"Remember Amalek!"

Author: Louis H. Feldman

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780878204557

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The divine commandment to exterminate all the Amalekites - men, women, children, and even animals who have no free will - is in contemporary terms no less than genocide. Louis Feldman helps us to understand how three ancient Jewish commentators on the Bible - Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus - wrestled with the issues involved in this divine command, especially its provisions that an entire people must be punished for all time for the misdeeds of their ancestors. Feldman broadens the issue by examining several biblical parallels where God commands the destruction of whole groups of people - namely, in the Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the plague of the first-born Egyptians, and the seven Canaanite nations. In addition, he examines several instances of mass destruction of entire groups of people where there was no specific divine commandment - the annihilation of the nations of Sihon and Og, the complete destruction of the inhabitants of Jericho, and the extermination of the priests of Nob. Phineas for his zealotry in bypassing the law when he put to death a Jew and a non-Jew for their immorality. All of these biblical passages raise difficult questions, to which, Feldman demonstrates, there are no simple answers.

The Jewish Way
The Jewish Way

Author: Irving Greenberg

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-03-01

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 1451644272

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Called “enriching” and “profoundly moving” by Elie Wiesel, The Jewish Way is a comprehensive and inspiring presentation of Judaism as revealed through its holy days. In thoughtful and engaging prose, Rabbi Irving Greenberg explains and interprets the origin, background, interconnections, ceremonial rituals, and religious significance of all the Jewish holidays, including Passover, Yom Kippur, Purim, Hanukkah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Israeli Independence Day. Giving detailed instructions for observance—the rituals, prayers, foods, and songs—he shows how celebrating the holy days of the Jewish calendar not only relives Jewish history but puts one in touch with the basic ideals of Judaism and the fundamental experience of life. Insightful, original, and engrossing, The Jewish Way is an essential volume that should be in every Jewish home, library, and synagogue.

Did God Really Command Genocide?
Did God Really Command Genocide?

Author: Paul Copan

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2014-11-11

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1441221093

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A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. Even Christians have a hard time stomaching such a thought, and many avoid reading those difficult Old Testament passages that make us squeamish. Instead, we quickly jump to the enemy-loving, forgiving Jesus of the New Testament. And yet, the question doesn't go away. Did God really command genocide? Is the command to "utterly destroy" morally unjustifiable? Is it literal? Are the issues more complex and nuanced than we realize? In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages. Pastors, youth pastors, campus ministers, apologetics readers, and laypeople will find that this book both enlightens and equips them for serious discussion of troubling spiritual questions.

War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition
War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition

Author: Lawrence H. Schiffman

Publisher: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 9780881259452

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"With focus centered on the United States' involvement in Iraq and Israel's ongoing war with terrorism, the sixteenth annual meeting of the Orthodox Forum in March 2004 took up the question of War, Peace, and the Jewish Tradition, the papers of which are published here."--BOOK JACKET.

Letters to Josep
Letters to Josep

Author: Levy Daniella

Publisher:

Published: 2016-03-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789659254002

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This book is a collection of letters from a religious Jew in Israel to a Christian friend in Barcelona on life as an Orthodox Jew. Equal parts lighthearted and insightful, it's a thorough and entertaining introduction to the basic concepts of Judaism.

Daily Wisdom Vol. 2 - Standard Size 51⁄2 X 81⁄2
Daily Wisdom Vol. 2 - Standard Size 51⁄2 X 81⁄2

Author: Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Publisher:

Published: 2018-12-10

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 9780826608949

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The Lubavitcher Rebbe's mystical teachings on the weekly Torah portions are widely studied by students and admirers around the world. The Rebbe saw the weekly Torah portion as an inexhaustible source of new ideas, insight into current issues, and profound relevance for daily life. He urged his followers, as well as everyone who came into contact with him, to seek daily inspiration from studying the Torah.This second volume of DAILY WISDOM, in the tradition of the highly acclaimed first volume of DAILY WISDOM, presents these daily inspirations in a clear, user-friendly format. Like its predecessor, this volume comprises 378 daily lessons, each of which offers a taste of the Rebbe's vast and deep teachings, filled with love for humanity, pragmatic optimism, and the conviction that evil and negativity will disappear when we learn to emphasize goodness and kindness. These ideas are woven together throughout the book, resulting in a precious daily resource that will enrich and elevate the lives of all readers.

The God I Don't Understand
The God I Don't Understand

Author: Christopher J. H. Wright

Publisher: Zondervan

Published: 2009-05-26

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0310574358

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Many Christians believe that they have to understand everything about their faith for that faith to be genuine. This isn't true. There are many things we don't understand about God, His Word, and His works. And this is actually one of the greatest things about the Christian faith: that there are areas of mystery that lie beyond the keenest scholarship or even the most profound spiritual exercises. Sadly, for many people these problems raise so many questions and uncertainties that faith itself becomes a struggle. But questions, and even doubts, are part of faith. Chris Wright encourages us to face the limitations of our understanding and to acknowledge the pain and grief they can often cause. In The God I Don't Understand, he focuses on four of the most mysterious subjects in the Bible and reflects upon why it's important to ask questions without having to provide the answer: The problem of evil and suffering. The genocide of the Canaanites. The cross and the crucifixion. The end of the world. "However strongly we believe in divine revelation, we must acknowledge both that God has not revealed everything and that much of what he has revealed is not plain. It is because Dr. Wright confronts biblical problems with a combination of honesty and humility that I warmly commend this book." —John Stott

Remembering the Future
Remembering the Future

Author: Emma O'Donnell

Publisher: Liturgical Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0814663176

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Common to both Judaism and Christianity is a heightened engagement with time within liturgical practice, in which collective religious memory and anticipation come together to create a unique sense of time. Exploring the nebulous realms of religious experience and the sense of time,Remembering the Future charts the ways that the experience of time is shaped by the traditions of Judaism and Christianity and experienced within their ritual practices. Through comparative explorations of traditional Jewish and Christian understandings of time, contemporary oral testimonies, and discussions of the work of select twentieth-century Jewish and Christian thinkers, this book maps the temporal landscapes of the religious imagination. Maintaining that the sense of time is integral to Jewish and Christian religious experience, Remembering the Futuremakes a notable contribution to interreligious studies and liturgical studies. It sheds light on essential aspects of religious experience and finds that the intimacy of the experience of time grants it the capacity to communicate across religious boundaries, subtly transgressing obstacles to interreligious understanding.

Traces of God
Traces of God

Author: Rabbi Neil Gillman, PhD

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2011-05-06

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1580235794

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A Probing and Powerful Look at the Role You Play in Shaping Your Relationship with God “No matter how hard we look, the God of Israel cannot be seen. Looking is not seeing, and seeing God is not like seeing an apple. It is much more like making a medical diagnosis on the basis of looking at a complex set of symptoms. Each of the symptoms is a dot. We can look at the dots and still miss the pattern.” —from Part I The Torah is replete with references to hearing God but precious few references to seeing God. Seeing is complicated. What we look for and see are traces of God’s presence in the world and in history, but not God. In order to identify those traces as reflections of divine presence, we need to re-examine how we see, what we see, and how we interpret that information. In this challenging and inspiring look at the dynamics of the religious experience, award-winning author and theologian Neil Gillman guides you into a new way of seeing the complex patterns in the Bible, history, and everyday experiences and helps you interpret what those patterns mean to you and your relationship with God. Examining faith and doubt, revelation and law, suffering and redemption, Gillman candidly deconstructs familiar biblical moments in order to help you develop and refine your own spiritual vision, so that you are able to discern the presence of God in unanticipated ways.

A Primer for Forgetting
A Primer for Forgetting

Author: Lewis Hyde

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2019-06-18

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0374710147

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“One of our true superstars of nonfiction” (David Foster Wallace), Lewis Hyde offers a playful and inspiring defense of forgetfulness by exploring the healing effect it can have on the human psyche. We live in a culture that prizes memory—how much we can store, the quality of what’s preserved, how we might better document and retain the moments of our life while fighting off the nightmare of losing all that we have experienced. But what if forgetfulness were seen not as something to fear—be it in the form of illness or simple absentmindedness—but rather as a blessing, a balm, a path to peace and rebirth? A Primer for Forgetting is a remarkable experiment in scholarship, autobiography, and social criticism by the author of the classics The Gift and Trickster Makes This World. It forges a new vision of forgetfulness by assembling fragments of art and writing from the ancient world to the modern, weighing the potential boons forgetfulness might offer the present moment as a creative and political force. It also turns inward, using the author’s own life and memory as a canvas upon which to extol the virtues of a concept too long taken as an evil. Drawing material from Hesiod to Jorge Luis Borges to Elizabeth Bishop to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from myths and legends to very real and recent traumas both personal and historical, A Primer for Forgetting is a unique and remarkable synthesis that only Lewis Hyde could have produced.