By Tommy Tenney, Mark Andrew Olsen

The best-selling novel that captured readers' hearts with its romantic and fascinating tale of Queen Esther involves paperback!

By Michael Wex

Sure to resonate with Jewish and Gentile readers alike, How to Be a Mentsh (and no longer a Shmuck) is a sensible and witty self-help handbook for pursuing happiness whereas nonetheless performing with integrity, honor, and compassion. Michael Wex, New York instances bestselling writer of Born to Kvetch and Just Say Nu, attracts on assets that variety from the Talmud and Yiddish proverbs to modern track and films during this insightful advisor that explores not just human nature and psychology but our tasks to ourselves and each other.

By Bernard Spolsky

Historic sociolinguistics is a relatively new zone of study, investigating tricky questions about language types and offerings in speech and writing. Jewish ancient sociolinguistics is wealthy in unanswered questions: whilst does a language turn into 'Jewish'? What was once the foundation of Yiddish? How a lot Hebrew did the common Jew be aware of over the centuries? How was once Hebrew re-established as a vernacular and a dominant language? This booklet explores those and different questions, and indicates the level of scholarly war of words over the solutions. It indicates the price of including a sociolinguistic point of view to matters as a rule missed in usual histories. A bright remark on Jewish survival and Jewish speech groups that would be loved through the final reader, and is vital studying for college students and researchers attracted to the learn of heart japanese languages, Jewish reviews, and sociolinguistics.

By Raphael Israeli

Hatred, Lies, and Violence on the earth of Islam examines the torrential flood of anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish, and anti-Zionist propaganda that permeates many Muslim societies. Raphael Israeli locates the resource of this anti-Semitic sentiment within the inadequacies and insecurities of Muslim states. by way of demonizing and delegitimizing Israel and Jews, they search to get rid of a winning counterexample in their personal mess ups, therefore placing an finish to their very own "humiliation."

Beyond mapping the distribution of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda within the Arab and Islamic worlds, Israeli makes use of case-studies to demonstrate the premises of this research: the Palestinians, who've an immediate stake in fighting Israel; Turkey, which now claims management of the Arab and Sunni Muslim worlds; and Shi’ite Iran, which gives a extra severe instance of either hatred and disrespect for truth and heritage whereas threatening to damage Israel.

Israeli records the global collaboration among Jew-haters of every type, explaining the exponential development of Jew-hatred on the net, with hundreds of thousands of latest hate websites further each year, outpacing Jew-hatred within the conventional media. He locations anti-Semitism in a broader culture of political lies and political deceit. within the ultimate bankruptcy, Israeli considers the potential of reversing anti-Jewish agitation in Muslim nations, which he unearths not likely simply because such a lot of of the region’s regimes are outfitted on foundations of anti-Semitism.

By Amos Oz, Fania Oz-Salzberger

«Los judíos y las palabras es apasionante y divertido y desafía clichés y estereotipos en cada una de sus páginas. Su tono es en parte serio y en parte jocoso, mezclando un gran dominio del tema con un toque casual. Promete ser muy controvertido y ampliamente leído.» Mario Vargas Llosa ¿Por qué las palabras son tan importantes para los judíos? El novelista Amos ounces y los angeles historiadora Fania Oz-Salzberger engranan hábilmente personalidades de todos los tiempos, desde el autor anónimo y probablemente femenino del Cantar de los Cantares hasta los oscuros talmudistas o los escritores contemporáneos, para explicar los angeles relación esencial que existe entre los judíos y las palabras. Mezclando l. a. narración y los angeles exertions de investigación, l. a. conversación y l. a. argumentación, padre e hija cuentan las historias que se ocultan tras los nombres, adagios, disputas, textos y chistes más perdurables del judaísmo. Ambos argumentan que estas palabras componen los angeles cadena que conecta a Abraham con los judíos de todas las generaciones posteriores. Con una prosa llena de conocimiento, de lírica y de sentido del humor, Los judíos y las palabras propone una visita extraordinaria a las palabras que conforman el corazón de los angeles cultura judía y tiende una mano al lector para que se una a los angeles conversación.

By Yaacob Dweck

The Scandal of Kabbalah is the 1st booklet concerning the origins of a tradition battle that all started in early smooth Europe and maintains to today: the talk among kabbalists and their critics at the nature of Judaism and the that means of spiritual culture. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric kind of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah unfold during the early glossy global and have become a valuable characteristic of Jewish existence. students have lengthy studied the progressive impression of Kabbalah, yet, as Yaacob Dweck argues, they've got misunderstood the nature and timing of competition to it.

Drawing on quite a number formerly unexamined assets, this publication tells the tale of the 1st feedback of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by way of Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. during this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an genuine type of old esotericism, Modena proved the hot origins of Kabbalah and sought to persuade his readers to come to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides.

The Scandal of Kabbalah examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed through Modena's attack--a severe research of sacred texts, skepticism approximately non secular truths, and self-consciousness concerning the past--and exhibits how those characteristics and the later heritage of his polemic problem traditional understandings of the connection among Kabbalah and modernity. Dweck argues that Kabbalah used to be the topic of severe inquiry within the very interval it got here to dominate Jewish lifestyles instead of centuries later as so much students have thought.

Antisemitism: A History deals a readable evaluation of a frightening subject, describing and interpreting the hatred that Jews have confronted from precedent days to the current. The essays contained during this quantity supply an amazing creation to the historical past and nature of antisemitism, stressing clarity, stability, and thematic coherence, whereas attempting to achieve a ways from the polemics and apologetics that so frequently cloud the topic. Chapters were written by means of major students within the box and consider crucial new advancements of their parts of workmanship. jointly, the chapters hide the total background of antisemitism, from the traditional Mediterranean and the pre-Christian period, throughout the Medieval and Early glossy classes, to the Enlightenment and past. The later chapters specialise in the historical past of antisemitism via zone, taking a look at France, the English-speaking international, Russia and the Soviet Union, jap Europe, and Nazi Germany, with contributions too at the phenomenon within the Arab international, either earlier than and after the root of Israel.

Contributors grapple with the use and abuse of the time period 'antisemitism', which used to be first coined within the mid-nineteenth century yet which has for the reason that amassed more than a few imprecise connotations and confusingly varied definitions, usually utilized retrospectively to traditionally far away sessions and greatly distinct phenomena. in fact, as this ebook indicates, hostility to Jews dates to biblical sessions, however the nature of that hostility and the various reasons to which it's been positioned have diversified through the years and infrequently been combined with admiration - a scenario which maintains within the twenty-first century.

By David J. Goldberg

'This handsomely produced and curiously illustrated quantity is 2 works in a single. the 1st half deals a survey of Jewish historical past and literature. the second one half provides what the preface describes as 'a thematic research of the lessons and practices of Judaism.'' Israel Finestein, Jewish Chronicle

'Fluently written, with an admirable fair-mindedness in surveying either heritage and belief.' A.J. Shermann, Times Literary Supplement

'The clever non-expert will get a transparent photo of Jewish lifestyles, letters and background and it'll be an ceaselessly valuable reference book.' Julia Neuberger, Times academic Supplement

'A wide-ranging account of items Jewish that you'll really suggest to intellectually curious Gentiles, in addition to to nearly all of glossy secularized Jews who comprehend really little approximately their advanced tradition.' Louis Marcus, Irish instances

By Peter Eli Gordon

By Ted Merwin