Orthodox, Sephardic, and Chabad on the right. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD

The Great Jewish Calendar Controversy

According to the Book of the Calendar Controversy, found in the Cairo Genizah in the early twentieth century, Aaron Ben Meir, a highly esteemed scholar and Head of the Jewish community living in Muslim-occupied Israel, challenged, in A.M. 4682 (921 CE), Babylonian Jewry’s power to construct the Jewish calendar by declaring on the Mount of Olives that the months of Heshvan and Kislev would be defective (both having 29 days), and as a result, Passover 4682 will fall on Sunday, contradicting the pronouncement of the Babylonian Sanhedrin whose calendar said the months of Heshvan and Kislev will be full (both having 30 days) and Passover falling on Tuesday, two days later. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish History, Jewish Religion

Book is irreverent but useful guide to Jewish practice

Why Jews Do That, authored by Rabbi Avram Mlotek, co-founder and the Rabbi of Base Manhattan, a group described as an “organization aiming to be a pluralistic Jewish salon for the post-college set,” is occasionally irreverent, often amusing, and always succinct and to the point with its answers. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish Religion

How scattered Jewish people kept a religion intact

For nearly two millennia, the Jewish people dispersed throughout the world—lacking a homeland, temple, Sanhedrin, and king—enduring many strange cultures, conducting their lives under control of foreign governments and alien cultures as slaves, outsiders, and self-rulers, did not abandon their God, their religion, or their dreams. Blondheim and Rosenberg are the editors of Communication in the Diaspora, a compendium of eleven essays, describing little-explored pieces of a puzzle explaining how Jews maintain a shared and cohesive identity. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish History, Jewish Religion

Pandemics through history and the religious response

In his newest book, God and the Pandemic, Rabbi Samuel starts with a historical look at plagues in antiquity, comparing and contrasting leadership skills combating them, praising Marcus Aurelius, a stoic, for guiding his nation through the Antonine Plague in the second century, and condemning Roman emperors in the following century for failing to protect the citizenry during the Plague of Cyprian. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, International, Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Middle East, USA

The philosophical, religious lessons of Auschwitz

The title of Joshua Hammerman’s book Embracing Auschwitz is incredulous. How can a rabbi, a pulpit rabbi charged with comforting his congregation, in light of the continental genocide and devastation inflicted on so many families, known as the Holocaust, and understanding the Jewish nation has a God-given obligation to obliterate the Amalekites, the biblical archetype of evil, ask us to accept and welcome this malevolence? The conundrum is resolved before one begins to read a single chapter. Hammerman, stressing there is nothing positive about the Holocaust, invokes his interpretation of the word “embrace” by quoting Abraham Joshua Heschel: “There are three ways we respond to sorrow. On the first level, we cry; on the second level, we are silent; on the highest level, we take sorrow and turn it into song.” [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish History, Jewish Religion

Modern woman tells of life under the ayatollahs

Author Jacqueline Saper, part of a Jewish family, the daughter of an Iranian university professor and a British mother, an assistant airport manager, describes growing up in a wealthy and idyllic setting, a large house with opulent furnishings in the Tehran neighborhood of Yousefabad, dining in the best restaurants, attending private schools, travelling back and forth between England and Iran, and surrounded by maids and household laborers. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish History, Middle East

Rescue brought Iranian Jewish children to U.S.

Escape From Iran: The Exodus of Persian Jewry During the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Sholem Ber Hecht, G&D Media ©2020, ISBN 978-1-7225-0294-2, p. 217, plus twelve pages of pictures, an appendix and index, $19.95. By Fred Reiss, Ed.D. WINCHESTER, California – Nebuchadnezzar, in the latter part of sixth century BCE, brought the vanquished Jews of

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD