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 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.
Muck: A Novel
In this re-telling of the life of Jeremiah, the second major prophet in the Hebrew Bible, Dror Burstein, an Israeli poet and novelist who teaches literature at Tel Aviv and Hebrew universities, interweaves all aspects of the modern world, including cell phones, fax machines, computers, and high-speed transit with the ancient Jerusalem in which the First Temple dominates the horizon. T
Mavericks, Mystics & False Messiahs: Episodes from the Margins of Jewish History
In Mavericks, Mystics & False Messiahs: Episodes from the Margins of Jewish History, Pini Dunner provides a series of bizarre stories describing how some Jews crashed through conventional guardrails of staid Jewish tradition and sped forward onto aberrant lanes of false messiahs, forgers of Passover Haggadot, rabbis searching for subversive religious meanings of Hebrew amulets, and an 18th-century British lord who converted to Judaism.
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?
On the Other Hand: Ten Minutes of Torah: Naso
Do we do things because they bring us meaning, or do things have meaning because we do them? Can your morning yoga class or walk through the park serve as a source of spiritual inspiration?