In his signature plainspoken, accessible style, Rabbi Sacks shares with us traditional interpretations of the Bible, Jewish law, and theology, as well as the works of philosophers and ethicists from other cultures, to examine what constitutes morality and moral behavior. “We are here to make a difference,” he writes, “a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make the world a place of justice and compassion.” He argues that in today’s religious and political climate, it is more important than ever to return to the essential understanding that “it is by our deeds that we express our faith and make it real in the lives of others and the world.”To Heal a Fractured World—inspirational and instructive, timely and timeless—will resonate with people of all faiths.From the Hardcover edition.

    Restoration is a riveting argument for a return to that original biblical expression of faith in Jesus. Discover for yourself the profound beauty of Torah life, the celebration of the biblical Sabbath, and the application of God's holy feast days. Your eyes will be opened to another dimension of the faith that is beginning to reemerge among Christians worldwide. Lancaster answers common theological objections to the Torah, while demonstrating that Christians are already keeping more of God's Law than they realize. This thought provoking, theological boat-rocker is a fun-to-read inspiring journey into the world of the Bible.

    Instead, it’s usually scattered throughout textbooks, self-made crib sheets, and sticky-notes on their computer monitor. Now there’s a better way! The Zondervan Get an A! Study Guides to Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew are handy, at-a-glance study aids ideal for last minute review, a quick overview of grammar, or as an aid in translation or sermon preparation. Each set contains four information-packed sheets that are laminated and three-hole-punched, making them both durable and portable. The study guides are tied to Zondervan’s Basics of Biblical Greek and Basics of Biblical Hebrew.

     Lew is one of the most sought-after rabbis on the lecture circuit. He has had national media exposure for his dynamic fusion of Eastern insight and Bible study, having been the subject of stories on ABC News, the McNeil Lehrer News Hour, and various NPR programs. In the past five years there have been national conferences on Jewish meditation in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami where Lew has been a featured speaker. Lew's first book, One God Clapping, was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and winner of the PEN Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence. Publishers Weekly hailed him as "a perceptive thinker" for his "refreshing and sometimes startling perspective" in his last book, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared.

    With this edition, the voices of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, Rashbam, and other medieval commentators come alive once more, speaking in a contemporary English translation annotated and explicated for lay readers.Each page of The Commentators’ Bible contains several Hebrew verses from the book of Exodus, surrounded by both the 1917 and 1985 JPS translations and new English translations of the major commentators. This large-format volume is beautifully designed for ease of navigation among the many elements on each page, including explanatory notes and selected additional comments from the works of Bekhor Shor, Hizkuni, Abarbanel, Sforno, Gersonides, and others. JPS is pleased to make available for group study and teaching purposes individual parshiyot (weekly Torah readings) from The Commentators’ Bible.

    The cool air of distant hills mingles with the sweet scent of baking bread. The moon rises and glows softly. It's the sort of place where miracles could happen."David and Jacob live in the same little, ordinary town, but it's almost as if they're from different worlds. David is so poor he can barely feed his family. Jacob is so consumed with staying rich he thinks about nothing but money. But the two men have one thing in common: they both believe that miracles are big, magical things that can only happen somewhere else, to someone else.But when Jacob wakes up from a nap in synagogue one day, sure that God has demanded twelve loaves of bread from him, all this changes in amazing ways you'd never expect.A delightful, timeless legend based on Jewish tradition, In God's Hands tells of the ordinary miracles that occur when we really, truly open our eyes to the world around us.

    In this definitive volume of Italian Jewish recipes, Edda Servi Machlin, a native of Pitigliano, Italy, a Tuscan village that was once home to a vibrant Jewish community, reveals the secrets of this delicate and unique culinary tradition that has flourished for more than two thousand years.Originally introduced into the region by Jewish settlers from Judea, other Middle Eastern countries, and North Africa, Italian Jewish cuisine was always more than a mere adaptation of Italian dishes to the Jewish dietary laws; it was a brilliant marriage of ancient Jewish dishes and preparation methods to the local ingredients that relied on the imaginative use of fresh herbs, fruit, and vegetables. Fifteen hundred years later, with the influx of Iberian refugees, it was enriched by some Sephardic (from Spain and Portugal) dishes.Here you'll find recipes for the quintessential Italian Jewish dishes -- from Goose "Ham," Spicy Chicken Liver Toasts, and Jewish Caponata to Sabbath Saffron Rice, Purim Ravioli, and Tagliatelle Jewish Style (Noodle Kugel); from Creamed Baccalà, Red Snapper Jewish Style, and Artichokes Jewish Style to Creamed Fennel and Fried Squash Flowers; from Couscous Salad and Sourdough Challah Bread to Haman's Ears, Honey Cake, and Passover Almond Biscotti.Selected from Edda Servi Machlin's three widely admired books on Italian Jewish cuisine and filled with beautifully rendered memories from her birthplace, this rare collection of more than three hundred recipes is a powerful tribute to a rich cultural heritage and a rare gift to food lovers. With a special section on Jewish holiday menus, Classic Italian Jewish Cooking is a volume to treasure for generations.

    Section II addresses her nuanced understanding of oppression and includes her important work on anti-Judaism in Christian feminism. Section III contains a variety of short and highly readable pieces that make clear Plaskow's central role in the creation of Jewish feminism, including the essential "Beyond Egalitarianism." Finally, section IV presents her writings on the significance of sexual ethics to the larger project of transforming Judaism.Intelligently edited with the help of Rabbi Donna Berman, and including pieces never before published, The Coming of Lilith is indispensable for religious studies students, fans of Plaskow's work, and those pursuing a Jewish education.

    Sentenced to death, hounded at every step, they kept themselves alive by peddling cigarettes in Warsaw's Three Crosses Square - where the author, a member of the Jewish Underground in Poland, met and helped them and recorded their story. Several of the children were finally caught and killed, but most survived and are alive today. The story of the cigarette sellers has been published in Polish, Romanian, Hebrew and Yiddish, and a dramatised version has been broadcast in Israel. The book was awarded a literary prize by the World Jewish Congress in New York.

    With a thorough command of modern Yiddish culture as well as its centuries-old history, Jeffrey Shandler investigates the remarkable diversity of contemporary encounters with the language. His study traverses the broad spectrum of people who engage with Yiddish—from Hasidim to avant-garde performers, Jews as well as non-Jews, fluent speakers as well as those who know little or no Yiddish—in communities across the Americas, in Europe, Israel, and other outposts of "Yiddishland."

    A brilliant yet largely forgotten poet, her reputation rests on her volume of poetry published in Yiddish in 1929 in New York City. Although written in the 1920s, Margolin's poetry is remarkably fresh and contemporary, dealing with themes of anxiety, loneliness, sexual tensions, and the search for intellectual and spiritual identity, all of which were clearly reflected in her own life choices. Sensitively and beautifully translated here, the poems appear both in the original Yiddish and in English translation.Shirley Kumove's fascinating critical-biographical introduction highlights Margolin's tempestuous and unconventional life. An exceptionally beautiful and gifted woman, Margolin adopted a bohemian and an eccentric lifestyle, and threw herself into both intellectual pursuits and romantic attachments beyond her two marriages.

    In the camps, she stayed close to her mother, but her mother died in her hands in Belsen shortly before liberation. Isabelle recovered from typhus and pleurisy in Sweden and later moved to France ro live with her uncle, the only survivor of the family.Frances Irwin, "Remember to be a Good Human Being": A Memoir of Life and the Holocaust. A fifteen, Frances snuck out of the Konskie ghetto through sewers to get food for her family. After almost two years imprisonment in Auschwitz-Birkenau, she endured a death march to Mauthausen and was liberated from that camp's Lenzing sub-camp. She immigrated to the U.S., where she became a lecturer on the Holocaust for Facing History and Ourselves and a member of the board and executive committee of Hillel at Brooklyn College.Lotti Kahana-Aufleger,Eleven Years of Suffering The inspiring story of a woman willing to make almost any sacrifice to save her ill husband, six-year-old daughter, and elderly parents from the Romanian-run (and Ukrainian-assisted) camps in Transnistria. With resourcefulness and courage, Lotti and Sigfried rescued the family from extreme brutality and from the murderous Aktions, in which the camp inmates were taken across the Bug River to be killed.Margit Raab Kalina, Surviving a Thousand deaths (Memoir:1939-1945) At the war's outbreak, a 16-year-old Margit and her family fled Karvina (Czech Silesia) to Eastern Poland. After her father was killed in a bomb-raid, the family fled westward to Tarnow, where the Gestapo shot Margit's mother. Margit worked at the Madritsch textile factory there and then in the Paszow labor camp, was deported to Auschwitz, and from there to Bergen-Belsen. After liberation, she joined her only surviving relatives in Bratislava.Jane Lipski, My Escape into Prison and Other Memories of a Stolen Youth, 1939-1948 The story of a young woman surviving both the Nazis and Soviet prisons. Part of the Bedzin ghetto resistance, after her family was deported to Auschwitz she escaped to Slovakia, where she met her future husband. Soviet partisans took them to Moscow to be honored as heroes, but imprisoned them instead; she never saw her husband again. Jane bore her son in prison, and miraculously they both survived. Repatriated to Poland in 1948, she later settled in the U.S.

    A seminal document in the study of Kabbalah, the Tanya explores and solves the dilemmas of the human soul by arriving at the root causes of its struggles. Though it is a classic Jewish spiritual text, the Tanya and its commentary take a broad and comprehensive approach that is neither specific to Judaism nor tied to a particular personality type or time or point of view.

    Whereas for many centuries conversion to Judaism was relatively rare, in modern times it is a significant phenomenon. This book will enable readers to better understand the phenomenon and to appreciate the need for halakhic conversions.

    Encompassing Jewish mystical literatures from those of late antiquity to works of Polish Hasidism, Moshe Idel highlights the diversity of Kabbalistic views on eros and distinguishes between the major forms of eroticism.The author traces the main developments of a religious formula that reflects the union between a masculine divine attribute and a feminine divine attribute, and he asks why such an “erotic formula” was incorporated into the Jewish prayer book. Idel shows how Kabbalistic literature was influenced not only by rabbinic literature but also by Greek thought that helped introduce a wider understanding of eros. Addressing topics ranging from cosmic eros and androgyneity to the affinity between C. J. Jung and Kabbalah to feminist thought, Idel’s deeply learned study will be of consuming interest to scholars of religion, Judaism, and feminism.

    This long-awaited work is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the roots, development and interpretation of Jewish law in general, and for those who wish to know how Conservative Judaism evolved and what it represents.

    Believing that the Torah has a message relevant to every generation, he discusses how the perennial values of Judaism are to be understood in our day. Rabbi Amital also offers guidance on deeply personal matters, such as coping with crisis and independent decision-making. He especially highlights the need to be a mensch and to respect all people created in God's image. Religious life should not contradict one's humanity and individuality, but rather flow from them.

    At its core, it discusses the function of a nassi, a Jewish leader, who awakens within every single person the deepest part of the soul. Similar to Moses, the nassi inspires the person so that one's most basic faith in G-d leaves the realm of the abstract and becomes real.

    While contemporaries like Walter Benjamin regarded Kraus as heroically isolated, this book places him within a dynamic field of cultural production. Timms highlights the court cases Kraus pursued with his lawyer Oskar Samek and the theatrical projects that earned him Brecht’s friendship.In the final section of the book, the author refutes the legend that Kraus responded with stunned silence to Hitler’s seizure of power. His career culminated in Third Walpurgis Night, an analysis of Nazi ideology that has proved enduringly influential. Timms concludes that Kraus’s lifelong critique of the media, combining Orwell’s political radicalism with Joyce’s linguistic playfulness, incisively anticipates the propaganda techniques of our own age.

    The papers' authors are scholars from the US, Canada, the UK, Hungary, Germany, and New Zealand. In addition to the papers, the volume contains a bibliography of Kertesz's works including translations, and a bibliography of studies in several languages about his work.

    In Germany, conversely, during the 1980s, when Jonas himself was an octogenarian, he became a veritable intellectual celebrity, owing to the runaway success of his 1979 book The Imperative of Responsibility. In the 1920s, Jonas studied philosophy with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, but the Nazi regime forced him to leave Germany for London in 1933. He later emigrated to Palestine and eventually enlisted in the British Army’s Jewish Brigade to fight against Hitler. Following the Israeli War of Independence, he emigrated to the United States and took a position at the New School for Social Research in New York. He became part of a circle of friends around Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blucher, which included Adolph Lowe and Paul Tillich.   This memoir, a diverse collection of previously unpublished materials—diaries, letters, interviews, and public statements—has been organized by Christian Wiese, whose afterword links the Jewish dimensions of Jonas’s life and philosophy. Because Jonas’s life spanned the entire twentieth century, this memoir provides nuanced pictures of German Jewry during the Weimar Republic, of German Zionism, of the Jewish emigrants in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, and of German Jewish émigré intellectuals in New York. Since Memoirs was first published in 2008, interest in the work of Hans Jonas has grown among American academics in recent years.

    It has a modern English translation of the Torah which incorporates and remains faithful to Rashi. The 'Classic questions' are drawn from a range of commentators, Midrash and Talmud. It is the first Chumash to include a commentary anthologized from the works of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Beautifully bound in a hand-tooled leather style cover, both interior and exterior are sure to impress.

    When Rabbi Nachman first started telling his stories, he declared: "Now I am going to tell you stories." The reason he did so was because in generations so far from God the only remedy was to present the secrets of the Torah--including even the greatest of them--in the form of stories. --from the Preface For centuries, spiritual teachers have told stories to convey lessons about God and perceptions of the world around us. Hasidic master Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) perfected this teaching method through his engrossing and entertaining stories that are fast-moving, brilliantly structured, and filled with penetrating insights. This collection presents the wisdom of Rebbe Nachman, translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan and accompanied by illuminating commentary drawn from the works of Rebbe Nachman's pupils. This important work brings you authentic interpretations of Rebbe Nachman's stories, allowing you to experience the rich heritage of Torah and Kabbalah that underlies each word of his inspirational teachings.

    It unfolds in a succession of reminiscences that weave together a shimmering tapestry depicting a lost world. The setting is Lodz, Poland, in the years between the author's childhood and early maturity, a period overtaken by the cataclysmic events of the 1930s and early 1940s. The narrative approach presents a powerful personal testament and reflects the determination of an entire community to remain human in the face of its greatest peril, even at the last frontier of life.East of Time received the 2006 New South Wales Premier's Award for the Best Book of Non-Fiction and was short-listed for the 2006 Australian Literary Society's Gold Medal and the South Australia Arts Festival Award for Innovation in Literature.

    Doctorow questions the very notion of the Jewish American writer, insisting that all great writing is secular and universal. Allegra Goodman embraces the categorization, arguing that it immediately binds her to her readers. Dara Horn, among the youngest of these writers, describes the tendency of Jewish writers to focus on anti-Semitism and advocates a more creative and positive way of telling the Jewish story. Thane Rosenbaum explains that as a child of Holocaust survivors, he was driven to write in an attempt to reimagine the tragic endings in Jewish history.Here are the stories of how these writers became who they are: Saul Bellow on his adolescence in Chicago, Grace Paley on her early love of Romantic poetry, Chaim Potok on being transformed by the work of Evelyn Waugh. Here, too, are Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Erica Jong, Jonathon Rosen, Tova Mirvis, Pearl Abraham, Alan Lelchuk, Rebecca Goldstein, Nessa Rapoport, and many more.Spanning three generations of Jewish writing in America, these essays — by turns nostalgic, comic, moving, and deeply provocative- constitute an invaluable investigation into the thinking and the work of some of America’s most important writers.

    Small rabbit characters at the bottom of each page offer lively commentary. Full color.

    The readings in this book are for anyone seeking a deeper level of personal reflection and spiritual intimacy--and a clearer understanding of just what makes Yom Kippur so holy.Drawn from a variety of sources--ancient, medieval, modern, Jewish and non-Jewish--this selection of readings, prayers and insights explores the opportunities for inspiration and reflection inherent in the themes addressed on the Day of Atonement: sin, forgiveness, repentance, spiritual growth, and being at one with self, family, community and God. These readings enable you to enter into the spirit of Yom Kippur in a personal and powerful way while they uplift and inform. They will add to the benefits of your High Holy Day experience year after year.

    "Spiritual practice reveals that the Garden of Eden is right where you are standing and helps you to be here, now. Therefore, Jewish spiritual practices cultivate joy, hope, resilience and understanding so that you can undertake your soul's work in this lifetime with vision, passion and integrity."from the IntroductionThis innovative guidebook makes accessible Judaism's spiritual pathways, principles and applications, and empowers you to test their value within your own life. Each chapter provides step-by-step, recipe-like guides to a particular Jewish practice or group of practices, gives examples of how they might unfold inside your life, and shows how each can help refuel your spirit throughout the day.You'll discover:Prayer practices for embracing the body and creation with awe, limbering up your mind, and preparing for compassionate action How to draw sustenance from the Great Mystery, the inexplicable and unknowable Source of Life How to mine the Torah's stories, commentaries, symbols and metaphors for meaning Ways to develop your Hebrew vocabulary so you can formulate your own interpretations of sacred text How to explore and practice mitzvot as meaningful, compelling parts of your spiritual life How to view the Jewish people as a precious human resource and as a model for resilience... and much, much more.

    From the Paraphrase of Shem to Pesiqta Rabbati, scholars and students alike must have a fundamental understanding of these documents' content, provenance, and place in NT interpretation. But achieving even an elementary facility with this literature often requires years of experience, or a photographic memory. Evans's dexterous survey-a thoroughly revised and significantly expanded edition of his Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation - amasses the requisite details of date, language, text, translation, and general bibliography. Evans also evaluates the materials' relevance for interpreting the NT. The vast range of literature examined includes the Old Testament apocrypha, the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, assorted ancient translations of the Old Testament and the Targum paraphrases, Philo and Josephus, the New Testament pseudepigrapha, the early church fathers, various gnostic writings, and more. the NT, and a comparison of Jesus' parables with those of the rabbis will further save the interpreter precious time.

    They enjoyed a renaissance in these lands until their expulsion from Spain in 1492, when they settled in the countries along the Mediterranean, throughout the Ottoman Empire, in the Balkans, and in the lands of North Africa, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, mixing with the Mizrahi, or Oriental, Jews already in these locations. Sephardic Jews have contributed some of the most important Jewish philosophers, poets, biblical commentators, Talmudic and Halachic scholars, and scientists, and have had a significant impact on the development of Jewish mysticism. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry brings together original work from the world's leading scholars to present a deep introductory overview of their history and culture over the past 1500 years. The book presents an overarching chronological and thematic survey of topics ranging from the origin of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry and their history to kabbalah, philosophy, and biblical commentary, and Sephardic Jewish life in the modern era. This collection represents the most up-to-date scholarship about Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry available.Contributors include: Mark R. Cohen, Norman Stillman, David Bunis, Jonathan Decter, Yitzhak Kalimi, Moshe Idel, Annette B. Fromm, Zvi Zohar, Morris Fairstein, Pamela Dorn Sezgin, Mark Kligman, and Henry Abramson.

    Nature versus nurture. Free will versus determinism. Every November at the University of Chicago, the best minds in the world consider the question that ranks with these as one of the most enduring of human history: latke or hamantash? This great latke-hamantash debate, occurring every year for the past six decades, brings Nobel laureates, university presidents, and notable scholars together to debate whether the potato pancake or the triangular Purim pastry is in fact the worthier food. What began as an informal gathering is now an institution that has been replicated on campuses nationwide. Highly absurd yet deeply serious, the annual debate is anopportunity for both ethnic celebration and academic farce. In poetry, essays, jokes, and revisionist histories, members of elite American academies attack the latke-versus-hamantash question with intellectual panache and an unerring sense of humor, if not chutzpah. The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate is the first collection of the best of these performances, from Martha Nussbaum's paean to both foods—in the style of Hecuba's Lament—to Nobel laureate Leon Lederman's proclamation on the union of the celebrated dyad. The latke and the hamantash are here revealed as playing a critical role in everything from Chinese history to the Renaissance, the works of Jane Austen to constitutional law. Philosopher and humorist Ted Cohen supplies a wry foreword, while anthropologist Ruth Fredman Cernea provides historical and social context as well as an overview of the Jewish holidays, latke and hamantash recipes, and a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms, making the book accessible even to the uninitiated. The University of Chicago may have split the atom in 1942, but it's still working on the equally significant issue of the latke versus the hamantash. “As if we didn’t have enough on our plates, here’s something new to argue about. . . . To have to pick between sweet and savory, round and triangular, latke and hamantash. How to choose? . . . Thank goodness one of our great universities—Chicago, no less—is on the case. For more than 60 years, it has staged an annual latke-hamantash debate. . . . So, is this book funny? Of course it’s funny, even laugh-out-loud funny. It’s Mickey Katz in academic drag, Borscht Belt with a PhD.”—David Kaufmann, Forward

    The study begins by defining what midrash is, discussing why it can be so difficult to understand, and explaining how the Jewish sages used midrash to interpret biblical text. It then explores two genres of midrash—the parable and the midrashic story—and utilizes detailed readings to demonstrate how to “translate” the language of the sages into contemporary terminology. Among the texts analyzed in the book are some of the most fascinating and complex biblical stories, including the binding of Isaac, the sin of David and Bathsheba, the book of Jonah, and Moses and the burning bush. This study conveys a sensitivity to the language and meanings of the Hebrew Bible and helps readers develop an appreciation for the language and teachings of the Jewish sages.

    German society shunned Jews in the eighteenth century and opened unevenly to them in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only to turn murderous in the Nazi era. By examining the everyday lives of ordinary Jews, this book portrays the drama of German-Jewish history -- the gradual ascent of Jews from impoverished outcasts to comfortable bourgeois citizens and then their dramatic descent into genocidal torment during the Nazi years. Building on social, economic, religious, and political history, it focuses on the qualitative aspects of ordinary life -- emotions, subjective impressions, and quotidian perceptions. How did ordinary Jews and their families make sense of their world? How did they construe changes brought about by industrialization? How did they make decisions to enter new professions or stick with the old, juggle traditional mores with contemporary ways? The Jewish adoption of secular, modern European culture and the struggle for legal equality exacted profound costs, both material and psychological. Even in the heady years of progress, a basic insecurity informed German-Jewish life. Jewish successes existed alongside an antisemitism that persisted as a frightful leitmotif throughout German-Jewish history. And yet the history that emerges from these pages belies simplistic interpretations that German antisemitism followed a straight path from Luther to Hitler. Neither Germans nor Jews can be typecast in their roles vis � vis one another. Non-Jews were not uniformly antisemitic but exhibited a wide range of attitudes towards Jews. Jewish daily life thus provides another vantage point from which to study the social life of Germany. Focusing on both internal Jewish life -- family, religion, culture and Jewish community -- and the external world of German culture and society provides a uniquely well-rounded portrait of a world defined by the shifting sands of inclusion and exclusion.

    It uses a minimum of specialized linguistic terminology to analyze grammatical categories, phrases, expressions, and the construction of clauses and sentences. Verb and noun tables are provided as well as a comprehensive index in this useful teaching resource and easy-to-use reference tool.

    Accessible to the general reader but enlightening also to the scholar, Norman Roth's account of the diverse and diffuse culture of Jewish daily life in the medieval world offers a direct look on this profoundly historical people, who through their unique relationship with the cultures that surrounded them touched obliquely on so much else in the world of the Middle Ages--as well as on that of the present day.For ease of use by students, the work is organized into chapters covering all aspects of daily life: education, marriage and family life, the Jewish community at large, religious customs and observances, work, medicine, literature and the arts, the dangers of being Jewish, and the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. It includes a historical timeline of the critical events in the Jewish experience of the middle ages, a glossary of terms, and a bibliography for further reading. Throughout the work Roth shows the circumstances surrounding and at times invading Jewish life at the time, and paints a picture that is at once intimate and also comprehensive. This work will provide school and public librarians with a resource on Jewish culture that is unique, highly informative, historically accurate, and compelling to a high degree.

    It incorporates a flowing English translation of the Torah which is loyal to Rashi. The 'Classic questions' are drawn from a range of commentators, Midrash and Talmud, which are then ingeniously brought together in the Toras Menachem commentary. It is the first Chumash to include a commentary anthologized from the works of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Chumash also boasts a large sampling of inspirational Chasidic thoughts and insights into the Parsha, as well as practical lessons for our daily lives. The diagrams, charts, and illustrations all add to make this the perfect Chumash for layman or scholar. Beautifully bound in a hand-tooled leather style cover, both inside and outside are sure to impress.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    Exploring the history of communities of 100 to 1000 Jews, the book focuses on the years from the mid-nineteenth century to World War II. Weissbach examines the dynamics of 490 communities across the United States and reveals that smaller Jewish centers were not simply miniature versions of larger communities but were instead alternative kinds of communities in many respects.The book investigates topics ranging from migration patterns to occupational choices, from Jewish education and marriage strategies to congregational organization. The story of smaller Jewish communities attests to the richness and complexity of American Jewish history and also serves to remind us of the diversity of small-town society in times past.

    

    Sachar, gives us a comprehensive and enthralling chronicle of the achievements and traumas of the Jews over the last four hundred years. Tracking their fate from Western Europe’s age of mercantilism in the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet and post-imperialist Islamic upheavals of the twenty-first century, Sachar applies his renowned narrative skill to the central role of the Jews in many of the most impressive achievements of modern civilization: whether in the rise of economic capitalism or of political socialism; in the discoveries of theoretical physics or applied medicine; in “higher” literary criticism or mass communication and popular entertainment. As his account unfolds and moves from epoch to epoch, from continent to continent, from Europe to the Americas and the Middle East, Sachar evaluates communities that, until lately, have been underestimated in the perspective of Jewish and world history—among them, Jews of Sephardic provenance, of the Moslem regions, and of Africa. By the same token, Sachar applies a master’s hand in describing and deciphering the Jews’ unique exposure and functional usefulness to totalitarian movements—fascist, Nazi, and Stalinist. In the process, he shines an unsparing light on the often widely dissimilar behavior of separate European peoples, and on separate Jewish populations, during the Holocaust.A distillation of the author’s lifetime of scholarly research and teaching experience, A History of the Jews in the Modern World provides a source of unsurpassed intellectual richness for university students and educated laypersons alike.From the Hardcover edition.

    Why should American Jews be an exception? In a land where racial and ethnic boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred, the American Jewish community is also shifting. In Every Tongue is both a groundbreaking look at the changing faces of the Jewish people and an examination of the timelessness of those changes. Ranging from distinct communities of African American Jews and adopted children of color in white Jewish families to the growing number of religious seekers of all races who hope to find a home in Judaism, In Every Tongue explores the origins, traditions, challenges, and joys of diverse Jews in America. This book explodes the myth of a single authentic Judaism and shines a bright light on the thousands of ethnically and racially diverse Jews in the United States who live full and rich Jewish lives. It is impossible to read In Every Tongue without coming away with a deeper respect for and a broader understanding of the Jewish people today. In a time when Jewish community leaders decry the shrinking of the Jewish population, In Every Tongue imagines a vibrant and daring future for the Jewish people: becoming who they have always been.

    On the brink of arrest, they escaped with KGB’s help and eluded American intelligence for decades.Drawing on extensive interviews with Barr and new archival evidence, Steve Usdin explains why Barr and Sarant became spies, how they obtained military secrets, and how FBI blunders led to their escape. He chronicles their pioneering role in the Soviet computer industry, including their success in convincing Nikita Khrushchev to build a secret Silicon Valley.The book is rich with details of Barr’s and Sarant’s intriguing andexciting personal lives, their families, as well as their integration into Russian society. Engineering Communism follows the two spies through Sarant’s death and Barr’s unbelievable return to the United States.

    Jokes, history, customs, trivia, science facts (just how fast does a dreidel spin?) come to life with wacky and informative illustrations throughout.

    Jews have provided Broadway and Hollywood with some of their most enduring talent, from writers like Arthur Miller, Wendy Wasserstein, and Tony Kushner; to directors like Jerome Robbins and Woody Allen; to performers like Gertrude Berg, John Garfield, Lenny Bruce, and Barbra Streisand. Conversely, show business has provided Jews with a means of upward mobility, a model for how to "become American," and a source of cultural pride. Acting Jewish documents this history, looking at the work of Jewish writers, directors, and actors in the American entertainment industry with particular attention to the ways in which these artists offer behavioral models for Jewish-American audiences. The book spans the period from 1947 to the present and takes a close look at some of America's favorite plays (Death of a Salesman, Fiddler on the Roof, Angels in America), films (Gentleman's Agreement, AnnieHall), and television shows (The Goldbergs, Seinfeld), identifying a double-coding by which performers enact, and spectators read, Jewishness in contemporary performance-and, by extension, enact and read other minority identities. The book thus explores and illuminates the ever-changing relationship between Jews and mainstream American culture."Fascinating and original . . . Bial's command of sources is impressive, and his concept of 'double-coding' is convincing . . . the book should have no trouble finding a large audience."-Barbara Grossman, author of Funny Woman: The Life and Times of Fanny BriceHenry Bial is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film, University of Kansas. He is editor of the Performance Studies Reader and co-editor of the Brecht Sourcebook.

    The reader traverses a thrilling allegorical trail to self-awareness, spiritual growth, and lasting happiness.

    This book, by one of the top scholars in the field, is the first comprehensive book to study poverty in a premodern Jewish community--from the viewpoint of both the poor and those who provided for them.Mark Cohen mines the richest body of documents available on the matter: the papers of the Cairo Geniza. These documents, located in the Geniza, a hidden chamber for discarded papers situated in a medieval synagogue in Old Cairo, were preserved largely unharmed for more than nine centuries due to an ancient custom in Judaism that prohibited the destruction of pages of sacred writing. Based on these papers, the book provides abundant testimony about how one large and important medieval Jewish community dealt with the constant presence of poverty in its midst.Building on S. D. Goitein's Mediterranean Society and inspired also by research on poverty and charity in medieval and early modern Europe, it provides a clear window onto the daily lives of the poor. It also illuminates private charity, a subject that has long been elusive to the medieval historian. In addition, Cohen's work functions as a detailed case study of an important phenomenon in human history. Cohen concludes that the relatively narrow gap between the poor and rich, and the precariousness of wealth in general, combined to make charity "one of the major agglutinates of Jewish associational life" during the medieval period.