Jane Eisner traces the professional accomplishments and personal challenges of pop icon Carole King, exploring her unique contribution to American music“An eagle-eyed telling of how King (born Carol Joan Klein) emerged from the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn to achieve decades of songwriting success.†?—Karen Iris Tucker, Washington PostCarole King’s extraordinary career has defined American popular music for more...

As religiously grounded moral arguments have become ever more influential factors in the national debate-particularly reinforced by recent presidential elections and the creation of the faith-based initiative office in the White House-journalists' ignorance about theological convictions has often worked to distort the public discourse on important policy issues. Pope John Paul II's pronouncements on stem-cell research, the constitutional controversies regarding faith-based initiatives, the...

Who is a Jew in 21st century America? Is membership in “the tribe” defined by shared religious beliefs? Common ethnic backgrounds? Familiar holiday practices? Similar tastes in culture and cuisine? And what do the widely varying answers to those questions mean for the future of the American Jewish community? In 2013, at the suggestion of Jewish Daily Forward editor Jane Eisner, the Pew Research Center completed the most comprehensive and credible survey eve...

What can we believe about, and how can we believe in, Jesus in the twenty first century, in light of the Holocaust and other atrocities, and the drift from religion that followed? The key lies in Jesus’ Jewishness.What New York Times bestselling author James Carroll has discovered through decades of writing and lecturing, is that he is far from alone in clinging to a received memory of Jesus that separates him from his crucial identity as a Jew, and therefore as a human. Yet if Jes...

THE BOOK OF GENESIS is the key to the Bible. In the New Testament it is quoted twenty-seven times literally and thirty-eight times substantially. It tells in a very few words how God first imaged man and the universe and then turned the development over to Jehovah, who has been in a process of manifestation for ages and aeons. The "Five Books of Moses," of which Genesis is the first, have always been credited to Moses, but that he was the author seems doubtful in the face of the many stori...

Emmanuel Levinas is now widely recognised alongside Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre as one of the most important Continental philosophers of the twentieth century. His abiding concern was the primacy of the ethical relation to the other person and his central thesis was that ethics is first philosophy. His work has also had a profound impact on a number of fields outside philosophy such as theology, Jewish studies, literature and cultural theory, psychotherapy, sociology, political the...

This debut collection by Cave Canem fellow Geffrey Davis burrows under the surface of gender, addiction, recovery, clumsy love, bitterness, and faith. The tones explored—tender, comic, wry, tragic—interrogate male subjectivity and privilege, as they examine their "embarrassed desires" for familial connection, sexual love, compassion, and repair. Revising the Storm also speaks to the sons and daughters affected by the drug/crack epidemic of the '80s and addresses issues of masculin...

The interaction of Judaism and economics encompasses many different dimensions. Much of this interaction can be explored through the way in which Jewish law accommodates and even enhances commercial practice today and in past societies. From this context, The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics explores how Judaism as a religion and Jews as a people relate to the economic sphere of life in modern society as well as in the past. Bringing together an astonishingly strong group ...

In a groundbreaking call to arms, Fifty Plus takes an important look at the seventy-eight million strong American baby boomer revolution. From age 50+ on up, Americans are now refusing to rock away their retirement and are actively changing the face of aging in America. The Boomers are no strangers to the gym, voting booth, online investing sites, or even management of their 401(k)s. They're joining an already on the go group of Americans 50+ who are leaving their mark. Bill Novel...

Economic Morality and Jewish Law compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Espousing what philosophers would call a consequentialist ethical system, welfare economics evaluates the worthiness of an economic action based on whether the action would increase the wealth of society in the long run. In sharp contrast, Jewish law espouses a deontological system of ethics. With...

This interdisciplinary book brings an empirical evidence that social capital is an important building block in the reintegration processes, migration challenges and economic dynamism of the SEE communities. Such a conclusion opposes the common belief that (re)establishing social relations in a post-ethnic conflict environment is difficult, or sometimes even impossible. These are indeed societies where trust in people and institutions remains low, but it is often replaced with other forms o...

The legitimacy of the Zionist project--establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine--has been questioned since its inception. In recent years, the voices challenging the legitimacy of the State of Israel have become even louder. Chaim Gans examines these doubts and presents an in-depth, evenhanded philosophical analysis of the justice of Zionism. Today, alongside a violent Middle East where many refuse to accept Israel's existence, there are two academically respectable arguments for the in...