It was announced last week that two major play­ers in the Jew­ish book world, Jew­ish Lights Pub­lish­ing and the Rab­bini­cal Assem­bly, will be col­lab­o­rat­ing on a new joint imprint that will pub­lish books per­tain­ing to the the­ol­o­gy and phi­los­o­phy of Con­ser­v­a­tive Judaism.

In the spir­it of the Jew­ish Lights Publishing’s over­all mis­sion, the new imprint will pub­lish books of Jew­ish wis­dom and phi­los­o­phy rather than tra­di­tion­al Judaica and will be geared toward read­er­ship on a uni­ver­sal lev­el. In a state­ment from Rab­bi Julie Schon­feld, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Rab­bini­cal Assem­bly, she informed read­ers that the books will be appro­pri­ate for ​“peo­ple of faith” and will give them the guid­ance to fol­low their own spir­i­tu­al path using wis­dom pro­vid­ed by Con­ser­v­a­tive Judaism.

Jew­ish Lights Pub­lish­ing is a major pub­lish­er of Jew­ish-themed books tar­get­ed towards an inter­faith read­er­ship and offers a sub­stan­tial back­list devot­ed sole­ly to inter­faith resources. They are also the pub­lish­er of Life­Lights, their imprint for infor­ma­tion­al book­lets offer­ing advice inspired by Jew­ish phi­los­o­phy for dif­fi­cult, every­day sit­u­a­tions. They have also pub­lished a pop­u­lar col­lec­tion of essays titled I Am Jew­ish: Per­son­al Reflec­tions Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl that dis­cuss­es what it means to be Jew­ish from the per­spec­tive of fair­ly promi­nent Jew­ish thinkers, per­son­al­i­ties and authors.

Their new joint imprint with the Rab­bini­cal Assem­bly will pub­lish its first book, God of Becom­ing and Rela­tion­ship: The Dynam­ic Nature of Process The­ol­o­gy  by Rab­bi Bradley Shav­it Art­son, this fall. The book will focus on a con­tin­u­a­tion of Rab­bi Artson’s explo­ration of Process the­ol­o­gy, a reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal stand­point that rejects the notion of an almighty, puni­tive God in favor of trans­for­ma­tive, benef­i­cent God that serves as our source of inspi­ra­tion and divin­i­ty.

A part­ner­ship between these two promi­nent orga­ni­za­tions will clear­ly be ben­e­fi­cial for both sides, with the Rab­bini­cal Assem­bly as a pow­er­ful source of Jew­ish thought, schol­ar­ship and phi­los­o­phy and Jew­ish Lights Pub­lish­ing as an expe­ri­enced and well-known pub­lish­er. Their col­lab­o­ra­tion will like­ly help to enhance the lev­el of read­er­ship for books on the mat­ters of Jew­ish thought and will lead to many impor­tant and insight­ful works in the realm of Con­ser­v­a­tive Judaism.

Jack­ie Anza­root is a grad­u­ate of Brook­lyn Col­lege with degrees in Eng­lish and Lin­guis­tics. She has held intern­ships at Simon & Schus­ter and is cur­rent­ly intern­ing at the Jew­ish Book Council.