He addresses and challenges the whole person, portraying that rarest of human phenomena—the holy man.

    'I have decided,' President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced, 'that approximately 1,000 refugees should be immediately brought from Italy to this country.' One thousand refugees....For years, refugees knocking on the doors of American consulates abroad had been told, 'You cannot enter America. The quotas are filled.' And, while the quotas remained untouchable ... millions died."With this mixture of desperation and hope, Ruth Gruber begins Haven, the inspiring story of one thousand Jewish and Christian refugees brought to sanctuary in America in 1944. As special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, Gruber was selected to carry out this top-secret mission despite the objections of military brass who doubted the thirty-three-year-old woman's qualifications. When Gruber met the gaunt survivors, they told her about hiding in sewers and forests, of risking their lives to save others. As she wrote down their stories, tears often wiped out the words in her notebook. Gruber became the refugees' guardian angel during the dangerous crossing of the U-boat-haunted Atlantic, and during their eighteen-month internment at a former army camp in Oswego, New York. Lobbying Congress at the end of the war, she also helped the refugees become American citizens. This edition concludes with a new chapter featuring Gruber's look back on her many decades as a crusading journalist, and a special Appendix from the 1946 Congressional Record listing the names of all the camp's residents.Basis for the CBS Mini-series Starring Natasha Richardson.

    As Molly nears her first Thanksgiving in the New World, she doesn't find much to be thankful for. Her classmates giggle at her Yiddish accent and make fun of her unfamiliarity with American ways.Molly's embarassed when her mother helps with a class Thanksgiving project by making a little doll that looks more like a Russian refugee than a New England Pilgrim. But the tiny modern-day pilgrim just might help Molly to find a place for herself in America.The touching story tells how recent immigrant Molly leads her third-grade class to discover that it takes all kinds of pilgrims to make a Thanksgiving. Originally published in 1983, Molly's Pilgrim inspired the 1986 Academy Award-winning live-action short film.

    From imperial Russia in 1825 they head towards Western Europe, returning finally to modern Russia, where the persecution of the Jews continues. The Bindel family are knit by unbreakable bonds of love and loyalty, bonds which survive conscription into the Tsarist army in the 1830s, the Odessa pogrom of 1871, emigration to the Welsh valleys and Germany, the Nazis, the concentration camps, and the Gulags.

    Vishniac walked across Poland, the Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania with his camera, preserving for posterity images of a Jewish way of life fated soon to be destroyed. Of the 16,000 photographs he managed to take -- secretly and under dangerous circumstances -- he was able to rescue only about 2,000. Some he sewed into his clothing when he came to the United States in 1940, most he left with his father in a village in France for the duration of the war. A Vanished World brings together nearly 200 of these images, introduced to us by Vishniac's own moving Preface and captions.

    It is a profound excursion into religious psychology and phenomenology, a pioneering attempt at a philosophy of halakhah, and a stringent critique of mysticism and romantic religion.

    Why have Jews been the object of the most enduring and universal hatred in history? Why did Hitler consider murdering Jews more important than winning World War II? Why has the United Nations devoted more time to tiny Israel than to any other nation on earth? In this seminal study, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin attempt to uncover and understand the roots of antisemitism—from the ancient world to the Holocaust to the current crisis in the Middle East. Why the Jews? offers new insights and unparalleled perspectives on some of the most recent, pressing developments in the contemporary world, including: -The replicating of Nazi antisemitism in the Arab world -The pervasive anti-Zionism/antisemitism on university campuses -The rise of antisemitism in Europe -Why the United States and Israel are linked in the minds of antisemites Clear, persuasive, and thought-provoking, Why the Jews? is must reading for anyone who seeks to understand the unique role of the Jews in human history.

    This fascinating best-seller weaves these golden threads into a glorious tapestry, presenting hundreds of ideas and comments on the Aleph-Beis, including: the Aleph-Beis as the force of Creation, as a primer for Jewish living, and as a fountainhead of Torah insight and mystical meaning. The product of decades of learning, thinking, and teaching by the revered educator, lecturer, and community activist Rabbi Michael L. Munk. A treat not to be missed.

    Three of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's notable essays: If You Were G-d, Immortality and the Soul, and A World of Love.

    Drawn from sources as diverse as Morocco and India, Spain and Eastern Europe, Babylon and Egypt, the stories are characterized by their infusion of traditional Jewish characters with the archetypal forms found in all fairy tales, or by their treatment of Jewish religious themes. The book combines the playfulness of fairy tales with the author's depth of knowledge of the historical origins of the tales. Throughout one can find the quests and riddles of the traditional fairy tale along with the divine intervention that characterizes the Jewish fairy tale.

    When he dies, Yentyl feels that she no longer has a reason to remain in the village, and so, late one night, she cuts off her hair, dresses as a young man, and sets out to find a yeshiva where she can continue her studies and live secretly as a man.

    Detailing the country's refusal to offer aid, let alone sanctuary, to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution between 1933 and 1948, it is an immensely bleak and discomfiting story - and one that was largely unknown before the book's publication.Irving Abella and Harold Troper's retelling of this episode is a harrowing read not easily forgotten: its power is such that, 'a manuscript copy helped convince Ron Atkey, Minister of Employment and Immigration in Joe Clark's government, to grant 50,000 "boat people" asylum in Canada in 1979, during the Southeast Asian refugee crisis' (Robin Roger, The Literary Review of Canada). None Is Too Many will undoubtedly continue to serve as a potent reminder of the fragility of tolerance, even in a country where it is held as one of our highest values.

    Written to give couples an insight into the depth and spiritual power of the Jewish wedding ceremony, and of Judaism as a whole.

    In his voluminous writings on Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine, Buber united his religious and philosophical teachings with his politics, which he felt were essential to a life of public dialogue and service to God. Collected in ALand of Two Peoples are the private and open letters, addresses, and essays in which Buber advocated binationalism as a solution to the conflict in the Middle East. A committed Zionist, Buber steadfastly articulated the moral necessity for reconciliation and accommodation between the Arabs and Jews. From the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 to his death in 1965, he campaigned passionately for a "one state solution.With the Middle East embroiled in religious and ethnic chaos, A Land of Two Peoples remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published more than twenty years ago. This timely reprint, which includes a new preface by Paul Mendes-Flohr, offers context and depth to current affairs and will be welcomed by those interested in Middle Eastern studies and political theory.

    How does one make a movie that is both morally just and marketable? Film scholar Annette Insdorf provides sensitive readings of individual films and analyzes theoretical issues such as the truth claims of the cinematic medium. The third edition of Indelible Shadows includes five new chapters that cover recent trends, as well as rediscoveries of motion pictures made during and just after World War II. It addresses the treatment of rescuers, as in Schindler's List; the controversial use of humor, as in Life is Beautiful; the distorted image of survivors, and the growing genre of documentaries that return to the scene of the crime or rescue. The annotated filmography offers capsule summaries and information about another hundred Holocaust films from around the world, making this edition the most comprehensive and up to date discussion of films about the Holocaust, and an invaluable resource for film programmers and educators. Annette Insdorf is Director of Undergraduate Film Studies at Columbia University, and a Professor in the Graduate Film Division of the School of the Arts. She is the author of Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kielowski (Hyperion, 1999) and Francois Truffaut (Cambridge, 1995). She served as a jury member at the Berlin Film Festival and the Locarno Film Festival, and is the panel moderator at the Telluride Film Festival. Insdorf co-hosts (with Roger Ebert) Cannes Film Festival coverage for BRAVo/IFC.

    

    Essays on a variety of topics, from biography to Kabbalah, contemporary movements to cosmic speculation.

    The classic born-again experience is a sudden, discontinuous event. For a person growing with God in daily practice, there is likely to be less drama. The experience will be more gentle, natural, and easier on your immediate family.... If you stay with this work, you have every reason to trust the adage, "When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears."--from First Steps to a New Jewish Spirit This extraordinary spiritual handbook is a compassionate call to reconnect with your spiritual roots and nourish your relationship with God. Breaking free from ways of Jewish worship that no longer inspire, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi--one of the most important Jewish spiritual teachers since Abraham Joshua Heschel--guides you through practical exercises for enriching the most important aspects of everyday life--physical health, work, marriage, family, prayer--and empowers you with contemporary ways to satisfy your modern spiritual hunger.Whether refreshing your soul with a midday mini-Sabbath or improving your relationships by refining your awareness, Reb Zalman will introduce you to new models of practicing Judaism. In doing so, he will challenge you to embrace your faith as both spiritually and emotionally enriching, and will awaken you to innovative, inspiring ways for leading a meaningful Jewish life.

    . . . With his wisdom and love, the grandfather widens the child's understanding, as Sussman does for the reader of her endearing story.--Publishers Weekly.

    The Jews of the Kovno Ghetto went to Rabbi Oshry, one of the remaining religious authorities in the Kovno ghetto, and posed their questions to him. He answered their questions and recorded each and every query by copying it onto paper that he tore from cement sacks. He then buried these scraps of papers in cans in the soil around the ghetto. This book bears witness to the power of faith to survive in the direst of circumstances.

    In addition to providing our generation with its preeminent, venerated leader, Rebbetzin Chana was in her own right a truly outstanding person, a "woman of valor" in the fullest sense. Righteous, humble, giving and wise, her life is a shining example for every Jewish woman and "mother in Israel." This compilation contains selections from her memoirs, a brief biography and other events and historical information surrounding her illustrious life.

    Jenna Weissman Joselit traces the origins, nature, patterns, location, and impact of Jewish crime from the early years, when it was inextricably bound up with the East Side community as a whole, with criminals living among the more or less law-abiding citizens they preyed upon, to the post-World War I period and the gradual assimilation and absorption of Jewish crime into the mainstream of the American underworld.Parallel with this theme is a broader one: the New York Jewish community's reaction to Jewish crime, evolving from disbelief to denial to concern and the establishment of a network of correctional and preventive agencies, and finally--as the nature of Jewish crime changed, and as the community itself felt a growing sense of security--a sort of acceptance.

    "Admirable," the word Erika accepts for herself, is taken from an academic's compliment and turned over and over in the auto-biographical narrative as if it were a diamond suspected of flaws.An Admirable Woman is her book, told in her American voice, a voice in which the ghost of her German hovers like a lost homeland. She is the daughter of not-so-Jewish Berlin Jews for whom the coming of the Nazis is a surprise they misread. For Erika, political reality is less of a secret, and she leaves the university for Paris with Martens—the older, Aryan, art historian lover she has married. Paris, bristling with refugees, is meager, and so, with the thin promise of a job for Martens in America, they leave.Erika goes through the writer's grubstreet routines in New York, overcomes the numbing disorientation so many refugees feel, and slowly acquires a substantial, and substantially intimidating, reputation in modern intellectual history. Her success—she becomes one of those whose work the well-informed everywhere must know—is not matched by Martens, and, as their live together dwindles to his death, it is counterpointed by her affair with a famous musician. But even this sweetness cannot breach Erika's insular self-sufficiency and so change the nature of her life.