In the 17th century, Shabtai Zvi was a name to reckon with. A man of strong passions and mesmerizing personality, he convinced many that he was the Jewish Messiah. But his thirst for power - his conviction that anything he wanted could be his - was his downfall. The Ottoman authorities, rattled by Shabtai’s extreme statements and the unrest of the Jewish population, arrested him in 1666, forced him to convert to Islam, and in 1673 banished him. In contemporary Toronto, Shabtai’s legacy lives on. Donald May, a disgraced professor, becomes enamoured of Shabtai’s Kabbalistic philosophy. Like Shabtai, he has a thirst for admiration and a moral compass that doesn’t always run true. But unlike his hero, he may have a chance for redemption. This novel interweaves the lives of the two men, painting a vivid picture of the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s alongside the life of a contemporary man who struggles between desires of the flesh and the life of the mind.

In the 17th century, Shabtai Zvi was a name to reckon with. A man of strong passions and mesmerizing personality, he convinced many that he was the Jewish Messiah. But his thirst for power - his conviction that anything he wanted could be his - was his downfall. The Ottoman authorities, rattled by Shabtai's extreme statements and the unrest of the Jewish population, arrested him in 1666, forced him to convert to Islam, and in 1673 banished him. In contemporary Toronto, Shabtai's legacy lives on. Donald May, a disgraced professor, becomes enamoured of Shabtai's Kabbalistic philosophy. Like Shabtai, he has a thirst for admiration and a moral compass that doesn't always run true. But unlike his hero, he may have a chance for redemption. This novel interweaves the lives of the two men, painting a vivid picture of the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s alongside the life of a contemporary man who struggles between desires of the flesh and the life of the mind....

Gershom Scholem stands out among modern thinkers for the richness and power of his historical imagination. A work widely esteemed as his magnum opus, Sabbatai Ṣevi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai Ṣevi was an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey who aroused a fervent following that spread over the Jewish world after he declared himself to be the Messiah. The movement suffered a severe blow when Ṣevi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai Ṣevi details Ṣevi's rise to prominence and stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and passion. This edition contains a new introduction by Yaacob Dweck that explains the scholarly importance of Scholem's work to a new generation of readers.

A timely and fascinating study of an early modern movement that transcended traditional Jewish gender paradigms and allowed women to express their spirituality freely in the public arena.

A landmark work of Jewish history and a worldwide phenomenon when it was first published, this masterpiece of Jewish history was translated in multiple languages and instantly become the de facto standard in the field. German academic HEINRICH GRAETZ (1817-1891) brings a sympathetic Jewish perspective to the story of his own people, offering readers today an affectionate, passionate history, not a detached, clinical one. Backed by impeccable scholarship and originally published in German across 11 volumes between 1853 and 1875, this six-volume English-language edition was abridged under the direction of the author, and brought to American readers by the Jewish Publication Society of America in 1891. It remains an important work of the study of the Jewish religion and people to this day. Volume VI contains the index for the entire series, including tables of Jewish history and a comprehensive listing of characters, subjects, and maps. It also features a memoir of the author.

Rudolf Steiner's teachings of Christ are unique. Christ, he says, is an objective universal force, existing independently of Christian churches and confessions, and working for the whole of humanity. The impulse that Christ brought to earth acts for the advancement of all people, irrespective of religion, creed or race. Among the myriad other themes that emerge here are the introduction of the 'I' (or self) in human development and its connection to Christ and the meaning of the Ten.

Is Revelation really worth the effort? Does its message resonate with followers of Jesus in the here and now? Encountering Jesus in Revelation offers pastors and laypeople an accessible tool for studying Revelation within the local church. It situates Revelation in its ancient context while stressing how its apocalyptic nature addresses God’s people at every point in history, including our own. It does this by introducing apocalyptic writing as a form of literature and then surveys the alternative perspective Revelation offers on the world of its readers. That perspective is one in which we encounter Jesus and his call to leave behind the often-unrecognized beasts and monsters that inhabit our world. Readers who find themselves reluctant to study Revelation because of the confusing nature of its contents—and of academic books written about it—will find that Encountering Jesus in Revelation offers accessible and applicable insights as it explores how Revelation addresses its readers today.