With this Passover Haggadah, Elie Wiesel and his friend Mark Podwal invite you to join them for the Passover Seder -- the most festive event of the Jewish calendar. Read each year at the Seder table, the Haggadah recounts the miraculous tale of the liberation of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, with a celebration of prayer, ritual, and song. Wiesel and Podwal guide you through the Haggadah and share their understanding and faith in a special illustrated edition that will be treasured for years to come.

Accompanying the traditional Haggadah text (which appears here in an accessible new translation) are Elie Wiesel's poetic interpretations, reminiscences, and instructive retellings of ancient legends. The Nobel laureate interweaves past and present as the symbolism of the Seder is explored. Wiesel's commentaries may be read aloud in their entirety or selected passages may be read each year to illuminate the timeless message of this beloved book of redemption.

This volume is enhanced by more than fifty original drawings by Mark Podwal, the artist whom Cynthia Ozick has called a "genius of metaphor through line." Podwal's work not only complements the traditional Haggadah text, as well as Wiesel's poetic voice, but also serves as commentary unto itself. The drawings, with their fresh juxtapositions of insight and revelation, are an innovative contribution to the long tradition of Haggadah illustration.

Thomas Keating was a Cistercian monk who founded the worldwide 'Contemplative Outreach', teaching people the art of meditation. Invitation to Love provides a road map for the journey that begins when Centering Prayer is seriously undertaken. Pointing to some of the recognizable landmarks on this journey, as well as to its ultimate destination, Father Keating addresses common questions regarding contemplative practice: How will it affect my life? Where does it lead us spiritually? What obstacles will I encounter along the way? How does it work? Following on from Open Mind, Open Heart, this book establishes a dialogue between the insights of contemporary psychology and the classic Christian spiritual masters, providing a solid conceptual background for the practice of Centering Prayer. This is a practical book, articulating the stages of the process of spiritual growth, and outlining how we might develop a deeper relationship with God and move from contemplation to action.

Practical biblical tool takes believers from seeking God's hand to effectively seeking His face. Learn to experience God in phenomenal reality and closeness. For individuals, small groups or entire congregations.

Links film history with church history over the past century, illuminating America's broader relationship with religious currents over time Moments of prayer have been represented in Hollywood movies since the silent era, appearing unexpectedly in films as diverse as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Frankenstein, Amistad, Easy Rider, Talladega Nights, and Alien 3, as well as in religiously inspired classics such as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. Here, Terry Lindvall examines how films have reflected, and sometimes sought to prescribe, ideas about how one ought to pray. He surveys the landscape of those films that employ prayer in their narratives, beginning with the silent era and moving through the uplifting and inspirational movies of the Great Depression and World War II, the cynical, anti-establishment films of the 60s and 70s, and the sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters of today. Lindvall considers how the presentation of cinematic prayer varies across race, age, and gender, and places the use of prayer in film in historical context, shedding light on the religious currents at play during those time periods. God on the Big Screen demonstrates that the way prayer is presented in film during each historical period tells us a great deal about America's broader relationship with religion.

Since the formation of the Republic in 1923, Friday sermons (hutbe) have been an important platform that allows the state to engage and communicate with the Turkish people. Sermon topics vary from religious and ethical issues to matters concerning family, women, health, education, business and the environment. Even if politics, in the name of secularism, has been banned from mosques and sermons, questions of how to be a good citizen and honour the Turkish nation have been of utmost importance. With an all-pervading sermon theme of social, national and political unity, Elisabeth Ozdalga explores how long-standing religious rituals are utilised and mobilised in the formation of modern political loyalties and national identities.

Valeri presents an overview of Hawaiian religious culture, in which hierarchies of social beings and their actions are mirrored by the cosmological hierarchy of the gods. As the sacrifice is performed, the worshipper is incorporated into the god of his class. Thus he draws on divine power to sustain the social order of which his action is a part, and in which his own place is determined by the degree of his resemblance to his god. The key to Hawaiian society--and a central focus for Valeri--is the complex and encompassing sacrificial ritual that is the responsibility of the king, for it displays in concrete actions all the concepts of pre-Western Hawaiian society. By interpreting and understanding this ritual cycle, Valeri contends, we can interpret all of Hawaiian religious culture.

This book covers the ideological motives and religious perceptions behind travel to sites prescribed with sanctity in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It covers sites that have drawn pilgrims and religious tourists to them for hundreds of years, and seeks to provide an understanding of the complex world of religiously motivated travel. Beginning with contemporary perspectives of pilgrimage across these religions, it then discusses management aspects such as logistics, infrastructure, malevolent behaviour and evangelical volunteers. This book: - Provides a collection of new, contemporary perspectives on pilgrimage. - Reviews the ideological motives, history, mental health, and religious perceptions of tourism to holy cities. - Contains practical applications, models and illustrations of religious tourism and pilgrimage management from a variety of international and academic perspectives. Written by subject experts, this book addresses cultural sustainability for researchers and practitioners within religious tourism, religious studies, geography and anthropology.

This book offers a fresh and challenging multi-disciplinary interpretation of Aristophanes' Frogs. Drawing on a wide range of literary and anthropological approaches, it seeks to explore how membership of Greek fifth-century society would have shaped one's understanding of the play, and, more specifically, of Dionysus as a dramatic figure.

In past centuries, human responses to death were largely shaped by religious beliefs. Ralph Houlbrooke shows how the religious upheavals of the early modern period brought dramatic changes to this response, affecting the last rites, funerals, and ways of remembering the dead. He examines the interaction between religious innovation and the continuing need for reassurance and consolation on the part of the dying and the bereaved.

This volume addresses the means and ends of sacrificial speculation by inviting a selected group of specialists in the fields of philosophy, history of religions, and indology to examine philosophical modes of sacrificial speculation - especially in Ancient India and Greece - and consider the commonalities of their historical raison d'etre. Scholars have long observed, yet without presenting any transcultural grand theory on the matter, that sacrifice seems to end with (or even continue as) philosophy in both Ancient India and Greece. How are we to understand this important transformation that so profoundly changed the way we think of religion (and philosophy as opposed to religion) today? Some of the complex topics inviting closer examination in this regard are the interiorisation of ritual, ascetism and self-sacrifice, sacrifice and cosmogony, the figure of the philosopher-sage, transformations and technologies of the self, analogical reasoning, the philosophy of ritual, vegetarianism, and metempsychosis.

There is great contemporary interest in the mystery centres of antiquity, such as prehistoric caves, the pyramids of Egypt, Newgrange in Ireland, and the Externsteine in Germany. The trials and rites that took place there were for the chosen few, and are vividly described in this book -- from the trials of fire and water to the three-day near-death sleep. The author goes on to argue that modern-day initiation, however, has a substantially different character. Whereas a 'hierophant' -- a guide -- was previously needed to navigate a trial, these days it is life itself which brings us trials, which can sometimes lead to deeper experiences of the spiritual.

In this groundbreaking study, Michael Willis examines how the gods of early Hinduism came to be established in temples, how their cults were organized, and how the ruling elite supported their worship. Examining the emergence of these key historical developments in the fourth and fifth centuries, Willis combines Sanskrit textual evidence with archaeological data from inscriptions, sculptures, temples, and sacred sites. The centre-piece of this study is Udayagiri in central India, the only surviving imperial site of the Gupta dynasty. Through a judicious use of landscape archaeology and archaeo-astronomy, Willis reconstructs how Udayagiri was connected to the Festival of the Rainy Season and the Royal Consecration. Under Gupta patronage, these rituals were integrated into the cult of Vishnu, a deity regarded as the source of creation and of cosmic time. As special devotees of Vishnu, the Gupta kings used Udayagiri to advertise their unique devotional relationship with him. Through his meticulous study of the site, its sculptures and its inscriptions, Willis shows how the Guptas presented themselves as universal sovereigns and how they advanced new systems of religious patronage that shaped the world of medieval India.

Feeding the Dead outlines the early history of ancestor worship in South Asia, from the earliest sources available, the Vedas, up to the descriptions found in the Dharmshastra tradition. Most prior works on ancestor worship have done little to address the question of how shraddha, the paradigmatic ritual of ancestor worship up to the present day, came to be. Matthew R. Sayers argues that the development of shraddha is central to understanding the shift from Vedic to Classical Hindu modes of religious behavior. Central to this transition is the discursive construction of the role of the religious expert in mediating between the divine and the human actor. Both Hindu and Buddhist traditions draw upon popular religious practices to construct a new tradition. Sayers argues that the definition of a religious expert that informs religiosity in the Common Era is grounded in the redefinition of ancestral rites in the Grhyasutras. Beyond making more clear the much misunderstood history of ancestor worship in India, this book addressing the serious question about how and why religion in India changed so radically in the last half of the first millennium BCE. The redefinition of the role of religious expert is hugely significant for understanding that change. This book ties together the oldest ritual texts with the customs of ancestor worship that underlie and inform medieval and contemporary practice.