The Twilight Zone is remembered as a science fiction television series that reflected the uneasiness of Cold War America. Its creator, Rod Serling, was a secular Jew who fought in World War II and returned stateside to see moral problems at home, like racism and the potential for technology to rob us of our humanity. The Twilight Zone was Serling's attempt to influence mainstream culture in an ethically positive direction. His moral compass, which shaped his writing on the series, is entan...

Reclaiming the Wicked Son takes the ideas of six well-known secular Jewish philosophers from Karl Marx and Ludwig Wittgenstein to Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler and views them through a wide range of Jewish lenses from the Talmudic tradition and prophetic Judaism to Kabbalist approaches, thereby understanding the twentieth-century secular thinkers as on-going elements of a living Jewish intellectual tradition.

"An interesting and quirky and sometimes irreverent look at how the Yiddish language has survived all over the world." — Jerusalem PostYiddish—an oft-considered "gutter" language—is an unlikely survivor of the ages, much like the Jews themselves. Its survival has been an incredible journey, especially considering how often Jews have tried to kill it themselves. Underlying Neal Karlen's unique, brashly entertaining, yet thoroughly researche...

Throughout history there have been great and articulate defenders of the faith, from Augustine and Aquinas to Jonathan Edwards, G. K. Chesterton, Francis Schaeffer, and C. S. Lewis. But with new challenges comes the need for a fresh apologetic that specifically addresses the arguments levied against faith in our time of scientific atheism and skepticism.In the spirit of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, Alister McGrath's Mere Apologetics seeks to equip readers to e...

A "deeply researched and uncommonly engrossing" book profiling ten trailblazing literary women, including Dorothy Parker and Joan Didion ( Paris Review).In Sharp, Michelle Dean explores the lives of ten women of vastly different backgrounds and points of view who all made a significant contribution to the cultural and intellectual history of America. These women—Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael,...

From a brilliant and witty comic book aficionado, this “scholarly but lively narrative” (Kirkus Reviews) reveals the links between Jews and the iconic superheroes of Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby.Many of us know that thesuperheroes at the heart of the American comic book industry were created by Jews. But you’d be surprised to learn how much these beloved characters were shaped by the cultural and religious traditions...

Richly illustrated with images from Art Spiegelman’s Maus (“the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust” —The Wall Street Journal), Maus Now includes work from twenty-one leading critics, authors, and academics—including Philip Pullman, Robert Storr, Ruth Franklin, and Adam Gopnik—on the radical achievement and innovation of Maus, more than forty years since the original publication of “the first masterpiece in comic...

A careful and informed assessment of the “emerging church” by a respected author and scholar The “emerging church” movement has generated a lot of excitement and exerts an astonishingly broad influence. Is it the wave of the future or a passing fancy? Who are the leaders and what are they saying? The time has come for a mature assessment. D. A. Carson not only gives those who may be unfamiliar with it a perceptive introduction to the emerging church movement, but also includes a skillful a...

Here is a kaleidoscopic analysis of Jewish humor as seen through Funnyman, a little-known super-heroic invention by the creators of Superman. Included are complete comic-book stories and daily and Sunday newspaper panels from Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creative fiasco.Siegel and Shuster, two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland, sold the rights to their amazing and astonishingly lucrative comic book superhero to Detective Comics for $130 in 1938. Not only did they ...

Christianity Has the Resources to Address Intellectual and Cultural Issues. Do You?Christians can feel overwhelmed at the sheer number of competing worldviews in today’s pluralistic, multicultural society. Thankfully, you don’t have to memorize a different argument to answer every new issue. Instead, you can master a single line of defense, grounded in Scripture, that applies to any theory. In Romans, Paul reveals the strategy for defending the Christian message in...

**Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award“Dauber deftly surveys the whole recorded history of Jewish humour.” —Economist**In a major work of scholarship that explores the funny side of some very serious business (and vice versa), Jeremy Dauber examines the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing Jewish comedy into “seven strands”—including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar—he traces the ways Jewi...

Rethinking Effective Apologetics for the Present Age.Christians have always had to defend their faith against all kinds of criticism and misunderstandings, but these attacks change overtime, and the strongest arguments of the famous classical apologists who preceded us are not necessarily the strongest today.Intellectuals Don't Need God is written to today's faithful apologists who are trying to commend Christianity in terms of its relevance to eve...