This first US publication of Erez Bitton, one of Israel's most celebrated poets, recalls the fate of Moroccan Jewish culture with poems both evocative and pure. Considered the founding father of Mizrahi Israeli, a major tradition in the history of Hebrew poetry, Bitton's bilingual collection dramatically expands the scope of biographical experience and memory, ultimately resurrecting a vanishing world and culture.Preliminary Background WordsMy mother my...

On a trip to the Holy Land, Rabbi Small is drawn into a deadly conflict between religious extremists in this entry in the New York Times –bestselling series.Edgar Award–Winning AuthorRetired millionaire Barney Berkowitz, from the small Massachusetts town of Barnard's Crossing, invites Rabbi David Small to come to Israel and bar mitzvah him, as Berkowitz never went through the ceremony in his youth...

Sixty years after fighting in Israel's War of Independence, Yoram Kaniuk tries to remember what exactly did—and did not—happen in his time as a teenage soldier in the Palmach. The result is a touchingly poignant and hauntingly beautiful memoir that the author himself considers a work of fiction, for what is memory but one's own story about the past?Eschewing self-righteousness in favor of self-criticism, Kaniuk's book, winner of the 2010 Sapir Prize for Literature, is the tale of a...

A snapshot of Israel and the West Bank in the 1980s, through the voices of its inhabitants, from the National Jewish Book Award–winning author of Judas.Notebook in hand, renowned author and onetime kibbutznik Amos Oz traveled throughout his homeland to talk with people—workers, soldiers, religious zealots, aging pioneers, desperate Arabs, visionaries—asking them questions about Israel's past, present, and future. Observant or secular, rich or poor, native-...

An Israeli professor and an Arab student join forces in a witty novel that "tells a simple story about a region that complicates all it touches" ( The New Yorker).Yochanan Rivlin, a professor at Haifa University, is a man of boundless and often naïve curiosity. His wife, Hagit, a district judge, is tolerant of almost everything but her husband's faults and prevarications. Frequent arguments aside, they are a well-adjusted couple with two grown sons. When on...

A Words Without Borders Anthology"Remarkable . . . a triumph . . . connects us at the level of our humanity, no matter where we may be from."— Los Angeles TimesThe countries that stretch along the broad horizons of the Middle East—from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Pakistan—boast different cultures, different languages, and different religions. Yet the literary landscape of this dynamic part of the world has been bound together not by borders and ...

Winner of the 2012 National Translation Award“What Sinan [Antoon] has done with In the Presence of Absence is a kind of miraculous work of dedication and love. Reading this volume is sheer enjoyment and sublimity.”**—Saadi Yousef“There are two maps of Palestine that politicians will never manage to forfeit: the one kept in the memories of Palestinian refugees, and that which is drawn by Darwish’s po...

In Jerusalem archeologists labor to discover what lies beneath the Temple Mount, the magnificent edifice that has served the faithful as a symbol of Gods glory for 3,000 years and remains at the crossroads of the three great monotheistic religions. Here, award-winning journalist Joshua Hammer discovers, interpretations of ancient history are being shaped by modern-day politics.

These selections from Rumi's Mathnawi—a classic of Sufi spiritual literature—express the "lion's roar" of courage, discipline, clarity, and integrity. The lion represents the fierce intensity that recognizes no authority except the highest truth. At the same time, Rumi's lion is full of heart and devotion. Through these poems the reader will explore the qualities that are vital to the spiritual aspirant who seeks to overcome the imprisonment of ego.

Today, we here in America numbering twenty or more million people, [are into] one hundred years of begging for freedom, justice and equality. Today, God Almighty of Heaven and Earth, having the power of them both rolled up into his right hand, is here and has chosen us the so called American Negro to put us into Heaven while we live, and not after death.He says there is no Hereafter [for] a physical death. That is the law of the Earth and the Maker and of God that we live; we decay...

This book examines the claim of Elijah Muhammad's roots. Although during the great migration of blacks from the south to the north, many attempts were made to address their plight in the inner cities, the true solution went unaddressed until Master Fard Muhammad (God in person) came and raised up, then taught Elijah Muhammad how to raise the mentally dead so-called Negroes of America.The book lays out interesting arguments which enables the reader to see the clear evidence. The Fru...

A searing portrait of Muslim life in the West, this “profound and intimate” memoir captures one man’s struggle to forge an American Muslim identity (Washington Post)Haroon Moghul was thrust into the spotlight after 9/11, becoming an undergraduate leader at New York University’s Islamic Center forced into appearances everywhere: on TV, before interfaith audiences, in print. Moghul was becoming a prominent voice for American Muslims even as he struggled with...