In ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, his days are dedicated to intense study and religious rituals, and adolescence feels profoundly lonely. So when his family announces that they are moving to a glitzy Miami suburb, Ari seizes his unexpected chance for reinvention.Enrolling in an opulent Jewish academy, Ari is stunned by his peers’ dizzying wealth, ambition, and shameless pursuit of life’s pleasures. When the academy’s golden boy, Noah, takes Ari under his wing, Ari finds himself entangled in the school’s most exclusive and wayward group. These friends are magnetic and defiant—especially Evan, the brooding genius of the bunch, still living in the shadow of his mother’s death.Influenced by their charismatic rabbi, the group begins testing their religion in unconventional ways. Soon Ari and his friends are pushing moral boundaries and careening toward a perilous future—one in which the traditions of their faith are repurposed to mysterious, tragic ends.Mesmerizing and playful, heartrending and darkly romantic, The Orchard probes the conflicting forces that determine who we become: the heady relationships of youth, the allure of greatness, the doctrines we inherit, and our concealed desires.

    While the feisty Esther Kaminsky understands her obligations, her artistic talent inspires her to secretly explore worlds outside her religion, to dream of studying in Paris and to believe that God has a special destiny for her. When tragedy strikes her family, Esther views it as a warning from an angry God and suppresses her desires in order to become an obedient "Jerusalem maiden." But when a surprising opportunity forces itself on to her preordained path, Esther finds her beliefs clashing dangerously with the passions she has staved off her entire life forcing her to confront the most difficult and damning question of all. To whom must she be true, God or herself?

    It poses, and thoughtfully addresses, questions like these: · Can one doubt God’s existence and still be a good Jew? · Why do we need organized religion? · Why shouldn’t I intermarry? · What is the reason for dietary laws? · How do I start practicing Judaism? Concisely and engagingly, authors Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin present Judaism as the rational, moral alternative for contemporary man or woman.

    Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for history, this "wonderful history of the golden age of the movie moguls" (Chicago Tribune ) is a provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who were the moving forces behind the creation of America's motion picture industry.

    Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony. Nearly a decade in the making, The Evolution of God is a breathtaking re-examination of the past, and a visionary look forward.

    The controversy was never merely academic. The legal status and security of Jews—often their very lives—depended on the answer. In WHY THE JEWS REJECTED JESUS, David Klinghoffer reveals that the Jews since ancient times accepted not only the historical existence of Jesus but the role of certain Jews in bringing about his crucifixion and death. But he also argues that they had every reason to be skeptical of claims for his divinity. For one thing, Palestine under Roman occupation had numerous charismatic would-be messiahs, so Jesus would not have been unique, nor was his following the largest of its kind. For another, the biblical prophecies about the coming of the Messiah were never fulfilled by Jesus, including an ingathering of exiles, the rise of a Davidic king who would defeat Israel’s enemies, the building of a new Temple, and recognition of God by the gentiles. Above all, the Jews understood their biblically commanded way of life, from which Jesus’s followers sought to “free” them, as precious, immutable, and eternal.Jews have long been blamed for Jesus’s death and stigmatized for rejecting him. But Jesus lived and died a relatively obscure figure at the margins of Jewish society. Indeed, it is difficult to argue that “the Jews” of his day rejected Jesus at all, since most Jews had never heard of him. The figure they really rejected, often violently, was Paul, who convinced the Jerusalem church led by Jesus’s brother to jettison the observance of Jewish law. Paul thus founded a new religion. If not for him, Christianity would likely have remained a Jewish movement, and the course of history itself would have been changed. Had the Jews accepted Jesus, Klinghoffer speculates, Christianity would not have conquered Europe, and there would be no Western civilization as we know it. WHY THE JEWS REJECTED JESUS tells the story of this long, acrimonious, and occasionally deadly debate between Christians and Jews. It is thoroughly engaging, lucidly written, and in many ways highly original. Though written from a Jewish point of view, it is also profoundly respectful of Christian sensibilities. Coming at a time when Christians and Jews are in some ways moving closer than ever before, this thoughtful and provocative book represents a genuine effort to heal the ancient rift between these two great faith traditions.

    Then, a chance meeting with a young French immigrant turns Rose's world upside down, its once bearable strictures suddenly tightening like a noose around her neck. In rebellion, she begins to live a secret life – a life that shocks her parents when it is discovered. With nowhere else to turn, and an overwhelming desire to be reconciled with those she loves, Rose tries to bow to her parents' demands that she agree to an arranged marriage. But pushed to the edge, she commits an act so unforgivable, it will exile her forever from her innocent young sister, her family, and all she has ever known.Forty years later, pious Pearl's sheltered young daughter Rivka suddenly discovers the ugly truth about her Aunt Rose, the outcast, who has moved on to become a renowned photographer. Inspired, but naïve and reckless, Rivka sets off on a dangerous adventure that will stir up the ghosts of the past, and alter the future in unimaginable ways for all involved.Powerful, page-turning and deeply moving, Naomi Ragen's The Sisters Weiss is an unforgettable examination of loyalty and betrayal; the differences that can tear a family apart and the invisible bonds that tie them together.

    

    The Tao of Teaching is written in the same style as the Tao Te Ching, and gives examples from the classrooms of three present-day teachers whom the author feels embody Taoist wisdom and "student-centered" educational methods. The Tao of Teaching is a labor of love, containing many important insights by a talented and respected professional whose emphasis is on the students' contribution in a learning environment, whatever the context.

    In Through the Door of Life, Joy Ladin takes readers inside her transition as she changed genders and, in the process, created a new self.    With unsparing honesty and surprising humor, Ladin wrestles with both the practical problems of gender transition and the larger moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions that arise. Ladin recounts her struggle to reconcile the pain of her experience living as the “wrong” gender with the pain of her children in losing the father they love. We eavesdrop on her lifelong conversations with the God whom she sees both as the source of her agony and as her hope for transcending it. We look over her shoulder as she learns to walk and talk as a woman after forty-plus years of walking and talking as a man. We stare with her into the mirror as she asks herself how the new self she is creating will ever become real.    Ladin’s poignant memoir takes us from the death of living as the man she knew she wasn’t, to the shattering of family and career that accompanied her transition, to the new self, relationships, and love she finds when she opens the door of life.“Wrenching—and liberating. . . .[it] opens up new ways of looking at gender and the place of LGBT Jews in community.”—Greater Phoenix Jewish News“Given her high-profile academic position, Ladin’s transition was a major news story in Israel and even internationally. But behind the public story was a private struggle and learning experience, and Ladin pulls no punches in telling that story. She offers a peek into how daunting it was to learn, with little support from others, how to dress as a middle-aged woman, to mu on make-up, to walk and talk like a female. She provides a front-row seat for observing how one person confronted a seemingly impossible situation and how she triumphed, however shakingly, over the many adversities, both societal and psychological, that stood in the way.”—The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide

    From them he began to recover the long-lost wisdom of what he calls “Aboriginal Judaism”: the religion’s tribal roots. This book tracks his personal journey and draws from a dazzling mix of sources to detail the surprising connections between two seemingly unrelated religions.

    It depicts a typical middle-class Indian family mindset. Throughout his life, Vinay has been taught to dream big and work hard. After years of tireless effort, he becomes a doctor but things turn sour as he starts to perceive unusual psychiatric symptoms. He falls victim to major psychiatric disorders, OCD and Depression. With each passing day life increasingly becomes a burden on him. He looses his loved ones. He takes few futile attempts to balance work and life, but nothing works out. It is when he turns absolutely distraught that he decides to end his life. But one dream has changed it all. He discovers a new realm of life. He is a different man now. The story describes how one can find much-longed happiness, how one can break the cycle of desires and sorrows and how one can become Buddha in their own lives. The author gives a lucid description of novel concepts like “Self witnessing”, “Self-conditioning”, “Self-love” and “Buddhahood”. He describes ways to attain the supreme form of happiness. This book is unique in the sense that it touches the much-neglected topic of mental health. India is a country with the highest burden of people suffering from major psychiatric disorders. Additionally, it ranks number one in suicide rates all over the world. This book has been written by a medical professional- Dr. Sanjay Singh. It is second in line to books written by him after “Oh dear happiness! The lost story of contentment”. He has written a blog named “The story behind the Dark Disease - Depression" which has been read more than two lacs times. He hopes that this book will pave the way to a new way of life to those who are extremely depressed and suffering from various psychiatric illnesses.

    From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel–Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence.How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the ‘centre of the world’ and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a dazzling narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem’s biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women – kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores – who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem. As well as the many ordinary Jerusalemites who have left their mark on the city, its cast varies from Solomon, Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent to Cleopatra, Caligula and Churchill; from Abraham to Jesus and Muhammad; from the ancient city of Jezebel, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod and Nero to the modern times of the Kaiser, Disraeli, Mark Twain, Rasputin and Lawrence of Arabia.Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime’s study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique chronicle of the city that is believed will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice – in heaven and on earth.

    In telling the story of one master’s training and evolution in the Himalayas and his subsequent mission to his countrymen, the author enlightens you on the essence of India’s culture, philosophy and religion. His story will surely educate you, inspire you, and broaden your horizons of the meaning of life.The Swami spent five years in the Himalayas under the tutelage of two incredible Masters of live, as different as day and night. Although both were scholars of the scriptures, their manifestation was unique. One was an incredible streak of light and energy who traveled India teaching, then created a huge ashram center to serve all of humanity. The other was a quiet contemplative recluse who sang inspirational songs and taught only a few students.Swami Chinmayananda appeared on the scene at an appropriate time in Indian history. The British had just left the country with no one trained to take the helm of State. The British had taken all the top government positions. In addition, they had curtailed any industrial development; the Empire was about having consumers for British products. The Indians had lost their moorings: economically, spiritually and personally. To these countrymen, beaten down by 150 years of British rule, repression and slavery, the Swami gave a message of hope. He worked relentlessly for about 40 years to bring about a spiritual revival in India and abroad. His unique style and logical approach was appreciated by everyone from college students to bankers to priests—both Hindu and Christian.By teaching directly the wisdom of their ancient scriptures, he gave the listeners confidence and inspiration to move forward in business and in creating charitable endeavors for the uplifting of the downtrodden of the country. Through 200 centers in India, his devotees have built and operate schools, hospitals and clinics, nursing homes, retirement homes and training centers for nurses and teachers, as well as spiritual training centers.This story of the legacy of one of the most influential persons in the modern history of Hinduism is sure to surprise you, amaze you—and inspire you.

    Lucidly written and richly illustrated, this third edition contains new chapters on the Shekhina.