Best of
Jewish
1996
The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
Claudia Roden - 1996
The 800 magnificent recipes, many never before documented, represent treasures garnered bu Roden through nearly 15 years of traveling around the world. 50 photos & illustrations
The Trees of the Dancing Goats
Patricia Polacco - 1996
In the middle of her family's preparation for the festival of lights, Trisha visits her closest neighbors, expecting to find them decorating their house for Christmas. Instead they are all bedridden with scarlet fever. Trisha's family is one of the few who has been spared from the epidemic. It is difficult for them to enjoy their Hanukkah feast when they know that their neighbors won't be able to celebrate their holiday. Then Grampa has an inspiration: they will cut down trees, decorate them, and secretly deliver them to the neighbors, "But what can we decorate them with?" Babushka asks. Although it is a sacrifice, Trisha realizes that Grampa's carved animals are the perfect answer. Soon her living room is filled with trees -- but that is only the first miracle of many during an incredible holiday season. Based on a long cherished childhood memory, this story celebrates the miracle of true friendship.
Words That Hurt, Words That Heal: How to Choose Words Wisely and Well
Joseph Telushkin - 1996
With wit and wide-ranging intelligence, Rabbi Telushkin explains the harm in spreading gossip, rumors, or others’ secrets, and how unfair anger, excessive criticism, or lying undermines true communication. By sensitizing us to subtleties of speech we may never have considered before, he shows us how to turn every exchange into an opportunity.Remarkable for its clarity and practicality, Words That Hurt, Words That Heal illuminates the powerful effects we create by what we say and how we say it.
Tanach: The Torah, Prophets, Writings -- The Twenty-Four Books of the Bible, Newly Translated and Annotated (The ArtScroll Series)
Nosson Scherman - 1996
Author is Nosson Scherman Title is Tanach: The Stone Edition/Black The Torah/Prophets/Writings The Twenty-Four Books of the Bible Newly Translated and Annotated ISBN is 0899062695 Excellent condition, brand new.
The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto
Dawid Sierakowiak - 1996
In politics there's absolutely nothing new. Again, out of impatience I feel myself beginning to fall into melancholy. There is really no way out of this for us." This is Dawid Sierakowiak's final diary entry. Soon after writing it, the young author died of tuberculosis, exhaustion, and starvation―the Holocaust syndrome known as "ghetto disease." After the liberation of the Lodz Ghetto, his notebooks were found stacked on a cookstove, ready to be burned for heat. Young Sierakowiak was one of more than 60,000 Jews who perished in that notorious urban slave camp, a man-made hell which was the longest surviving concentration of Jews in Nazi Europe. The diary comprises a remarkable legacy left to humanity by its teenage author. It is one of the most fastidiously detailed accounts ever rendered of modern life in human bondage. Off mountain climbing and studying in southern Poland during the summer of 1939, Dawid begins his diary with a heady enthusiasm to experience life, learn languages, and read great literature. He returns home under the quickly gathering clouds of war. Abruptly Lodz is occupied by the Nazis, and the Sierakowiak family is among the city's 200,000 Jews who are soon forced into a sealed ghetto, completely cut off from the outside world. With intimate, undefended prose, the diary's young author begins to describe the relentless horror of their predicament: his daily struggle to obtain food to survive; trying to make reason out of a world gone mad; coping with the plagues of death and deportation. Repeatedly he rallies himself against fear and pessimism, fighting the cold, disease, and exhaustion which finally consume him. Physical pain and emotional woe hold him constantly at the edge of endurance. Hunger tears Dawid's family apart, turning his father into a thief who steals bread from his wife and children. The wonder of the diary is that every bit of hardship yields wisdom from Dawid's remarkable intellect. Reading it, you become a prisoner with him in the ghetto, and with discomfiting intimacy you begin to experience the incredible process by which the vast majority of the Jews of Europe were annihilated in World War II. Significantly, the youth has no doubt about the consequence of deportation out of the ghetto: "Deportation into lard," he calls it. A committed communist and the unit leader of an underground organization, he crusades for more food for the ghetto's school children. But when invited to pledge his life to a suicide resistance squad, he writes that he cannot become a "professional revolutionary." He owes his strength and life to the care of his family.
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays
Abraham Joshua Heschel - 1996
This first collection of Heschel's essays - compiled, edited and with an introduction by his daughter Susannah Heschel, is a stunning reminder of the virtuosity of one of the most well respected minds in Judaic studies.
How Good Do We Have to Be?: A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness
Harold S. Kushner - 1996
How Good Do We Have to Be? is for everyone who experiences that sense of guilt and disappointment. Harold Kushner, writing with his customary generosity and wisdom, shows us how human life is too complex for anyone to live it without making mistakes, and why we need not fear the loss of God's love when we are less than perfect. Harold Kushner begins by offering a radically new interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve, which he sees as a tale of Paradise Outgrown rather than Paradise Lost: eating from the Tree of Knowledge was not an act of disobedience, but a brave step forward toward becoming human, complete with the richness of work, sexuality and child-rearing, and a sense of our mortality. Drawing on modern literature, psychology, theology,,and his own thirty years of experience as a congregational rabbi, Harold Kushner reveals how acceptance and forgiveness can change our relationships with the most important people in our lives and help us meet the bold and rewarding challenge of being human.
Torah Studies
Menachem M. Schneerson - 1996
To hear or read such a discussion is to embark on a journey in which we are challenged and forced to move, and at the end stand far from where we began. Here, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, serves as guide to that journey, elucidating the question in each discourse and explaining its context. In this collection of lucid adaptations of the Rebbes talks on the weekly Torah readings and Jewish holidays, each question is not only resolved but also revealed to be the starting point of a major spiritual search, a journey to the inner sanctum of Torah.With descriptive introductions to each chapter and extensive indexes, Torah Studies is an important gateway to the Rebbes teaching and legacy.
The Temple Bombing
Melissa Fay Greene - 1996
The devastation to the building was vast-but even greater were the changes those 50 sticks of dynamite made to Atlanta, the South, and ultimately, all of the United States (Detroit Free Press). Finalist for the National Book Award, The Temple Bombing is the brilliant and moving examination of one town that came together in the face of hatred, a book that rescues a slice of the civil rights era whose lessons still resonate nearly fifty years after that fateful fall day.
Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary
Lawrence Kushner - 1996
Most of the time, we are unaware of it. Yet, every now and then, on account of some fluke, we are startled by the results of its presence. We realize we have been part of something with neither consciousness nor consent. It is so sweet and then it is gone. You say, But I don t believe in God. And I ask, What makes you think it matters to God?" fromLawrence Kushner, whose previous books have opened up new spiritual possibilities, now tells us stories in a new literary form.Through his everyday encounters with family, friends, colleagues and strangers, Kushner takes us deeply into our lives, finding flashes of spiritual insight in the process. Such otherwise ordinary moments as fighting with his children, shopping for bargain basement clothes, or just watching a movie are revealed to be touchstones for the sacred.This is a book where literature meets spirituality, where the sacred meets the ordinary, and, above all, where people of all faiths, all backgrounds can meet one another and themselves. Kushner ties together the stories of our lives into a roadmap showing how everything ordinary is supercharged with meaning if we can just see it.
The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York
Anthony Bianco - 1996
The Reichmanns is filled with fascinating characters, epic scope, and an illuminating look at the world of the ultra-orthodox. 16 pp. of photos. 608 pp. Author tour. Targeted ads. Online promotion. 35,000 print.
The Counting of the Omer: Forty-Nine Steps to Personal Refinement According to the Jewish Tradition
Simon Jacobson - 1996
This book will change your life as it guides you through a mystical yet accessible, practical 49-step journey through the human personality, refining and perfecting your emotions and behavior allowing you to grow and better cope with life's daily challenges.
Noah's Wife: The Story of Naamah
Sandy Eisenberg Sasso - 1996
Take two of every kind of living plant....Work quickly. The rains begin tomorrow."From award-winning author Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, a new story which lights our spiritual imaginations.When God tells Noah to bring the animals of the world onto the ark, God also calls on Naamah, Noah's wife, to save each plant on Earth.Entrusted with this task, Naamah sets off to every corner of the world, discovering a fabulous array of growing things, and gathering seeds, bulbs, cuttings, spores, and roots. She fills a room on the ark with every type of plant--from amaryllis, soybeans, and wheat to lilies, moss, and even dandelions. Then, after 40 long days and nights on the ark, the most important part of Naamah's work begins.In this new story, based on an ancient text, Naamah's wisdom and love for the natural harmony of the earth inspires us to use our own courage, creativity, and faith to carry out Naamah's work today.
The Clifford Goldstein Story
Clifford Goldstein - 1996
Yet he worshipped one anyway. His God was a partially written novel he hoped would be a bestseller, his typewriter the altar on which he offered sacrifices of obsessive devotion.Clifford Goldstein did believe in truth. He just didn't know what it was or where to find it.As the fiery writer traveled Europe and Israel in search of his novel's soul, his quest for meaning of life continued, leading him to a different kind of alter.An explosive confrontation takes place when Goldstein's dream for literary fame and his quest for truth collide in a struggle for supremacy—a struggle that wrenches a challenge from his tortured soul: "Show Your face, God, if You have one—if You dare!"
The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman's Commentary on the Torah
Ellen Frankel - 1996
Here are Miriam, Esther, Dinah, Lilith and many other women of the Torah in dialogue with Jewish daughters, mothers and grandmothers, past and present. Together these voices examine and debate every aspect of a Jewish woman's life -- work, sex, marriage, her connection to God and her place in the Jewish community and in the world. The Five Books of Miriam makes an invaluable contribution to Torah study and adds rich dimension to the ongoing conversation between Jewish women and Jewish tradition.
The Jps Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy : The Traditional Hebrew Text With the New Jps Translation (J P S Torah Commentary)
Jeffrey H. Tigay - 1996
Written by four outstanding Bible scholars, it represents a fusion of the best of the old and the new, utilizing the most advanced knowledge of the day to enhance our understanding of the biblical text. The JPS Torah Commentary is a text of our time -- a new English-language commentary on the first five books of the Bible. Each of the five volumes is the work of a scholar who stands at the pinnacle of his field, surveying the full range of material that illuminates the exciting exploration of the Bible. The commentary series will guide you through the words and ideas of the Bible. Each volume also contains supplementary essays that elaborate key words and themes, a glossary of commentators, and sources, extensive bibliographic notes, and maps.
Living History: A Memoir
Chaim Herzog - 1996
Now he gives readers a candid and acutely observant account of that life in all its historic and personal richness. Uniquely qualified to put a human face on history, Herzog provides insights into the people with whom he has played a part in the creation of that history. b&w photos.
The Book of Blessings
Marcia Falk - 1996
Steeped in dialogue with rabbinic tradition, it is for those who seek a more contemporary, egalitarian approach to traditional liturgy. "[Falk] manages to create extraordinarily beautiful prayers--in Hebrew and English--that are both radically new and deeply resonant with Jewish tradition." --Judith Plaskow, The Women's Review of Books "Marcia Falk's work in Hebrew blessings is as beautiful as it is innovative; and it is innovative in the sweetest, most nourishing sense, sat urated in love for the language itself (its overtones and melodies as well as its deep structure), its history, its people. Even those who do not hear the traditional liturgies as exclusionary will respond to the meticulously flowering poet's passion of Marcia Falk's wholly original contribution."--Cynthia Ozick "A truly magisterial and exciting collection of brakhot . . . that invites us to re-encounter not only the blessing, but the Source of blessing. . . . Falk rekindles the flame of Jewish ardor and devotion."--Hadassah "[Falk's] prayers are re-creations of traditional prayers, her versions striking in the beauty and power of their language, in English and Hebrew: this is a poet's siddur, full of profound meaning."--Sandee Brawarsky, Jewish Week
Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust
Michael C. Steinlauf - 1996
Rather than having spent the last 50 years coming to terms with the magnitude of evil of the Holocaust, this book is about a country that, according to the author, has largely ignored its participation and attempted to minimize its national memory of the event.
My Father, My King: Connecting with the Creator
Zelig Pliskin - 1996
This is a book that will enlighten both the beginner and the scholar.
Esther's Story
Diane Wolkstein - 1996
Esther, a shy orphan Jewish girl who is chosen to become the queen of Persia, risks the wrath of the king to save her people from destruction, and her courage and wisdom are now celebrated in the Jewish feast of Purim.
Total Immersion: A Mikvah Anthology
Rivkah Slonim - 1996
The issues of mikvah and Jewish family purity are addressed from philosophic, psychological, mystical, legal, practical, historical, and personal points of view.
Anne Frank (Famous People, Famous Lives)
Harriet Castor - 1996
Written by successful authors, the books include colour illustrations which add a touch of humour and help pace reading.
Preparing Your Heart for the High Holy Days: A Guided Journal
Kerry M. Olitzky - 1996
This spiritual guided journal will help you prepare your heart and soul for the Jewish New Year.
The JPS Torah Commentary Series, 5-volume set
Jewish Publication Society - 1996
Utilizing the latest research to enhance our understanding of the biblical text, it takes its place as one of the most authoritative yet accessible Bible commentaries of our day.This JPS Torah Commentary series guides readers through the words and ideas of the Torah. Each volume is the work of a scholar who stands at the pinnacle of his field.Every page contains the complete traditional Hebrew text, with cantillation notes, the JPS translation of the Holy Scriptures, aliyot breaks, Masoretic notes, and commentary by a distinguished Hebrew Bible scholar, integrating classical and modern sources.Each volume also contains supplementary essays that elaborate upon key words and themes, a glossary of commentators and sources, extensive bibliographic notes, and maps.
Alex Building a Life
Alex Singer - 1996
These letters, diary entries and drawings are quite simply riveting. Whether your interest is Israel, the development of a sensitive young mind, Judaism or God, you will never forget Alex: Building A Life. Read it and laugh and cry. In other words, read it and live a remarkable life that was cut short.
A Big Quiet House
Heather Forest - 1996
With a tiny, cluttered house, giggling children, and a snoring wife, one man can't get a good night's sleep. "If only," he thinks, "I had a big quiet house!" He throws off his covers and decides to visit the wise old woman at the edge of the village. Surely she can help him solve his problem and she does, but not without giving him some very unusual advice.The woman convinces the man to fill his house with rambling animals, none of which cure his sleeping problem. Until one day, the man takes the animals back to where they belong, and he welcomes the rhythmic sound of his wife's snoring. This ancient Yiddish folktale proves that quite often, nonsense makes the best sense of all. Susan Greenstein's bold illustrations--white pencil on black surface with watercolor - carry the reader through the warm interiors and peaceful nights of the shtetls of Eastern Europe. This story highlights the importance of perspective. Everyone has problems, however attitude can dramatically affect perception. It is the man who changes, and the world he perceives is transformed.
The Ghetto-Swinger: A Berlin Jazz Legend Remembers
Coco Schumann - 1996
From his early enthusiasm for American jazz in Berlin cabarets to his membership of Terezin's celebrated Ghetto Swngers, to surviving Auschwitz through his music, to post-war appearances with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, jazz remains a constant in a remarkable life story.
The Jews of Chicago: FROM SHTETL TO SUBURB
Irving Cutler - 1996
This edition of Irving Cutler's definitive historical volume also includes a new foreword written by the author. The first comprehensive history of Chicago's Jewish population in eighty years, The Jews of Chicago brings to life the people, events, neighborhoods, and institutions that helped shape today's Jewish community. Cutler intertwines neighborhood histories with representative biographical vignettes of some of Chicago's best known figures, such as Edna Ferber, Saul Bellow, Benny Goodman, Mel Tormé, Studs Terkel, Paul Muni, Mandy Patinkin, Emil G. Hirsch, Julius Rosenwald, Dankmar Adler, Arthur Goldberg, Philip Klutznick, and many others. From their roots in the Old Country to their present-day communities, Cutler captures in extraordinary detail the remarkable saga of the Jews of Chicago.
Purr--: Children's Book Illustrators Brag about Their Cats
Michael J. Rosen - 1996
In this tribute to the lovable, enigmatic, and mischievous cat, over 40 illustrators celebrate their favorite felines. All artists' royalties will be donated to The Company of Animals Fund to care for abused, needy, and neglected animals. Full color.
Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov
Moshe Rosman - 1996
As the progenitor of Hasidism, the Ba'al Shem Tov is one of the key figures in Jewish history; to understand him is to understand an essential element of modern Jewish life and religion.Because evidence about his life is scanty and equivocal, the Besht has long eluded historians and biographers. Much of what is believed about him is based on stories compiled more than a generation after his death, many of which serve to mythologize rather than describe their subject. Rosman's study casts a bright new light on the traditional stories about the Besht, confirming and augmenting some, challenging others. By concentrating on accounts attributable directly to the Besht or to contemporary eyewitnesses, Rosman provides a portrait drawn from life rather than myth. In addition, documents in Polish and Hebrew discovered by Rosman during the research for this book enable him to give the first detailed description of the cultural, social, economic, and political context of the Ba'al Shem Tov's life.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch: Architect Of Judaism For The Modern World (Artscroll History Series)
Eliyahu Meir Klugman - 1996
The inspiring life-story of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
God's Mailbox: More Stories about Stories in the Bible
Marc Gellman - 1996
Original, sensitive, and disarmingly funny, Gellman's stories make the messages of the Old Testament come alive to chrilden and adults alike. Illustrations.
The Hidden Face of God
Richard Elliott Friedman - 1996
Bible Review hailed this book as "brilliant, an elegant and learned reflection on one of the central mysteries or the Bible and of modern life."
Selected Poems of Shmuel Hanagid
Shmuel HaNagid - 1996
Peter Cole's groundbreaking versions of HaNagid's poems capture the poet's combination of secular and religious passion, as well as his inspired linking of Hebrew and Arabic poetic practice. This annotated Selected Poems is the most comprehensive collection of HaNagid's work published to date in English.The Multiple Troubles of ManThe multiple troubles of man, my brother, like slander and pain, amaze you? Consider the heart which holds them allin strangeness, and doesn't break.I'd Suck Bitter Poison from the Viper's MouthI'd suck bitter poison from the viper's mouth and live by the basilisk's hole forever, rather than suffer through evenings with boors, fighting for crumbs from their table.
Finding Joy: A Practical Spiritual Guide to Happiness
Dannel I. Schwartz - 1996
This guide explores and explains how to find joy through a time-honored, creative--and surprisingly practical--approach based on Kabbalah and the teachings of Jewish mystics.The very core of the Jewish mystical tradition is centered on the belief that if our focus is spiritual, then true appreciation of our lives, and true joy, are possible. Step by step, Finding Joy describes the basis of happiness in the context of Jewish mystical tradition and shows, in an easy-to-understand way, how we can use its concept of the 10 divine "rays of light," the Sefirot, to remedy the everyday unhappiness in our lives.Clear, creative, personal and down-to-earth, Finding Joy introduces the ancient insights of the Jewish mystics, and offers practical week-by-week exercises for the soul which bring them into our daily routines. Finding Joy is not an instant cure for modern life's burdens. Instead, it's a guide to a time-honored method for thinking and living ... and finding real joy.
The Selected Poetry
Dan Pagis - 1996
He became one of the most vibrant voices in modern Israeli poetry and is considered a major world poet of his generation. A master scholar of Hebrew literature, Pagis drew fully on classical texts and infused his poetry with a centuries-old mysticism. Yet he also brought an immediacy and colloquialism to Hebrew poetry. In these superbly translated poems, Dan Pagis's voice can be heard celebrating the human spirit.
Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps
Hermann Langbein - 1996
- Kirkus Reviews Finally in paperback, in this major and comprehensive work, hailed by Le Monde as a monumental study, Hermann Langbein shatters the myth that all prisoners of concentration camps, during World War II, passively let themselves be slaughtered. A prisoner himself and one of the leaders of resistance at Auschwitz, Langbein painstakingly documents the detailed account of the history of the camps and the story of the resistance. Spanning the initial years to the chaotic weeks before liberation, Against All Hope is the first systematic presentation of organized resistance. Deeply moving, it is an unforgettable testament to the resilience and determination of the human spirit.
Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America
Ruth Gay - 1996
They were mostly young, single and uneducated, but filled with hope of a new life in a new land. The newcomers maintained a sense of community longer than most immigrant groups, although culturally they were uncertain, clinging to fading memories of home, and not yet able to enter American life.
Red, Blue, and Yellow Yarn: A Tale of Forgiveness
Miriam R. Kosman - 1996
This warm tale of inter-generational love is complemented by whimsical full-color drawings.
Am I A Murderer?: Testament Of A Jewish Ghetto Policeman
Calel Perechodnik - 1996
In the vain hope of protecting himself and his family, Calel Perechodnik made the wrenching decision to become a ghetto policeman in a small town near Warsaw, and the tragedy of his decision becomes clear when, during the "Aktion", he sees his wife and child forced onto a train bound for the Treblinka extermination camp. Filled with loathing for the Germans, the Poles, his Jewish brethren, and himself, Perechodnik fled the ghetto to shelter with a Polish woman in Warsaw, and in the course of 105 terror-filled days he poured his story into a diary. Shortly before his death in 1944, he entrusted the diary to a Polish friend, and the document was eventually deposited in the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem. Left nearly forgotten for half a century, it was finally published in Poland in 1993.
The Jew In The Text: Modernity And The Construction Of Identity
Linda Nochlin - 1996
What does the Jew stand for in modern culture? The conscious or unconscious, often hysterical repetition of myths and exaggerations, and the repertory of cliches, fantasies and phobias surrounding the stereotypes of the Jew and the Jewess, have meant that they are figures frequently represented both in the world of literature and art and in the industries of popular culture.
Jerusalem Embattled: A Diary of the City Under Siege March 25, 1948 to July 18th, 1948 (Global Issues)
Harry Levin - 1996
The 100,000 Jews of the city, sealed off from the world, lacked food, water and power; the entire city was a front line. This diary, an authentic contemporaneous record kept by a foreign correspondent and resident of the city, is an intimate account of the ninety-day ordeal and its effect on the lives of the men, women and children of Jerusalem, including the rapid deterioration of living conditions and the desperate attempts to break the siege. Harry Levin accompanied daring military operations in and around Jerusalem, and travelled along the "Burma Road", which the Jews built secretly by night across the mountains in an attempt to break free.
Meta-Halakhah: Logic, Intuition, and the Unfolding of Jewish Law
Moshe Koppel - 1996
the author poses age-old questions about the nature of Sinaitic revelation, as well as modern questions about the role of computers and the immutability of a law. Far from a dry philosophical work, this is a lively discussion about Halakhah that bears relevance on life today.
Maimonides on the decline of the Generations and the Nature of Rabbinic Authority
Menachem Marc Kellner - 1996
Maimonides affirmed, not the superiority of the "moderns" (the scholars of his and subsequent generations) over the "ancients" (the Tannaim and Amoraim, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud) but the inherent equality of the two. The equality presented here is not equality of halakhic authority, but equality of ability, of essential human characteristics.In order to substantiate these claims, Kellner explores the related idea that Maimonides does not adopt the notion of "the decline of the generations," according to which each succeeding generation, or each succeeding epoch, is in some significant and religiously relevant sense inferior to preceding generations or epochs.
A Treasury of Jewish Bedtime Stories
Shmuel Blitz - 1996
The heroes range from kings and sages to wise travelers and fantasizing laborers. This is one of those rare books that youngsters will curl up with again and again. Illustrated by Liat Benyamini Ariel.