Download or read book Never Alone written by Natan Sharansky and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic account of courage, integrity, and most of all, belonging In 1977, Natan Sharansky, a leading activist in the democratic dissident movement in the Soviet Union and the movement for free Jewish emigration, was arrested by the KGB. He spent nine years as a political prisoner, convicted of treason against the state. Every day, Sharansky fought for individual freedom in the face of overt tyranny, a struggle that would come to define the rest of his life. Never Alone reveals how Sharansky's years in prison, many spent in harsh solitary confinement, prepared him for a very public life after his release. As an Israeli politician and the head of the Jewish Agency, Sharansky brought extraordinary moral clarity and uncompromising, often uncomfortable, honesty. His story is suffused with reflections from his time as a political prisoner, from his seat at the table as history unfolded in Israel and the Middle East, and from his passionate efforts to unite the Jewish people. Written with frankness, affection, and humor, the book offers us profound insights from a man who embraced the essential human struggle: to find his own voice, his own faith, and the people to whom he could belong.
Download or read book The Case For Democracy written by Natan Sharansky and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2009-02-23 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natan Sharansky believes that the truest expression of democracy is the ability to stand in the middle of a town square and express one's views without fear of imprisonment. He should know. A dissident in the USSR, Sharansky was jailed for nine years for challenging Soviet policies. During that time he reinforced his moral conviction that democracy is essential to both protecting human rights and maintaining global peace and security. Sharansky was catapulted onto the Israeli political stage in 1996. In the last eight years, he has served as a minister in four different Israeli cabinets, including a stint as Deputy Prime Minister, playing a key role in government decision making from the peace negotiations at Wye to the war against Palestinian terror. In his views, he has been as consistent as he has been stubborn: Tyranny, whether in the Soviet Union or the Middle East, must always be made to bow before democracy. Drawing on a lifetime of experience of democracy and its absence, Sharansky believes that only democracy can safeguard the well-being of societies. For Sharansky, when it comes to democracy, politics is not a matter of left and right, but right and wrong. This is a passionately argued book from a man who carries supreme moral authority to make the case he does here: that the spread of democracy everywhere is not only possible, but also essential to the survival of our civilization. His argument is sure to stir controversy on all sides; this is arguably the great issue of our times.
Download or read book Defending Identity written by Natan Sharansky and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-06-03 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is better prepared to confront challenges and defend principles in a volatile modern world? Those with strong national, religious, ethnic, or tribal identities who accept democracy, or democrats who renounce identity as a kind of divisive prejudice? Natan Sharansky, building on his personal experience as a dissident, argues that valueless cosmopolitanism, even in democracies, is dangerous. Better to have hostile identities framed by democracy than democrats indifferent to identity. In a vigorous, insightful challenge to the left and right alike, Natan Sharansky, as he has proved repeatedly, is at the leading edge of the issues that frame our times.
Download or read book The Zionist Ideas written by Gil Troy and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive Zionist collection ever published, The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland--Then, Now, Tomorrow sheds light on the surprisingly diverse and shared visions for realizing Israel as a democratic Jewish state. Building on Arthur Hertzberg's classic, The Zionist Idea, Gil Troy explores the backstories, dreams, and legacies of more than 170 passionate Jewish visionaries--quadruple Hertzberg's original number, and now including women, mizrachim, and others--from the 1800s to today. Troy divides the thinkers into six Zionist schools of thought--Political, Revisionist, Labor, Religious, Cultural, and Diaspora Zionism--and reveals the breadth of the debate and surprising syntheses. He also presents the visionaries within three major stages of Zionist development, demonstrating the length and evolution of the conversation. Part 1 (pre-1948) introduces the pioneers who founded the Jewish state, such as Herzl, Gordon, Jabotinsky, Kook, Ha'am, and Szold. Part 2 (1948 to 2000) features builders who actualized and modernized the Zionist blueprints, such as Ben-Gurion, Berlin, Meir, Begin, Soloveitchik, Uris, and Kaplan. Part 3 showcases today's torchbearers, including Barak, Grossman, Shaked, Lau, Yehoshua, and Sacks. This mosaic of voices will engage equally diverse readers in reinvigorating the Zionist conversation--weighing and developing the moral, social, and political character of the Jewish state of today and tomorrow.
Download or read book Benno and the Night of Broken Glass written by Meg Wiviott and published by Kar-Ben Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1938 Berlin, Germany, a cat sees Rosenstrasse change from a peaceful neighborhood of Jews and Gentiles to an unfriendly place where, one November night, men in brown shirts destroy Jewish-owned businesses and arrest or kill Jewish people. Includes facts about Kristallnacht and a list of related books and web resources.
Download or read book When They Come for Us We ll Be Gone written by Gal Beckerman and published by HMH. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “remarkable” story of the grass-roots movement that freed millions of Jews from the Soviet Union (The Plain Dealer). At the end of World War II, nearly three million Jews were trapped inside the USSR. They lived a paradox—unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone is the astonishing and inspiring story of their rescue. Journalist Gal Beckerman draws on newly released Soviet government documents as well as hundreds of oral interviews with refuseniks, activists, Zionist “hooligans,” and Congressional staffers. He shows not only how the movement led to a mass exodus in 1989, but also how it shaped the American Jewish community, giving it a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and teaching it to flex its political muscle. Beckerman also makes a convincing case that the effort put human rights at the center of American foreign policy for the very first time, helping to end the Cold War. This “wide-ranging and often moving” book introduces us to all the major players, from the flamboyant Meir Kahane, head of the paramilitary Jewish Defense League, to Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who labored in a Siberian prison camp for over a decade, to Lynn Singer, the small, fiery Long Island housewife who went from organizing local rallies to strong-arming Soviet diplomats (The New Yorker). This “excellent” multigenerational saga, filled with suspense and packed with revelations, provides an essential missing piece of Cold War and Jewish history (The Washington Post).
Download or read book Hidden Heroes written by Pamela Braun Cohen and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning nearly three decades, Hidden Heroes gives an insider's view of the modern-day exodus of Soviet Jews from the Soviet Union, a period of Jewish history that has rarely been told and is in danger of being forgotten. This deeply personal narrative explores the grassroots Soviet Jewish emigration movement through the eyes of one of its indefatigable leaders, focusing on the actions of heroic refuseniks in the Soviet Union as well as courageous individuals in the West - described by Natan Sharansky as the "army of students and housewives" who waged the battle to free Soviet Jews. From Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania to the distant republics of Central Asia, refuseniks come to life, discovering their identity, protesting on the streets, defending themselves in courtrooms, defying jailers in their prison cells, and struggling to survive in Siberian labor camps. This engrossing memoir tells the story of the resistance and moral courage of men and women inside the Soviet Union and of those in the West who relentlessly crusaded on their behalf. A very important memoir.... Pamela portrays many Jewish leaders...from different communities all over the United States, as well as Jewish refuseniks from different places all over the Soviet Union. It is this personal, intimate connection between these two groups that gave inspiration, encouragement, and strength to the people on both sides of the Iron Curtain and made our struggle...so powerful
Download or read book The Family with Two Front Doors written by Anna Ciddor and published by Kar-Ben Publishing ™. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet the Rabinovitches: mischievous Yakov, bubbly Nomi, rebellious Miriam, solemn Shlomo, and seven more! Papa is a rabbi and their days are full of intriguing Jewish rituals and lots of adventures in 1920s Poland. But the biggest adventure of all is when big sister Adina is told she is to be married at the age of fifteen—to someone she has never met. Originally published in Australia.
Download or read book Hannah G Solomon Dared to Make a Difference written by Bonnie Lindauer and published by Kar-Ben Publishing ®. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Hannah G. Solomon looked around Chicago, the city where she was born, she saw unfairness all around her. Many people were poor and living in terrible conditions. Immigrants from other countries struggled to survive in their new home. Hannah decided to help change that. When she grew up, she founded the National Council of Jewish Women—the first organization to unite Jewish women around the country—and fought to make life better for others, especially women and children, in Chicago and beyond.
Download or read book The Spy Who Played Baseball written by Carrie Jones and published by Kar-Ben Publishing ™. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moe Berg is not a typical baseball player. He's Jewish—very unusual for the major leagues in the 1930s—has a law degree, speaks several languages, and loves traveling the world. He also happens to be a spy for the U.S. government. When World War II begins, Moe trades his baseball career for a life of danger and secrecy. Using his unusual range of skills, he sneaks into enemy territory to gather crucial information that could help defeat the Nazis. But he also has plenty of secrets of his own. . .
Download or read book The Definition of Anti Semitism written by Kenneth L. Marcus and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is anti-Semitism? Previous efforts to define'anti-Semitism' have been complicated by the term's disreputable origins, discredited sources, diverse manifestations, and contested politics. The Definition of Anti-Semitism explores the ways in which anti-Semitism has historically been defined, demonstrates the weaknesses in prior efforts, and develops a new definition of anti-Semitism.
Download or read book Triumph Over Tyranny written by Philip Spiegel and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Jewish resistance in Russia and the government backed anti-Semitism that tried to obliterate every form of Jewish self-awareness. Traces the success of the heroes of this movement, people like Anatoly Sharansky, who became living legends in Russia, Israel, the United States and the world.
Download or read book Shadow Strike written by Yaakov Katz and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2019 National Jewish Book Award Finalist "At the top of my reading list." —Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School "Reads like an international thriller, but it is actually a compelling factual day-by-day (and sometimes hour-by-hour) account of an incident of acute threat and decisive action by the Jewish state...". —Jonathan Kirsch, Jewish Journal Review The never-before-told inside story of how Israel stopped Syria from becoming a global nuclear nightmare—and its far-reaching implications On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir ez-Zour in Syria. Israel often flew into Syria as a warning to President Bashar al-Assad. But this time, there was no warning and no explanation. This was a covert operation, with one goal: to destroy a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy in the Syrian desert. Shadow Strike tells, for the first time, the story of the espionage, political courage, military might and psychological warfare behind Israel’s daring operation to stop one of the greatest known acts of nuclear proliferation. It also brings Israel’s powerful military and diplomatic alliance with the United States to life, revealing the debates President Bush had with Vice President Cheney and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as the diplomatic and military planning that took place in the Oval Office, the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, and inside the IDF’s underground war room beneath Tel Aviv. These two countries remain united in a battle to prevent nuclear proliferation, to defeat Islamic terror, and to curtail Iran’s attempts to spread its hegemony throughout the Middle East. Yaakov Katz's Shadow Strike explores how this operation continues to impact the world we live in today and if what happened in 2007 is a sign of what Israel will need to do one day to stop Iran's nuclear program. It also asks: had Israel not carried out this mission, what would the Middle East look like today?
Download or read book Fight for Liberty written by Mark Lasswell and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anne Applebaum, Garry Kasparov, Richard North Patterson, and a constellation of other thinkers make the urgent case for liberal democracy -- reinvigorating its central values in an age of doubt and discord. Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces. Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia and undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from the right and left. But the defenders of democracy are strong too. Taking their cues from the 1788 Federalist Papers, the Renew Democracy Initiative is a collective of pro-democracy advocates from across the political spectrum, including Anne Applebaum, Garry Kasparov, Max Boot, Bret Stephens, Ted Koppel, and Natan Sharansky. This book is their foundational document, a collection of essays that analyze the multi-pronged threats to liberal democracy in the U.S. and abroad, and offer solutions based on fundamental democratic principles such as freedom of speech, a free press, and the rule of law. Fight for Liberty is a roadmap for the struggle against the rising tide of extremism and a cri de coeur in defense of the liberal world order, which sees itself threatened as never before today.
Download or read book The Land of Truth written by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book WorldPerfect written by Ken Spiro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-30 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Academics Against Israel and the Jews written by Manfred Gerstenfeld and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
