Sin.a.gogue


Book Description

This volume presents the concepts of sin and failure in Jewish thought, weaving together biblical and rabbinic studies to reveal a holistic portrait of the notion of sin and failure within Jewish thought.




Cinemagogue


Book Description

Understand the shared story in which we all play a part. Connect human creativity with the impulse of our Creator. Explore the relationship between images and imaging God. Do you like movies? Are you a cinephile? Do your friends consult YOU instead of IMDB? Were you raised on television? Spend hours talking cinema? This book is definitely for you. If you're a casual consumer who thinks Hollywood exists simply for diversion, this book may change your life. ""I am a Junior film and Television student... your interpretations of the films have helped formed the kind of filmmaker I am becoming, and also the way I experience films."" Humans crave narrative and usually don't stop to question why. Are we perhaps created to consume story, to create story, because we're image bearers of a Master Storyteller? In this book, movies meet God at the multiplex as the author challenges readers to redefine entertainment, understand the story they're in, and experience a new integrated level of spirituality and entertainment. ""You actually look at the film aspects and see how the artist's worldview really comes through."" What can we learn about God from Doctor Who and Han Solo? What are people like Jon Stewart and even Michael Bay helping us understand about story, good and bad? Peppered with movie quotes and metaphors, journey through the incredible changes film and storytelling have had on 21st century culture. Instead of an overly-academic offering on film and faith, Cinemagogue weaves a narrative from the author's own pop culture saturated life to the Greatest Story Ever Told, from Superman to Citizen Kane, Bertrand Russell to John Frame, Kurt Vonnegut to the apostle Paul, from our favorite narrative to our shared meganarrative. .".".I grew up on television in the 80s and relate to the context you grew up in.... I thank God for you and your ability to glorify him in everything, no matter what."" Classic notions of story structure, "monomyth" and universally shared themes in both popular and classic tales are examined in light of ancient scripture. From there, readers can see the genesis of creativity and worldview distortions from which conversation can bring us back to the future. After a dirty dozen examples of popular film in chapter five (with questions for discussion) the book tackles common objections with genre and content: horror movies, foul language, violence, sexuality, magic and more... and how many traditional objections are overshadowed by incredible opportunities for those brave enough to overcome fear and wade into the culture stream, secure in their faith. ""Your talk was one of the final confirmations of our move to Los Angeles to re-engage the film business by getting upstream in culture and trying to influence from the top down. Worked as an assistant on a TV series for a year, and now I'm working at a digital marketing agency that does a ton of film/TV work, as well as writing/producing my own projects."" The book ends with a call and commission to those who consider themselves spiritual and religious to get their heads out of the sand, to start realizing and utilizing the power of narrative. .".".really convicted me in both the movie and gaming arena to analyze what I am watching/playing and why. I had almost zero discernment before stumbling onto your series..."" A requested resource by movie-goers, movie-makers, pastors and teachers, Cinemagogue is an extension of a website and podcast, providing a "how-to" for those who want to experience the transforming power inherent in all story. ""Listening to your podcasts... opened my eyes to examine what I watch even closer."" Take your entertainment seriously while simultaneously having more fun with it than ever before. Learn how to watch to glorify, to be edified, and possibly to evangelize. Even better, create to




Concealment and Revelation


Book Description

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great new trends of Jewish thought emerged whose widely varied representatives--Kabbalists, philosophers, and astrologers--each claimed that their particular understanding revealed the actual secret of the Torah. They presented their own readings in a coded fashion that has come to be regarded by many as the very essence of esotericism. Concealment and Revelation takes us on a fascinating journey to the depths of the esoteric imagination. Carefully tracing the rise of esotericism and its function in medieval Jewish thought, Moshe Halbertal's richly detailed historical and cultural analysis gradually builds conceptual-philosophical force to culminate in a masterful phenomenological taxonomy of esotericism and its paradoxes. Among the questions addressed: What are the internal justifications that esoteric traditions provide for their own existence, especially in the Jewish world, in which the spread of knowledge was of great importance? How do esoteric teachings coexist with the revealed tradition, and what is the relationship between the various esoteric teachings that compete with that revealed tradition? Halbertal concludes that, through the medium of the concealed, Jewish thinkers integrated into the heart of the Jewish tradition diverse cultural influences such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticisims. And the creation of an added concealed layer, unregulated and open-ended, became the source of the most daring and radical interpretations of the tradition.




The Land of Truth


Book Description

Making the rich narrative world of Talmud tales fully accessible to modern readers, renowned Talmud scholar Jeffrey L. Rubenstein turns his spotlight on both famous and little-known stories, analyzing the tales in their original contexts, exploring their cultural meanings and literary artistry, and illuminating their relevance. Delving into both rabbinic life (the academy, master-disciple relationships) and Jewish life under Roman and Persian rule (persecution, taxation, marketplaces), Rubenstein explains how storytellers used irony, wordplay, figurative language, and other art forms to communicate their intended messages. Each close reading demonstrates the story's continuing relevance through the generations into modernity. For example, the story "Showdown in Court," a confrontation between King Yannai and the Rabbinic judges, provides insights into controversial struggles in U.S. history to balance governmental power; the story of Honi's seventy-year sleep becomes a window into the indignities of aging. Through the prism of Talmud tales, Rubenstein also offers timeless insights into suffering, beauty, disgust, heroism, humor, love, sex, truth, and falsehood. By connecting twenty-first-century readers to past generations, The Land of Truth helps to bridge the divide between modern Jews and the traditional narrative worlds of their ancestors.




The Passport as Home


Book Description

This is the story of an illustrious Romanian-born, Hungarian-speaking, Vienna-schooled, Columbia-educated and Harvard-formed, middle-class Jewish professor of politics and other subjects. Markovits revels in a rootlessness that offers him comfort, succor, and the inspiration for his life’s work. As we follow his quest to find a home, we encounter his engagement with the important political, social, and cultural developments of five decades on two continents. We also learn about his musical preferences, from classical to rock; his love of team sports such as soccer, baseball, basketball, and American football; and his devotion to dogs and their rescue. Above all, the book analyzes the travails of emigration the author experienced twice, moving from Romania to Vienna and then from Vienna to New York. Markovits’s Candide-like travels through the ups and downs of post-1945 Europe and America offer a panoramic view of key currents that shaped the second half of the twentieth century. By shedding light on the cultural similarities and differences between both continents, the book shows why America fascinated Europeans like Markovits and offered them a home that Europe never did: academic excellence, intellectual openness, cultural diversity and religious tolerance. America for Markovits was indeed the “beacon on the hill,” despite the ugliness of its racism, the prominence of its everyday bigotry, the severity of its growing economic inequality, and the presence of other aspects that mar this worthy experiment’s daily existence.




On Sacrifice


Book Description

The idea and practice of sacrifice play a profound role in religion, ethics, and politics. In this brief book, philosopher Moshe Halbertal explores the meaning and implications of sacrifice, developing a theory of sacrifice as an offering and examining the relationship between sacrifice, ritual, violence, and love. On Sacrifice also looks at the place of self-sacrifice within ethical life and at the complex role of sacrifice as both a noble and destructive political ideal. In the religious domain, Halbertal argues, sacrifice is an offering, a gift given in the context of a hierarchical relationship. As such it is vulnerable to rejection, a trauma at the root of both ritual and violence. An offering is also an ambiguous gesture torn between a genuine expression of gratitude and love and an instrument of exchange, a tension that haunts the practice of sacrifice. In the moral and political domains, sacrifice is tied to the idea of self-transcendence, in which an individual sacrifices his or her self-interest for the sake of higher values and commitments. While self-sacrifice has great potential moral value, it can also be used to justify the most brutal acts. Halbertal attempts to unravel the relationship between self-sacrifice and violence, arguing that misguided self-sacrifice is far more problematic than exaggerated self-love. In his exploration of the positive and negative dimensions of self-sacrifice, Halbertal also addresses the role of past sacrifice in obligating future generations and in creating a bond for political associations, and considers the function of the modern state as a sacrificial community.




Fire in the Ashes


Book Description

Sixty years after it ended, the Holocaust continues to leave survivors and their descendants, as well as historians, philosophers, and theologians, pondering the enormity of that event. In this book, a group of Jewish and Christian scholars, members of he Pastora Goldner Symposium, attempt to understand divine justice in the face of evil.




Ten-day MBA, The, Rev.


Book Description

Steven Silbiger has distilled the material of the ten most popular business schools in order to teach readers the language of business. At the rate of one easy-to-understand chapter a day, this book will enable readers to absorb the material, speak the language, and, most importantly, acquire the confidence and expertise needed to get ahead in the competitive business world.




Defending the Human Spirit


Book Description

Expanded from the Chief Rabbi of South Africa's doctoral thesis, Defending the Human Spirit explores the Torah's legal system compared to Western law. Using real court cases to demonstrate the similarities and differences between Judaism's view of defending the vulnerable and Western legal practice, Rabbi Goldstein places halacha as truly ahead of its time. Covering such diverse topics as political tyranny, oppression of women, crime, and poverty, Defending the Human Spirit is fascinating, informative and inspiring reading.




The Passenger


Book Description

A BEST BOOK OF 2021 FOR THE GUARDIAN * FINANCIAL TIMES * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT * MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE * THE TIMES Hailed as a remarkable literary discovery, a lost novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity about flight and persecution in 1930s Germany Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had long patronized, and fearful of being exposed as a Jew despite his Aryan looks, he boards a train. And then another. And another . . . until his flight becomes a frantic odyssey across Germany, as he searches first for information, then for help, and finally for escape. His travels bring him face-to-face with waiters and conductors, officials and fellow outcasts, seductive women and vicious thieves, a few of whom disapprove of the regime while the rest embrace it wholeheartedly. Clinging to his existence as it was just days before, Silbermann refuses to believe what is happening even as he is beset by opportunists, betrayed by associates, and bereft of family, friends, and fortune. As his world collapses around him, he is forced to concede that his nightmare is all too real. Twenty-three-year-old Ulrich Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938, fresh in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, and his prose flies at the same pace. Taut, immediate, infused with acerbic Kafkaesque humor, The Passenger is an indelible portrait of a man and a society careening out of control.