In 1958, a mute Jewish boy locked away in a mental institution outside of Dublin forms an unlikely friendship with a man consumed by the story of the love he lost nearly two decades earlier. And in present-day London, an Irish journalist is forced to confront her conflicting notions of identity and family when her Jewish boyfriend asks her to make a true leap of faith. These three arcs, which span generations and intertwine in revelatory ways, come together to tell the haunting story of Ireland’s all-but-forgotten Jewish community. Ruth Gilligan’s beautiful and heartbreaking Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan explores the question of just how far we will go to understand who we really are, and to feel at home in the world.

    

    Her curiosity led her to embark on an entire year of intensive research, observation, and writing about the milestones on the Jewish religious calendar.

    At stake were not only the reputations of two historians but the record of history itself.

    Passing a Christian church, they notice a curious sign in front that says "$1,000 to anyone who will convert." "I wonder what that's about," says Abe. "I think I'll go in and have a look. I'll be back in a minute; just wait for me."Sol sits on the sidewalk bench and waits patiently for nearly half an hour. Finally, Abe reappears."Well," asks Sol, "what are they up to? Who are they trying to convert? Why do they care? Did you get the $1,000?"Indignantly Abe replies, "Money. That's all you people care about."Ted Cohen thinks that's not a bad joke. But he also doesn't think it's an easy joke. For a listener or reader to laugh at Abe's conversion, a complicated set of conditions must be met. First, a listener has to recognize that Abe and Sol are Jewish names. Second, that listener has to be familiar with the widespread idea that Jews are more interested in money than anything else. And finally, the listener needs to know this information in advance of the joke, and without anyone telling him or her. Jokes, in short, are complicated transactions in which communities are forged, intimacy is offered, and otherwise offensive stereotypes and cliches lose their sting—at least sometimes.Jokes is a book of jokes and a book about them. Cohen loves a good laugh, but as a philosopher, he is also interested in how jokes work, why they work, and when they don't. The delight at the end of a joke is the result of a complex set of conditions and processes, and Cohen takes us through these conditions in a philosophical exploration of humor. He considers questions of audience, selection of joke topics, the ethnic character of jokes, and their morality, all with plenty of examples that will make you either chuckle or wince. Jokes: more humorous than other philosophy books, more philosophical than other humor books."Befitting its subject, this study of jokes is . . . light, funny, and thought-provoking. . . . [T]he method fits the material, allowing the author to pepper the book with a diversity of jokes without flattening their humor as a steamroller theory might. Such a book is only as good as its jokes, and most of his are good. . . . [E]ntertainment and ideas in one gossamer package."—Kirkus Reviews"One of the many triumphs of Ted Cohen's Jokes-apart from the not incidental fact that the jokes are so good that he doesn't bother to compete with them-is that it never tries to sound more profound than the jokes it tells. . . . [H]e makes you feel he is doing an unusual kind of philosophy. As though he has managed to turn J. L. Austin into one of the Marx Brothers. . . . Reading Jokes makes you feel that being genial is the most profound thing we ever do-which is something jokes also make us feel-and that doing philosophy is as natural as being amused."—Adam Phillips, London Review of Books"[A] lucid and jargon-free study of the remarkable fact that we divert each other with stories meant to make us laugh. . . . An illuminating study, replete with killer jokes."—Kevin McCardle, The Herald (Glasgow)"Cohen is an ardent joke-maker, keen to offer us a glimpse of how jokes are crafted and to have us dwell rather longer on their effects."—Barry C. Smith, Times Literary Supplement"Because Ted Cohen loves jokes, we come to appreciate them more, and perhaps think further about the quality of good humor and the appropriateness of laughter in our lives."—Steve Carlson, Christian Science Monitor

    Despite the extraordinarily diverse forms it has taken, the Jewish people have believed themselves bound to God by the same covenant for more than three thousand years. This book explains how Judaism came to be and how it has developed from one age to the next, as well as the ways in which its varieties have related to each other.A History of Judaism ranges from Judaism's inception amidst polytheistic societies in the second and fi rst millennia, through the Jerusalem Temple cult in the centuries preceding its destruction, to the rabbis, mystics and messiahs of medieval and early modern times and, finally, the many expressions of the modern and contemporary Jewish worlds. Throughout, Martin Goodman shows how Judaism has been made and remade over the millennia by individuals as well as communities, and shaped by the cultures and philosophies in which Jews have been immersed.It becomes a truly global story, spanning not only the Middle East, Europe and North Africa, but also China, India and America, andone that untangles the threads of doctrinal and philosophical debate running through Judaism's history. Goodman demonstrates that its numerous strains have often adopted incompatible practices and ideas - about the authority of ancestral traditions, the meaning of scripture, the nature of God, the afterlife and the End of Days - but that disagreement has almost always been tolerated without schism.There have been many histories of the Jewish people but remarkably few attempts to describe the history and evolution of Judaism itself. This panoramic book, the first of its kind in almost seventy years, does glorious justice to the inexhaustible variety of one the world's great religions.