Book picks similar to
Flower of God: A Jewish family's 3000-year journey from spice to medicine by Herbert Ausubel
jewish-history
jewish-non-fiction
judaica
not-rated-enough-yet
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
Abraham: One Nomad's Amazing Journey of Faith
Charles R. Swindoll - 1988
Powerful kings claimed to be gods, building massive pyramids to achieve immortality. Out of this mass of misunderstandings, one man emerged. The man we know today as Abraham not only claimed that one true Creator existed but also staked his entire life on this belief. Why, thousands of years later, are we still discussing the faith of this desert nomad? One of America's most popular Bible teachers, Pastor Chuck Swindoll, answers that question and many more in this compelling and insightful biography that will inspire your own faith.
Dream and You Will Win the World
Cesar Castellanos - 2006
Your life will not be the same after reading "Dream and You Will Win the World". You will become a person that dreams, a visionary, challenged by the experiences of Pastor Cesar Castellanos.
Survivor: Life in the SAS
Mark Wales - 2021
Over four deployments of intense warfighting, Mark watched the line between right and wrong become blurred. When he left the SAS he was adrift, crippled by guilt.On a mission to rebuild himself, Mark turned his life around. He fought his way into the gates of a US Ivy League business school and into the boardrooms of top-tier international corporations. He spent years navigating failure in a quest to find new meaning in life. With every setback, Mark counterattacked, discovering the tactics and tools needed to become more resilient, and to find happiness, belonging and purpose.Told with gripping suspense, humour and touching warmth, Survivor is Mark's extraordinary life in and out of the SAS, a story of resilience and a testament to the power of transformation.
Basic Judaism
Milton Steinberg - 1947
Including both the modernist and the traditionalist view in his exploration, Rabbi Steinberg discusses the Torah, what Judaism says about God and the relationship between man and God, the nature of good and evil in a moral society, and what exists in the Kingdom of God. He also talks about the laws that define Judaism, the practices and rituals that sustain it, and the synagogue and the rabbinate that support it.For all students of Judaism??—??be they practicing Jews, uncommitted Jews, or curious non-Jews, Rabbi Steinberg offers a brilliant chance to understand what the Jewish faith is, why it has elicited such intense devotion, and why it remains such a mighty force in the lives of its believers and, beyond them, the world.
Rachel's Secret
Shelly Sanders - 2012
At fourteen, Rachel knows that she wants more from life than the traditional role of wife and mother. She has dreams of being a writer. But everything is put on hold when a young Christian man is murdered and Rachel is forced to keep the murderer’s identity a secret. Tensions mount as the Christians’ distrust of the Jews is fueled by prejudice and rumour.While Rachel keeps the truth to herself, she watches as lies and anti-Jewish propaganda leap off the pages of the local newspaper, inciting Christians to riot against the Jews. Violence breaks out on Easter Sunday, 1903, and when it finally ends, Rachel finds that the person she loves most is dead and that her home has been destroyed. As she struggles to survive the aftermath of the riots – or pogroms – support comes from someone totally unexpected, when a young Christian named Sergei turns against his father, a police officer complicit in the riots, to help Rachel.With everything against them, the two young people find comfort in the bond that is growing between them, one of the few signs of goodness and hope in a time of chaos and violence.
Holy Days: The World Of The Hasidic Family
Lis Harris - 1985
Harris chronicles the personal transformation she experienced as she grew closer to the largely hidden men and women of the Hasidic world.
Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews
Eva Hoffman - 1997
With understanding and sensitivity, Shtetl limns the culture that influenced Christian villagers' decisions to conceal or betray Jewish neighbors when the Nazis invaded. A New York Times Notable Book.
The Essentials of Living Aboard a Boat: The Definitive Guide for Liveaboards
Mark Nicholas - 2004
Mark Nicholas has combined his experience of life aboard with the advice of other liveaboards, marina owners, technicians, boat manufacturers, and advocates in order to detail the challenges and offer real advice for success. This lifestyle, typically thought to be out of reach or for other people, is now available to all who dream. Essentials explains, among other things, how to: Figure out your needs Choose the right boat Buy your boat Choose the right marina Forecast your costs Prepare for the lifestyle Accommodate partners, children and pets Outfit your boat Plan for all climates Address safety and sanitation issues And more!
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
Jan Tomasz Gross - 2000
In this shocking and compelling study, historian Jan Gross pieces together eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence into a comprehensive reconstruction of the horrific July day remembered well by locals but hidden to history. Revealing wider truths about Jewish-Polish relations, the Holocaust, and human responses to occupation and totalitarianism, Gross's investigation sheds light on how Jedwabne's Jews came to be murdered-not by faceless Nazis, but by people who knew them well.
Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America's Food Answers to a Higher Authority
Sue Fishkoff - 2010
In this captivating account of a Bible-based practice that has grown into a multibillions-dollar industry, journalist Sue Fishkoff travels throughout America and to Shanghai, China, to find out who eats kosher food, who produces it, who is responsible for its certification, and how this fascinating world continues to evolve. She explains why 86 percent of the 11.2 million Americans who regularly buy kosher food are not observant Jews—they are Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, vegetarians, people with food allergies, and consumers who pay top dollar for food they believe “answers to a higher authority.” Fishkoff interviews food manufacturers, rabbinic supervisors, and ritual slaughterers; meets with eco-kosher adherents who go beyond traditional requirements to produce organic chicken and pasture-raised beef; sips boutique kosher wine in Napa Valley; talks to shoppers at an upscale kosher supermarket in Brooklyn; and marches with unemployed workers at the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. She talks to Reform Jews who are rediscovering the spiritual benefits of kashrut, and to Conservative and Orthodox Jews who are demanding that kosher food production adhere to ethical and environmental values. And she chronicles the corruption, price-fixing, and strong arm tactics of early-twentieth-century kosher meat production, against which contemporary kashrut standards pale by comparison. A revelatory look at the current state of kosher in America, this book will appeal to anyone interested in food, religion, Jewish identity, or big business.
A History of the Jews
Paul Johnson - 1987
This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation, showing the impact of Jewish character and imagination upon the world.
Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York
Stephen Birmingham - 1967
From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. In response, they created their own elite "100," a privileged society as opulent and exclusive as the one that had refused them entry.
The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life
Tom Reiss - 2005
Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution, became celebrated across fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino–a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust–is still in print today.But Lev's life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identity–until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck–also a friend of both Freud's and Einstein's–was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolini's official biographer–until the Fascists discovered his "true" identity. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book–discovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone–helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound. Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Lev's story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subject's life. Reiss's quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle, to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles.As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum's deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds–of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists–that have also been forgotten. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth century–of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.
God Strong: The Military Wife's Spiritual Survival Guide
Sara Horn - 2010
These women can experience a roller coaster of emotions including disappointment, loneliness, and fear. Sara Horn, the wife of a navy reservist, understands the challenges these women face. She knows how to talk about faith and spiritual truths through the filter of military life.In her encouraging book, Horn shares her personal stories, as well as wisdom and anecdotes of other wives from all branches of service. She reminds readers that:God is in control.You can have joy, no matter what.Superwomen get grace, too.God knows where you hurt.Horn's reliance on Scripture and confidence in God's comfort during difficult times will remind military wives they don't have to be an army of one when they are God Strong.