As World War II progressed, Bugaria's King Boris followed all of Hitler's Jewish mandates: a newly formed pro-Nazi government quickly instituted their own version of the Nuremberg laws and secretly devised a plan for the deportation--and ultimated execution--of all of Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews.

    We go to synagogue dutifully enough. We rise when we should rise, sit when we should sit. We read and sing along with the cantor and answer 'Amen' in all the right places. We may even rattle through the prayers with ease. We sacrifice vitality for shelf-life, and the neshomeh, the Jewish soul, can taste the difference."--from the IntroductionThis fresh approach to prayer is for all who wish to appreciate the power of prayer's poetry and song, jump into its ceremonies and rituals, and join the age-old conversation that Jews have had with God. Reb Zalman, one of the most important Jewish spiritual teachers in contemporary American Judaism, offers you new ways to pray, new channels for communicating with God and new opportunities to open your heart to God's response.With rare warmth and authenticity, Reb Zalman shows you:How prayer can engage not just spirit, but mind, heart and bodyMeditations that open the door to kavanah, the focus or intention with which we prayHow to understand the underlying "deep structure" of our prayer servicesHow to find and feel at home in a synagogueHow to sing and lead niggunim, the simple, wordless tunes that Jews sing to get closer to Godand more

    In a myriad of commonplace activities, he finds the presence of the divine, and he elegantly describes these persons, events, and observations, nimbly transporting readers into these realities. With his masterly crafted prose, Buechner edifies, inspires, and offers a timeless model for approaching our human experience.

    The works of Maimonides, particularly The Guide for the Perplexed, are reckoned among the fundamental texts that influenced all subsequent Jewish philosophy and also proved to be highly influential in Christian and Islamic thought. Spanning subjects ranging from God, prophecy, miracles, revelation, and evil, to politics, messianism, reason in religion, and the therapeutic role of doubt, Maimonides and the Book That Changed Judaism elucidates the complex ideas of The Guide in remarkably clear and engaging prose. Drawing on his own experience as a central figure in the current Israeli renaissance of Jewish culture and spirituality, Micah Goodman brings Maimonides’s masterwork into dialogue with the intellectual and spiritual worlds of twenty-first-century readers. Goodman contends that in Maimonides’s view, the Torah’s purpose is not to bring clarity about God but rather to make us realize that we do not understand God at all; not to resolve inscrutable religious issues but to give us insight into the true nature and purpose of our lives.

    Eve bears the burden of a secret: Two weeks before Tam died, Eve and Tam argued so vehemently that they did not speak again. Her sister was famous, acclaimed for her career as a TV journalist and her devoted marriage. But Tam, too, had a secret, revealed the day after the funeral, one that inverts the story Eve has told herself since their childhood. In the aftermath, Eve is forced to revise her version of her fractured family, her sister’s accomplishments and vaunted marriage, and her own impeded ambition in work and love.Day by day as the family sits shiva, the stories unfold, illuminating the past​ to shape the present. Evening explores the dissonant love between sisters, the body in longing, the pride we take in sustaining our illusions, and the redemption that is possible only when they are dispelled.

    In 1944, the United States finally acted. That year, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, and put a young Treasury lawyer named John Pehle in charge.Over the next twenty months, Pehle pulled together a team of D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across four continents and a dozen countries. Together, they tricked the Nazis, forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe. They bought weapons for the French Resistance and sliced red tape to allow Jewish refugees to escape to Palestine. In this remarkable work of historical reclamation, Holocaust historian Rebecca Erbelding pieces together years of research and newly uncovered archival materials to tell the dramatic story of America's little-known efforts to save the Jews of Europe.

    A runner, a reader and a romantic, Kurshan adapted to its pace, attuned her ear to its poetry, and discovered her passions in its pages. She brought the Talmud with her wherever she went, studying in airplanes, supermarket lines, and over a plate of pasta at home, careful not to drip tomato sauce upon discussions about the sprinkling of blood on the Temple altar. By the time she completed the Talmud after seven and a half years, Kurshan was remarried with three young children. With each pregnancy, her Talmud sat perched atop her growing belly.This memoir is a tale of heartache and humor, of love and loss, of marriage and motherhood, and of learning to put one foot in front of the other by turning page after page. Kurshan takes us on a deeply accessible and personal guided tour of the Talmud, shedding new light on its stories and offering insights into its arguments both for those already familiar with the text and for those who have never encountered it. For people of the book both Jewish and non-Jewish If All the Seas Were Ink is a celebration of learning through literature how to fall in love once again.

    . . about Judaism. And no one is more surprised than she is.Hurwitz was the quintessential lapsed Jew—until, at age thirty-six, after a tough breakup, she happened upon an advertisement for an introductory class on Judaism. She attended on a whim, but was blown away by what she found: beautiful rituals, helpful guidance on living an ethical life, conceptions of God beyond the judgy bearded man in the sky—none of which she had learned in Hebrew school or during the two synagogue services she grudgingly attended each year. That class led to a years-long journey during which Hurwitz visited the offices of rabbis, attended Jewish meditation retreats, sat at the Shabbat tables of Orthodox families, and read hundreds of books about Judaism—all in dogged pursuit of answers to her biggest questions. What she found transformed her life, and she wondered: How could there be such a gap between the richness of what Judaism offers and the way so many Jews like her understand and experience it?Sarah Hurwitz is on a mission to close this gap by sharing the profound insights she discovered on everything from Jewish holidays, ethics, and prayer to Jewish conceptions of God, death, and social justice. In this entertaining and accessible book, she shows us why Judaism matters and how its message is more relevant than ever, and she inspires Jews to do the learning, questioning, and debating required to make this religion their own.

    Belet wages war against one of the worst sins of his (and our) time - backbiting - better known to us as detraction (telling the faults of others without cause). Most of us do not realize how evil this sin is. In fact, many of us don't think it's a sin at all. After ruining someone's reputation, or satisfying our anger (and yes, our hatred) by spewing out every bad thing we can say about someone, we justify ourselves by saying, "Well, it's true!" We even think we are acting justly by giving someone what they deserve.. Due to our lack of charity and also to our pride, little do we see things from God's point of view, to whom these are vile sins - a form of hatred of neighbor - a failure to do the two things necessary - to love God and our neighbor (Matt. 22:37-40). In explaining this sin of backbiting, properly called detraction, Fr. Belet quotes the best men of Western Civilization: Aristotle, Plato, Horace, Seneca, Pliny, the Roman Emperor Constantine, King David, Isaiah, Saints James, Luke, Matthew, Paul, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Cassian, Gregory the Great, Augustine, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, and many others. A very helpful book for those who wish to know to meaning of backbiting---and how to avoid it.

    One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the tangled history that binds the two sides of his family. For generations, the men of the al-Raqb family have served as watchmen of the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, built at the site where the infant Moses was taken from the Nile. Joseph learns of his ancestor Ali, a Muslim orphan who nearly a thousand years earlier was entrusted as the first watchman of the synagogue and became enchanted by its legendary--perhaps magical--Ezra Scroll. The story of Joseph's family is entwined with that of the British twin sisters Agnes and Margaret, who in 1897 depart their hallowed Cambridge halls on a mission to rescue sacred texts that have begun to disappear from the synagogue.The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a moving page-turner of a novel from acclaimed storyteller Michael David Lukas. This tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces--potent magic, forbidden love--that boldly attempt to bridge that divide.Praise for The Last Watchman of Old Cairo"A beautiful, richly textured novel, ambitious and delicately crafted, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is both a coming-of-age story and a family history, a wide-ranging book about fathers and sons, religion, magic, love, and the essence of storytelling. This book is a joy."--Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman

    / The elms made tents of solace over grimy / streets and alley cats purred me to sleep.” She writes in graphic, unflinching language about the poor, banished now by politicians because they are no longer “real people like corporations.” There are elegies for her peer group of poets, gone now, whose work she cherishes but from whom she cannot help but want more. There are laments for the suicide of dolphins and for her beloved cats, as she remembers “exactly how I loved each.” She continues to celebrate Jewish holidays in compellingly original ways and sings praises of her marriage and the small pleasures of daily life.This is a stunning collection that will please those who already know Marge Piercy’s work and offer a splendid introduction to it for those who don’t.

    It is undoubtedly the most popular and common Marian devotion due to its simplicity, the ease with which it can be learnt and the profound and sublime character of its prayers and meditations.The Rosary has been variously described as “an epitome of the Old Testament,” “an abridgement of the New Testament,” “a compendium of the Gospel,” “the Breviary of the laity,” “the catechism of youth,” “a beautiful system of popular theology,” “an inexhaustible book of meditation for our greatest theologians” and “a whole badge of Christian piety.””Apart from the Eucharist and other Sacraments of the Church, the Rosary is probably the most powerful means of sanctification. It is a key to the most intimate knowledge of Jesus and Mary, and is an effective way to attain to the perfection of Christian charity.As Blessed Pope John Paul II pointed out in his great Apostolic Letter on the Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, published at the beginning of the Year of the Rosary in October 2002, “to recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ.”As the title suggests, this book is a step-by-step guide to praying the Rosary. The layout of a standard Rosary bead set is imitated, so that each section of the Rosary begins on a new page. The active Table of Contents contains hyperlinks to every prayer in the book.The Introduction includes sections on the origins of the Rosary, the Rosary today, Our Lady's 15 promises, the prayers of the Rosary, and how to pray the Rosary. In addition to the complete Rosary, the book contains the Angelus, the Memorare of Saint Bernard, the Magnificat and the Thirty Days Prayer for obtaining graces, an Act of Consecration to Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary, the Prayer to Saint Joseph for the October devotions, and the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel.The Bibliography contains an extensive list of Papal Encyclicals related to the Rosary. Clicking on the title of an encyclical will open a web browser and take the reader directly to the official English text of the Encyclical on the Vatican web site.Interest in the Rosary has been rekindled since Blessed Pope John Paul II proposed the addition of a new decade comprised of the five 'Mysteries of Light' which he described as “a revelation of the Kingdom now present in the very person of Jesus.”In addition to the traditional Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries, the Luminous Mysteries (which have never been officially incorporated into the Rosary) have been included in this book for those who like to recite them.To supply a scriptural foundation and greater depth to the meditations on each mystery, suitable Bible passages are provided before the commencement of each decade.The Biblical texts chosen by the author refer not only to the subject-matter of the particular mystery, but also to the spiritual grace which the mystery is believed to confer. The spiritual grace is specified, as is the day on which the subject-matter of the mystery is commemorated by the Church.To give the user's meditation even further depth, and to help focus his or her attention on the mysteries of the Rosary, the beautiful woodcut engravings of Gustave Doré which were made for the English translation of the Bible of 1866 are included to illustrate the mysteries.As Sister Lucia of Fatima said, "There is no problem ... no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.

    Though supposedly "cured," he is still prone to retreating into his own mind or erupting in wordless rages. The adults' inability to make him better - or even to give his affliction a name - forces Judy to ask larger questions: If God could perform miracles for her sainted ancestors, why can't He cure Nachum? And what of the other stories her family treasured?Judy starts to negotiate with God, swinging from holy tenets to absurdly hilarious conclusions faster than a Talmudic scholar: she goes on a fast to nab coveted earrings; she fights with her siblings at the dinner table for the ultimate badge of honor ("Who will survive the next Holocaust?"); and she adamantly defends her family's reputation when, scandalously, her parents are accused of having fallen in love---which is absolutely not what pious people do.For all its brutal honesty about this insular community, This is Not a Love Story is ultimately a story of a family like so many others, whose fierce love for each other and devotion to their faith pulled them through the darkest time in their lives.

    As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world—only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression—turning on the radio—is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs, until, several years later, his faith unravels entirely. Now a heretic, he fears being discovered and ostracized from the only world he knows. His relationship with his family at stake, he is forced into a life of deception, and begins a long struggle to hold on to those he loves most: his five children. In All Who Go Do Not Return, Deen bravely traces his harrowing loss of faith, while offering an illuminating look at a highly secretive world.

    It can feel like we are pulling a cart behind us with all are troubles and worries, it slows us down, we can become tired, depressed, even jealous, as life seems so easy for others. All we need to do is LET GO of the cart and we will feel lighter and free, but often we have held onto it so long that it has become part of us. Many of the people we know are also carrying carts, so it can seem normal. We talk about how heavy are cart is with anyone that will listen, at no point do we realize that we can set down that heavy cart that is keeping us from Gods love. We need to learn to Let go. In this book I will share with you stories of people that struggled with letting go and what happened when they did. God is only in the present moment, he is not in the past or future. The moment that we let go of the past God will turn the page to the next chapter of our life, which will be much better than the last. It will take courage and faith, but I invite you to take this journey with me. By the end of the book God will shine a light into your life that will illuminate you to… THE POWER OF LETTING GO.