Showing titles in Judaism

Bridging the end of the Old Testament period and the beginning of the New Testament period, this book surveys the history and theological developments of four significant eras in Israel's post-exilic history: the Late Persian Era (465-331 BC), the Hellenistic Era (332-167 BC), the Hasmonean Era (167-63 BC), and the Roman Era (63-4 BC). In doing so, it does away with the notion that there were four hundred years of prophetic silence before Jesus.

Harold S. Kushner turns to the experience of Moses to find the requisite lessons of strength and faith. Moses towers over all others in the Old Testament; he is the man on the mountaintop to whom God speaks with unparalleled intimacy, and he leads his people out of bondage. But he is also deeply human, someone whose soaring triumphs are offset by frustration and longing; his people ignore his teachings, he is denied entrance to the Promised Land, his family suffers. But he overcomes.

In an extensive examination of this impassioned debate, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman find that the president was neither savior nor bystander. In FDR and the Jews, they draw upon many new primary sources to offer an intriguing portrait of a consummate politician - compassionate but also pragmatic - struggling with opposing priorities under perilous conditions.

In a paradigm of true leadership, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of sainted memory, embraced all issues of import to Jews, Jewish life, and beyond, spurring a Jewish revival that continues to gain momentum even after his passing. Through his incisive and illuminating Torah expositions, the Rebbe inspired an awareness of a attainable higher reality and sparked an enthusiasm for Torah study among scholars and layman alike.

Throughout the New Testament, the apostles draw on the book of Exodus as a book of types concerning the believers' corporate experience of God's salvation. Paul speaks of "our Passover, Christ" (1 Cor. 5:7). He says that Israel was "baptized...in the sea", that Israel ate the "same spiritual food", and that Israel "drank of a spiritual rock which followed them", which rock "was Christ" (1 Cor. 5:7; 10:2-4). The Lord Jesus similarly says that He is "the living bread which came down out of heaven", the fulfillment of the manna in the wilderness (John 6:51).

This incisive history upends the complacency that confines anti-Judaism to the ideological extremes in the Western tradition. With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West. Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world.

The Old Testament is one of the most carefully studied books in the world’s history. It is also one of the most misunderstood. This founding text of the world’s three largest religions is also, Erich Fromm argues, an impressive radical humanist text. He sees the stories of mankind’s transition from divided clans to united brotherhood as a tribute to the human power to overcome. Filled with hopeful symbolism, You Shall Be as Gods shows how the Old Testament and its tradition is an inspiring ode to human potential.

Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity. Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim "Live as if you were living for the second time".

Through our perception of sound and vibration, we internalize the world around us. What we hear and how we process that hearing has a profound impact on how we experience life. This audiobook will guide you in methods of utilizing the power of sound and vibration to heal and maintain mental, emotional, and spiritual health, to fine-tune your midos and even to guide you into deeper levels of deveikus/conscious unity with Hashem. The vibratory patterns of the aleph-beis are particularly useful portals into our deeper conscious selves.

At the height of World War II, with the Third Reich's final solution in full operation, a small group of Jews who had barely escaped the Nazis did the unthinkable: They went back. Spies now, these men took on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. They Dared Return is their story - a tale of adventure, espionage, love, and revenge.

The image of the Golden Calf haunts the commentaries that thread through Leviticus. This catastrophic episode, in which the Israelites (freed from Egyptian slavery and forty days after their momentous encounter with God at Mount Sinai) worship a pagan idol while Moses is receiving the Torah from God on the mountaintop, gives the mostly legalistic text a unique depth and resonance. According to midrashic tradition, the post-traumatic effects of the sin of the Golden Calf linger through the generations, the sin to be “paid off” in small increments through time.

The God of the Old Testament commanded and endorsed many practices that we find morally reprehensible today. High on the list was the institution of slavery, which features prominently in several sections of the Hebrew Bible. Fathers could sell their daughters into slavery, masters could beat their slaves, creditors could carry off children for failure to repay a debt, and foreigners could be kept for life, passed down as inherited property. How are we to make sense of all of this from our modern point of view?

Selma van de Perre was 17 when World War II began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had not been an issue. But by 1941 it had become a matter of life or death. On several occasions, Selma barely avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. While her father was summoned to a work camp and eventually hospitalized in a Dutch transition camp, her mother and sister went into hiding - until they were betrayed in June 1943 and sent to Auschwitz.

This is the full, uninterrupted audiobook of the 14 books of The Apocrypha - listen with the passion this masterpiece deserves by number one best-selling voice talent Steve Cook. The word “Apocrypha” originates from the Greek word apókruphos, which means “hidden”, referencing to its selective state in different renditions of books - consequently, many have sought to discover why this is so.

Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works—journalism, books, plays and novels—devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years—and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.

This volume contains a complete English translation of the famous Ethiopian work, The Kebra Nagast, i.e. the Glory of the Kings [of Ethiopia]. This work has been held in peculiar honour in Abyssinia for several centuries, and throughout that country it has been, and still is, venerated by the people as containing the final proof of their descent from the Hebrew Patriarchs, and of the kinship of their kings of the Solomonic line with Christ, the Son of God.

As Mira is nearing the end of her life, her daughter Rachelle wants to find out how her mother had lived through four concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and a Death March. There was a mystery to her survival, it seemed—which perhaps had something to do with the strange things that always happened around her. And, incredibly, when giving testimony later in life, she says that it was during this time—despite witnessing the depths of man’s cruelty—that she learned about “the goodness of people.”

Life is hard, especially for Christians. It is certain that we will face difficulties and that God will allow them. But just as certain is the fact that the same God who led us in will lead us out. As The Red Sea Rules makes comfortingly clear, he is in control. Using the Israelites' story in Exodus 14 as an example, Robert Morgan offers 10 sound strategies for moving from fear to faith. Just as Moses and the Israelites became trapped between Pharaoh's rushing armies and the uncrossable Red Sea, so are we sometimes overwhelmed by life's problems.

From his modest headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the Rebbe advised some of the world's greatest leaders and shaped matters of state and society. Statesmen and artists as diverse as Ronald Reagan, Robert F. Kennedy, Yitzchak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Elie Wiesel, and Bob Dylan span the spectrum of those who sought his counsel.

Our fearless author, A. J. Jacobs, tackles a new intellectual adventure, an exploration of the most influential book in the world: the Bible. He determined that the best way to explore the Bible was to live it, as literally as possible. For one year.