Dissident Rabbi

Dissident Rabbi

Author: Yaacob Dweck

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-08-06

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0691183570

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In 1665, as Jews abandoned reason for the ecstasy of enthusiasm for self-proclaimed Messiah Sabbetai Zevi, Jacob Sasportas watched in horror. Dweck tells the story of the Sephardic rabbi who challenged Sabbetai Zevi's improbable claims and warned his fellow Jews that their Messiah was not the answer to their prayers..


The Eternal Dissident

The Eternal Dissident

Author: David N. Myers

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2018-05-11

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0520969790

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Eternal Dissident offers rare insight into one of the most inspiring and controversial Reform rabbis of the twentieth century, Leonard Beerman, who was renowned both for his eloquent and challenging sermons and for his unrelenting commitment to social action. Beerman was a man of powerful word and action—a probing intellectual and stirring orator, as well as a nationally known opponent of McCarthyism, racial injustice, and Israeli policy in the occupied territories. The shared source of Beerman’s thought and activism was the moral imperative of the Hebrew prophets, which he believed bestowed upon the Jewish people their role as the “eternal dissident.” This volume brings Beerman to life through a selection of his most powerful writings, followed by commentaries from notable scholars, rabbis, and public personalities that speak to the quality and ongoing relevance of Beerman’s work.


Prophets Outcast

Prophets Outcast

Author: Adam Shatz

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9781560255093

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Includes writings by Isaac Deutscher, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Leon Trotsky, I. F. Stone, Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, and others.


The Pursuit of Heresy

The Pursuit of Heresy

Author: Elisheva Carlebach

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780231071918

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Rabbi Moses Hagiz, one of the most prominent and influential Jewish leaders of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, devoted his career to restoring rabbinic authority. His most prominent talent was as a polemicist, and he campaigned ceaselessly against Jewish heresy in an attempt to unify the rabbinate. During Hagiz's lifetime there was an overall decline in rabbinic authority, which the author argues was the result of migration and assimilation.


Jews Against Zionism

Jews Against Zionism

Author: Thomas Kolsky

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2010-05-03

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1439903751

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The first full-scale history of the only organized American Jewish opposition to Zionism during the 1940s.


Rabbi Outcast

Rabbi Outcast

Author: Jack Ross

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1597978299

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A pivotal figure in American anti-Zionism.


The Dissident

The Dissident

Author: Paul Goldberg

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2023-06-06

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 1250208564

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“A feast for serious fiction readers.” —Wendy Smith, The Washington Post “A dead-serious, dead-funny, no-he-didn't marvel.” —Joshua Cohen, author of The Netanyahus A thrilling, witty, and slyly original Cold War mystery about a ragtag group of Jewish refuseniks in Moscow. On his wedding day in 1976, Viktor Moroz stumbles upon a murder scene: two gay men, one of them a U.S. official, have been axed to death in Moscow. Viktor, a Jewish refusenik, is stuck in the Soviet Union because the government has denied his application to leave for Israel; he sits “in refusal” alongside his wife and their group of intellectuals, Jewish and not. But the KGB spots Viktor leaving the murder scene. Plucked off the street, he’s given a choice: find the murderer or become the suspect of convenience. His deadline is nine days later, when Henry Kissinger will be arriving in Moscow. Unsolved ax murders, it seems, aren’t good for politics. A whip-smart, often hilarious Cold War thriller, Paul Goldberg’s The Dissident explores what it means to survive in the face of impossible choices and monumental consequences. To help solve the case, Viktor ropes in his community, which includes his banned-text-distributing wife, a hard-drinking sculptor, a Russian priest of Jewish heritage, and a visiting American intent on reliving World War II heroics. As Viktor struggles to determine whom to trust, he’s forced to question not only the KGB’s murky motives but also those of his fellow refuseniks—and the man he admires above all: Kissinger himself. Immersive, unpredictable, and always ax-sharp, The Dissident is Cold War intrigue at its most inventive. It is an uncompromising look at sacrifice, community, and the scars of history and identity, from an expert storyteller.


WorldPerfect

WorldPerfect

Author: Ken Spiro

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-08-30

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0757324061

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In pursuit of an answer to the question of what would constitute a perfect world, author Ken Spiro questioned more than 1,500 people of various backgrounds and religions. His findings revealed six core elements: Respect for human life; peace and harmony; justice and equality; education; family; and social responsibility. He then set off on a journey to find out why these were such common goals across cultural, economic, social and racial lines, and in the process, traced the history of the development of world religions, values and ethics. As a rabbi, he paid particular attention to how Judaism impacted, and was influenced by, the course of these developments. The result is a highly readable and well-documented book about the origins of values and virtues in Western civilization as influenced by the Greeks, Romans, Christians, Muslims and, most significantly, the Jews. The history of religion, presented in Spiro’s highly readable style, is a fascinating and timely subject, especially in today’s volatile religious climate. Spiro divides his book into five engaging parts: Where the Quality of Mercy Was Not Strained: The World of Greece and Rome Against the Grain: The Jewish View A Father to Many Nations: Abraham and the Implications of Monotheism With Sword and Fire: The Rise of Christianity and Islam The New Promised Land: Impact of Judaism on Liberal Democracies Readers of all faiths will find that the elements of a perfect world can only be achieved by a common understanding of our mutual backgrounds and that our diverse religions are all merely branches growing from one single tree.


An Army Like No Other

An Army Like No Other

Author: Haim Bresheeth-Zabner

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1788737849

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A history of the IDF that argues that Israel is a nation formed by its army. The Israeli army, officially named the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was established in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, who believed that 'the whole nation is the army'. In his mind, the IDF was to be an army like no other. It was the instrument that might transform a diverse population into a new people. Since the foundation of Israel, therefore, the IDF has been the largest, richest and most influential institution in Israel's Jewish society and is the nursery of its social, economic and political ruling class. In this fascinating history, Bresheeth charts the evolution of the IDF from the Nakba to the continued assaults upon Gaza, and shows that the state of Israel has been formed out of its wars. He also gives an account of his own experiences as a young conscript during the 1967 war. He argues that the army is embedded in all aspects of daily life and identity. And that we should not merely see it as a fighting force enjoying an international reputation, but as the central ideological, political and financial institution of Israeli society. As a consequence, we have to reconsider our assumptions on what any kind of peace might look like.


Turn It Again

Turn It Again

Author: Sheila Delany

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2007-05-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1725219832

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Originally published as a special issue of Exemplaria, these essays deserve a much wider audience. They deal with Jewish studies and the medieval historian, rabbinic ecclesiology and the synods of Nicaea and Yavneh, Jewish women martyrs, sexual politics and marriage, late-medieval Castile, nation and miscegenation, cultural hybridity, and Kabbalistic anthropology. The authors are widely published scholars and critics in various fields of Jewish studies. The volume will be valuable to many scholars, teachers, and students. The essays open up so many interesting avenues of inquiry that they will enlighten and challenge not only specialists in Jewish studies but also scholars, critics, students, and teachers of medieval literature and Jewish literature, medieval history and culture, women's studies, and religious studies.