This small but brilliant volume condenses and crystallizes Jewish thought and Talmudic methods, but one can read it in three hours.

Central to Judaism are Torah and Talmud--which offer democratic learning systems open to all willing to avail themselves. Heschel uses the great Yiddish writer Mendele Moher Sefarim's description of a typical Eastern European Jewish town--"where Torah was studied from time immemorial; where practically all the inhabitants are scholars, where the Synagogue or the House of Study is full of people of all classes busily engaged in studies, townfolk as well as young men from afar...where at dusk, between twilight and evening prayers, artisans and other simple folk gather around the tables to listen to a discourse on the great books of Torah, to interpretations of Scripture, to readings from theological, homiletical or ethical writings...., where on the Sabbath and the holidays, near the Holy Ark, at the reading stand, sermons are spoken that kindle the hearts of the Jewish people for the Divine Presence, sermons seasoned with parables and aphorisms of the sages, in a voice and a tone that heartens one's soul, that melts all limbs, that penetrates the whole being." Study included all: Indeed, a book preserved at New York's Yivo Institute bears the stamp of the Berditshev Society of Wood Choppers for the Study of Mishnah, the earliest part of Talmud.

A Christian scholar who visited Warsaw during World War I saw many parked coaches with no drivers in sight. In his country, he wrote, "I would have known where to look for them. A young Jewish boy showed me the way: in a courtyard, on the second floor, was the shtible of Jewish drivers. It consisted of two rooms: one filled with Talmud volumes, the other a room for prayer. All the drivers were involved in fervent study and religious discussion.... It was then that I... became convinced that all the professions, the bakers, the shoemakers, etc., have their own shtible in the Jewish district; and every free moment which can be taken off from work is given to the study of Torah. And when they get together in intimate groups, one urges the other, 'Sog mir a shtickle Torah--Tell me a little Torah."

European Jews studied in their own language--Yiddish--born of what Heschel calls "a will to make intelligible, to explain and simplify the tremendous complexities of the sacred literature. Thus there arose, as though spontaneously, a mother tongue, a direct expression of feeling, a mode of speech without ceremony or artifice, a language that speaks itself without taking devious paths, a tongue that has maternal intimacy and warmth. In this language, you say 'beauty' and mean 'spirituality;' you say 'kindness' and mean 'holiness.' Few languages can be spoken so simply and directly; there are but few languages which lend themselves with such difficulty to falseness. No wonder Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav would sometimes choose Yiddish to pour out his heart to God."

Heschel's words could easily define the Jewish faith itself. The world he describes was lost in the Holocaust, but the faith was not. This book rekindles it. Alyssa A. Lappen

A short book in size but a great book in content. It is a description of the spirit of the Jews of Eastern Europe, an exaltation of their culture, their way of life, and above all of the high spiritual development of this ethnic group. The author manifests a certain melancholy for days gone by, for a way of life which he believes no longer exists. Lets leave to the present day Hassids to confirm or deny this statement. Beautiful prose, a must for anyone interested in learning about the essence of Eastern Europe Judaism.

If I had to pick just one book to explain my inner life as a Hasidic Jew, this would be it. In fact, now that is is back in print, I shall do exactly that in my FAQ on Hasidic Culture.

Not just about Hasidism, this thin but profound volume, written in such beautifully poetic prose, covers the different types of Eastern European Jews in a way that informs and inspires at the same time. Rabbi Heschel explain so clearly how Jewish spirituality is expressd, not in visible cathedrals, art, or monuments, but in timeless words and values as they are expressed in community through both worship and daily life.

Originally written in 1949, it appears that the author, himself a Holocaust survivor, intended this book to be a memorial to a lost world. Yet 50 years later, the book is as fresh and inspiring as the day it was written. The physical Jewish world he describes may no longer be there in Eastern Europe, but the inner world of religious Jews continues to grow and flourish so that I, as a Hasid in the 90's, can read this book and say, "Yes, this describes my inner life, too!" .

Perhaps, as Heschel himself suggests, this Eastern European "golden age" of Jewish spirituality (his words) can now be fully appreciated by the world. An excellent, EXCELLENT, book! Double 5-stars!

It explains, mainly through examples in chemistry and physics, what are the required components for "complex behaviors" to occur within dynamical systems. It does not insist on the technicalities proper to the examples but rather tries to gather what one can learn from specific situations concerning the necessary components for complexity to arise.

Focus is on intuition and global understanding, not on mathematical aspects. However, some knowledge in math would certainly help...a first course in probability theory and some background in dynamical systems is a good idea (at the level of undergraduate courses in pure and applied sciences).

All explanations are not rigorous but the objective is to provide a good intuition about the mechanisms driving complexity. Recommended for all people interested in stochastic modeling and chaos theory.

Since non-equilibrium science and complexity theory where actually shaped and influenced by the Brussels school, anybody interested in a concise -yet readable- introduction would do well to start with this book. Written by Nicolis and Prigogine, it will enlighten and entertain you. Some knowledge of math helps when reading this book, but the level is intermediate, thereby making it suitable for a rather large group of interested readers. I found myself reading the book in stages, taking the time to ponder various topics and issues before continuing again. It really made me wonder, and I learned a lot from it (ironically, I actually learned more from this book than from the -much- more advanced books by the author(s) that cover the same material).

Somin clearly points out how easy it would have been for the West to overthrow the Bolsheviks by forcefully intervening themselves or providing sufficient support to the White armies to crush the Bolsheviks. Western leaders like Lloyd George and President Wilson didn't overthrow the Bolsheviks because they didn't want to. Winston Churchill was the only Western leader who understood the situation. In a letter to Lloyd George in March 1920 he wrote, "Since the armistice my policy would have been 'Peace with the German people, war on the Bolshevik Tyranny.' Willingly or unavoidably, you have followed something very near the reverse." The cost of the Bolshevik victory was horrific but avoidable. Somin does an excellent job of showing why.

This book is an unparalleled effort to bring the visceral experience of the oppressed Russian citizens to the lay person. Somin is a quick study, finding his true voice, and the voice of those he writes about throughout this work. I only wish the book was longer. How long will I have to wait for Somin's next book?

This book is well structured, written in an excellent style, with illustrative and relevant examples and figures. It treats in a systematic way all things a programmer should be aware of when designing and optimizing high performance applications. Beyond a reference for Sun's development environment, it is compulsory reading for a novice or intermediately experienced in this field, conveying a lot of information about compilers and hardware alongside. Again, I want to have this book in my bookshelf since it is a gem in the category of software books. Its graceful style complements the density of information. It is not a quick read, if you want to digest everything.

An excellent resource for people using the Forte IDE and C,C++, F77 and F95. I found the new UltraSPARC III compiler options to be very useful as well. HPC ClusterTools are also discussed and a good explaination of how to use them and when. OpenMP is also covered. This was a long needed resource that both myself and my customers will love! A good compliment to Cockcroft's "Sun Performance and Tuning" book (and updated info) for application developers and perf. tuning gurus.

A warm tale of the endurance of the human spirit

"Typically a reader obtains their first impression of a new book by identifying the authors, the title and the blurb on the back, in that order, and to follow this algorithm would be to have the reader expect that the book is about statistical analysis in microarray experiments, alone. Even a cursory examination of the table of contents and skimming chapters and the color plates might perpetuate this view, but actually the book is much more than that"
From- Cancer Biology and Therapy

Reviewed by- Michael N. Liebman

Another collection of great tories from i halil

This book is a rarety...People often read books about the Holocaust and its effects on Jews in the world. This book looks at the holocaust-ridden world from another perspective; not from a jew in Germany or Europe, but a jew in the USSR.

Not may people know that the biggest holocaust in history was not the one by the Nazis, it was by Stalin and his supporters. He killed many times more Jews than the Germans, and this protrays what it was like in that world, where all jews were considered the scum of the earth, and families were torn apart for the most minute cause.

Ilya and his siblings went through a lot in their lives, and this book explains it very well, while including supporting documents to prove that this was true.

Hallo,where I can find Repin's biography? Thank you, Maria

In an era when the fourth commandment seems arcane, Heschel creates an acute sense of urgency towards our awareness of the Sabbath...its preciousness, its relavance. For we must choose: are we to be workaholic slaves to the Pharaoh of material aquisition, or serve precious moments of holiness, which the Sabbath provides? In a society that values things more than moments of time, Heschel shows us how the Sabbath points us to a value system in which time, when made holy, puts space/things/people in their proper perspective. Have we become deluded that time-saving devices(cars, microwaves, telephones, computers) will create new moments of time for us? The opposite has proved true. As Heschel says, "The more we think the more we realize:we cannot conquer time through space. We can only master time in time." And so he shows us that God's gift to us is not arcane, but critically important today. As the Sabbath is the central Jewish holiday, and the first of all that God created as 'holy', we take a new view of Judaisim- its main holy sites are architectural masterpieces made from time, holy days set in the cycle of a week, a season, a year. And these lessons are for every religion, for our understanding of the value of time needs to be universal, or we fall into a materialism in which there is no room for religion or spirituality. There are so many teachings from Heschel in each paragraph and his language constantly brushes the edges of poetry. "The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments. In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on man but a spiritual presence. What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight rather than the place where the act came to pass. A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time. Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time" Abraham Heschel, THE SABBATH.

Perhaps no aspect of Jewish religious observance has been so poorly understood by the outside world as the Sabbath. Gentile expressions such as "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" have tended to give the impression that the Jewish Sabbath is something oppressive. Not so, says Rabbi Heschel. The Sabbath, when understood properly, is a gift of freedom.

In this now-classic book, first published in 1951, Heschel shows how the Sabbath is a "palace in time," a carefully structured retreat from the hustle and bustle of the marketplace. The laws of the Sabbath are the spiritual architecture with which the "palace in time" is built. Once you understand the blueprint for that palace, then all of the restrictions and to-do things on the Sabbath make sense.

Heschel was the first Jewish theologian (as far as I know) to explain how traditional Jews live more in sacred time than in sacred space. While other religions have devoted their energy to building physical temples and cathedrals in sacred places, Jews have erected sanctuaries in the form of sacred days. Time, like physical space, has a varied texture to it. Just as there are differences between mountains and oceans, so, too, are there are there differences between the Sabbath and the ordinary days of the week. The Sabbath is more than just a secular "day off." It's a specific creation made by God in the very dawn of Creation. The Sabbath is as real as the physical things we see and touch everyday in the natural world. But in order to experience the specialness of the Sabbath, one must step inside the structure of its special rules and observances -- to enter the "palace in time."

This book is beautifully-written in poetic prose that will inspire both Jews and non-Jews. It goes in and out of print with various publsihers, so, if it is not available on Amazon right now, track down a used copy or borrow it from the library. You will be very glad you did! s

Heschel's "The Sabbath" was perhaps the singular most important work in helping me understand my own relationship to a weekly sabbath/shabbat. It is a masterfully written (and, unlike other Heschel books, short!) description of what it means to create a "cathedral in time" each week. Heschel's central insight that Judaism is a "religion of time and not of space" -- I'm quoting from memory so don't harass me if I got it wrong -- is brilliant and important. Highly recommended for Jews and other spiritual seekers.