When he visited Israel in 1975, Saul Bellow kept an account of his experiences and impressions. It grew into an impassioned and thoughtful book. As he wryly notes, "If you want everyone to love you, don't discuss Israeli politics." But discuss them is very much what he does. Through quick sketches and vignettes, Bellow evokes places, ideas, and people, reaching a sharp picture of contemporary Israel. The reader is offered a wonderful panorama of an ancient and modern world city. Like every other visitor to Israel, Bellow tumbles into "a gale of conversation." He loves it and he makes the reader feel at home. Bellow delights in the liveliness, the gallantry of Israeli life: people on the edge of history, an inch from disaster, yet brimming with argument and words. He delights not in tourist delusions but with a tough critical spirit: his Israel is pocked with scars and creases, and all the more attractive for it. Simply as a travel book, the reader finds remarkable descriptions, such as one in which Bellow finds "the melting air" of Jerusalem pressing upon him "with an almost human weight" Something intelligible is communicated by the earthlike colors of this most beautiful of cities. The impression that Bellow offers is that living in Israel must be as exhausting as it is exciting: a murderous barrage on the nerves. Israel, he writes, "is both a garrison state and a cultivated society, both Spartan and Athenian. It tries to do everything, to make provisions for everything. All resources, all faculties are strained. Unremitting thought about the world situation parallels the defense effort." Jerusalem's people are actively and individually involved in universal history. Bellow makes you share in the experience.

Nobel laureate Saul Bellow’s revealing interviews and meditations, steeped in history and literature, on the unique spirit and challenges of Israel A Penguin Classic A powerful, stimulating testament, To Jerusalem and Back is a rigorous attempt to come to grips with Israel’s history and future. Immersing himself in the landscape and culture of this “small state in perpetual crisis,” Bellow records the opinions, passions, and dreams of Israelis of varying viewpoints—Yitzak Rabin, Amos Oz, the editor of the largest Arab-language newspaper in Israel, a kibbutznik escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto—and adds his own reflections on being Jewish in the twentieth century. Saul Bellow’s journey is not merely an exploration of a very beautiful and very troubled city; it is a major literary work, and an urgently important one. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In the mid-1970s, Saul Bellow visited Israel and To Jerusalem and Back is his account of his time there. Immersing himself in its landscape and culture, he records the opinions, passions and dreams of Israelis of varying viewpoints – from Prime Minister Rabin, novelist Amos Oz and the editor of an Arab-language newspaper to a kibbutznik escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and the barber at Bellow’s hotel. Through meditations steeped in history and literature he adds his own reflections on being Jewish in the twentieth century. Bellow’s exploration of a beautiful and troubled city is a powerful testament to the unique spirit and challenges of Israel, its history and its future.

The powerful spiritual vision of the Chinese church to send 100,000 missionaries across China's borders to complete the Great Commission, even in this generation.

A deep and abiding passion, wedded to the keenest of intellects, shaped Scholem's life's work—the study of Jewish mysticism.

This book is a journey through the history of Jerusalem. The entire city is a veritable museum-a treasure trove of all things sacred to the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. Every stone here has witnessed the tumultuous history of the three faiths and their faithful. The journey begins with the migration of Prophet Abraham to Canaan and ends with the fall of Palestine in 1967. It evokes the interminable suffering of the Jews and the cruelty of the Christian Crusaders who drowned the streets of the Holy City in the blood of Muslims and Jews. This is the story of Bait al Maqdis where Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) attained Mairaj, and where Caliph Umar proclaimed Islam. The saga of Jerusalem flows with the history of the Ummayads, the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Ayyubids, the Mamluks and the Ottomans. The splendid Islamic architecture is embodied in the magnificent Dome of the Rock, which stands proud as the icon of Muslim heritage in a world beset with violence and hatred.

When the Six-Day War began, Elie Wiesel rushed to Israel. "I went to Jerusalem because I had to go somewhere, I had to leave the present and bring it back to the past. You see, the man who came to Jerusalem then came as a beggar, a madman, not believing his eyes and ears, and above all, his memory." This haunting novel takes place in the days following the Six-Day War. A Holocaust survivor visits the newly reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall he encounters the beggars and madmen who congregate there every evening, and who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel bids the reader to join him on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem.