Sherwin concludes with a controversial proposal for the future of Polish-Jewish relations.

Amidst raging West Coast wildfires, FBI Agent Tori Spark must track down a deadly arsonist using the inferno as cover for murder. Can Tori decipher the sparks before he strikes again? AMIDST THE ASHES (A Tori Spark FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 3) is the third novel in a new series by mystery and suspense author Laura Rise. The series begins with AMIDST THE DARKNESS (Book 1). A captivating crime thriller that centers on a brilliant but tortured female protagonist, the Tori Spark series offers an exhilarating experience filled with unrelenting suspense, ingenious narrative turns, shocking revelations, and a fast pace that will have you eagerly turning pages deep into the night. Fans of Rachel Caine, Mary Burton, and Kendra Elliot are sure to fall in love. Future books in the series are also available!

When a shattered city is hit with aftershocks, FBI Agent Tori Spark must sift through the survivors to decode cryptically staged murder scenes—and decode the killer’s pattern… before he strikes again. AMIDST THE RUINS (A Tori Spark FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 2) is the second novel in a new series by mystery and suspense author Laura Rise. The series begins with AMIDST THE DARKNESS (Book 1). A captivating crime thriller that centers on a brilliant but tortured female protagonist, the Tori Spark series offers an exhilarating experience filled with unrelenting suspense, ingenious narrative turns, shocking revelations, and a fast pace that will have you eagerly turning pages deep into the night. Fans of Rachel Caine, Mary Burton, and Kendra Elliot are sure to fall in love. Future books in the series are also available!

Byron Sherwin demonstrates that Jewish theological thinking can be understood as a response to visceral existential issues and argues that human meaning and fulfillment can be discovered in the application of an authentic Jewish way of thinking and living.

An unprecedented annotated anthology of the most important Jewish mystical works, A Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism Reader is designed to facilitate teaching these works to all levels of learners in adult education and college classroom settings. Daniel M. Horwitz’s insightful introductions and commentary accompany readings in the Talmud and Zohar and writings by Ba'al Shem Tov, Rav Kook, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and others. Horwitz’s introduction describes five major types of Jewish mysticism and includes a brief chronology of their development, with a timeline. He begins with biblical prophecy and proceeds through the early mystical movements up through current beliefs. Chapters on key subjects characterize mystical expression through the ages, such as Creation and deveikut (“cleaving to God”); the role of Torah; the erotic; inclinations toward good and evil; magic; prayer and ritual; and more. Later chapters deal with Hasidism, the great mystical revival, and twentieth-century mystics, including Abraham Isaac Kook, Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. A final chapter addresses today’s controversies concerning mysticism’s place within Judaism and its potential for enriching the Jewish religion.

Popular Washington, D.C. rabbi and psychotherapist Arthur Blecher believes that the American Jewish community is actually flourishing amidst fears of dying out. He shows us that intermarriage strengthens Judaism--a concept that many Jews continue to debate. In straightforward and engaging chapters, he provides a progressive and positive outline of how this religion has changed over the years, and why American Jewish culture must be embraced and discussed in depth in Jewish families. This is a fascinating exploration of the ways in which social and psychological forces created a new and quite different form of Judaism in America more than one hundred years ago.

The problem of being a stranger is present in every culture. In this context, “the Jewish question” is often discussed, since the Jews have been present in other nations for centuries, constituting the social and cultural minority and being almost always perceived as strangers. This volume presents a detailed analysis of Jewish self-perceptions and attitudes, often very complex, towards other societies and communities living in the same lands. The contributors to this book explore the lengthy discussions between both the supporters and adversaries of assimilation within the Jewish environment and also between the assimilated Jews and non-Jews, which often further complicate this issue. As the authors show here, the “methods of assimilation” of eastern European Jews were not straightforward, but were rather often rather complicated and rough. Many Jewish people were trying to find the best solution to their own, “Jewish question”, and adapt themselves reasonably to the gentile environment and to the changing realities of the world in which they had to exist, regardless of their will, or in which they freely chose to live having made autonomic and personal decisions. As such, this volume explores Jewish assimilation issues from a wide and multifaceted perspective.