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Spirituality and Religion May 2020
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The prophet
by Kahlil Gibran
"In Kahlil Gibran's inspirational masterpiece--the most famous work of spiritual fiction of the twentieth century--a prophet named Almustafa is about to board a ship to travel back to his homeland after twelve years in exile when he's stopped by a group of people who ask him to share his wisdom before he leaves. In twenty-eight poetic essays, he does so, offering profound and timeless insights on many aspects of life, including love, pain, friendship, family, beauty, religion, joy, sorrow, and death. An immediate success when it was first published in 1923, The Prophet is a modern classic, having been translated into more than forty languages and sold more than nine million copies in the United States alone. The message it imparts, of finding divinity through love, made it the bible of 1960s culture and continues to touch hearts and minds across generations and national borders. This edition is illustrated with twelve of Gibran's famous visionary paintings and features a foreword by Rupi Kaur"
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| Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life by Harold S. KushnerWhat it is: an inspiring and thought-provoking memoir from Rabbi Harold Kushner, meant to engage believers and skeptics alike.
Chapters include: "Forgiveness Is a Favor You Do Yourself," "Religion Is What You Do, Not What You Believe," and "A Love Letter to a World That May or May Not Deserve It."
About the author: Rabbi Kushner served for 25 years as a congregational rabbi and is the author of more than a dozen books, including the bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People. |
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In Jerusalem : three generations of an Israeli family and a Palestinian family
by Lis Harris
"An entirely fresh take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that examines the life-shaping reverberations of wars and ongoing tensions upon the everyday lives of families in Jerusalem. A secular, diaspora Jew, Lis Harris grew up with the knowledge of the historical wrongs done to Jews. In adulthood, she developed a growing awareness of the wrongs they in turn had done to the Palestinian people. It gave her an intense desire to understand how the Israelis' history led them to where they are now. However,she found that top-down political accounts and insider assessments made the lives of those most affected seem like chess pieces. What she wanted was to register the effects of the country's seemingly never-ending conflict on the lives of successive generations. Shuttling back and forth over ten years between East and West Jerusalem, Harris got to know two families: the Israeli Pinczowers/Ezrahis and the Palestinian Abuleils. She came to know members of each family young and old, religious and secular, male and female. As they shared their histories with her, she looked at how each family survived the losses and dislocations that defined their lives; how, in a region where war and its threat were part of the very air they breathed, they gave children hope for their future; and how the adults' understanding of the conflict evolved over time. Combined with a decade of historical research and political analysis, Harris creates a living portrait of one of the most complicated and controversial conflicts of our time"
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The Story of the Jews : Belonging, 1492-1900 by Simon SchamaThe Jewish story is a history that is about, and for, all of us. And in our own time of anxious arrivals and enforced departures, the Jews' search for a home is more startlingly resonant than ever. Belonging is a magnificent cultural history abundantly alive with energy, character and colour. It spans centuries and continents, from the Jews' expulsion from Spain in 1492 it navigates miracles and massacres, wandering, discrimination, harmony and tolerance; to the brink of the twentieth century and, it seems, a point of profound hope. It tells the stories not just of rabbis and philosophers but of a poetess in the ghetto of Venice; a boxer in Georgian England; a general in Ming China; an opera composer in nineteenth-century Germany. The story unfolds in Kerala and Mantua, the starlit hills of Galilee, the rivers of Colombia, the kitchens of Istanbul, the taverns of Ukraine and the mining camps of California. It sails in caravels, rides the stage coaches and the railways; trudges the dawn streets of London, hobbles along with the remnant of Napoleon's ruined army. Through Schama's passionate telling of this second chronicle in an epic tale, a history emerges of the Jewish people that feels it is the story of everyone, of humanity.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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