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Coventry: essays /
By Rachel Cusk. 2019
The author's first collection of essays about motherhood, marriage, feminism, and art both offers new insights on the themes at…
the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions. 2019.Before I was a critic I was a human being / (Essais series #no. 7)
By Amy Fung. 2019
Fung takes a closer examination at Canada's mythologies of multiculturalism, settler colonialism, and identity through the lens of a national…
art critic. Following the tangents of a foreign-born perspective and the complexities and complicities in participating in ongoing acts of colonial violence, the book as a whole takes the form of a very long land acknowledgement. Taken individually, each piece roots itself in the learning and unlearning process of a first generation settler immigrant as she unfurls each region's sense of place and identity. 2019.Who By Fire: War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leonard Cohen
By Matti Friedman. 2022
The incredible never-before-told story of Leonard Cohen's 1973 tour of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. "Who by Fire is…
a stunning resurrection of a moment in the life of Leonard Cohen and the history of Israel. It’s the story of a young artist in crisis and a young country at war, and the powerful resonance of the chord struck between them. A beautiful, haunting book full of feeling." —Nicole Krauss, author of To Be a Man In October, 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen – 39 years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end – traveled to the Sinai desert and inserted himself into the chaos and bloodshed of the Yom Kippur War. Moving around the front with a guitar and a pick-up team of local musicians, Cohen dived headlong into the midst of a global crisis and met hundreds of fighting men and women at the worst moment of their lives. His audiences heard him knowing it might be the last thing they heard, and those who survived never forgot what they heard. Cohen’s war tour was an electric cultural moment, one that still echoes today, and one that inspired some of his greatest songs – but a moment that only few knew about, until now. In Who By Fire, Canadian-Israeli journalist Matti Friedman gives us a riveting account of what happened during those weeks in Israel in October, 1973. With access to amazing and never-before-seen material written by Cohen himself, along with dozens of interviews and rare photographs, Friedman revives this fraught and stunning time, presenting an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the artist, and of the young people who heard him sing in the midst of combat. Who By Fire brings us close to one the greatest, most brilliant and charismatic voices of our times, and gives us a rare glimpse of war, faith, and belonging.Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada
By Michelle Good. 2023
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLERA bold, provocative collection of essays exploring the historical and contemporary Indigenous experience in Canada.With authority and insight,…
Truth Telling examines a wide range of Indigenous issues framed by Michelle Good’s personal experience and knowledge.From racism, broken treaties, and cultural pillaging, to the value of Indigenous lives and the importance of Indigenous literature, this collection reveals facts about Indigenous life in Canada that are both devastating and enlightening. Truth Telling also demonstrates the myths underlying Canadian history and the human cost of colonialism, showing how it continues to underpin modern social institutions in Canada.Passionate and uncompromising, Michelle Good affirms that meaningful and substantive reconciliation hinges on recognition of Indigenous self-determination, the return of lands, and a just redistribution of the wealth that has been taken from those lands without regard for Indigenous peoples.Truth Telling is essential reading for those looking to acknowledge the past and understand the way forward.Ordinary Wonder Tales
By Emily Urquhart. 2022
A journalist and folklorist explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagine—and reveals the magic in the everyday. “I’ve…
always felt that the term fairy tale doesn’t quite capture the essence of these stories,” writes Emily Urquhart. “I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories.” In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter storm—or the onset of a loved one’s dementia. In essays on death and dying, pregnancy and prenatal genetics, radioactivity, chimeras, cottagers, and plague, Ordinary Wonder Tales reveals the essential truth: if you let yourself look closely, there is magic in the everyday.Nineteenth-Century Jewish Literature: A Reader
By Jonathan M Hess, Maurice Samuels, Nadia Valman. 2013
Recent scholarship has brought to light the existence of a dynamic world of specifically Jewish forms of literature in the…
nineteenth century—fiction by Jews, about Jews, and often designed largely for Jews. This volume makes this material accessible to English speakers for the first time, offering a selection of Jewish fiction from France, Great Britain, and the German-speaking world. The stories are remarkably varied, ranging from historical fiction to sentimental romance, to social satire, but they all engage with key dilemmas including assimilation, national allegiance, and the position of women. Offering unique insights into the hopes and fears of Jews experiencing the dramatic impact of modernity, the literature collected in this book will provide compelling reading for all those interested in modern Jewish history and culture, whether general readers, students, or scholars.American Post-Judaism, Revised Edition
By Shaul Magid. 2013
How do American Jews identify as both Jewish and American? American Post-Judaism argues that Zionism and the Holocaust, two anchors…
of contempoary American Jewish identity, will no longer be centers of identity formation for future generations of American Jews. Shaul Magid articulates a new, post-ethnic American Jewishness. He discusses pragmatism and spirituality, monotheism and post-monotheism, Jesus, Jewish law, sainthood and self-realization, and the meaning of the Holocaust for those who have never known survivors. Magid presents Jewish Renewal as a movement that takes this radical cultural transition seriously in its strivings for a new era in Jewish thought and practice.Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud
By Michal Bar-Asher Siegal. 2013
This book examines literary analogies in Christian and Jewish sources, culminating in an in-depth analysis of striking parallels and connections…
between Christian monastic texts (the Apophthegmata Patrum or 'The Sayings of the Desert Fathers') and Babylonian Talmudic traditions. The importance of the monastic movement in the Persian Empire, during the time of the composition and redaction of the Babylonian Talmud, fostered a literary connection between the two religious populations. The shared literary elements in the literatures of these two elite religious communities sheds new light on the surprisingly inclusive nature of the Talmudic corpora and on the non-polemical nature of elite Jewish-Christian literary relations in late antique Persia.Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam
By Rita Copeland, Jon Whitman, Cohen, Mordechai Z. and Bar-Asher, Meir M. and Copeland, Rita and Berlin, Adele Whitman, Jon, Mordechai Z. Cohen, Adele Berlin, Bar-Asher, Meir M.. 2016
This comparative study traces Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural interpretation from antiquity to modernity, with special emphasis on the pivotal…
medieval period. It focuses on three areas: responses in the different faith traditions to tensions created by the need to transplant scriptures into new cultural and linguistic contexts; changing conceptions of the literal sense and its importance vis-à-vis non-literal senses, such as the figurative, spiritual, and midrashic; and ways in which classical rhetoric and poetics informed - or were resisted in - interpretation. Concentrating on points of intersection, the authors bring to light previously hidden aspects of methods and approaches in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This volume opens new avenues for interdisciplinary analysis and will benefit scholars and students of biblical studies, religious studies, medieval studies, Islamic studies, Jewish studies, comparative religions, and theory of interpretation.Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism
By Danya Ruttenberg. 2001
A diverse group of young women--from witches to rabbis--explore the new Judaism. Contributors ponder Jewish transgenderdom, Jewish body image, Jewish…
punk, the stereotype of the Jewish American Princess, intermarriage, circumcision, faith, and intolerance.What Is a Jew?
By Morris N. Kertzer, Lawrence A. Hoffman. 1993
This work is geared towards those with little to no background in Judaism. It covers many topics and is written…
largely from a Reform perspective, though it does give some information about the beliefs of those who are more observant. Definitely a good place to begin.Utopia's Debris: Selected Essays
By Gary Indiana. 2008
Gary Indiana is one of America's leading cultural critics-a public intellectual who has written key essays on every aspect of…
American culture. Utopia's Debris comprises selections of his very best work, revealing him to be an enormously acute, frequently scabrous, and always brilliant observer of the best and worst America has to offer.His writings range from popular culture-trash novels, architectural wonders and horrors-to appreciations of the best of modern literature, art, and cinema. They include his convincing (and highly entertaining) debunking of fashionable conspiracy theories, a spirited and contrarian defense of Bill Clinton's autobiography, a Mencken-like examination of the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the politics of celebrity in what Indiana calls the Age of Contempt.A postmodern Emerson, Indiana wields scalpel-sharp wit and a fealty to logic on issues in which, all too often, irrationalism and emotionalism hold sway. At times rigorously serious, at other times whimsical, Indiana's most conspicuous feature is skepticism-his wildly satirical contempt for conventional wisdom.What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery
By Francis Crick. 1988
Near-Death Experiences . . . and Others: And Others
By Robert Gottlieb. 2018
A new collection of immersive essays from the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth centuryThis new…
collection from the legendary editor Robert Gottlieb features twenty or so pieces he’s written mostly for The New York Review of Books, ranging from reconsiderations of American writers such as Dorothy Parker, Thornton Wilder, Thomas Wolfe (“genius”), and James Jones, to Leonard Bernstein, Lorenz Hart, Lady Diana Cooper (“the most beautiful girl in the world”), the actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth, the scandalous movie star Mary Astor, and not-yet president Donald Trump. The writings compiled here are as various as they are provocative: an extended probe into the world of post-death experiences; a sharp look at the biopics of transcendent figures such as Shakespeare, Molière, and Austen; a soap opera-ish movie account of an alleged affair between Chanel and Stravinsky; and a copious sampling of the dance reviews he’s been writing for The New York Observer for close to twenty years. A worthy successor to his expansive 2011 collection, Lives and Letters, and his admired 2016 memoir, Avid Reader, Near-Death Experiences displays the same insight and intellectual curiosity that have made Gottlieb, in the words of The New York Times’s Dwight Garner, “the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth century.”The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in the United States, Israel, and Germany
By Zvi Gitelman, Mikhail Krutikov, Stephanie Sandler, Anna Shternshis, Sveta Roberman, Uzi Rebhun, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Adrian Wanner, Nelly Elias, Steven J. Gold, Mark Tolts, Hannah Pollin-Galay, Julia Lerner, Marina Sapritsky, Elena Nosenko-Shtein, Olena Bagno-Moldavski, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Gur Ofer, Yaacov Ro'I. 2016
In 1900 over five million Jews lived in the Russian empire; today, there are four times as many Russian-speaking Jews…
residing outside the former Soviet Union than there are in that region. The New Jewish Diaspora is the first English-language study of the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora. This migration has made deep marks on the social, cultural, and political terrain of many countries, in particular the United States, Israel, and Germany. The contributors examine the varied ways these immigrants have adapted to new environments, while identifying the common cultural bonds that continue to unite them. Assembling an international array of experts on the Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish diaspora, the book makes room for a wide range of scholarly approaches, allowing readers to appreciate the significance of this migration from many different angles. Some chapters offer data-driven analyses that seek to quantify the impact Russian-speaking Jewish populations are making in their adoptive countries and their adaptations there. Others take a more ethnographic approach, using interviews and observations to determine how these immigrants integrate their old traditions and affiliations into their new identities. Further chapters examine how, despite the oceans separating them, members of this diaspora form imagined communities within cyberspace and through literature, enabling them to keep their shared culture alive. Above all, the scholars in The New Jewish Diaspora place the migration of Russian-speaking Jews in its historical and social contexts, showing where it fits within the larger historic saga of the Jewish diaspora, exploring its dynamic engagement with the contemporary world, and pointing to future paths these immigrants and their descendants might follow.Civilizations of the Holy Land
By Paul Johnson. 1979
From the book s introduction civilizations of the holy land is an expression not easily…
defined in either space or time By the Holy Land most of us mean the stretch of Near-Eastern territory the nucleus of which is modern Palestine or Israel intimately associated with the great Religions of the Book Judaism Christianity and Islam Many of the events crucial to the origin and early development of these three faiths took place outside this geographical nucleus but cannot for that reason be ignored in this account Equally not all the cultures which have flourished in this region have been directly linked to the beliefs which to us make it holy but they are part of its history nonetheless and must be brought into the story The truth is that the history of this corner of the world is extremely complicated and does not easily accommodate itself to the straitjacket of a strictly systematic treatment In telling it we shall sometimes find ourselves digressing both in chronology and geography before resuming the main thread of our narrative In short we shall be closer to the methods of Herodotus than those of Thucydides - with a dash of Pausanias and Strabo thrown in No matter what the tale loses in clarity it may gain in colour History buffs and students of the Bible and Koran would find this book fascinating The understanding of either book will be enhanced by knowing the history and culture behind those books and the places of worship which they inspire From Canaaites to Crusaders Very readableBermuda Shorts
By James Patterson. 2010
In clothing, Bermuda Shorts are a kind of casual formal wear - and in this collection of essays, Bermuda Shorts…
is the perfect metaphor for James J. Patterson's fundamentally serious but playful literary style. Patterson writes like the love child of Henry Miller and Mary Karr, with all the contradictions that implies -- a philosopher who thinks best over a glass of fine wine; an ex-Catholic still haunted by the image of the Crucifixion; an irreverent political satirist whose patriotism flies the flag of another iconoclast, Thomas Paine. Patterson grew up with a foot planted in each of two worlds -- one in Washington DC, the Capital of the Empire as he calls it, where the wheels of power spin, and one in rural Ontario, where his Canadian mother insisted the family spend their summers. His father, one of the wizards of twentieth century newspaper publishing, introduced him to the city's wheels of money and power, which he would later navigate as an entrepreneur, starting his first business at 20. But those Canadian summers introduced him to a different world - one where a cedar strip boat was better than any car, and where the ghosts of those who'd previously inhabited the family's island house floated out over the water of Lovesick Lake. It is those two worlds that blend in this collection, in reflections both serious and playful, on what it means to be a man, an artist, an iconoclast, a patriot, a lover, as the 20th century rolls over into the 21st.Seek!: Selected Nonfiction
By Rudy Rucker. 1999
The essays and memoirs collected in Seek! trace Rudy Rucker's trajectory through the final decade of the second millennium. His…
topics include artificial life, chaos, the big bang, Pieter Brueghel, the church of the subgenius, live sex, mathematics, science fiction, and TV evangelism. A computer scientist and programmer, Rucker is an articulate, engaging guide to the world on either side of the computer screen.Why We Remain Jews: The Path To Faith
By Vladimir Tsesis. 2013
Dr. Tsesis describes the path he traversed from religious ignorance to strong belief in the Jewish religion. Tsesis assigns a…
special place to the proof of his conclusion that religion and science--especially in light of recent discoveries--are not antagonists, and are, in fact, in complete harmony, supplementing and not excluding each other. In the spirit of ecumenism Tsesis speaks about coexistence of different religions, which share the common objective of assurance of perpetual survival of the human race. The unifying theme of this book, however, is the beauty of the Jewish religion and a possible answer to the question of why we remain Jews.Jurisprudence and Theology
By Joseph E. David. 2014
The book provides in depth studies of two epistemological aspects of Jewish Law (Halakhah) as the 'Word of God' -…
the question of legal reasoning and the problem of knowing and remembering. - How different are the epistemological concerns of religious-law in comparison to other legal systems? - In what ways are jurisprudential attitudes prescribed and dependent on theological presumptions? - What specifies legal reasoning and legal knowledge in a religious framework? The author outlines the rabbinic jurisprudential thought rooted in Talmudic literature which underwent systemization and enhancement by the Babylonian Geonim and the Andalusian Rabbis up until the twelfth century. The book develops a synoptic view on the growth of rabbinic legal thought against the background of Christian theological motifs on the one hand and Karaite and Islamic systemized jurisprudence on the other hand. It advances a perspective of legal-theology that combines analysis of jurisprudential reflections and theological views within a broad historical and intellectual framework. The book advocates two approaches to the study of the legal history of the Halakhah: comparative jurisprudence and legal-theology, based on the understanding that jurisprudence and theology are indispensable and inseparable pillars of legal praxis.