An "important and timely" study of the Jewish holiday's temporary shelters and the meaning of home ( Journal of Folklore Research).The sukkah, the symbolic ritual home built during the annual Jewish holiday of Sukkot, commemorates the temporary structures that sheltered the Israelites as they journeyed across the desert after the exodus from Egypt. Despite the simple Biblical prescription for its design, the remarkable variety of creative expression in the ...

Each year 11 million people trek to the Louvre to gawk at the Mona Lisa. Many visitors clutch guide books in hand describing the painting. For some, it’s the experience of a lifetime, one they’ll talk about with friends and family for decades.Yet some modern researchers say that the vast majority of people will never recognize the hidden messages in this painting. That’s because those hidden messages are subliminal.Buried below the threshold of conscious awareness, D...

Exploring the people and contexts that imbue Jewish material culture with its meaning.In museums, synagogues, antique stores, and personal collections, Jewish objects are gathered, studied, and passed down as material representations of a culture and faith. What defines these items as "Jewish," and how does an item acquire or lose this characteristic throughout its life?Drawing from material culture studies, folklore studies, and curatorial perspectives, th...

In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrar...

**Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and PracticeFinalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in NonfictionA New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the YearA startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living.**Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelis...

More than ever, Christians are bombarded with tough faith questions from their pluralistic friends and neighbors. Many of these emerge as "anti-truth claims" and slogans we are all familiar with:• Why not just look out for yourself?• Do what you want--just as long as you don't hurt anyone• Miracles violate the laws of nature• Aren't people born gay?Paul Copan has been answering questions like these for many years. In When God Goes to Starbucks, h...

This first-ever biography on Yiddish is “a charming and highly readable history of the language” that “recreates the sound of a world . . . gone forever” (The Washington Post)For a thousand years Yiddish, was the glue that held a people together. Through the intimacies of daily use, it linked European Jews with their heroic past, their spiritual universe, their increasingly far-flung relations. In it they produced one of the world’s most richly human cultu...

Is Western civilization in an accelerating decline? And if it continues will it eventually weaken and cause us to come to the end of cultured civilization as we now know it? "Yes," says David Jeremiah, and in his book, I Never Thought I'd See the Day! he details numerous signs of this cultural decay including:America held hostage by IranMarriage becoming obsoleteCreeping socialismThe invisibility of culture's enemiesIncrease in...

First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide—but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation. They need adults with the confidence to teach their importance. Ruth tr...

Covering such timely issues as witness in a multifaith society and political engagement in a pluralistic world, this compelling book highlights things Christians can do to serve the common good. Now in paperback.Praise for the cloth editionNamed one of the "Top 100 Books" and one of the "Top 10 Religion Books" of 2011 by Publishers Weekly"Accessible, wise guidance for people of all faiths."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Driven from their homes in Russia, Poland, and Romania by pogroms and poverty, many Jews who came to Canada in the wave of immigration after the 1905 Russian revolution were committed radicals. A Future Without Hate or Need brings to life the rich and multi-layered lives of a dissident political community, their shared experiences and community-building cultural projects, as they attempted to weave together their ethnic particularity—their identity as Jews—with their international...

Fifteen years ago, Tony Campolo's 20 Hot Potatoes That Christians Are Afraid to Touch pushed, pulled, and prodded Christians into serious consideration of controversial but critical issues related to the Christian life. Campolo challenged his more than 150,000 readers to re-think their convictions (and prejudices) and to do something about them!Dubbed by Christianity Today as "the positive prophet" and "a ferocious critic of Christians left and right," Campolo liv...