The terrorist massacre committed by Hamas against innocent Israelis on October 7, 2023 brought great trauma to the state of Israel. But it also has brought great clarity. It is this clarity that tells us we must try something NEW. It is this clarity that tells us Israel must plan its future on its own and not obsess about what others think. And it is this clarity that compels us to go back to basics — to return to the biblical values and divine covenants that unite the Jewish people. It is this clarity that has inspired David Friedman, former US Ambassador to Israel and bestselling author of SLEDGEHAMMER, to write and lead a new movement: ONE JEWISH STATE.

One of the leading architects of the historic Abraham Accords, David Friedman explains why in these turbulent and dangerous times, the simple phrase of three words – ONE JEWISH STATE – must be the guideline for Israel and the world’s collective future. Each word of ONE JEWISH STATE is deeply instilled with meaning:

ONE: There is only ONE country earmarked for the Jewish people; ONE. There are 49 Muslim countries, and many Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu countries, but only ONE Jewish State.

JEWISH: This Jewish State is exactly that – JEWISH. It is the place where Jewish history was born, where Jewish values were created and where more Jews live than anywhere else. It is situated on the land given to the Jewish people by God in the words of the Holy Bible.

STATE: Israel is not just a place; it is a country with sovereignty over its land and responsibility for its inhabitants. Today that sovereignty has been called into question by the nations of the world and even by some within Israel. But Israel cannot be Jewish without sovereignty over the places that make it Jewish.

Friedman proposes a goal and a path, with God’s help, for Israel to have complete sovereignty over all its biblical homeland – in a just manner that brings peace, prosperity, and essential human dignity to ALL of Israel’s inhabitants. In ONE JEWISH STATE he will explore:

• The History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• The True History of Jews and Muslims in the Disputed Territories
• Past, Present & Future Legal Issues
• Prior Proposals, Peace Plans and So-Called “Solutions,” and Why They ALL Failed
• Why Israel has Succeeded as a Regional Superpower While its Arab Neighbors Have Failed
• Palestinian Tribalism and the Creation of a Nationalist Movement
• Religious and Biblical Issues, Conflict and Agreement
• Palestinian and Muslim Leaders and Goals for Their Peoples
• Geographic and Security Considerations for ALL
• Hamas and the Gaza Strip – Insoluble for Now
• American Evangelicals and Their Influence

Ambassador Friedman's book persuasively explains the many reasons why in this massive world there MUST remain room for ONE JEWISH STATE.

The Hebrew Bible is a philosophical testament. Abraham, the first biblical philosopher, calls out to the world in God's name exactly as Plato calls out in the name of the Forms. Abraham comes forward as a critic of pagan thought about, specifically, persons. Moses, to whom the baton is passed, spells out the practical implications of the Bible's core anthropological teachings. In Persons and Other Things Mark Glouberman explores the Bible's philosophy, roughing out in the course of a defence of it how men and women who see themselves in the biblical portrayal (as he argues that most of us do once the "religious" glare is reduced) are committed to conduct their personal affairs, arrange their social ties, and act in the natural world. Persons and Other Things is also the author's testament about the practice of philosophy. Glouberman sets out the lessons he has acquired as a lifelong learner about thinking philosophically, about writing philosophy, and about philosophers.

A surprising history of how the pig has influenced Jewish identity.

Jews do not eat pig. This (not always true) observation has been made by both Jews and non-Jews for more than three thousand years and is rooted in biblical law. Though the Torah prohibits eating pig meat, it is not singled out more than other food prohibitions. Horses, rabbits, squirrels, and even vultures, while also not kosher, do not inspire the same level of revulsion for Jews as the pig. The pig has become an iconic symbol for people to signal their Jewishness, non-Jewishness, or rebellion from Judaism. There is nothing in the Bible that suggests Jews are meant to embrace this level of pig-phobia.

Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Jordan D. Rosenblum historicizes the emergence of the pig as a key symbol of Jewish identity, from the Roman persecution of ancient rabbis, to the Spanish Inquisition, when so-called Marranos (“Pigs”) converted to Catholicism, to Shakespeare’s writings, to modern memoirs of those leaving Orthodox Judaism. The pig appears in debates about Jewish emancipation in eighteenth-century England and in vaccine conspiracies; in World War II rallying cries, when many American Jewish soldiers were “eating ham for Uncle Sam;” in conversations about pig sandwiches reportedly consumed by Karl Marx; and in recent deliberations about the kosher status of Impossible Pork.

All told, there is a rich and varied story about the associations of Jews and pigs over time, both emerging from within Judaism and imposed on Jews by others. Expansive yet accessible, Forbidden offers a captivating look into Jewish history and identity through the lens of the pig.

Apocryphal traditions, often shared by Jews and Christians, have played a significant role in the history of both religions. The 26 essays in this volume examine regional and linguistic developments in Ethiopia, Egypt, Syria, Armenia, the Balkans, and Italy. Dissenting groups, such as the Samaritans, followers of John the Baptist, and mediaeval dualists are also discussed. Furthermore, the book looks at interactions of Judaism and Christianity with the religions of Iran. Seldom verified or authorized, and frequently rejected by Churches, apocryphal texts had their own process of development, undergoing significant transformations. The book shows how apocryphal accounts could become a medium of literary and artistic elaboration and mythological creativity. Local adaptations of Biblical stories indicate that copyists, authors and artists conceived of themselves as living not in a post-Biblical era, but in direct continuity with Biblical personages.

This book conducts a focused study of contradictions and coherence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. The first section of this study examines the apparent disruption of congruity with regard to the vertical dimension of the Targum, that is, between the Torah (the Hebrew Vorlage) and the Targum (the Aramaic translation). The second section addresses the apparent disruption of congruity with regard to the horizontal dimension of the Targum, that is, within the boundaries of the TgPsJ corpus. Ultimately, this work suggests that the contradictions are given to resolution, once the greater context of biblical and Jewish tradition is taken into consideration.

As inheritors of Platonic traditions, many Jews and Christians today do not believe that God has a body. God is instead invisible and incorporeal, and even though Christians believe that God can be seen in Jesus, God otherwise remains veiled from human sight. In this ground-breaking work, Brittany E. Wilson challenges this prevalent view by arguing that early Jews and Christians often envisioned God as having a visible form. Within the New Testament, Luke-Acts in particular emerges as an important example of a text that portrays God in visually tangible ways. According to Luke, God is a perceptible, concrete being who can take on a variety of different forms, as well as a being who is intimately intertwined with human fleshliness in the form of Jesus. In this way, the God of Israel does not adhere to the incorporeal deity of Platonic philosophy, especially as read through post-Enlightenment eyes. Given the corporeal connections between God and Jesus, Luke's depiction of Jesus's body also points ahead to future controversies concerning his divinity and humanity in the early church. Indeed, questions concerning God's body are inextricably linked with Christology and shed light on how we are to understand Jesus's own visible embodiment in relation to God. In The Embodied God, Wilson reframes approaches to early Christology within New Testament scholarship and calls for a new way of thinking about divine-and human-bodies and embodied experience.

Through the application of scientific methods of analysis to a corpus of medieval manuscripts found in the Cairo Genizah, this work aims to gain a better understanding of the writing materials used by Jewish communities at that time, shedding new light not only on the production of manuscripts in the Middle Ages, but also on the life of those Jewish communities.

Around 1900 the small Ethiopian community in Jerusalem found itself in a desperate struggle with the Copts over the Dayr al-Sultan monastery located on the roof of the Holy Sepulchre. Based on a profoundly researched, impassioned and multifaceted exploration of a forgotten manuscript, this book abandons the standard majority discourse and approaches the history of Jerusalem through the lens of a community typically considered marginal. It illuminates the political, religious and diplomatic affairs that exercised the city, and guides the reader on a fascinating journey from the Ethiopian highlands to the Holy Sepulchre, passing through the Ottoman palaces in Istanbul. Have a look inside the book