Book picks similar to
The Miracle of Intervale Avenue: The Story of a Jewish Congregation in the South Bronx by Jack Kugelmass
judaism
grad-school
anthropology
20th-century
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
Israel Finkelstein - 2001
They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible—the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon’s vast empire—reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts. Challenging the fundamentalist readings of the scriptures and marshaling the latest archaeological evidence to support its new vision of ancient Israel, The Bible Unearthed offers a fascinating and controversial perspective on when and why the Bible was written and why it possesses such great spiritual and emotional power today.
The Altar Boys
Suzanne Smith - 2020
A community betrayed ... The whistle-blower priest who paid the ultimate price Glen Walsh and Steven Alward were childhood friends in their tight-knit working-class community in Shortland, on the outskirts of Newcastle, New South Wales. Both proud altar boys at the local Catholic church, they went on to attend the city's Catholic boys' highs schools: Glen to Marist Brothers and Steven to St Pius X. Both did well: Steven became a journalist; Glen a priest. But when Glen discovered another priest was sexually abusing boys, he reported the offending to police, breaking Canon Law and his vows to the Catholic 'brotherhood' in the process. Just weeks before he was due to give evidence at a key trial against the highest cleric to ever be charged with covering up child abuse, Father Glen Walsh was dead. Two months later, his friend Steven also died, only weeks before he was to marry the love of his life. Ensuing investigations revealed that at least 60 men in the region had taken their own lives. Why? What had happened, and why were so many from the three Catholic high schools in the area?By six-time Walkley Award-winning investigative reporter Suzanne Smith, The Altar Boys is the powerful expose of widespread and organised clerical abuse of children in an Australian city, and how the cover-up in the Catholic Church in Australia extended from parish priests to every echelon of the organisation. Focusing on two childhood friends, their families and community, this gripping and explosive story is backed by secret documents, diary notes and witness accounts, and details a deliberate church strategy of using psychological warfare against witnesses in key trials involving paedophile priests.
The Mezuzah in the Madonnna's Foot: Marranos and Other Secret Jews--A Woman Discovers Her Spiritual Heritage
Trudi Alexy - 1993
Describes the lives of Jews living in Spain as Catholics.
Letters to Talia
Dov Indig - 2012
Dov Indig was killed on October 7, 1973, in a holding action on the Golan Heights in Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Letters to Talia, published in his memory by family and friends, contains excerpts from an extensive correspondence Dov maintained with Talia, a girl from an irreligious kibbutz in northern Israel, in 1972 and 73, the last two years of his life. At the time, Talia was a highschool student, and Dov was a student in the Hesder yeshiva Kerem B Yavneh, which combines Torah study with military service. It was Talia s father who suggested that Talia correspond with Dov, and an intense dialogue developed between them on questions of Judaism and Zionism, values and education. Their correspondence continued right up to Dov s death in the Yom Kippur War."
How to Be a Jewish Parent: A Practical Handbook for Family Life
Anita Diamant - 2000
A creative handbook for Jewish parents explains how to build a family and a home that is imbued with the values, principles, and traditions of Judaism combining insights from the Talmud with practical advice and firsthand experience to offer guidance on synagogue membership, religious education, hol
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World
Lucette Lagnado - 2007
Her father, Leon, was a boulevardier who conducted business on the elegant terrace of Shepheard's Hotel, and later, in the cozy, dark bar of the Nile Hilton, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit. But with the fall of King Farouk and Nasser's nationalization of Egyptian industry, Leon and his family lose everything. As streets are renamed, neighborhoods of their fellow Jews disbanded, and the city purged of all foreign influence, the Lagnados, too, must make their escape. With all of their belongings packed into twenty-six suitcases, their jewels and gold coins hidden in sealed tins of marmalade, Leon and his family depart for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxta-posed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado's memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph.Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.
Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge: Family Ties, Warrior Culture, Commodity Foods, Rez Dogs, and the Sacred
Vic Glover - 2004
Together, with humor and perseverance, they are strengthened as they try to overcome the social and political forces that threaten their community. Native and non-native alike will find a poignant honesty that grabs them from the opening line to the end. For some it will feel like familiar territory; for others, a heart-opening awakening to the struggles and spirit of The People.
Caste as Social Capital
R. Vaidyanathan - 2019
The establishment and running of businesses tap into caste networks, both in terms of arranging finance and providing access to a ready workforce.By and large, caste has only been studied from a religious, social and political angle. Though it is widely accepted that caste has economic ramifications, any study of this aspect has been limited to looking at caste groups in terms of their per capita income, their representation in various professions, and other statistical details.Caste as Social Capital examines the workings of caste through the lens of business, economics and entrepreneurship. It interrogates the role caste plays in the economic sphere in terms of facilitating the nuts and bolts of business and entrepreneurship: finance, markets and workforce. Through this qualitative view of caste, an entirely new picture emerges of caste which forces one to view this age-old institution in new light.
Burning Lights
Bella Chagall - 1966
Bella's warm, humorous stories of her pious Jewish family are illustrated by 36 of her husband's pen-and-ink line drawings.
யூதர்கள்-வரலாறும் வாழ்க்கையும்
Mugil - 2007
Apart from their achievements, they have suffered all through the history right from the days of Moses till the Israel-Palestine issue. This book clearly brings out the life of jews and their battles, sufferings, customs, beliefs, strategies etc.
Step Aside for Royalty: Treasured Memories of the Royal Household
Eileen Parker - 2017
Eileen was inside Buckingham Palace for all the grand state occasions as well as the private moments of crisis and joy. Eileen knew Prince Philip before his marriage. Later, her husband Mike Parker became the Prince's first private secretary and the ‘Parkers of the Palace’ became part of the furniture at Court. Prince Philip even gave them his car. The events that tested Mike and Eileen's marriage to breaking point have been seen in fiction in the Netflix television series, The Crown. Here’s the real story in Eileen's own words.
My Name Is Asher Lev
Chaim Potok - 1972
Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time his gift threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores. As it follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic.
Passover Haggadah
Elie Wiesel - 1993
Read each year at the Seder table, the Haggadah recounts the miraculous tale of the liberation of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, with a celebration of prayer, ritual, and song. Wiesel and Podwal guide you through the Haggadah and share their understanding and faith in a special illustrated edition that will be treasured for years to come. Accompanying the traditional Haggadah text (which appears here in an accessible new translation) are Elie Wiesel's poetic interpretations, reminiscences, and instructive retellings of ancient legends. The Nobel laureate interweaves past and present as the symbolism of the Seder is explored. Wiesel's commentaries may be read aloud in their entirety or selected passages may be read each year to illuminate the timeless message of this beloved book of redemption. This volume is enhanced by more than fifty original drawings by Mark Podwal, the artist whom Cynthia Ozick has called a "genius of metaphor through line." Podwal's work not only complements the traditional Haggadah text, as well as Wiesel's poetic voice, but also serves as commentary unto itself. The drawings, with their fresh juxtapositions of insight and revelation, are an innovative contribution to the long tradition of Haggadah illustration.
Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
Daniel Gordis - 2016
Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future?We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel’s people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions. Though Israel’s history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people’s story and the creation of the state. Clear-eyed and erudite, he illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse—but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel’s deepening isolation.With Israel, public intellectual Daniel Gordis offers us a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic, and political history of this complex nation, from its beginnings to the present. Accessible, levelheaded, and rigorous, Israel sheds light on the Israel’s past so we can understand its future. The result is a vivid portrait of a people, and a nation, reborn.
The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved
Alan M. Dershowitz - 2005
From the division of Jerusalem and Israeli counterterrorism measures to the security fence and the Iranian nuclear threat, his analyses are clear-headed, well-argued, and sure to be controversial. According to Dershowitz, achieving a lasting peace will require more than tough-minded negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. In academia, Europe, the UN, and the Arab world, Israel-bashing and anti-Semitism have reached new heights, despite the recent Israeli-Palestinian movement toward peace. Surveying this outpouring of vilification, Dershowitz deconstructs the smear tactics used by Israel-haters and shows how this kind of anti-Israel McCarthyism is aimed at scuttling any real chance of peace.