Book picks similar to
Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought by Moshe Greenberg
israel
jewish-philosophy
judaica
38
I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity
Izzeldin Abuelaish - 2010
A Harvard-trained Palestinian doctor who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and "who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians" (New York Times), Abuelaish has been crossing the lines in the sand that divide Israelis and Palestinians for most of his life - as a physician who treats patients on both sides of the line, as a humanitarian who sees the need for improved health and education for women as the way forward in the Middle East. And, most recently, as the father whose daughters were killed by Israeli soldiers on January 16, 2009, during Israel's incursion into the Gaza Strip. His response to this tragedy made news and won him humanitarian awards around the world. Instead of seeking revenge or sinking into hatred, Abuelaish called for the people in the region to start talking to each other. His deepest hope is that his daughters will be "the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis."
Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War
Micah Goodman - 2017
In 2017, best-selling Israeli author Micah Goodman published a balanced and insightful analysis of the situation that quickly became one of Israel’s most debated books of the year. Now available in English translation with a new preface by the author, Catch-67 deftly sheds light on the ideas that have shaped Israelis’ thinking on both sides of the debate, and among secular and religious Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Contrary to opinions that dominate the discussion, he shows that the paradox of Israeli political discourse is that both sides are right in what they affirm—and wrong in what they deny. Although he concludes that the conflict cannot be solved, Goodman is far from a pessimist and explores how instead it can be reduced in scope and danger through limited, practical steps. Through philosophical critique and political analysis, Goodman builds a creative, compelling case for pragmatism in a dispute where a comprehensive solution seems impossible.
A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
John J. Collins - 2007
Collins's Introduction to the Hebrew Bible with CD-ROM is a leading textbook in Old Testament studies. With this new, well- tailored abridgement of that larger work, Collins's erudition is now available to general readers and professors and students who prefer a shorter, more concise introduction to the Hebrew scriptures. New features, especially designed for the college student, include maps, images, and study questions. A companion web site includes special resources for both teachers and students including: PowerPoint presentations, chapter by chapter test banks, study questions, suggestions for further reading, and web site links.
Apples from the Desert: Selected Stories
Savyon Liebrecht - 1986
Apples From the Desert brings together Liebrecht’s most vivid and affecting work and makes it available in English for the first time.With a precision and a subtle ferocity reminiscent of the work of Nadine Gordimer, Liebrecht’s stories reveal the impact of larger social and political conflicts within the private worlds of home and family. She depicts the personal tragedies—and the small acts of courage and reconciliation—that grow from the deep-rooted conflict between Arabs and Jews, women and men, and older and younger generations in present-day Israel. These stories create a finely nuanced portrait of contemporary Israel; at the same time, they reach toward truths that know no national boundaries. As Lily Rattok writes in her introduction, “Liebrecht’s skill as a writer, combined with her perceptiveness, her compassion, and her deep humanity, create a body of work that is a testament to the healing power of storytelling.”
This Year In Jerusalem
Mordecai Richler - 1994
According to intriguing reports I had heard, it was the custom, on their kibbutzim already established in Palestine, for boys and girls under the age of eighteen to shower together. Hashomer Hatza'ir members in Montreal included a boy I shall call Shloime Schneiderman, a high-school classmate of mine. In 1944, when we were still in eighth grade, Schloime enjoyed a brief celebrity after his photo appeared on the front page of the Montreal Herald. Following a two-cent rise in the price of chocolate bars, he had been a leader in a demonstration, holding high a placard that read: down with the 7cents chocolate bar. Hashomer Hatza'ir members wore uniforms at their meetings: blue shirts and neckerchiefs. "They had real court martials," wrote Marion Magid in a memoir about her days in Habonim in the Bronx in the early fifties, "group analysis, the girls were not allowed to wear lipstick." Whereas, in my experience, the sweetly scented girls who belonged to Young Judaea favored pearls and cashmere twinsets. They lived on leafy streets in the suburb of Outremont, in detached cottages that had heated towel racks, basement playrooms, and a plaque hanging on the wall behind the wet bar testifying to the number of trees their parents had paid to have planted in Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.I joined Habonim -- the youth group of a Zionist political party, rooted in socialist doctrine -- shortly after my bar mitzvah, during my first year at Baron Byng High School. I had been recruited by a Room 41 classmate whom I shall call Jerry Greenfeld..."
Wherever You Go
Joan Leegant - 2010
Yona Stern longs to make amends with her estranged sister who lives in a radical Jewish settlement. Mark Greenglass, a Talmud teacher, has inexplicably lost his once fierce devotion to Orthodox Judaism and now wonders if he’s done with God. Enter Aaron Blinder, an unstable college dropout whose famous father endlessly—some say obsessively—mines the Holocaust for his best-selling, melodramatic novels. In a sweeping, beautifully written story of the lengths to which we will go in search of spiritual fulfillment, Joan Leegant weaves together the stories of three lives in the grip of a volatile, demanding faith, and ultimately bound together by a tragic act of violence. Haunting and wise, Wherever You Go is a gripping and prescient debut novel.
The Source
James A. Michener - 1965
Through the predecessors of four modern men and women, we experience the entire colorful history of the Jews, including the life of the early Hebrews and their persecutions, the impact of Christianity, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, all the way to the founding of present-day Israel and the Middle-East conflict."A sweeping chronology filled with excitement."THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations
Martin Goodman - 2007
Sixty years later, after further violent rebellions and the city’s final destruction, Hadrian built the new city of Aelia Capitolina where Jerusalem had once stood. Jews were barred from entering its territory. They were taxed simply for being Jewish. They were forbidden to worship their god. They were wholly reviled.What brought about this conflict between the Romans and the subjects they had previously treated with tolerance? Martin Goodman—equally renowned in Jewish and in Roman studies—examines this conflict, its causes, and its consequences with unprecedented authority and thoroughness. He delineates the incompatibility between the cultural, political, and religious beliefs and practices of the two peoples. He explains how Rome’s interests were served by a policy of brutality against the Jews. He makes clear how the original Christians first distanced themselves from their origins, and then became increasingly hostile toward Jews as Christian influence spread within the empire. The book thus also offers an exceptional account of the origins of anti-Semitism, the history of which reverberates still.An indispensable book.
Messiah in the Feasts of Israel
Sam Nadler - 2007
You will learn the prophetic purposes of the feasts, how the feasts are fulfilled in Messiah, future implications of the feasts and practical truths for life
Can We Talk About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted
Daniel Sokatch - 2021
As the head of the New Israel Fund, which is dedicated to equality and democracy for all Israelis, not just Jews, Sokatch is supremely well-versed on the Israeli conflict.Can We Talk About Israel? is the story of that conflict, and of why so many people feel so strongly about it without actually understanding it very well at all. It is an attempt to grapple with a century-long struggle between two peoples that both perceive themselves as (and indeed are) victims. And it's an attempt to explain why Israel (and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) inspires such extreme feelings-why it seems like Israel is the answer to "what is wrong with the world" for half the people in it, and "what is right with the world" for the other half.Complete with engaging illustrations by Christopher Noxon, Can We Talk About Israel? is an easy-to-read yet penetrating and original look at the history and basic contours of one of the most complicated conflicts in the world.
Ô Jérusalem
Larry Collins - 1972
Collins & Lapierre weave a tapestry of shattered hopes, valor & fierce pride as the Arabs, Jews & British collide in their fight for control of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem! meticulously recreates this historic struggle. It penetrates the battle from the inside, exploring each party's interests, intentions & concessions as the city of their dreams teeters on the brink of destruction. From the Jewish fighters & their heroic commanders to the Arab chieftain whose death in battle doomed his cause along with the Mufti of Jerusalem's support for Hitler and the extermination of the Jews, but inspired a generation of Palestinians, O Jerusalem! tells the 3-dimensional story of this high-stakes, emotional conflict.
Only Yesterday
S.Y. Agnon - 1945
Agnon's famous masterpiece, his novel Only Yesterday, here appears in English translation for the first time. Published in 1945, the book tells a seemingly simple tale about a man who immigrates to Palestine with the Second Aliya--the several hundred idealists who returned between 1904 and 1914 to work the Hebrew soil as in Biblical times and revive Hebrew culture. Only Yesterday quickly became recognized as a monumental work of world literature, but not only for its vivid historical reconstruction of Israel's founding society. This epic novel also engages the reader in a fascinating network of meanings, contradictions, and paradoxes all leading to the question, what, if anything, controls human existence?Seduced by Zionist slogans, young Isaac Kumer imagines the Land of Israel filled with the financial, social, and erotic opportunities that were denied him, the son of an impoverished shopkeeper, in Poland. Once there, he cannot find the agricultural work he anticipated. Instead Isaac happens upon house-painting jobs as he moves from secular, Zionist Jaffa, where the ideological fervor and sexual freedom are alien to him, to ultra-orthodox, anti-Zionist Jerusalem. While some of his Zionist friends turn capitalist, becoming successful merchants, his own life remains adrift and impoverished in a land torn between idealism and practicality, a place that is at once homeland and diaspora. Eventually he marries a religious woman in Jerusalem, after his worldly girlfriend in Jaffa rejects him.Led astray by circumstances, Isaac always ends up in the place opposite of where he wants to be, but why? The text soars to Surrealist-Kafkaesque dimensions when, in a playful mode, Isaac drips paint on a stray dog, writing "Crazy Dog" on his back. Causing panic wherever he roams, the dog takes over the story, until, after enduring persecution for so long without "understanding" why, he really does go mad and bites Isaac. The dog has been interpreted as everything from the embodiment of Exile to a daemonic force, and becomes an unforgettable character in a book about the death of God, the deception of discourse, the power of suppressed eroticism, and the destiny of a people depicted in all its darkness and promise.
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine
Noura Erakat - 2019
Sovereignty has become a trap for Palestinians and getting out is a matter of political vision and will. The law does not determine any particular outcome, it only promises the contest over one. While Jewish and Palestinian sovereignty are incommensurable, their belonging is not. The law is not just and justice is not rule-based.
How to Fight Anti-Semitism
Bari Weiss - 2019
“Stunning . . . Bari Weiss is heroic, fearless, brilliant and big-hearted. Most importantly, she is right.”—Lisa Taddeo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Women On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a total shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh raised a question Americans can no longer avoid: Could it happen here? This book is Weiss’s answer. Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism. No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics and the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo, anti-Semitism is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all. Weiss’s cri de couer is an unnerving reminder that Jews must never lose their hard-won instinct for danger, and a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in uncertain times from one of our most provocative writers. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.
Antisemitism: Here and Now
Deborah E. Lipstadt - 2018
And the reemergence of the white nationalist movement in America, complete with Nazi slogans and imagery, has been reminiscent of the horrific fascist displays of the 1930s. Throughout Europe, Jews have been attacked by terrorists, and some have been murdered.Where is all this hatred coming from? Is there any significant difference between left-wing and right-wing antisemitism? What role has the anti-Zionist movement played? And what can be done to combat the latest manifestations of an ancient hatred? In a series of letters to an imagined college student and imagined colleague, both of whom are perplexed by this resurgence, acclaimed historian Deborah Lipstadt gives us her own superbly reasoned, brilliantly argued, and certain to be controversial responses to these troubling questions.