Jts Library Book Talks

Dinner at the Center of the Earth, a new political thriller from Pulitzer finalist and best-selling author Nathan Englander, unfolds in the highly charged territory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.A prisoner in a secret cell. The guard who has watched over him a dozen years. An American waitress in Paris. A young Palestinian man in Berlin who strikes up an odd friendship with a wealthy Canadian businessman. And the General, Israel's most controversial leader, who lies dying in a hospital, the only man who knows of the prisoner's existence.From these vastly different lives Englander has woven a powerful, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, even as the lives of its citizens become fatefully and inextricably entwined—a political thriller of the highest order that interrogates the anguished, violent division between Israelis and Palestinians, and dramatizes the immense moral ambiguities haunting both sides. Who is right, who is wrong—who is the guard, who is truly the priso

In his new book, the winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship, JTS's Dina and Eli Field Family Chair in Jewish History Dr. Benjamin R. Gampel uses rich new archival data to illuminate one of the major disasters that struck medieval Jewry: the anti-Jewish riots of 1391-92 in the lands of Castile and Aragon.Offering the most exhaustive and profound record to date of the ten fateful months between June 1391 and March 1392, during which hundreds if not thousands of Jews were killed or forcibly converted to Christianity, the book explores why the famed convivencia of medieval Iberian society—in which Christians, Muslims and Jews seemingly lived together in relative harmony—was conspicuously absent during this period. Taking into account the social, religious, political, and economic tensions at play, Gampel analyzes the evolution of this bloody wave of persecution, provides new perspectives on the riots' origins, and examines responses from the rulers of Aragon. 

In his book Kohelet’s Pursuit of Truth, Rabbi Benjamin J. Segal, former president of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, presents an arresting new translation and commentary on Ecclesiastes that unlocks the ancient wisdom of one of the deepest and most controversial books of the Tanakh. Segal's most striking innovations include the tracing of change within the book, an exploration of the charatcer of the main speaker, an appreciation of the literary structure, and a sensitivity to the varied voices of the main speaker. A persuasive guide to the book Thomas Wolfe called "the greatest single piece of literature I have known," Kohelet’s Pursuit of Truth demonstrates that Ecclesiastes is designed to empower the reader, emphasizing challenges rather than answers.