Living Inspired Akiva Tatz Ever wondered why there is no parking on Golders Green Road on Wednesday nights? Because Wednesday night is Coffee Lounge and Deluxe Desserts with..

    Happiness isn't somewhere else, it's where we are. It isn't something we don't have, we do. It isn't fantasy, it's reality experienced in a certain way. Happiness is a close relative of faith'Following the painful loss of his father, Chief Rabbi Sacks began to learn how to celebrate life in a new way. He discovered where happiness lives, often in unexpected places, through family, community, friendship and responsibilities. He also found it through a renewed relationship with God who spoke to his deepest needs.Based, in part, on his columns in the UK's Times newspaper, Celebrating Life is for people of all faiths and none. It shows us how to be human and, in becoming so, how we can touch the divine.

    In The Committed Marriage, Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, esteemed teacher, counselor, and matchmaker, helps even the most pressured modern couples find harmony and unity, guided by the timeless wisdom of the Torah. Starting with the first stagesof finding a soul mate, and continuing through the challenge of learning to communicate with compassion and understanding, whether debating parenting issues or how to grow old in harmony, these real-life success stories reflect the practicality and endurance of traditional values. The anecdotes and true-life stories will speak to your heart and mind, while the Rebbetzin's faith and depth of understanding will inspire you and strengthen your marriage.

    One of the world's most famous and respected rabbis has given us the one guide we need to practice Jewish prayer and understand the prayer book.From the origins and meaning of prayer to a step-by-step explanation of the daily services to the reason you're not supposed to chat with your friends during the service, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz answers many of the questions likely to arise about Jewish prayer.  Here are chapters on daily prayer; Sabbath prayer; prayer services for the holidays; the yearly cycle of synagogue Bible readings; the history and make-up of the synagogue; the different prayer rites for Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Yemenites, and other cultural/geographic groupings; the role of the rabbi and the cantor in the synagogue; and the role of music in the service.The book also contains a glossary, a bibliography, and biographical sketches of the rabbis who were instrumental in creating and ordering the prayers through the ages.Rabbi Steinsaltz's guide is an essential volume both for the newcomer to Jewish prayer and for those who have been engaged in prayer for years.From the Hardcover edition.

    Always wearing an easy smile, Hasidic rabbi Haskel Besser spreads joy wherever he goes, enriching the lives of his many friends and congregants with his profound understanding of both Orthodox Judaism and humannature.With warmth and admiration, journalist Warren Kozak writes about the rabbi's extraordinary life—from his family's escape to Palestine in the late 1930s to his witnessing of Israel's rebirth in 1948, to his move to New York City, where he lives today.A rare window into the normally closed world of Hasidic Jews, The Rabbi of 84th Street is also the story of Judaism in the twentieth century; of the importance of centuries-old traditions; and of the triumph of faith, kindness, and spirit.

    This fascinating best-seller weaves these golden threads into a glorious tapestry, presenting hundreds of ideas and comments on the Aleph-Beis, including: the Aleph-Beis as the force of Creation, as a primer for Jewish living, and as a fountainhead of Torah insight and mystical meaning. The product of decades of learning, thinking, and teaching by the revered educator, lecturer, and community activist Rabbi Michael L. Munk. A treat not to be missed.

    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.

    One man as he was studying for the priesthood. Madeleine Albright famously learned from the Washington Post when she was named Secretary of State. "What is it like to find out you are not who you thought you were?" asks Barbara Kessel in this compelling volume, based on interviews with over 160 people who were raised as non-Jews only to learn at some point in their lives that they are of Jewish descent. With humor, candor, and deep emotion, Kessel's subjects discuss the emotional upheaval of refashioning their self-image and, for many, coming to terms with deliberate deception on the part of parents and family. Responses to the discovery of a Jewish heritage ranged from outright rejection to wholehearted embrace. For many, Kessel reports, the discovery of Jewish roots confirmed long-held suspicions or even, more mysteriously, conformed to a long-felt attraction toward Judaism. For some crypto-Jews in the southwest United States (descendants of Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition), the only clues to their heritage are certain practices and traditions handed down through the generations, whose significance may be long since lost. In Poland and other parts of eastern Europe, many Jews who were adopted as infants to save them from the Holocaust are now learning of their heritage through the deathbed confessions of their adoptive parents. The varied responses of these disparate people to a similar experience, presented in their own words, offer compelling insights into the nature of self-knowledge. Whether they had always suspected or were taken by surprise, Kessel's respondents report that confirmation of their Jewish heritage affected their sense of self and of their place in the world in profound ways. Fascinating, poignant, and often very funny, Suddenly Jewish speaks to crucial issues of identity, selfhood, and spiritual community.

    In simple and powerful language, Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin presents the fundamentals of Judaism, including the laws and observances for the Sabbath, the dietary laws, family life, prayer at home and in the synagogue, the major and minor holidays, and the guiding principles and observances of life, such as birth, naming, circumcision, adoption and conversion, Bar-mitzvah, marriage, divorce, death, and mourning. Ideal for reference, reflection, and inspiration, To Be a Jew will by greatly valued by anyone who feels that knowing, understanding, and observing the laws and traditions of Judaism in daily life is the essence of what it means to be a Jew.

    More than a "how-to" guide, this resource deals with basic issues for the modern worshiper, the historial compilation of the Siddur, and much more.

    It is a must for every Jew -- Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or un-affiliated!

    As the religion stands on the brink of becoming irrelevant to the very people who look to it for answers, Nothing Sacred takes aim at its problems and offers startling and clearheaded solutions based on Judaism’s core values and teachings.Disaffected by their synagogues’ emphasis on self-preservation and obsession with intermarriage, most Jews looking for an intelligent inquiry into the nature of spirituality have turned elsewhere, or nowhere. Meanwhile, faced with the chaos of modern life, returnees run back to Judaism with a blind and desperate faith and are quickly absorbed by outreach organizations that—in return for money—offer compelling evidence that God exists, that the Jews are, indeed, the Lord’s “chosen people,” and that those who adhere to this righteous path will never have to ask themselves another difficult question again.Ironically, the texts and practices making up Judaism were designed to avoid just such a scenario. Jewish tradition stresses transparency, open-ended inquiry, assimilation of the foreign, and a commitment to conscious living. Judaism invites inquiry and change. It is an “open source” tradition—one born out of revolution, committed to evolution, and willing to undergo renaissance at a moment’s notice. But, unfortunately, some of the very institutions created to protect the religion and its people are now suffocating them.If the Jewish tradition is actually one of participation in the greater culture, a willingness to wrestle with sacred beliefs, and a refusal to submit blindly to icons that just don’t make sense to us, then the “lapsed” Jews may truly be our most promising members. Why won’t they engage with the synagogue, and how can they be made to feel more welcome?Nothing Sacred is a bold and brilliant book, attempting to do nothing less than tear down our often false preconceptions about Judaism and build in their place a religion made relevant for the future.From the Hardcover edition.

    A miracle of brevity, it guides readers through the world's oldest practicing religion with all the power, clarity and wit of Wouk's celebrated novels.

    With Rabbi Yosef Begun's marginal notes. Vowelized, facing Hebrew and English texts.

    Bader in the foreword to Zen Judaism. “This growing movement offers a unique way to follow in the footsteps of the Buddha, ideally without gaining quite so much weight.” These nearly 100 sacred teachings are capable “of bringing about an enlightenment experience so pure, so elevating, and so intense, you could plotz.” For you, some samples:To know the Buddha is the highest attainment. Second highest is to go to the same doctor as the Buddha.Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated? There is no escaping Karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?If there is no self, whose arthritis is this? Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.