The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide when he was twelve years old. The story of a man who leaves the constraints of his family and its community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz, change his name, marry, have children. The story of a writer who becomes an active participant in the political life of his nation.(back cover)

    They planned to be there for a year, during which time Daniel would be a Fellow at the Mandel Institute in Jerusalem. This was a euphoric time in Israel. The economy was booming, and peace seemed virtually guaranteed. A few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to remain in Israel permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace.Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his and his family’s life to friends and family abroad. These missives—passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative—began reaching a much broader readership than he’d ever envisioned, eventually being excerpted in The New York Times Magazine to much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails, If a Place Can Make You Cry is a first-person, immediate account of Israel’s post-Oslo meltdown that cuts through the rhetoric and stridency of most dispatches from that country or from the international media. Above all, Gordis tells the story of a family that must cope with the sudden realization that they took their children from a serene and secure neighborhood in Los Angeles to an Israel not at peace but mired in war. This is the chronicle of a loss of innocence—the innocence of Daniel and his wife, and of their children. Ultimately, through Gordis’s eyes, Israel, with all its beauty, madness, violence, and history, comes to life in a way we’ve never quite seen before.Daniel Gordis captures as no one has the years leading up to what every Israeli dreaded: on April 1, 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that Israel was at war. After an almost endless cycle of suicide bombings and harsh retaliation, any remaining chance for peace had seemingly died.If a Place Can Make You Cry is the story of a time in which peace gave way to war, when childhood innocence evaporated in the heat of hatred, when it became difficult even to hope. Like countless other Israeli parents, Gordis and his wife struggled to make their children’s lives manageable and meaningful, despite it all. This is a book about what their children gained, what they lost, and how, in the midst of everything, a whole family learned time and again what really matters.From the Hardcover edition.

    Her sixteenth book since the 1930s, it chronicles her intimate friendships with luminaries of the century, her encounters with the native peoples of Alaska, and her work in Israel as the nation was born. Gruber presents a unique personal philosophy—living inside of time—that has enabled her to forge a trailblazer's life and contribute decades of unique service to humanity. Now she looks back on life from the age of ninety-one, creating a book that all readers eager to learn about the human side of global events will treasure. 16 pages of photographs add to this fascinating life story including the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Golda Meir.

    But those dreams were quickly dispelled by the reality they encountered: dark, towering walls of stone and a community of pious but impoverished Jews with customs foreign to them. How would the ben-Yichyas find their place in this new world peopled by European Torah scholars, and who would buy the exquisite jewelry they fashioned? This stirring saga spans four generations of a family of Yemenite goldsmiths at the vortex of history in the Land of Israel. Their tragedies and triumphs, their sorrows and joys, and most of all, the heroine's profound love for the Holy City, create a vivid and lasting image of an ancient land rising from two millennia of slumber to an era of splendor.

    British Jews have been central to the unfolding of key political events of the modern period, especially the establishment of the State of Israel, but inconspicuous in shaping the character and outlook of modern Jewry. Their story, less dramatic perhaps than that of other Jewish communities, is no less deserving of this comprehensive and finely balanced analytical account.Even though Jews were never completely absent from Britain after the expulsion of 1290, it was not until the mid- seventeenth century that a permanent community took root. Endelman devotes chapters to the resettlement; to the integration and acculturation that took place, more intensively than in other European states, during the eighteenth century; to the remarkable economic transformation of Anglo-Jewry between 1800 and 1870; to the tide of immigration from Eastern Europe between 1870 and 1914 and the emergence of unprecedented hostility to Jews; to the effects of World War I and the turbulent events up to and including the Holocaust; and to the contradictory currents propelling Jewish life in Britain from 1948 to the end of the twentieth century. We discover not only the many ways in which the Anglo-Jewish experience was unique but also what it had in common with those of other Western Jewish communities.

    In fact, they were the world's first historians. But their historical records reveal far more than a chronology of significant events; they reveal how the events related to God. God was constantly active and involved in the lives of his people. He was always and everywhere working his will, evoking faith and obedience, and showing his love and compassion -- just as he does in our lives.Thankfully, to our benefit, the Hebrews' accounts were recorded. By observing how God and our ancestors dealt with each other, we learn valuable lessons that still apply now, so many years later. In The Message: Old Testament History Books, Eugene Peterson recounts the Bible's historical books (Joshua through Esther) in the language we use today.Come, celebrate as Joshua, a man of courage and strength, leads the people of Israel in settling the Promised Land. Watch as God weaves the quiet, ordinary life of Ruth into his great plan of salvation. Observe God's way of dealing with human sin as Saul's arrogance and disobedience cost him his dynasty. Join King David on his path of both sweet prosperity and bitter failure. And rejoice as the wise Solomon builds the long-awaited temple and dedicates it to God.Though these events took place long ago, Peterson's vivid, easy-to-read paraphrase brings them to life in the present, helping us relate God's eternal truths to our contemporary world.

    Works of art found at the sites, such as mosaics, frescoes and sculpture, are explored to learn about the use of these ancient locales and the lives of the people who inhabited them.

    What lies behind this transformation? In order to understand capitalist development, argue Bichler and Nitzan, we need to break the artificial separation between "economics" and "politics", and think of accumulation itself as "capitalisation of power". Applying this concept to Israel, they reveal the big picture that never makes it to the news. Diverse processes – such as regional conflicts and energy crises, ruling class formation and dominant ideology, militarism and dependency, inflation and recession, the politics of high-technology and the transnationalisation of ownership – are all woven into a single story. The result is a fascinating account of one of the world’s most volatile regions.

    residents of the refugee camps and international observers speak out against the invasion.

    With a minimalist stroke of his deft hand, combined with an object related to what the subject is noted for -- along with his sharp wit -- Piven presents his vision of the celebrities he portrays.The stories Piven tells about each face are enlivened by elemental puns, developed from a three-step creative process. As Piven is sketching the subject in pencil, he is coming up with a word or two to describe the person: "Americana" for Bruce Springsteen, "media" for Jesse Jackson. Now he goes out "to the field" to find the appropriate object, the field being anything from a toy store to a hardware store. Then he lays out all the stuff he has found and combines the objects, adding or culling as necessary, until he achieves the minimum amount of information the viewer needs to recognize the person.Thus we have Steven Spielberg's beard and moustache expressed with strips of film; Jesse Jackson's mouth is a speaker. Within the seven categories of TV, film, music, American politics, the world, finance, and miscellaneous, Faces by Hanoch Piven presents 76 deliciously wicked takes on the likes of such diverse folks as Sigmund Freud, Marilyn Monroe, and the Unabomber.