Phil Borges presents, through the medium of photography, a project that brings attention to the situation in Tibet. Both stylish and yet sensitive, Borges uses an extensive cross section of subjects to accomplish this. He brings to the project, like I mentioned above, an extensive cross section not just of subjects but locations as well that exemplify the phenomenal complexity and diversity in that country. An example is the portrait of Yama, which caught my eye, who could be any child in any place in the world. I might be waxing "noble savage" here but does she not deserve a childhood just like any child in the globe? With text from such notables as Nobel Peace Laureates like Elie Wiesel and His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso - the book is a sure hit and a must for every home. Not to be outdone are other contributors who themselves are "heavy hitters" in the discourse of Tibet and Tibetan issues - Robert F. Thurman and the late Galen Rowell. Phil Borges presents us with nothing less than a tour de force of visual stimulation coupled with profound text and a stylish presentation. A keeper that will stand the test of time.

Miguel Llora

Each of these faces is pure incarnation of a human feeling...from joy to worriness, from amazement to pride.Some of these people will haunt you for long after you turn the last page (See little 4 year old Pemba's eyes...) Sent the book to friends overseas...just the kind of work you want to share with your closest ones.

Phil Borges amazing photography, accompanied by words from the Dalai Lama make this book not only beautiful to look at, but inspiring as well.

This book will make you laugh and make you cry. It will sway you like Rabbi Carlebach managed to sway so many...Shlomo lives on...

Holy Brother is a book that everyone, whether Jewish or not, whether on a spiritual path or not, should read. Rabbi Schlomo Carlebach was a gift to human aspiration, a living manifestation of heavenly love. The stories of his boundless goodness, earthy personality, and prescient mind touch the miraculous and the mundane all at once. I am very disappointed that the book is out of print, as I was about to order several more copies for dear friends met at the Parliament of World Religions in Cape Town, South Africa at the end of the millenneum. This book would be a wonderfully uplifting gift for anyone who is downhearted for any reason. It is easy, eloquent and lucid reading, and can be read in small segments, or all at once. I found it impossible to put down and re-read it often. If you can find a copy, read it! Not to be missed!

Yitta Halberstam has written every line of this book with love. How appropriate! For Reb Shlomo lived every day of his life with love. I am not Jewish but I was moved to my soul by these stories of a great holy one who lived among us. I regret that although our lives were synchronous for fifty years, somehow I missed seeing or hearing him in the flesh.

All the more credit to Yitta who brings him back to life in this moving tribute from the mouths of those who did have the privilege to know and be touched by him.

I hope his example will inspire me to a similar single-mindedness and open-heartedness.

One look at the pages of this wrenching book will tell the story. Roman Vishniac, secretly, in some cases, shot thousands of pictures of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe, shortly before they were swallowed up by the Holocaust.

Young, old, in-between are shown going about their ordinary lives, some already paying the price of the prevalent Eastern European anti-Semitism, virtually oblivious to what was coming their way.

You can't look at these pictures and not shudder: certainly no one in these pictures can still be alive, and it's not just because of the passage of time. Most of the people photographed here lived in the smaller villages, segregated in many cases from the Gentiles, wearing clothes that quickly and easily identified them to their destroyers.

Vishniac shot an estimated 16,000 pictures, but managed to get only about 2,000 out when he fled to the United States in 1940. We should be grateful for what he's given us, and mourn all that was lost.

I was amazed at the quality of the images and the sensitive approach to what has become an amazing record of that,which many of us could only imagine from verbal accounts.It is without doubt the best photographic recording of a society which was to be brutally decimated. Vishniac's photographic artistry in my mind are on a par with Cartier Bresson whom I greatly admire. Thanks to the publisher for printing such a wonderful book.

Open this book and you will enter a world of the vanished, but not vanquished. Roman Vishniac's stunning black and white photographs of the destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe will surely enter your heart, as they have mine. The simple, sometimes stark compositions are primarily of the faces of Jews long lost in the flames of the Holocaust. Most of the photographs have a brief explanatory comment that gives them context. Vishniac takes us into the tiny basement apartments of Warsaw's Jewish porters, the logging villages of Carpathian Ruthenia, and the narrow streets of Vilna. I found myself drawn into that world where Jews worked, studied, walked on their way to and from synagogues or markets, plowed fields and played in the streets. My own family originated in that world, and I thank Roman Vishniac for giving me a glimpse of it. I highly recommend this book.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame is a classic, one-volume library of works from the so called Golden Age of Science Fiction. These stories are from the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's, when science fiction was booming. This volume contains the works of some of the biggest and most well known authors in the field, such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon and James Blish, among many others.
Don't get this volume mixed up with the pulp science fiction thats out there. The stories within are among some of the most famous out there. Nightfall, Surface Tension and Flowers for Algernon are in here, some of the classic stories out there.
Each and every one of the twenty-six stories in this book are exciting, thoughtful, interesting and are at the edge of imagination. They cover everything from bioengineering, first contact, mutations, god, robots, Mars and space travel, all the things that come with science fiction.
One of the most interesting things about these stories is that they were written seventy, sixty, fifty or fourty years ago, yet the ideas and writing are just as vivid as they would be written today. Some of the things that are being written about had not been invented or conceived by science, but are now the forefronts of science now. Bioengineering and robotics are the big ones. First contact and space travel still remain in science fiction for the most part, but who knows what will happen, expecially if some of those ideas were correct?
This is a must for any science fiction fan out there.

This is the basic collection of classical SF short stories. My copy is so tattered and worn out that I'm hoping to find a new one-- and this is my second copy. It was the text of our Science Fiction as English Lit class in college, and it's a book I've treasured ever since.

This is by far and away the master work off all that science fiction anthologies has given us.

Here is a complete list of the titles included.

A Martian Odyssey

Twilight

Helen O' Loy

The Roads must Roll

Microcosmic God

Nightfall

The Weapon Shop

Mimsy Where the Borogoves

Huddling Place

Arena

First Contact

That only a Mother

Scanners live in Vain

Mars is Heaven!

The Little Black Bag

Born of Man and Woman

Comming Attraction

The Quest for Saint Aquin

Surface Tension

The Nine Billion Names of God

It's a Good Life

The Cold Equations

Fondly Fahrenheit

The Country of the Kind

Flowers for Algernon

A Rose for Ecclesiastes

If you can find this book then buy it. It's awsome. Science Fiction only truly shined back in the 30's and up through the 60's and some of the 70's. This collection encompasses for the first time most of those great short-fiction works.

Enjoy!

Elie Wiesel describes himself as neither philosopher nor historian but "merely" as a "storyteller who transmits what was given to him, as faithfully as possible, yet lending it his own voice and intonation." He does exactly that in SOULS ON FIRE: HASIDIC PORTRAITS AND LEGENDS.

Before reading this book, I only knew what little of Hasidism one can absorb from watching the Habad Lubavitch funding appeals on Public Television and from casual reading of such novels as Potok's THE CHOSEN.I did know that dancing played a part in Hasidic prayer, but hadn't a clue as to why. SOULS ON FIRE didn't make an instant Hasidic expert out of me, but it did give me a feeling for the history and traditions of a movement that, in the years of the holocaust, played a major, if indirect, part in the preservation of Eastern European Jewry and its culture. (It made reference to the dancing, too.)

The modern Hasidic movement seems to have started with the Baal Shem Tov (1700 - 1760). (Baal Shem Tov translates as Master of the Name.) Passed from the Baal Shhem Tov through succeeding generations of disciples, some of whom also became Masters, or Rebbes, in their own generations, the movement survived, and even thrived in a much less than friendly environment. Eventually it had spread to three geographical areas; the Ukraine, White Russia, and Poland. In each area there were individual Rebbes who taught their own brand of Hasidism and who had their own fervent followers.

Since Wiesel's approach to his subject is to let the various tales and parables of the Rebbes speak for themselves, it's my intention, in this review, to do the same but on a very limited scale. A few comments follow:

Baal Shem Tov: "Whoever loves God exclusively . . . . excluding man, reduces his love and his God to an abstraction."

Wiesel's Grandfather, a Hasid, but not a Rebbe: "To induce others to believe is easier than to believe."

Menachim-Mendl of Kotsk: "In Hell one prays better than in Paradise."

Rebbe Bunham of the School of Pshiskhe: "I think that I could reform any sinner - except a liar . . . . and the worst liar is one who lies to himself."

One complete tale which evidently is meant for God's ears and which reflects on man's seemingly futile wait for the Messiah:

This is also from Rebbe Bunham: A king, wanting to punish his son, sends him into exile in a distant land. The prince, suffering from hunger and cold, waits to be recalled. As years go by, he loses the very strength needed to wait for the royal pardon. Finally, many years later, the king sends an emissary with full powers to grant the prince every desire and wish. In response, the prince asks for a piece of bread and a warm coat, nothing else. He has forgotten that he is a prince and that he could return to his father's kingdom.

Some of the more pessimistic Rebbes seemed to feel that God had to be reminded of his responsibilities to man, and so reminded him through their tales and parables.

Wiesel tells us that Hasidism was born in and survived eras of fear, hunger, and persecution. He hints, through references to his own incarceration, along with most Eastern European Jews, in the Nazi Concentration Camps, that Hasidism, bred in times of anguish, had the strength to survive the hardest test of all, the murder of most of its adherents.

Very little in SOULS ON FIRE can be read in a literal sense. To get the full impact of the book it is necessary to suspend reliance on reality in favor of imagination and perhaps a touch of compassion.

The subject is inspiring and the text is prose at its most elegant.

I picked up this book on a whim, and now I can't stop recommending it to everyone I meet! In this book, Ellie Weisel gives a personalized history of Hasidism. Using his own memories and insights, plus whatever tales and legends he finds most interesting, he takes us through Hasidism from its beginning through a lot of the Hasidic masters. The subject is interesting by itself, especially since many of the legends are profound or funny, and Mr. Weisel's wonderful writing style is the perfect vehicle for it. Buy and read this book!

Area studies may be the next area of creativity and productivity in Holocaust studies. Raul Hilberg has written on the whole -- masterfully, brilliantly and enduringly. Leni Yahil, Lucy Dawidowicz, Martin Gilbert and others have also written on the whole offering differing perspectives but attempting to grasp the whole. The next generation may, of necessity, be more restricted and more restrained in their writing. More documents are available and thus more can be known of each specific area of study, of victim groups, of regions. Many younger scholars do not have the mastery of languages that was common to their elders, most especially to the Eastern European Jews who mastered several languages before they left home.

Radu Ioanid is an excellent example of the promise of area studies. A Romanian native, he has written of the Holocaust in Romania. This work, originally written in French, is translated into English because of the generosity and commitment of the Holocaust Memorial Museum and its determination to make a study of Romanian Jewry available. It has assisted in the publication of two works on Hungarian Jewry including an important condensation of Randolph Braham masterful study of The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary.

Ioanid's work has many virtues. It is detailed and precise. His mastery of the material is evident throughout. His interpretations are sound, his methods are clear. Perhaps the two most important virtues of the work are that it is virtually without competition for Ioanid has reviewed and reported on new documentation that has hitherto been virtually unavailable for anyone to see. Too little has been published in the English language regarding the fate of Romanian Jewry. It is a story worth telling because it does not fit into the general pattern of destruction. Romania was allied with Germany. Some of its population and a large part of its Jewish population - the Jews of Northern Transnistria -- was given to Hungary by Germany in 1940, and thus its Jews remained relatively untouched by the "Final Solution" until the fateful days following the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944. Between May 15th and July 8th 437,402 Jews were transported to Auschwitz on 148 trains. Though originally Romanian - Elie Wiesel among them - their fate is regarded as an essential part of the Hungarian story, not the Romanian one.

The shape of Ioanid's chapters tell much of the Romanian story: Massacres at the Beginning of the War, Transit camps, Deportations and Other Mass Murders, Massacres in Transnistia, Life in Transnistria, the Survival of Romanian Jews. What scholars have long known but few non-professionals realize - and what Ioanid documents in precise detail -- is that for the most part Romania did not rely upon German assistance or initiatives to solve its own Jewish problem. They "took care" of their own Jews, mimicking some of the German formats, but in essence avoided the unique German creation of the death camps, instead transporting the Jews to Transnistria. Romania was not necessarily less ruthless to its Jews than the Germans, only significantly less disciplined and methodical, less technologically inventive. Those not murdered by Romanian troops, or those who did not die along the way, lived under such harsh conditions that their chances of survival were imperiled until Romanian adjusted its policy to the new reality that Germany was certain to lose the war. They then presumed that there was more value in living Jews than dead Jews. Living Jews could be exchanged for money or political advantage. Dead Jews were of little value, except for the fact that the land was Judenrein for unlike the Germans, Romania did not recycle Jewish bodies.

Along the way, the Romanians initiated pogroms, such as the one in Iasi. Romanian troops participated in the Einsatzgruppen murders along with SS troops, In Bessarabia, northern Bukovina and southern Ukraine - the most prominent murder sites were Bogdanovka, Dumanovka and Acmicetcka and of course Odessa.. They deported Jews from their homes in cattle cars, copying the German deportations of Jews from ghettos to death camps, but the Romanians did not have death camps at the end of the journey of these Jews. Thus, they were held captive in these trains without food or water in unlivable conditions until they died, and were then buried in mass graves along the railroad tracks. The majority of the Jews were deported to Transnistria, where they were held captive until they died. More than 150,000 Jews died there. And the Jews in old Romania were held for a ransom that was not forthcoming - until many years after the Holocaust when the Jews of Romania were ransomed from Communist rule, in a story that is still largely untold.

Ioanid is not only plowing fresh land, describing the fate of Romanian Jews that is little understood, but he is also relying on documents that have only recently become available. One of the major contributions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and its recently retired chairman Miles Lerman has been international agreements to copy documents relating to the Holocaust in countries that were formerly behind the Iron Curtain. Ioanid and the director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Paul Shapiro were deeply involved in these efforts for almost a decade and the fruits of their impressive labor are to be seen in the collection of the Museum archives and in the benefit that scholars such as Ioanid reap, from this newly available material. Only two scholars, Radu Ioanid and Jean Ancel of Yad Vashem have spent the time reading this vast documentation and Ioanid's work shows the benefits of such detailed documentary research.

The timing of his work is also fortunate. There have been efforts by Romanian nationalists on the right, who were long silenced by Communist rule, to rehabilitate the reputation of Marshall Antonescu, the Romanian ruler during the Holocaust. Monuments have been erected and new words of praise have seen their way into print. Ioanid's work will ensure that the full record of Antonescu will be known in the West and the revisionist history will not be fueled by ignorance in the West.

The Holocaust in Romania is difficult to read emotionally as Elie Wiesel put it in his foreword because the behavior of the Romanians at their own initiative without relying on the Germans marks an anguished chapter in the history of the Holocaust. In Ioanid, the Jews of Romania have found a historian whose intellect matches his dedication to detail and his passion to tell the truth that he uncovers.

This survey of the destruction of Jews and gypsies under the Antonescue regime from 1940-44 surveys a little-known era in Romanian history (indeed, much of the nation's history is little revealed to those outside the country). Chapters prove in depth a holocaust every bit as extensive as the German experience and reveals cruelty expressed on many levels in Romanian society.

This book is a powerful reminder of a time we should never forget. In 1941 a German soldier Willy Georg went into the Warsaw Ghetto and took some pictures. Without meaning to he documented for history what life was like for the Jews in the Polish Ghetto before it was raised to the ground by the Nazis and most of its occupants massacred. Willy Georg is not a hero, he did nothing to help the people of the Ghetto, all he did was prove that they had existed at all. This book is tragic as it is magnificent. The accompanying text is concise and well written, showing the reader along with the photos how people lived and died in Warsaw during the early 1940s. This book should be on every library shelf and every school from Junior to High should have access to it. Sometimes pictures can speak louder than words and in this case it is more than true.

The origin of this book is in of itself remarkable. In the summer of 1941, Willie Georg (a German soldier stationed in Warsaw), was given a pass by his commanding officer that allowed him to enter the Warsaw Ghetto--a 1.36 square mile area into which 500,000 Jews had been packed. "There are some curious goings-on behind that wall," said the officer. "Take your [camera]...and bring back some photos of what you find." George did this, but the photographs he took have waited over five decades to see publication. Jewish scholar Rafael F. Scharf has collected these poignant, powerful images into a volume supplimented by excerpts from the diaries of Warsaw Ghetto Jews. The result is a book that brings the past to life with vivid and literally painful clarity. The Ghetto was deliberately created by the Nazis as a place for Jews to slowly died from hunger, cold and disease. (Georg's photos were taken a little less than a year before the death camps opened for large-scale business.) Every page is an portrait--in words or pictures--of people the reader knows almost certainly died before the war ended. It's impossible to look at these images without feeling a sense of loss on a purely human level. Old men, women, children, their faces gaunt with hunger, are seen still struggling to live a life of sorts, but it is clearly a struggle they are losing. IN THE WARSAW GHETTO is a reminder that every person who suffered and died under the Nazi regime was a fellow human being--that each and every one of those deaths was an ineffacable tragedy.

This book was very well written but just to top of a great book there were amazing illustrations.

Interesting to read in different chapters, and a good guideline for whats fact and fiction.

The journalist Eliezer, a WWII Nazi concentration camp survivor, steps in front of a cab while crossing the street and the reader is left to speculate whether the occurence was an accident, or attempted suicide. Many who read the novel may comment on the depressing outlook of this survivor from one of the worst atrocities of western civilization. As he describes flashbacks of his experience throughout the nomalcy of his everyday life before the accident, and afterwards while hospitalized, the reader is confronted with the ir-reality that he endures. The weighty psychological effects of the holocost described in the first book of the trilogy "Dawn," where he directly tells the story of being taken into the concentration camps at a young age, follows him ominously. But it would be a great disappointment if this is all the reader examines in the novel, because it is also a story of companionship and romance. The author, while cynical, is also humorous and honest in his view of the world, of God, or the Jewish faith, and the relationship that he gains with his doctor. It is also a touching story about a love relationship. His relationship with Kathleen, dedicated to him - before and after the accident - is a genuine, caring, and witty relationship between two people that endure together through the worst. Anyone who reads it could only hope for something as genuine. The depth of thought and horrorific imagery of a mind that has experienced such atrocities in his youth is evidently what catches the readers attention, and may make for a depressing read, but there is more that this novel has to offer: casual humor, introspection, and insight. An honest story to be appreciated at many levels.

It is not often that a book this small can have such an impact on me... this book is absolutely wonderful for anyone who's ever experienced grief or been tired of life... the whole trilogy was amazingly powerful, but this book I can relate to most of all.

Having read "Night," I found "The Accident" meaningful in the sense that it presents hope in spite of one's history. In the face of cynicism, the character in the book struggled between life and death, love and indifference. I definitely do not regret taking up this book in my Philosophy class.

A lucid introduction to Jewish mysticism as it exists in the modern era. I've read quite a lot on the topic, yet the book taught me things I honestly did not know previously. Also, I appreciate the fact that Weiner generally avoids the syncretism that is common in works that attempt to relate Jewish mysticism to the contemporary spiritual quest.

This is another one of those 20th century classics that I am delighted to see back in print. First published in 1969, it remains an excellent and very readable introduction to Jewish mysticism as practiced by Jews in modern times. I discovered it in the early 1970's and literally wore out my first copy. It was one of the pivotal books in my own personal quest, and remains a favorite today.

The "half mystic" in the title is Rabbi Herbert Weiner (Reform), who describes his personal interactions with various Jewish mystics and schools of thought, ranging from the highly academic university professor, Gershom Scholem, to the Breslover Hasidim in Israel, to an eccentric old scholar living in obscurity on East Broadway. There's a fascinating interview with the late Lubovitcher Rebbe (Menachem M. Schneerson) back in the days when he still met with seekers one-to-one, a personal invitation to a Belzer Hasidic wedding celebration, and a dip in the holy mikveh used by 16th-century Rabbi Isaac Luria. Especially interesting are Weiner's experiences among various Hasidic groups in Jerusalem, in a more spiritual time before the "ultra-Orthodox" became so highly politicized. In short, the book is a sort of travelogue through two critical decades, bridging the kabbalah from the last generation to remember the pre-Holocaust world, and into the modern era. For this reason alone, it's a very valuable testimony.

But don't get me wrong --- this book is not just history. Weiner's quest is as valid today as it was over 30 years ago. Interwoven with his personal experiences are clear explanations of the teachings, given in the context where he first received them. His quest to unravel the secrets is your quest also. Little by little, the book teaches you about kabbalah in a very practical, down-to-earth way. Highly recommended!

Review of several related streams in the Hassidic tradition of mystic practice. Not a "How to" but does whet one's appetite for the experience.