"As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile," S. Y. Agnon declared at the 1966 Nobel Prize ceremony. "But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem." Agnon's act of literary imagination fueled his creative endeavor and is explored in these pages. Jerusalem and the Holy Land (to say nothing of the later State of Israel) are often two-faced in Agnon's Hebr...

Chester Jones drives his new car to the forested slopes of the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, Australia, in order to deliver an extravagant gift to aclient after clinching a massive business deal.On the side of the road he discovers something that will change many lives, most particularly that of his and his wife's.In the meantime, a shark-eaten body of a woman is washed up on a beach by the Great Ocean Road and Detective Bruce Nash is called in to investigate. A few...

Jews, Christians and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue explores the ways in which divergent ethnic, national and religious communities interacted with one another within the synagogue in the Greco-Roman period. It presents new perspectives regarding the development of the synagogue and its significance of this institution for understanding religion and society under the Roman Empire.

The menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum, has traversed millennia as a living symbol of Judaism and the Jewish people. Naturally, it did not pass through the ages unaltered. The Menorah explores the cultural and intellectual history of the Western world’s oldest continuously used religious symbol. This meticulously researched yet deeply personal history explains how the menorah illuminates the great changes and continuities in Jewish culture, from biblical times to modern Israe...

What does it mean to be a Jew? How does one begin to answer so extensive a question?In this insightful and completely updated tome, esteemed rabbi and bestselling author Joseph Telushkin helps answer the question of what it means to be a Jew, in the largest sense. Widely recognized as one of the most respected and indispensable reference books on Jewish life, culture, tradition, and religion, Jewish Literacy covers every essential aspect of the Jewish people and Judaism. In 352 sho...

**Discover how it all began in the very first Rebus novel from '**Britain's No.1 crime writer' Daily Mirror'And in Edinburgh of all places. I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburgh, do you...?''That sort of thing' is the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls. And now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end. Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own young daughter spiri...

The Holocaust is one of the great crimes of world history, but is it prefigured in the most unexpected source - the Bible? Is the Old Testament a list of astonishing atrocities, engineered by the entity called Jehovah that so many billions of people choose to worship as God? Is it possible to put God himself on trial using exactly the same set of charges that were used to prosecute the Nazi High Command at the Nuremberg Trials? In the name of free speech, civil and human rights, this is th...

The second Inspector Rebus novel from the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES.'Ian Rankin is a genius' Lee ChildA junkie lies dead in an Edinburgh squat, spreadeagled, cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, a five-pointed star daubed on the wall above.Just another dead addict - until John Rebus begins to chip away at the indifference, treachery, deceit and sleaze that lurks behind the facade of the...

When, if ever, should lying be permitted?If you've damaged a person's reputation unfairly, can the damage be undone?Is a person who sells weapons responsible for how those weapons are used?if the fetus is not a life, what is it? How, as an adult, can one carry out the command to honor one's parents when they make unreasonable demands?What are the nine biblical challenges a good person must meet?What do the great Jewish writings of the last 3,500 year...

The fourteenth Inspector Rebus novel - and No.1 bestseller.Two seventeen-year-olds are killed by an ex-Army loner who has gone off the rails. The mystery takes Rebus into the heart of a shattered community. Ex-Army himself, Rebus becomes fascinated by the killer, and finds he is not alone. Army investigators are on the scene, and won't be shaken off. The killer had friends and enemies to spare and left behind a legacy of secrets and lies.Rebus has more than...

**NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALISTPart of the Jewish Encounter series**One May day in 1896, at a dining-room table in Cambridge, England, a meeting took place between a Romanian-born maverick Jewish intellectual and twin learned Presbyterian Scotswomen, who had assembled to inspect several pieces of rag paper and parchment. It was the unlikely start to what would prove a remarkable, continent-hopping, century-crossing saga, and one that in many ways has revolutionized ou...

'Rebus is one of fiction's greatest creations' MARIAN KEYESIn the depths of Edinburgh winter, the bodies are piling up for Detective John Rebus - two suicides, a murder, and the mysterious death of an inmate in one of Scotland's largest prisons.When his investigation uncovers a web of conspiracy among the city's political elite, it's clear that everything Rebus holds dear - his job, his life, even his young daughter - is now at stake.