Showing titles in Judaism

This book is about an idea - namely, that Scripture mandates a Jewish return to the historical region of Palestine - which in turn morphed into a political movement, rallied around a popular slogan ("A country without a nation for a nation without a country"), and eventually contributed to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Christian Zionism continues to influence global politics, especially US foreign policy, and has deeply affected Jewish-Christian and Muslim-Christian relations.

Mussar is an illuminating, approachable, and highly practical set of teachings for cultivating personal growth and spiritual realization in the midst of day-to-day life. Here is an accessible and inspiring introduction to this Jewish spiritual path, which until lately has been best known in the world of Orthodox Judaism. The core teaching of Mussar is that our deepest essence is inherently pure and holy, but this inner radiance is obscured by extremes of emotion, desire, and bad habits.

Tim Franks spent years as the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent covering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. During that time, he was attacked as a self-hating Jew and as an Islamophobe – as a tool of competing, malign agendas. He always tried to respond with a journalist’s detached curiosity, drawing a clear line between his identity and his work. Up to the point that he asked himself: is that necessary? Beyond the judgments of others: what does it mean to be Jewish?

When Israel Regardie wrote A Garden of Pomegranates in 1932, he designed it to be a simple yet comprehensive guidebook outlining the complex system of the Qabalah and providing a key to its symbolism. Since then, it has achieved the status of a classic among texts on the Qabalah.

For centuries, many have been taught to believe that the Bible presents a vivid picture of a fiery Hell, where God sadistically torments most of humanity by burning their skin for all eternity. But is this really the picture Scripture paints? Were you raised to view Hell through the lens of the Augustinian-Calvinist tradition, perhaps too intimidated ever to question it? If so, this book is for you. In it, we will challenge the fundamentalist perspective on Hellfire by exploring the original context in which the biblical teachings on Hell were written.

Kabbalah. The word itself is feminine, meaning "receiving," yet women have long been excluded from the pursuit of this Jewish mystical tradition. On The Woman's Kabbalah, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone opens a treasury of meditations and practices especially for women interested in this path to inner...

Yeshua Matters is the story of a pastor who discovers that Jesus Christ was not just a Jewish person, but a practicing Jew, a teacher of Judaism - a rabbi, known during his earthly ministry as Rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth. Yet despite this emerging scholarly consensus, Jesus has lost his Jewishness in the collective heart and mind of the church. We simply don't imagine, interpret, or follow him as a part of the broader tapestry of Jewish life and history.

The Sepher Yetzirah or Book of Formation is perhaps the oldest rabbinical treatise of Kabbalistic philosophy which is still extant. This thoroughly re-edited and revised version helps bring this text to life.

Each of the great three Abrahamic religious traditions holds the seeds for deep mystical contemplation. But what do most of us know about these mystics and the tradition they sustained? Explore this spiritual, literary, and intellectual heritage in these great faiths of the West as it unfolds over three millennia with these 36 enlightening, thought-provoking lectures that offer nearly

In 1943, as the Nazi power swept across central Europe, Rosa, her husband Emanuel and their daughter, Judy, were forced into hiding. But after a year and a half of living a terrifying, day-by-day existence, they were betrayed. As they arrived in Auschwitz, Rosa was torn from her husband and her only daughter. Could she dare to hope she would see either of them again?

Shortlisted for the Shalom Australian Jewish Book Award, Non-Fiction Unorthodox meets Start with Why: how escaping a cult led Debbie Haski-Leventhal to become a ‘professor of purpose’ and master the art of finding personal meaning in life. When she was five, tragedy prompted her parents to...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From two New York Times bestselling authors, a timely, disarmingly honest, and thought-provoking investigation into antisemitism that connects the dots between the tropes and hatred of the past to our current complicated moment. For Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby no...

On October 13, 1894, Captain Dreyfus was summoned by the General de Boisdeffre to the Ministry of War. Despite minimal evidence against him he was placed under arrest for the crime of high treason. Not long afterward Dreyfus was incarcerated on Devil's Island. But how did an innocent man come to be convicted? And why was he kept locked up for so long? The Dreyfus Affair uniquely combines a fast-moving mystery story with a snapshot of France at a moment of great social flux and cultural richness.

Charlotte Beradt began having unsettling dreams after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. She envisioned herself being shot at, tortured and scalped, surrounded by Nazis in disguise, and breathlessly fleeing across fields with storm troopers at her heels. Shaken by these nightmares and banned as a Jew from working, she began secretly collecting dreams from her friends and neighbors, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Disguising these "diaries of the night" in code and concealing them in the spines of books from her extensive library, she smuggled them out of the country one by one.

A bestselling author and rabbi’s profoundly affecting exploration of the meaning and purpose of the soul, inspired by the famous correspondence between Albert Einstein and a grieving rabbi. “A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He...

Renowned critic and translator Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative has radically expanded our view of the Bible by recasting it as a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. In this seminal work, Alter describes how the Hebrew Bible’s many authors used innovative literary styles and devices such as parallelism, contrastive dialogue, and narrative tempo to tell one of the most revolutionary stories of all time: the revelation of a single God. In so doing, Alter shows, these writers reshaped not only history, but also the art of storytelling itself.

There are three main ways one can look at the Book of Psalms. For many, it is a book of one hundred 50 beautifully written poems. For some, it is the legacy of the most powerful king to ever rule. And for others, it is their connection to God. In this translation of the Book of Psalms, understanding the words won’t be your job, choosing which way to look at it will.

Imagine walking into your place of worship - your local church, synagogue, mosque, or meditation center - to find that all of the usual adornments have been replaced with statues and pictures of sexually intertwined cherubs. Chances are, you'd be quickly taken aback. But according to Mark Gafni, bestselling author of "Your Unique Self" and "Soul Prints", these were the precise images found atop the ark of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem.

Read by the author. Read the Bible with Fresh Eyes as You See Scripture's Promise-Shaped Patterns When you read the Bible, have you ever noticed parallels between certain people, events, and institutions? Should we understand Noah as a kind of new Adam, and if so, does that somehow point us to...

Bob Dylan arrived in New York one winter morning in 1961. His music and spirit would go on to capture the hearts and minds of a generation, but what no one knew then was that, like so many before him, Dylan was concealing his Jewish origins. For Harry Freedman, Dylan’s roots are the key to grasping how this complete unknown burst onto the scene and reinvented not only himself, but popular music. The instinct for escape and reinvention has defined Dylan’s long career.