This book is a love story that relates how two young people of different religions came together, and overcame the differences to enter a happy and loving marriage. When I first conceived the idea of writing, it was to expound on the subject of anti-Semitism. I soon learned the amount of books on this old subject was monumental, and so I decided to turn it into fiction. However, within the context of the book, I endeavor to bring out the messages I wish to express to anyone willing to read this. Hatred has become vogue, and it has spread across the modern world with a vengeance not seen in many a year. I have been astounded at the gullibility of people who subscribe to hate, and the injustices they are able to commit in its name. My primary focus, although on anti-Semitism, has been embellished by knowledge of modern day genocide in many more countries than one would imagine. I have included some of this information in the text. Some of the killing, especially in Africa, has subsided, but hatreds are popping up anew in other areas. In Russia, for example, ethnic people of darker skin are being attacked, and in some cases murdered by thugs who have nothing better to do with their lives. The most visible, and the largest hate group appears to be the militant Muslims who see the entire world under Islam. The lies being taught to their young will be a very long time in dying, if ever. As usual, it is America (America the beautiful) who is leading the fight against terrorism throughout the world, but it is an uphill battle. Politics here at home as well as world politics and greed make the task more difficult. One would think as the world grows smaller and becomes more global in the relationships of the worlds countries to each other that there would be more enlightenment. However, it seems we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. I want to believe in the All Mighty; that there is a whatever watching over us, and interceding when man goes too far with evil actions. Perhaps God is very present, and doing His thing, but we dont recognize or understand it. Perhaps the Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Until I am convinced he is not there, Ill go on believing because I want him to be there for us. No one religion is all right or all wrong. Consequently, we must not harbor (in our hearts) hatred for those who are different from us for they are our brothers. My wish (my prayer) is to bring the world to its senses, and I only wish I could live to see the day when man will accept man as his brother, and when they will beat their swords into pruning hooks and plowshares. Then, and then only, hatred will die, and there will be no more wars.

Born into a loving, wealthy German family, Katarina Von Rahmel, protected and cherished, becomes a prima ballerina but finds her career destroyed by the horrors of war. Betrayed by the Nazi officer she has married, she escapes a prison camp and joins her brother and others as they fight back against Hitler’s regime. In the aftermath of WWII, they continue their battle against oppression as Berlin teeters on the brink of a Stalinist takeover. Becoming estranged from her family, except for her Catholic priest brother, Katarina abandons her daughter and marries again to escape the difficult post-war living conditions in the bombed-out city. Her new husband objects to her continued anti-Communist activities and eventually is able to take her home with him to Hawaii to begin a new life, but Katarina’s terrible memories from the war and her fierce independence cause her unwitting betrayal of the children she would fight to keep.

Although today the region is mostly identified with Islam, it has been home to many other great cultures, and the civilization of the Islamic world is itself indebted to the various peoples that the Arabs subdued in the 7th and 8th centuries. Far from fading away after the Arab conquest, the inhabitants of the Iranian plateau and of Mesopotamia were central players in the lives of their regions. However, the magnitude of their contribution to the emergence of the early Islamic world has hitherto been neglected. In this fascinating and groundbreaking study, Khanbaghi offers a comprehensive discussion of those groups that resisted assimilation to the new Islamic order yet continued to participate actively in the socio-political life of their homeland. He concentrates on Iran, which due to its complex religious history offers unique opportunities for the study of non-Muslim communities, specifically of Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians.Aptin Khanbaghi has written an important and fascinating book which aims to present a thorough evaluation of the historical contributions made by religious minorities - Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians - to the societal and cultural physiognomy of the lands of Iran in pre-modern and early modern times. His general perspective and his broad treatment of the topic are quite new, while his use of sources and of the secondary literature is genuinely impressive. The Fire, the Star and the Cross makes a very significant and original contribution to our knowledge and understanding of Iranian history and civilization during an era when the foundations were laid for the emerging modern Iranian state.'BERT G FRAGNER, Director of the Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a Christian convert and a social philosophy scholar, had an intense conversation with the Jewish thinker Franz Rosenzweig in 1913. This “Leipzig Conversation” shattered Rosenzweig’s understanding of the meaning of religion, but it also propelled him to embrace his innate Jewish faith. Three years later, they engaged in a correspondence that has emerged as an historic, stunning dialogue on Jewish-Christian thinking. Rosenzweig went on to write The Star of Redemption, a classic work of modern Jewish philosophical theology and to become one of the most important and influential figures of twentieth-century German Jewry. Rosenstock-Huessy took a different path—writing his Sociology, which pointed the social sciences in a new direction based on speech-thinking, and an enormous, rich body of work covering grammar and society, revolutions, Church history, and industrial law; teaching generations of European and American university students; and putting his faith into action. This is the first major collection of essays on these two close friends’ “new thinking.” Their dialogue mirrored Nietzsche’s anti-transcendent reading of Judaism and Christianity, as well as his attack on idealism. But their dialogue also resurrected the redemptive cores of these faiths as sources for the rejuvenation of human society. This book brings to publication three essays by Rosenstock-Huessy on Nietzsche, and a translation of a chapter from his Sociology, clarifying the post-Nietzschean approach of the “new thinking.” The Cross and the Star, a 50-year span of significant scholarship, vivifies the reasons for Rosenzweig’s and Rosenstock-Huessy’s influence on faith and society, and why their respective thought speaks directly and enduringly to the global human challenges of our time.