Building A Jewish Framework To Live By
These essays are written by strong women who are strong thinkers, well-versed in articulating Jewish teachings and values. Judaism provides the foundation and the framework of their lives. For this writing endeavor, each woman looked at her life experience through her “Jewish lens,” and chose a single snapshot to share.
After One-Hundred-and-Twenty: Reflecting on Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in the Jewish Tradition
I know I’m not alone in wrestling with my own mortality. I was asked these questions many times during my rabbinic career as people aged and as loved ones died – but never did I think they related to me personally. Now I find myself looking for answers to these questions, and I’ve found answers in Hillel Halkin’s After One-Hundred-and-Twenty: Reflecting on Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in the Jewish Tradition.
The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate
At almost 750 pages long, it’s is a very big book, one that contains 66 essays and personal reflections. The length isn’t a surprise, actually, when you realize that the scope of the book spans four decades of women in the rabbinate: 40 years, the amount of time it took our Israelite ancestors to reach the Promised Land.
Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a lively look at the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, co-authors Shana Knizhnik, a law student, and Irin Carmon, a reporter for MSNBC, mix chatty stories, photographs, charts, letters, and cartoons with legal decisions to illustrate the illustrious career of the first Jewish woman Supreme Court justice.
The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel
In the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which Israel came close to losing, a traumatized Israeli public demanded to know how Israel’s Mossad failed to detect that war was imminent, given a massive buildup of Egyptian forces along the Suez Canal and Syrian troops on the Golan Heights.
The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower
From drones to satellites, missile defense systems to cyber warfare, Israel leads the world in the development of high-tech weaponry, a legacy born of necessity. Since 1948, this country of eight million people has had to learn to adapt to changes in warfare and, in the process, has become a military superpower in innovation and efficiency.
The Mandela Plot
Adolescence, otherness, and Apartheid make a literally explosive cocktail in National Jewish Book Award winner Kenneth Bonert’s new novel, The Mandela Plot. Half hyperbolic adventure and half historical fiction, Bonert elevates his unlikely hero, Martin Helger, to almost mythic status, while reminding readers both of South Africa’s Jewish diaspora and the horrors of Apartheid.
Stories We Tell: The Wooden Sword
On the Other Hand: Ten Minutes of Torah: B’chukotai: Do We Believe that Good Behavior Brings Rewards, and Bad Behavior Punishment?
Does being a person of faith mean you believe in blessings and curses? Why should we always "do the right thing?" Are we rewarded or punished for what we do in the world?
On the Other Hand: Ten Minutes of Torah: B'midbar: Uniting as One, Despite Our Differences
Like our ancestors, we focus on our own modern day tribes: The tribes of the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, and secular. Amidst our real differences, can we sew ourselves together into a larger identity of being Am Yisrael – one people?