Download or read book Judaism Does Not Equal Israel Easyread Large Edition written by Marc H. Ellis and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2009-12 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 2008, Israel's attack on Gaza provoked international condemnation. The killing of civilians anguished even many supporters of Israel, who found it morally indefensible. In this poignant, powerful volume, the influential Jewish thinker and critic Marc H. Ellis takes on the hard moral questions about Jewish support for the state of Israel. Reviewing the historical record of the past fifty years and envisioning the prospects for a just and lasting peace, Ellis makes an unyielding case based on central prophetic Jewish values that the present policies of the Israeli state cannot reasonably be defended. Ellis examines how Holocaust theology replaced God with Israel and gutted the prophetic moral core of Judaism as a religion. The future not only of Judaism but of Israel itself, he argues, hinges on a fundamental shift in Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and on a completely new direction in the peace process. At a time when critics of Israel are silenced with the charge of anti-Semitism, Ellis offers a prophetic Jewish alternative to the blind acceptance of Israeli policies, demonstrating ''great courage, integrity, and insight,'' according to Noam Chomsky. Sure to be the subject of fervent debate, Judaism Does Not Equal Israel marks a major effort by a leading American Jewish thinker to make the case that questioning current Israeli policies is fully consonant with being a faithful Jew. In his Jewish liberation theology, Ellis offers a way to assure the global survival of Judaism by moving beyond the stalemate of a two-state solution.
Download or read book This is Not the Way written by David Goldberg and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few subjects invoke such passion as the history and current situation of Jews in Western societies. David Goldberg, a progressive Rabbi with many years' experience of dealing with other faiths and other Jews, takes the most difficult issues of this fraught relationship and confronts them head on. He argues that it is wrong to equate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, that it is far more difficult to be a Muslim in twenty-first century Britain than it is to be a Jew, that Israel is far too often treated sentimentally and that the identification of Israel with the Holocaust - memorializing the latter and sacralising the former - has had baneful effects. His discussion of the perennial question, 'who is a Jew?', is equally trenchant: he rejects all strict rabbinic criteria, proposing that a Jew is simply anyone who insists that he or she is one. Forthright, challenging and witty, This is Not the Way will spark debate, criticism and delight in equal measure.
Download or read book Not by Might Nor by Power written by Moshe Menuhin and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new introduction by Adi Ophir: An early and fierce critique of Zionism from a Jewish child of Palestine who argued against nationalism and injustice. Born in 1893, Moshe Menuhin was part of the inaugural class to attend the first Zionist high school in Palestine, the Herzliya gymnasium in Tel Aviv. He had grown up in a Hasidic home, but eventually rejected orthodoxy while remaining dedicated to Judaism. As a witness to the evolution of Israel, Menuhin grew disaffected with what he saw as a betrayal of the Jews’ spiritual principles. This memoir, written in 1965, is considered the first revisionist history of Zionism. A groundbreaking document, it discusses the treatment of the Palestinians, the effects of the Holocaust, the exploitation of the Mizrahi Jewish immigrants, and the use of propaganda to win over public opinion in America and among American Jews. In a postscript added after the Six-Day War, Menuhin also addresses the question of occupation. This new edition is updated with an introduction by Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir, putting Menuhin’s work into a contemporary historical context. Passionate and sometimes inflammatory in its prose, and met with controversy and anger upon its original publication under the title The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time, Menuhin’s polemic remains both a thought-provoking reassessment of Zionist history and a fascinating look at one observer’s experience of this embattled corner of the world over the course of several tumultuous decades.
Download or read book If I Am Not For Myself written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1992 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a century, Jews have been identified with liberalism. Not only have they been a driving force behind the spread of liberal politics; they have also been steadfastly loyal to a doctrine that promised them both safety and political acceptance. Recent evidence suggests that their commitment has not waned. But while Jews continue to stand up for other groups and "vote their conscience", contends Ruth Wisse, the liberal commitment to the Jews is not nearly so strong. Whenever Jews have been attacked - from the trial of Captain Dreyfus to the sustained military and political war against Israel - liberals have been slow to defend Jewish rights and have preferred instead to hold the Jews responsible for the persistence of their enemies. The explanation for this liberal default, Wisse argues, is the survival and success of anti-Semitism. This irrational idea continues to flourish throughout the world, despite the destruction of the fascist and communist regimes that were its deadliest twentieth-century allies. Wisse points out that anti-Semitism's astonishing resilience has put liberals - including liberal Jews - in an impossible position. The only reasonable response to such a doctrine, Wisse insists, is not appeasement or avoidance, but steadfast confrontation and rejection. Yet such opposition is alien to liberal ideas of open-mindedness and strikes many as intolerant. Unwilling to suspend their optimistic view of man as a benevolent and rational being in order to combat a mortal enemy, most liberals - including many Jews - conclude that Jews themselves must be responsible for the continuing wars against them - thus implicitly condoning their sacrifice. Wisse's book, inspired by afriend's emigration to Israel, traces the Jewish romance with liberalism from its discovery by Jewish integrationists and Zionists to the acceptance today by many Jews of a moral equivalence between Zionism and the war against it. She also explores, among the many contradictions of modern Jewish politics, the ambiguous question of Jewish "chosenness", and the Jewish longing for acceptance in a larger human family; the successful Arab war of ideas against Israel; and the dilemma of Jewish writers and intellectuals who wish to transcend their parochializing siege. Above all, she shows how and why anti-Semitism became the twentieth century's most successful ideology and reveals what people in liberal democracies would have to do to prevent it from once again achieving its goal.
Download or read book To Heal the World written by Jonathan Neumann and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A devastating critique of the presumed theological basis of the Jewish social justice movement—the concept of healing the world. What is tikkun olam? This obscure Hebrew phrase means literally “healing the world,” and according to Jonathan Neumann, it is the master concept that rests at the core of Jewish left wing activism and its agenda of transformative change. Believers in this notion claim that the Bible asks for more than piety and moral behavior; Jews must also endeavor to make the world a better place. In a remarkably short time, this seemingly benign and wholesome notion has permeated Jewish teaching, preaching, scholarship and political engagement. There is no corner of modern Jewish life that has not been touched by it. This idea has led to overwhelming Jewish participation in the social justice movement, as such actions are believed to be biblically mandated. There's only one problem: the Bible says no such thing. In this lively theological polemic, Neumann shows how tikkun olam, an invention of the Jewish left, has diluted millennia of Jewish practice and belief into a vague feel-good religion of social justice. Neumann uses religious and political history to debunk this pernicious idea, and shows how the Bible was twisted by Jewish liberals to support a radical left-wing agenda. In To Heal the World?, Neumann explains how the Jewish Renewal movement aligned itself with the New Left of the 1960s, and redirected the perspective of the Jewish community toward liberalism and social justice. He exposes the key figures responsible for this effort, shows that it lacks any real biblical basis, and outlines the debilitating effect it has had on Judaism itself.
Download or read book We Stand Divided written by Daniel Gordis and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From National Jewish Book Award Winner and author of Israel, a bold reevaluation of the tensions between American and Israeli Jews that reimagines the past, present, and future of Jewish life Relations between the American Jewish community and Israel are at an all-time nadir. Since Israel’s founding seventy years ago, particularly as memory of the Holocaust and of Israel’s early vulnerability has receded, the divide has grown only wider. Most explanations pin the blame on Israel’s handling of its conflict with the Palestinians, Israel’s attitude toward non-Orthodox Judaism, and Israel’s dismissive attitude toward American Jews in general. In short, the cause for the rupture is not what Israel is; it’s what Israel does. These explanations tell only half the story. We Stand Divided examines the history of the troubled relationship, showing that from the outset, the founders of what are now the world’s two largest Jewish communities were responding to different threats and opportunities, and had very different ideas of how to guarantee a Jewish future. With an even hand, Daniel Gordis takes us beyond the headlines and explains how Israel and America have fundamentally different ideas about issues ranging from democracy and history to religion and identity. He argues that as a first step to healing the breach, the two communities must acknowledge and discuss their profound differences and moral commitments. Only then can they forge a path forward, together.
Download or read book The Modern Jew written by Arnold White and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Wicked Son written by David Mamet and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Mamet's interest in anti-Semitism is not limited to the modern face of an ancient hatred but encompasses as well the ways in which many Jews have internalized that hatred. Using the metaphor of the Wicked Son at the Passover seder (the child who asks, "What does this story mean to you?") Mamet confronts what he sees as an insidious predilection among some Jews to exclude themselves from the equation and to seek truth and meaning anywhere--in other religions, political movements, mindless entertainment--but in Judaism itself. He also explores the ways in which the Jewish tradition has long been and still remains the Wicked Son in the eyes of the world. Written with the searing honesty and verbal brilliance that is the hallmark of Mamet's work, The Wicked Son is a powerfully thought-provoking look at one of the most destructive and tenacious forces in contemporary life.
Download or read book The New Anti Semitism written by Phyllis Chesler and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2005-01-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this intensely passionate and compelling book, the best-selling feminist and Jewish writer Phyllis Chesler demonstrates how old-fashioned anti-Semitism has become newly fashionable, even politically correct, and how this plague threatens the Jews of the world, America, and Western civilization. A dangerous, worldwide coalition of Islamic terrorists, well-intentioned but profoundly misinformed students, right wing fascists, left-wing ideologues, pious academics, feminists, opportunistic European politicians, and sensation-seeking international media have joined together to once again blame the Jews and the Jewish state for the current world crisis. Today, lethal activism against the Jews often takes the form of anti-Zionism. Osama Bin Laden, for example, blamed the 9/11 World Trade Center attack on U.S. government support for Israel. Since then, hundreds of synagogues have been burned, cemeteries and destroyed, and Jews threatened, boycotted, beaten, and killed. Jews have been blamed for huge stock market losses and for the decline of the world economy. The long-ago disproven Protocols of Zion, which accuse the Jews of an alleged world-conspiracy to conquer and control the world, have been revived and promulgated in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. So what must we do? "Fight against the Big Lies," Chesler says. (No, the Jews do not control the world's money and media, and the Jews did not kill Christ.) Avoid rigid, dogmatic ideologies. Focus on the world's real problems (disease, poverty, illiteracy, violence) instead of scapegoating the Jews and demonizing the Jewish state. Be fair to Israel. Form Jewish-Christian, Jewish-Muslim, and Jewish-Palestinian alliances. Restore campus civility and above all, Jews must stop fighting among themselves.
Download or read book Judaism Human Values and the Jewish State written by Yeshayahu Leibowitz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biochemist by profession, a polymath by inclination and erudition, Yeshayahu Leibowitz has been, since the early 1940s, one of the most incisive and controversial critics of Israeli culture and politics. His direct involvement, compelling polemics, and trenchant criticism have established his steadfast significance for contemporary Israeli-and Jewish- intellectual life. These hard-hitting essays, his first to be published in English, cover the ground Leibowitz has marked out over time with moral rigor and political insight. He considers the essence and character of historical Judaism, the problems of contemporary Judaism and Jewishness, the relationship of Judaism to Christianity, the questions of statehood, religion, and politics in Israel, and the role of women. Together these essays constitute a comprehensive critique of Israeli society and politics and a probing diagnosis of the malaise that afflicts contemporary Jewish culture. Leibowitz's understanding of Jewish philosophy is acute, and he brings it to bear on current issues. He argues that the Law, Halakhah, is essential to Judaism, and shows how, at present, separation of religion from state would serve the interest of halakhic observance and foster esteem for religion. Leibowitz calls the religious justification of national issues "idolatry" and finds this phenomenon at the root of many of the annexationist moves made by the state of Israel. Long one of the most outspoken critics of Israeli occupation in the conquered territories, he gives eloquent voice to his ongoing concern over the debilitating moral effects of its policies and practices on Israel itself. This translation will bring to an English-speaking audience a much-needed, lucid perspective on the present and future state of Jewish culture.
Download or read book With Friends Like You written by Matti Golan and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time of growing tension between Israel and the U.S., journalist matti Golan vents the grievances beneath the surface of cordial relations between Israelis and American Jews.
Download or read book Judaism Or Jewish Nationalism written by Elmer Berger and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leader of the Anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism presents arguments to prove that spiritual allegiance to Israel is not an integral part of the Jewish faith.
Download or read book At Home in Exile written by Alan Wolfe and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eloquent, controversial argument that says, for the first time in their long history, Jews are free to live in a Jewish state—or lead secure and productive lives outside it Since the beginnings of Zionism in the twentieth century, many Jewish thinkers have considered it close to heresy to validate life in the Diaspora. Jews in Europe and America faced “a life of pointless struggle and futile suffering, of ambivalence, confusion, and eternal impotence,” as one early Zionist philosopher wrote, echoing a widespread and vehement disdain for Jews living outside Israel. This thinking, in a more understated but still pernicious form, continues to the present: the Holocaust tried to kill all of us, many Jews believe, and only statehood offers safety. But what if the Diaspora is a blessing in disguise? In At Home in Exile, renowned scholar and public intellectual Alan Wolfe, writing for the first time about his Jewish heritage, makes an impassioned, eloquent, and controversial argument that Jews should take pride in their Diasporic tradition. It is true that Jews have experienced more than their fair share of discrimination and destruction in exile, and there can be no doubt that anti-Semitism persists throughout the world and often rears its ugly head. Yet for the first time in history, Wolfe shows, it is possible for Jews to lead vibrant, successful, and, above all else, secure lives in states in which they are a minority. Drawing on centuries of Jewish thinking and writing, from Maimonides to Philip Roth, David Ben Gurion to Hannah Arendt, Wolfe makes a compelling case that life in the Diaspora can be good for the Jews no matter where they live, Israel very much included—as well as for the non-Jews with whom they live, Israel once again included. Not only can the Diaspora offer Jews the opportunity to reach a deep appreciation of pluralism and a commitment to fighting prejudice, but in an era of rising inequalities and global instability, the whole world can benefit from Jews’ passion for justice and human dignity. Wolfe moves beyond the usual polemical arguments and celebrates a universalistic Judaism that is desperately needed if Israel is to survive. Turning our attention away from the Jewish state, where half of world Jewry lives, toward the pluralistic and vibrant places the other half have made their home, At Home in Exile is an inspiring call for a Judaism that isn’t defensive and insecure but is instead open and inquiring.
Download or read book How to Fight Anti Semitism written by Bari Weiss and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • The prescient founder of The Free Press delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains what we can do to defeat it. “A praiseworthy and concise brief against modern-day anti-Semitism.”—The New York Times On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh, as well as the continued surge of hate crimes against Jews in cities and towns across the country, raise a question Americans cannot avoid: Could it happen here? This book is Weiss’s answer. Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. With its promise of free speech and religion, its insistence that all people are created equal, its tolerance for difference, and its emphasis on shared ideals rather than bloodlines, America has been, even with all its flaws, a new Jerusalem for the Jewish people. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism. No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics as well as the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all. Weiss is one of our most provocative writers, and her cri de coeur makes a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in this uncertain moment. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.
Download or read book Jews Must Live written by Samuel Roth and published by Blurb. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by one of America's most famous Jewish pornographers, this work provides a shocking and insightful account of Jewish attitudes towards Gentiles. Samuel Roth first embraced Judaism and Zionism, but later blamed other Jews for his financial and legal troubles-which landed him in jail. He became so embittered with this treatment at the hands of his co-religionists that he wrote this book which he said exposed their underhanded dealings with the Gentile world. The engrossing narrative starts with the origin of Jewish behaviour, which Roth identifies as coming from the Old Testament/Talmud. Using specific examples (such as the Jewish patriarch Abraham's pimping of his wife Sarah to blackmail neighbouring Gentile tribes into handing over their possessions), Roth claims that such behavioural patterns are repeated to the present day. This behaviour, Roth says, is founded in a Jewish belief that all the world's possessions belong to them by divine right. He then discusses the effect of Jews in law, media, medicine, prostitution, literature, arts, and much more. Also included is a fascinating section on the vow-breaking Kol Nidre prayer. Roth also includes detailed sections on his own experiences at being swindled, and concludes that anti-semitism is always a reaction to Jewish behaviour, and not the product of some irrational disposition on the part of Gentiles, as is so often claimed. He explains his own position in this way: "I don't think I ever shared the Jewish contempt for the goyim, which is part and parcel of all Jewish psychology." This is the first full unexpurgated edition to be published since this book's original publication. It contains all seventeen chapters (including the appendix) and all seventeen original illustrations by John Conrad.
Download or read book Discipleship Essentials EasyRead Super Large 18pt Edition written by and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jews Judaism and the State of Israel written by Ben Zion Bokser and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
