But after many years, she wonders in the deepest confines of her heart if her sacrifices mean anything, if her calling is real.Tzipporah, a desert shepherdess who knows nothing of her husband's divine purpose, suffers as he is torn from her by a strange god, a foreign people, and an unforgiving sister. In her heart, she harbors terrible secrets that haunt the love she shares with Moses and threaten her tenuous peace with Miryam.Together, Miryam and Tzipporah weave a narrative that gives voice to the women of Exodus—their lives, their community, and ultimately, their sisterhood.

    But when Meir’s talents as a novice banker catch the attention of a German prince, Meir is suddenly afforded entrée into the European world of finance and nobility, and the Rothschilds’ lives are changed forever. As proud as Gutle is of her husband’s success, she is also cautious—very much aware of the fact that her husband’s rise is tied to his patrons’ willingness to “see past” his Jewishness. As their family grows, and a dream of fortune comes true, so does their belief that money will ultimately bring the power needed to establish Jewish civil rights.Told through Gutle’s intimate journals, revealed across decades—from the French Revolution through personal tragedies and triumphs—The First Mrs. Rothschild paints a rich and intimate tapestry of family drama, world-changing history, and one woman’s steadfast strength.

    Captured by the Romans, he saved his skin by finding favor with the emperor Vespasian. He then served as an adviser to the Roman legions, running a network of spies inside Jerusalem, in the belief that the Jews' only hope of survival lay in surrender to Rome.As a Jewish eyewitness who was given access to Vespasian's campaign notebooks, Josephus is our only source of information for the war of extermination that ended in the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, and the amazing times in which he lived. He is of vital importance for anyone interested in the Middle East, Jewish history, and the early history of Christianity.

    Her memoir, a rare account of an ordinary woman, enlightens not just her children, for whom she wrote it, but all posterity about her life and community. Gluckel speaks to us with determination and humor from the seventeenth century. She tells of war, plague, pirates, soldiers, the hysteria of the false messiah Sabbtai Zevi, murder, bankruptcy, wedding feasts, births, deaths, in fact, of all the human events that befell her during her lifetime. She writes in a matter of fact way of the frightening and precarious situation under which the Jews of northern Germany lived. Accepting this situation as given, she boldly and fearlessly promotes her business, her family and her faith. This memoir is a document in the history of women and of life in the seventeenth century.

    The Holocaust had left Lotte the lone survivor of her family, and these precious objects gave her back a crucial piece of her past. Four Girls from Berlin vividly recreates that past and tells the story of Lotte and her courageous non-Jewish friends Ilonka, Erica, and Ursula as they lived under the shadow of Hitler in Berlin.Written by Lotte's daughter, Marianne, this powerful memoir celebrates the unseverable bonds of friendship and a rich family legacy the Holocaust could not destroy.

    The chief Rabbi of Palestine prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, Kook (1865-1935) represents the renewal of the Jewish mystical tradition in modern times.

    It is easy to think that the daily challenges we experience in the 21st century are new and unlike any that people faced in the past. Michal draws on her own heritage and a wide range of Chassidut (Jewish teachings) to offerpractical advice for common concerns, such as a broken heart, parenting, overcoming setbacks, and getting the most out of your career.By challenging you to explore what matters, Michal offers solutions to your everyday struggles. She will empower you as well as teach you how to adopt her self-development tools to discover who you really are and what you were born to do with your life. With its uplifting belief that you already have all the ingredients within you to lead a joyous life, Michal's unique mix of corporate culture experience and Jewish wisdom will help you reconnect with yourself.This unique book will help you to find your courage, and move forward freely, with no fear at all!

    During his senior year of high school, he begins to date longtime crush and non-Jewish girl Amy Andrews—a forbidden relationship he hides from his parents. But that’s not the only complicated part of Ron’s life: he’s also struggling to choose between his two passions, medicine and music. As time goes on, he becomes entangled in a compelling world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Will he do the right thing?A fictionalized memoir of the author’s life as a young man in Lincoln, Nebraska, The Frontman is a coming-of-age tale of love and fidelity.

    Close to five million Poles were killed. Of these, more than half were Jews killed in the Holocaust. Ninety percent of the world's second largest Jewish community was annihilated. But despite the calamity shared by Poland's Jews and non-Jews, anti-Semitic violence did not stop in Poland with the end of the war. Jewish Holocaust survivors returning to their Polish hometowns after the war experienced widespread hostility, including murder, at the hands of their neighbors. The bloodiest peacetime pogrom in twentieth-century Europe took place in Kielce, Poland, a year after the war ended. Jan Gross's Fear is a detailed reconstruction of this pogrom and the Polish reactions to it that attempts to answer a perplexing question: How was anti-Semitism possible in Poland after the war?Gross argues that postwar Polish anti-Semitism cannot be understood simply as a continuation of prewar attitudes. Rather, it developed in the context of the Holocaust and the Communist takeover: Anti-Semitism eventually became a common currency between the Communist regime and a society filled with people who had participated in the Nazi campaign of murder and plunder, people for whom Jewish survivors were a standing reproach. The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz said that Poland's Communist rulers fulfilled the dream of Polish nationalists by bringing into existence an ethnically pure state.For more than half a century, what happened to Jewish Holocaust survivors in Poland has been cloaked in guilt and shame. Writing with passion, brilliance, and fierce clarity, Gross at last brings the truth to light.

    Someone was trying to kill her, "to put a bullet in my head," Sonia told anyone who would listen. Polish and Jewish, Sonia Reich had survived the Holocaust by staying always on the run. She and Howard's father, Robert, also a Holocaust survivor, had fled to America, moved to Chicago, and raised their young son to tell no one that they were Jewish. It was only after moving to Skokie, a town filled with Holocaust survivors, that his family would live as Jews. Still, his parents told Howard almost nothing about their past. The First and Final Nightmare… is Reich's moving and bittersweet memoir of growing up in Skokie, discovering an odd and personal American freedom in jazz, and his riveting, revealing investigation into his family's past and the nature of his mother's illness, called late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is a poignant story of a mother and a son, a haunted past, and the irony of what may happen when that often repeated admonition to "never forget" becomes a curse.

    More recently, Kabbalah nearly disappeared—as most of its practitioners perished in the Holocaust. Now this powerful spiritual tradition, after centuries of secrecy and near-extinction, is explained clearly in this book by one of its most prominent teachers.Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? How do we get there? These questions have fueled Kabbalists for nearly a millennium. Rabbi David A. Cooper is the first to bring this obscure and difficult tradition to a mainstream audience in a way that gently leads us to the heart of the subject, showing us how to transform profound teachings into a meaningful personal experience—and appreciate fully this great mystical process we know as God.

    Jewish Studies. Winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Outstanding Debut Fiction. Raised in Baltimore in the '90s, 17-year-old Samuel Gerson is ready to be rid of his high school baseball team, his protective upbringing, and the tight-knit Jewish community in which he's spent his whole life. But when he befriends enigmatic Dmitri Zilber, a recent Russian Jewish immigrant who is obsessed with the works of Dostoevsky, Samuel's world begins to shift. In the wake of his grandfather's suicide, as his life increasingly entangles with that of Dmitri and his beautiful sister Yelizaveta, it sets in motion a series of events that culminates in a disturbing act of violence. A quietly devastating portrait of late adolescence, THE SENSUALIST examines the culture we inherit as it collides with the one we create.I throw at you, without reservation, this adjective: masterful. This book is fast and warm, fraught and intimate--and no slouch in the funny department, either. Daniel Torday's voice is entirely his own. Baltimore is his. Dmitri Zilber is a brilliant character, and I am in love with his sister. I am constantly happy to be in their presence.--Adam Levin

    Based on the latest scholarship and richly illustrated, it is the most authoritative and accessible chronicle of the Jewish experience available. Michael Brenner tells a dramatic story of change and migration deeply rooted in tradition, taking readers from the mythic wanderings of Moses to the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust; from the Babylonian exile to the founding of the modern state of Israel; and from the Sephardic communities under medieval Islam to the shtetls of eastern Europe and the Hasidic enclaves of modern-day Brooklyn. The book is full of fascinating personal stories of exodus and return, from that told about Abraham, who brought his newfound faith into Canaan, to that of Holocaust survivor Esther Barkai, who lived on a kibbutz established on a German estate seized from the Nazi Julius Streicher as she awaited resettlement in Israel. Describing the events and people that have shaped Jewish history, and highlighting the important contributions Jews have made to the arts, politics, religion, and science, A Short History of the Jews is a compelling blend of storytelling and scholarship that brings the Jewish past marvelously to life.

    It included Hebrew, a touch of the Romance and Slavic languages, and a large helping of German. In a world of earthly wandering, this pungent, witty, and infinitely nuanced speech, full of jokes, puns, and ironies, became the linguistic home of the Jews, the bond that held a people together.Here is the remarkable story of how this humble language took vigorous root in Eastern European shtetls and in the Jewish quarters of cities across Europe; how it achieved a rich literary flowering between the wars in Europe and America; how it was rejected by emancipated Jews; and how it fell victim to the Holocaust. And how, in yet another twist of destiny, Yiddish today is becoming the darling of academia. Yiddish is a history as story, a tale of flesh-and-blood people with manic humor, visionary courage, brilliant causes, and glorious flaws. It will delight everyone who cares about language, literature, and culture.

    Can you handle her truth? "I loved him so much. I loved him and I hated him. I needed him and I needed to be free of him. He was everything to me and he'd taken everything away from me." Olivia Moy, widow of a beloved author, struggles to cope with the untimely death of her husband. Seeking solace with her only child, she soon befriends a neighbor and begins to reveal closely-held marital secrets. Can she find healing without destroying her late-husband's legacy?