Amy Dockser Marcus, however, demonstrates that the bloody struggle for power actually started much earlier, when Jerusalem was still part of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism laid the groundwork for the battles that would continue to rage nearly a century later. Nineteen thirteen was the crucial year for these conflicts—the year that the Palestinians held the First Arab Congress and the first time that secret peace talks were held between Zionists and Palestinians. World War I, however, interrupted these peace efforts. Dockser Marcus traces these dramatic times through the lives of a handful of the city’s leading citizens as they struggle to survive. A current events must read in our ongoing efforts to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict.

    First published in Odessa in 1908-11, it was recognized immediately as a masterwork in its own right, and reprinted numerous times in Israel.The Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik and the renowned editor Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, the architects of this masterful compendium, selected hundreds of texts from the Talmud and midrashic literature and arranged them thematically, in order to provide their contemporaries with easy access to the national literary heritage of the Jewish people -- the texts of Rabbinic Judaism that remain at the heart of Jewish literacy today.Bialik and Ravnitzky chose Aggadah -- the non-legal portions of the Talmud and Midrash -- for their anthology. Loosely translated as "legends", Aggadah includes the genres of biblical exegesis, stories about biblical characters, the lives of the Talmudic era sages and their contemporary history, parables, proverbs, and folklore. A captivating melange of wisdom and piety, fantasy and satire, Aggadah is the expressive medium of the Jewish creative genius.The arrangement of this compendium reflects the theological concerns of the Rabbinic sages: the role of Israel and the nations; God, good and evil; human relations; the world of nature; and the art of healing. Here, the reader who wants to explore traditional Jewish views on a particular subject is treated to a selection of relevant texts at his fingertips but will soon become immersed in a way of thinking, exploring, and questioning that is the hallmark of Jewish inquiry."Whatever the imagination can invent is found in the Aggadah," wrote the historian Leopold Zunz, "its purpose always being to teach man the ways of God." The Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah, now available in William Braude's superbly annotated translation, enables modern Jews to experience firsthand the richness and excitement of their cultural inheritance.

    Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan has therefore translated the Sefer Yetzirah the oldest and most mysterious of all kabbalistic texts, and now brings its theoretical, meditative and magical implication to light. He expounds on the dynamics of the spiritual domain, the worlds of the Sefirot, souls and angels. When properly understood, the Sefer Yetzirah becomes the instruction manual for a very special type of meditation meant to strengthen concentration, and to aid the development of telekinetic and telepathic powers. These powers were meant to help initiates perform feats that outwardly appeared magical. The magical kabbalah is closely related to the meditative kabbalah, and uses various signs, incantations, and divine names by which initiates could influence or alter natural events. This translation includes the meditation in five dimensions, the transition from Binah to Chakhmah consciousness, the point of infinity, kabbalistic astrology, Ezekiel's vision according to the Sefer Yetzirah, and the mystery of the 231 gates.Also included is a digest of all major commentaries on the text of Sefer Yetzirah and a bibliography of many of the major kabbalistic works that discuss it, as well as extensive notes regarding various aspects of the translation, Rabbi Kaplan's translation is based on the Gra version, which has been thought to be the most authentic. Also included is the short version, the long version, and the Saadia version, making this volume the most complete work on the Sefer Yetzirah in English.

    The first "graphic history book" of its kind, The Story of the Jews celebrates the major characters and events that have shaped the Jewish people and culture, illustrating what it means to be Jewish. You will visit all the major Jewish happenings from biblical times to the twenty-first century--from Abraham and Sarah on the banks of the Euphrates to the Diaspora, intermarriage, and the State of Israel. Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, The triumph of King David, The creation of the Talmud, The rise of Christianity and Islam, The Crusades, The Inquisition, The Enlightenment, Life in the new Babylon (the United States), The birth of the state of Israel, And--of course--the world's first "Oy!"

    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.

    But choices and decisions made by one generation have ripple effects on those who come later—and in the decades that follow, family secrets, betrayals, and mistakes made in the name of love threaten the survival of the family: Bessie and Abe Weissman’s children struggle with the shattering effects of daughter Ruby’s mental illness, of Jenny’s love affair with her brother-in-law, of the disappearance of Ruby’s daughter as she flees her mother’s legacy, and of the accidental deaths of Irene’s husband and granddaughter. A sweeping saga that follows three generations from the tenements of Brooklyn through WWII, from Woodstock to India, and from Spain to Israel, How to Make a Life is the story of a family who must learn to accept each other’s differences—or risk cutting ties with the very people who anchor their place in the world.

    His book Lovesong is a beautifully written account of his spiritual journey away from the conventions of his Southern heritage and Methodist upbringing, culminating in his personal self-discovery through a conversion to Judaism.Growing up in the turbulent civil rights era South, Lester was often discouraged by the disconnectedness between the promises of religion and the realities of his life. He used the outlets available to him to try to come to grips with this split and somehow reconcile the injustices he was witnessing with the purity of religion. He became a controversial writer and commentator, siding with neither blacks nor whites in his unconventional viewpoints. He became a luminal figure of the times, outside of the conventional labels of race, religion, politics, or philosophy.Lester’s spiritual quest would take him through the existential landscape of his Southern, Christian upbringing, into his ancestry, winding through some of the holiest places on the planet and into the spiritual depths of the world’s major religious cultures. His odyssey of faith would unexpectedly lead him to discovering Judaism as his true spiritual calling.

    Written by a 12th- century thinker who was equally active as an original philosopher and as a Biblical and Talmudic scholar, it is both a classic of great historical importance and a work of living significance today.The Guide for the Perplexed was written for scholars who were bewildered by the conflict between religion and the scientific and philosophic thought of the day. It is concerned, basically, with finding a concord between the religion of the Old Testament and its commentaries, and Aristotelian philosophy. After analyzing the ideas of the Old Testament by means of "homonyms," Maimonides examines other reconciliations of religion and philosophy (the Moslem rationalists) and then proposes his own resolution with contemporary Aristotelianism. The Guide for the Perplexed was at once recognized as a masterwork, and it strongly influenced Jewish, Christian, and Moslem thought of the Middle Ages. It is necessary reading for any full comprehension of the thought of such scholastics as Aquinas and Scotus, and indispensable for everyone interested in the Middle Ages, Judaism, medieval philosophy, or the larger problems which Maimonides discusses.

    20,000 first prin

    Through a blend of storytelling and scholarship, conversation and argument, father and daughter tell the tales behind Judaism’s most enduring names, adages, disputes, texts, and quips. These words, they argue, compose the chain connecting Abraham with the Jews of every subsequent generation.Framing the discussion within such topics as continuity, women, timelessness, and individualism, Oz and Oz-Salzberger deftly engage Jewish personalities across the ages, from the unnamed, possibly female author of the Song of Songs through obscure Talmudists to contemporary writers. They suggest that Jewish continuity, even Jewish uniqueness, depends not on central places, monuments, heroic personalities, or rituals but rather on written words and an ongoing debate between the generations. Full of learning, lyricism, and humor, Jews and Words offers an extraordinary tour of the words at the heart of Jewish culture and extends a hand to the reader, any reader, to join the conversation.

    secularist, denomination vs. denomination, liberal vs. conservative -- in the last forty years, American Jews have increasingly found themselves torn apart by their diversity. In this chronicle of the evolution of American Jewry, Samuel G. Freedman illuminates the forces that have undermined the traditional peaceful coexistence among the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist branches, and secular and unaffiliated Jews. Examining recent headline-making stories as well as less publicized controversies, Freedman discusses the vitriolic battles that have arisen over intermarriage, standards of conversion, the role of women in religious ritual, the Middle East peace process, and the secular influence on religious life. As he weighs the arguments of both extremes, Freedman comes to the controversial conclusion that the Jewish-American community is headed for a Reformation, a permanent fracture of one faith into many.

    But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book Jerry Muller, a leading historian of capitalism, separates myth from reality to explain why the Jewish experience with capitalism has been so important and complex--and so ambivalent. Drawing on economic, social, political, and intellectual history from medieval Europe through contemporary America and Israel, "Capitalism and the Jews" examines the ways in which thinking about capitalism and thinking about the Jews have gone hand in hand in European thought, and why anticapitalism and anti-Semitism have frequently been linked. The book explains why Jews have tended to be disproportionately successful in capitalist societies, but also why Jews have numbered among the fiercest anticapitalists and Communists. The book shows how the ancient idea that money was unproductive led from the stigmatization of usury and the Jews to the stigmatization of finance and, ultimately, in Marxism, the stigmatization of capitalism itself. Finally, the book traces how the traditional status of the Jews as a diasporic merchant minority both encouraged their economic success and made them particularly vulnerable to the ethnic nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Providing a fresh look at an important but frequently misunderstood subject, "Capitalism and the Jews" will interest anyone who wants to understand the Jewish role in the development of capitalism, the role of capitalism in the modern fate of the Jews, or the ways in which the story of capitalism and the Jews has affected the history of Europe and beyond, from the medieval period to our own.

    In The Rebbe’s Army, award-winning journalist Sue Fishkoff gives us the first behind-the-scenes look at this small Brooklyn-based group of Hasidim and the extraordinary lengths to which they take their mission of outreach. They seem to be everywhere—in big cities, small towns, and suburbs throughout the United States, and in sixty-one countries around the world. They light giant Chanukah menorahs in public squares, run “Chabad houses” on college campuses from Berkeley to Cambridge, give weekly bible classes in the Capitol basement in Washington, D.C., run a nonsectarian drug treatment center in Los Angeles, sponsor the world’s biggest Passover Seder in Nepal, establish synagogues, Hebrew schools, and day-care centers in places that are often indifferent and occasionally hostile to their outreach efforts. They have built a billion-dollar international empire, with their own news service, publishing house, and hundreds of Websites.Who are these people? How successful are they in making Jews more observant? What influence does their late Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (who some thought was the Messiah), continue to have on his followers? Fishkoff spent a year interviewing Lubavitch emissaries from Anchorage to Miami and has written an engaging and fair-minded account of a Hasidic group whose motives and methodology continue to be the subject of speculation and controversy.From the Hardcover edition.

    Second Hand Smoke is the story of Mila's sons, Issac and Duncan, the one secretly abandoned in Poland, and the other, American-born, raised as an avenging Nazi hunter, poisoned with rage.Told in bursts of fractured realism and dark comedy, Second Hand Smoke is a postmodern mystery of great lyrical power, deep insight, and emotional resonance.

    As in his first trip with Alberto Granado, this second journey was an encounter with the roots of indigenous America, with the incipient people’s movements and all the beauty and suffering of a continent oppressed for centuries.“The name of the sidekick has changed from Alberto to Calica, but the trip is the same: two free-spirits spanning out over South America without knowing exactly what they're looking for or which way is north,” wrote Guevara in his travel diary.The two friends explore Bolivia, Perú and Ecuador, alternating their enthusiasm for travel and youthful antics with revealing discoveries about social and political reality in Latin America, in the end turning the trip into a profound journey of self-discovery that would change them forever.The book presents previously unpublished photos from Calica’s personal album that portray the childhood and youth of the two friends in the town of Alta Gracia in the Province of Córdoba, Argentina, as well as their trip together.Alberto Granado, friend of both Ernesto and Calica, prologues the book and finishes with these words:“Thank you, Calica, for having brought this breath of fresh air and showing us our friend just as he was, is and always will be: a man of flesh and blood.”