As sixty-eight year old Peter Abeles confronts his ambivalence over his mother's recent death, he laces together his childhood memories of the prewar Austrian aristocracy his Jewish family belonged to, the rising tide of hate that engulfed them and their decision to flee, and the story of his life in America. In trying to come to terms with his personal history and family, Abeles looks beyond the immediate horrors of the Holocaust and the Diaspora to some of the more subtle effects on the reconstructed lives that followed. He gives a hard, honest account of his upbringing by a cold, demanding father and an embittered, materialistic mother-but he frames that account in forgiveness and redemption, imagining his dead mother as she receives a treasure box of wisdom. that has much to say about exile and immigration, about class, money, love and forgiveness. In Otto, the Boy at the Window, they offer readers some hard-earned shreds of Kabbalah. Praise for Otto, the Boy at the Window: This unforgettable book opens with the death of Abeles' mother in Long Island when he was 68, which prompts him to reflect on his Viennese childhood in the 1930s. His mother was strict and possessive, and his father was unyielding. The father owned a thriving wholesale shoe business, and the family had servants and tutors. Abeles relives the Anschluss of March 12, 1938, when the Nazis took control of Austria, and he remembers mobs of Nazi sympathizers destroying synagogues and Jewish-owned properties during Kristallnacht in November of that year. In November 1939, the family sailed from Rotterdam to New York with only USD10 left from their fortune. They went to Chicago, where two sponsoring families met them.

Maybe you're a believer, but you don't feel like you could ever know God personally. Maybe you've allowed man's acceptance or approval to obscure how God feels about you. Maybe you used to believe, but you were never too sure Who or What it was you believed in. Maybe you've never been able to trust in something you can't see or feel or touch. What would happen if you could start all over again with God? Ground Zero's unique MindFast will help you discover, without interference from anyone else, who God is, who you are, and who you and God are together. You will have the opportunity to reflect, to write your thoughts, and to explore ideas you may not have thought about before: God personally designed and created you. You are a God-thought; God cannot love you any more or less than He does right now; God is everywhere and in everything; God is waiting to share His thoughts with you, His most personal creation. Imagine what you could create with God as your partner. Ground Zero is designed to help you get to the place where you can know God, personally and intimately. Author Ron Cook writes. Everyone wants to be loved by God and to love God. afraid to start. Religion can sometimes seem so complicated and overwhelming. Religious people can seem remote and unaware. But we don't want to talk about religion - that is the last thing on our minds. We simply want to present a clear, simple message of who God is and what He means to us - a message that anyone and everyone can understand.