Frank Carlson Library

Short verses describe symbols, foods, and family fun associated with the festival of Hanukkah. Includes facts about the history and traditions.

"In Uncle Tungsten, Oliver Sacks weaves together the wonders of chemistry and his boyhood experiences with grace, ease, and just the right comedic touch. The result is a rich, unique, and compelling glimpse into the development of an enormously fertile and creative mind

In a bold and moving book that is sure to spark heated debate, the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling two-thousand-year course of the Church's battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture. The Church's failure...

A fully updated and revised edition of a classic text on Jewish prayer. The power of prayer for spiritual renewal and personal transformation is at the core of all religious traditions. Because Hasidic literature contains no systematic manual of contemplative prayer, the texts included in this volume have been culled from many sources. From the teachings of the Hasidic Masters-the Ba'al Shem Tov, the Maggid Dov Baer of Meidzyrzec, and their immediate...

A comprehensive, inspiring and fascinating discovery of what Jews believe about the Messiah-and why you might believe in the Messiah, too. "The conviction that the Messiah is coming is a promise of meaning. It is a source of consolation. It is a wellspring of creativity. It is a reconciliation between what is and what should be. And it is perhaps our most powerful statement of faith-in God, in humanity and in ourselves." -from Chapter 1, "The Messiah...

The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish religious work, ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. Written by multiple Palestinian Jews between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, it is one of the earliest apocalyptic texts and is not considered part of the biblical canon by Christians or Jews, save certain Ethiopian or Eritrean Christian churches. The book describes the visions of Enoch, taken up by God at age 365 to witness heaven, the damnation...

Written in 75 AD by the Jewish historian and Roman citizen Titus Flavius Josephus, "The Wars of the Jews", describes Jewish history from the capture of Jerusalem in 164 BC. to the destruction of the city in 70 AD. Josephus, born in Jerusalem in 37 AD with the name Yosef ben Matityahu, was from a Jewish family with a father of a priestly heritage and a mother who claimed to have royal blood. Josephus fought against the Romans in the First Jewish-Roman...

Shares the author's experience of finding faith during her times of doubt and crisis when her marriage unraveled, and describes how she overcame her "middle stage" of her spiritual life to find hope and healing.

An Inspiration to All Who Struggle for Religious and Gender Equality "Our souls yearn to pray, in peace, in the sacred place, to read from our holy Torah, together with other Jewish women." -from the In Israel today, the historic Western Wall, known as the Kotel, a holy site for Jewish people, is under the religious authority of the Orthodox rabbinate. Women have only limited rights to practice Jewish ritual in its precincts. This passionate book...

In The New American Zionism, Theodore Sasson challenges the conventional view of waning American Jewish support for Israel. Instead, he shows that we are in the midst of a shift from a "mobilization" approach, which first emerged with the new state and focused on supporting Israel through big, centralized organizations, to an "engagement" approach marked by direct and personal relations with the Jewish state. Today, growing numbers of American...