The rapidly growing sect had bought land in rural Upstate New York, populated it solely with members of its faction, and created a village called Kiryas Joel that exerted extraordinary political pressure over both political parties. Marking the first time in American history that a governmental unit was established for a religious group, the legislature’s action prompted years of litigation that eventually went to the US Supreme Court.As today’s Supreme Court signals its willingness to view a religious viewpoint like any other speech and accord it equal protection, the 1994 case, Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet, stands as the most important legal precedent in the fight to uphold the separation of church and state. In The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel, plaintiff Louis Grumet opens a window onto the Satmar Hasidic community, where language, customs, and dress have led to estrangement from and clashes with neighboring communities, and details the inside story of his fight for the First Amendment and against New York’s most powerful politicians.Informed by numerous interviews with key figures such as Governor George Pataki, media accounts, court transcripts, and more, The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel not only tantalizes with a peek at cynical power politics driven by votes and Supreme Court justice squabbling and negotiation; it also provides an important demonstration of how a small, insular, and politically savvy religious group can grasp legal and political power. This story—a blend of politics, religion, cultural clashes, and constitutional tension—is an object lesson in the ongoing debate over freedom of versus freedom from religion.

    The growing demands on theological education have made it difficult for students of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) to master the intermediate-level skills required to interpret the syntax of the Bible's original language. A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax defines the fundamental syntactical features of the Hebrew Bible, and illustrates each feature with at least one example, extracted from the Bible itself and accompanied with English translation.

    This is the surprise that physician-mother Beth Ricanati learned when she started baking challah almost a decade ago: that simply stopping and baking bread was the best medicine she could prescribe for women in a fast-paced world. Braided chronicles a journey of a thousand challahs and one woman’s quest for wellness and peace.

    She knew much of it by heart—and was therefore surprised when, while getting her MFA at the University of Iowa, she took the novelist Marilynne Robinson’s class on the Old Testament and discovered she barely recognized the text she thought she knew so well. From differences in the Ten Commandments to a less ambiguous reading of the creation story to a new emphasis on the topic of slavery, the English translation often felt like another book entirely from the one she had grown up with.Kushner began discussing the experience with Robinson, who became a mentor, and her interest in the differences between the ancient language and the modern one gradually became an obsession. She began what became a ten-year project of reading different versions of the Hebrew Bible in English and traveling the world in the footsteps of the great biblical translators, trying to understand what compelled them to take on a lifetime project that was often considered heretical and in some cases resulted in their deaths.In this eye-opening chronicle, Kushner tells the story of her vibrant relationship to the Bible, and along the way illustrates how the differences in translation affect our understanding of our culture’s most important written work. A fascinating look at language and the beliefs we hold most dear, The Grammar of God is also a moving tale about leaving home and returning to it, both literally and through reading.

    Michael Berg has accomplished the monumental task of translating the eternal truths of life into spiritual common sense. Without a doubt, The Way will become one of the sacred texts of your own life."-Caroline Myss, Ph.D., author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Sacred ContractsThe spiritual way of Kabbalah has grown from a hidden treasure into a widespread mainstream movement that has helped people from every walk of life, all around the world, to improve their lives. In this bestselling book, Michael Berg of The Kabbalah Centre-the world's leading educational institution teaching the wisdom of Kabbalah-shows you how to recognize and understand the key spiritual laws in order to improve your life and the lives of everyone around you. The Way will teach you meditation and prayer techniques and how to reduce emotional chaos and increase personal harmony. At once groundbreaking and so clearly written that it is accessible to anyone following any spiritual path, The Way provides the spiritual power tools to attain true fulfillment and happiness.

    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.

    We hear words like nosh, schlep, and schmutz all the time, but how did these words come to pepper American English? In Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land, Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle trace the influence of Yiddish from medieval Europe to the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. This comics anthology contains original stories by notable writers and artists such as Barry Deutsch, Peter Kuper, Spain Rodriguez, and Sharon Rudahl. Through illustrations, comics art, and a full-length play, four major themes are explored: culture, performance, assimilation, and the revival of the language. The last fully realized work by Harvey Pekar, this book is a thoughtful compilation that reveals the far-reaching influences of Yiddish.Praise for Yiddishkeit: “The book is about what Neal Gabler in his introduction labels ‘Jewish sensibility.’ It pervades this volume, which he acknowledges is messy; he writes: ‘You really can't define Yiddishkeit neatly in words or pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.’ The book does this with gusto.” —New York Times “Yiddishkeit is as colorful, bawdy, and charming as the culture it seeks to represent.” —Print magazine “every bit of it brimming with the charm and flavor of its subject and seamlessly meshing with the text to create a genuinely compelling, scholarly comics experience” —Publishers Weekly“Yiddishkeit is a book that truly informs about Jewish culture and, in the process, challenges readers to pick apart their own vocabulary.” —Chicago Tribune “a postvernacular tour de force” —The Forward “A fascinating and enlightening effort that takes full use of the graphic storytelling medium in an insightful and revelatory way.” —The Miami Herald “With a loving eye Pekar and Buhle extract moments and personalities from Yiddish history.” —Hadassah “gorgeous comix-style portraits of Yiddish writers” ––Tablet “Yiddishkeit has managed to survive, if just barely, not because there are individuals dedicated to its survival, though there are, but because Yiddishkeit is an essential part of both the Jewish and the human experience.” —Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, from his introduction

     For those of you who can’t just slip away from life, travel to France and immerse yourself in the language in order to learn it, this is your solution! Reading and listening to native-spoken French stories is the next best thing. You have at your fingertips the written word AND an accompanying audio recording that allows you to: Gain a greater vocabulary that you can use immediately, every day. You will add 1,500+ French words and expressions to your repertoire through the encounter of descriptive sentences and casual conversations woven throughout the stories. Sharpen your comprehension of the spoken word by listening to a native French speaker. Learn how to pronounce French words properly by comparing the written word to the audio recording. Familiarize yourself with a wide range of grammar structures and put them to use today. Avoid the monotonous task of memorizing grammar rules. How awesome is that?! How this book will improve your French language skills: Each story is recorded in two different ways: A slow version helps beginners improve their pronunciation, and a normal, natural speed for intermediate and advanced learners trains your ears to understand what is being said. You receive 4 hours of MP3 audio recording! There is no need for a dictionary. Each story is broken down with a French and English glossary that introduces you to the words and phrases you might not understand. This comes in handy because there is no need for the irritating process of flipping pages, continually searching for definitions or translations. A vocabulary recap at the end of each chapter allows you to review what you have read and listened to so you don’t forget the essential words and expressions taught throughout the lesson. The book contains 15 stories with the following themes: Family, Months, Days, Numbers, Weather, Introduce yourself, House, Nature, Clothing, Shopping, Visiting/Tourism, Weekend Activities, Daily Routine, Describe yourself, Food, Cooking, Jobs and Occupation, At the Train Station. All stories are written using vocabulary that you could easily use in your day-to-day conversations. With this book and accompanying audio you can start improving your French today!

    This smart and funny book includes tales from many of these much-loved comics, and will appeal to their broad audience, while revealing the history, context and wider culture of Jewish joking.The Jewish joke is as old as Abraham, and like the Jews themselves it has wandered over the world, learned countless new languages, worked with a range of different materials, been performed in front of some pretty hostile crowds, and yet still retained its own distinctive identity. So what is it that animates the Jewish joke? Why are Jews so often thought of as ‘funny’? And how old can a joke get?The Jewish Joke is a brilliant—and laugh-out-loud funny—riff on about what marks Jewish jokes apart from other jokes, why they are important to Jewish identity and how they work. Ranging from self-deprecation to anti-Semitism, politics to sex, Devorah Baum looks at the history of Jewish joking and asks whether the Jewish joke has a future. With jokes from Lena Dunham to Woody Allen, as well as Freud and Marx (Groucho, mostly), Baum balances serious research with light-hearted humor and provides fascinating insight into this well-known and much loved cultural phenomenon.

    This is a practical way to learn the aspects of language that you’ll actually need and use; from booking a hotel room to navigating a menu, Paul will effortlessly build your confidence and give you the tools to handle any holiday situation.His ‘word robbery’ will also help unlock the range of vocabulary you already know. By making a few simple tweaks, you’ll go from fantastic to fantástico.Ideal for first-time learners or people who struggled in school, this book will help you absorb information quickly and efficiently, just like you did learning English as a child. Forget the way you used to be taught; this course guarantees you minimum effort and maximum success without the need for complex grammar rules or jargon. With thousands of satisfied customers, there’s never been a better time to learn.“There is nothing so complicated in foreign languages that it cannot be made simple.” Paul NobleA quick, easy and fun way to unlock your basic language skills. Perfect for beginners, this book will give you all the information you need to build basic conversations and get by on your travels.

    They come from both Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews who settled all over America, bringing with them a wide variety of regional flavors, changing and adapting their traditional dishes according to what was available in the new country.What makes Jewish cooking unique is the ancient dietary laws that govern the selection, preparation, and consumption of observant Jews. Food plays a major part in rituals past and present, binding family and community. It is this theme that informs every part of Joan Nathan’s warm and lively text. Every dish has a story–from the cholents (the long-cooked rich meat stews) and kugels (vegetable and noodle puddings) prepared in advance for the Sabbath, to the potato latkes (served with maple syrup in Vermont and goat cheese in California) and gefilte fish (made with white fish in the Midwest, salmon in the Northwest, haddock in New England, and shad in Maryland). Joan Nathan tells us how lox and bagels and Lindy’s cheesecake became household words, and how American products like Crisco, cream cheese, and Jell-O changed forever Jewish home cooking.The recipes and stories come from every part of the U.S.A. They are seasoned with Syrian, Moroccan, Greek, German, Polish, Georgian, and Alsatian flavors, and they represent traditional foods tailored for today’s tastes as well as some of the nouvelle creations of Jewish chefs from New York to Tuscon. When Jewish Cooking in America was first published in 1994, it won both the IACP / Julia Child Cookbook Award for Best Cookbook of the Year and the James Beard Award for Best Food of the Americas Cookbook. Now, more than ever, it stands firmly established as an American culinary classic.

    Finegan's best selling text, LANGUAGE: ITS STRUCTURE AND USE, Fourth Edition maintains its relevance with new emphasis on the political and social aspects of language including "Applications to the Professions."

    But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weird-Jews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt. These marginal Jews may have found their way into the history books far less frequently than their more socially upstanding neighbors, but there's one place you can find them in force: in the Yiddish newspapers that had their heyday from the 1880s to the 1930s. Disaster, misery, and misfortune: you will find no better chronicle of the daily ignominies of urban Jewish life than in the pages of the Yiddish press.An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi exposes the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With true stories plucked from the pages of the Yiddish papers, Eddy Portnoy introduces us to the drunks, thieves, murderers, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in print. There's the Polish rabbi blackmailed by an American widow, mass brawls at weddings and funerals, a psychic who specialized in locating missing husbands, and violent gangs of Jewish mothers on the prowl-in short, not quite the Jews you'd expect. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.

    Circling the Jewish calendar from Rosh Hashanah to Tisha B'Av, this lively, accessible guide includes rituals, recipes, songs, prayers, and suggestions for new approaches to holiday observance.

    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.