Böcker utgivna av Gefen Publishing House

Haim Lifshitz relates in his book on Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook, Shivchei Harayah, Someone once told Rabbi Kook, God willing, we will move to the Land of Israel. Rav Kook replied, ''God is certainly willing. What counts is that you be willing.'' Rabbi Dov Lipmans Coming Home, a survey of Jewish thought on the significance of living in the Land of Israel, is epitomized by this exchange. Coming Home presents the sources in classic Jewish texts regarding the primacy of living in the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Beginning with the story of the first aliyah Avraham to twentieth-century leaders, the book includes sources, commentaries, and stories to make the point that living in the Land of Israel is among the highest ideals in Judaism. The book can be appreciated by teenagers through seniors and can be used as a basis for a syllabus or curriculum for a course in schools and synagogues.

Exciting, interesting and inspiring, for young and old, for scholars and novices.

Nachmanides was and still is a highly respected scholar. Yet despite his brilliance he had ideas that many modern Jews are unable to accept. He was the first person who contended that the Bible, Targum Onkelos, and the other Aramaic translations of the Bible contained mystical teachings. In this volume, Dr. Drazin reveals some unusual and generally unknown facts about the revered sage and demonstrates that his mystical notions and his stands on issues such as medicine, magic, astrology, divination, life after death, the land of Israel, women, angels, hell, demons, and even God are not the normative views of most modern Jews. This fresh look at one of Judaisms most venerated sages asks and answers provocative questions on the nature of Nachmanides work and its role in Jewish thought.

Sixth-grader Avi has an assignment: write a letter to the teacher like the interesting letters of days gone by. Taking the missive as a starting point, the bright and inquisitive youngster delves into his own psyche and tackles philosophical issues such as the search for identity, family relationships, the meaning of time, the role numbers play in the world, and more. Avis letter, in which he attempts to set out on paper his essential list of important issues, becomes a forum for the hidden thoughts and questions of a sensitive and intelligent youth, amazed by the world around him. This is not a typical young adult book, but a daring attempt to understand the personal and internal world of an adolescent, with respect for both the simple and complex issues that occupy him. Izaksons lyrical and enigmatic prose makes for an unforgettable read. The Essential List - A Letter to the Teacher is an English translation of the bestselling Hebrew youth novel Ha-Reshima Ha-Kova'at.

Avraham examines media coverage of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel through the lens of the terrorists' agendas and the extent to which those agendas have infiltrated the media. The book explains how journalists can cover terror attacks without giving in to the publicity objectives of the terror organizations.

A person who reads the writings of Rav Kook will discover a man who rejected superficial labels of religious verses secular, right wing verses left wing. Rav Kook was one of the most spiritual and open minded thinkers in modern Jewish history.

A concise account of the players, motivations, and setting for one of the most consequential letters of modern history. The letter began a process by which the international community came to embrace the idea of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

The world is in the midst of a revolution in military affairs, caused by a shift from symmetric to asymmetric war the digitisation and globalisation of information, and the automation of war by robotics and cyber aggression. In this modern environment, a new weapon known as lawfare plays an essential role. Lawfare is the use, or more correctly the misuse, of law as a weapon of combat to embarrass Western countries, to constrain their armies, and in this way to achieve military objectives. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world''s leading conflict on this new battlefront. Drawing on the personal stories of soldiers in the Israeli and US armies, as well as the filings at the International Criminal Court, A Table Against Mine Enemies: defines lawfare and related terms through personal stories; explains the four fundamental laws of war on which lawfare attacks are based; details Israel-based examples of lawfare in the separation barrier, the disputed territories, and flotilla attempts to break the blockade against importation of weapons to Gaza; and presents scenarios for the future of war and of lawfare, based on advanced electronics, robotics, cyber attacks, and machine autonomy. Lawfare is in the news every week, and will continue to appear over the coming decades. This book provides the information essential to understanding this new and revolutionary weapon of war.

Since 1948, Israel has withstood three full-scale invasions on multiple fronts, bloody wars with Palestinian militias, deadly bombings of its diplomatic missions, and hundreds of terrorist attacks within its territory and against its citizens abroad.

Genocide has been an on-going catastrophic reality of the past hundred years. Terrorism has intensified tremendously in the last fifty years. Despite a huge collection of treaties, conventions, declarations, and hyperbolic resolutions, practically nothing has been done to save the many millions of lives that were sacrificed on the altar of barbarity. And the complicity of the West has guaranteed the impunity of the mass murderers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this masterful book, Professor Dolinger presents a scathing indictment of the United Nations. Debating with scholars of international law, Dolinger discredits and demoralises the UN. Writing clearly and convincingly, Dolinger delivers a message that will be meaningful to people of all walks of life: Let us close the UN and create a serious, authentic world organisation that will respect human dignity and defend the human rights of all peoples, of all nations.

"Ecclesiastes, 'the greatest single piece of literature I have known' (Thomas Wolfe) continues to engage readers. The book is so controversial that some of the earliest rabbis sought to exclude it from the Bible in light of its self-contradictions and occasional near-heresies. Fortunately, the depth of thought won out. This commentary confronts the book from a perspective that is literary, while maintaining the highest academic standards. The volume is strikingly new, including the following central reconsideration's: Ecclesiastes was written with empowering the reader in mind. It is not a developed philosophy, but a short novelette, a story of one man's search for verifiable evidence of God's workings in this world (which he does not find). Strikingly, his principal consequent advice is: 'Enjoy.' The book is a retrospective collection, so one finds a plethora of voices from one person the young searcher, the poet, the teacher, the old man obsessed with death, etc. To these, the author adds the slightly dissenting voice of the one presenting the book. This variety turns the novelette into a parallel ongoing dialogue. The presentation as first person speech serves both to make the reader more sympathetic toward the speaker and yet less accepting of his contentions. Many of the 'contradictions' in Ecclesiastes are in fact evidence of growth and change, as observable in the text. The reader is left to judge these as maturity, as the weakness of age, or possibly as the confusions inherent in life. As the speaker turns ever more to advice on how to get along, ultimately recommending no more contemplation, the reader is nevertheless left with more questions than answers. This book does not seek to provide answers to all the challenges, but rather a challenge to all the answers."

This fourth volume of the "Unusual Bible Interpretations" series explores the biblical books Ruth and Esther and the apocryphal book Judith, which Jews and Protestants did not include in the Bible. Similar to Joshua and Judges, neither Ruth nor Esther shows any familiarity with the laws in the Five Books of Moses. Remarkably, Judith contains more religious expressions than either Ruth or Esther. Why, then, did the rabbis exclude it from the Bible? After a detailed analysis of the story, this book offers an answer to this age-old question. The volume contains a plethora of unexpected and thought-provoking facts, such as: Although many rabbis suggest that Ruth converted to Judaism, the story stresses repeatedly even at the end that Ruth is a Moabite. No mention is made that she converted. Indeed, the practice of conversion most likely did not exist prior to 125 BCE. Mordecai is the hero of Purim. It is he, not Esther, whom the book praises in its conclusion. According to II Maccabees 15:36, Adar 14 was called the Day of Mordecai. Both Esther''s and Mordecai''s names, although considered Jewish names today, are Persian names most likely based on the idols Ishtar and Marduk. In the book of Judith, the Judeans prayerfully wait for God to save them from the Assyrian siege. In contrast, Judith devises a plan to kill the general and save her people.

We strive for holiness, but the quest is so elusive. And yet, the path toward holiness is embedded within the Torahs words, for all who seek to grapple with them. With striking insight, Rabbi Ari Kahn draws out of the book of Vayikra meaningful instructions for attaining holiness -- in our nation, in our relationships with our loved ones, and within ourselves. Also, entitled In Search of Holiness, this is the third in a five-volume Me''orei Ha''Aish: Fire and Flame series on the weekly Torah portion, published jointly by Gefen Publishing House and the OU.

Perhaps no other city has been spoken of as often or as passionately as Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Book of Quotations brings together the kaleidoscopic impressions and perspectives of a representative group of those who have responded to the wonder of the Holy City from the biblical period to the present: Jews, Christians, and Muslims; pilgrims as well as skeptics, travelers, conquerors, scholars, and statesmen. The work gives expression to the discordant notes of contrasting perspectives about the meaning of Jerusalem. At the same time, it reflects the city s unique distinction as the embodiment of mankind s highest ethical and spiritual aspirations.

In 1929 Albert Londres, a non-Jew and renowned journalist, set out to document the lives of Jews at this time. His travels to England, Eastern Europe and finally Palestine produced the literary masterpiece, "The Wandering Jew has Arrived."

how many heroes of Jewish heritage come to mind? Each of the eleven Jewish heroes presented in this volume, some famous and others less so, overcame tremendous challenges to achieve greatness, persevering through their faith in God and belief in freedom and human dignity.

For 50 years, until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Soviet Union ran a campaign of repression, imprisonment, political trials and terror against its 3 million Jews. In Australia, political leaders and the Jewish community contributed significantly to the international protest movement which eventually triumphed over Moscow''s tyranny and led to the modern Exodus of Soviet Jews to Israel and other countries. Lipski and Rutland make this largely unknown Australian story come alive with a combination of passion, personal experience and ground-breaking research.