Astonishingly, Israeli lesbians and gays have been able to achieve many political goals that still elude America's gay community. Israel's Supreme Court has mandated same-sex spousal benefits; the military, which never barred gays to begin with, has removed its last official restrictions; Israel's parliament boasts a Subcommittee for the Prevention of Sexual Orientation Discrimination; and school curricula are gay-friendly—all of this in a country where religious interests wield extraordinary power and whose identity today is the object of fierce struggle. Between Sodom and Eden, the first book to explore this rapidly changing landscape, is based on interviews with over one hundred Israelis, as well as Palestinians. Lee Walzer explores how, within a decade, Israel has evolved from a society that marginalized homosexuals to one that offers some of the most extensive legal protections in the world. He traces the political, religious, and social factors that make Israel a gay rights trendsetter, examining the interplay between Judaism and homosexuality, the growing prominence of gay themes in Israeli literature, film, music, and television, and the role of the media in advancing lesbian and gay political progress.

The graphic novel is a vital and emerging genre, and this is the only book that focuses on its relation to Jewish culture, literature, and history. A highly readable and informative collection that will be of great interest to readers across a wide range of disciplines.--Deborah R. Geis, editor of "Considering MAUS: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust."

Zionism was not only a political and ideological program but also a sexual one. The liberation of Jews and creation of a new nation were closely intertwined with a longing for the redemption and normalization of the Jewish male body. That body had to be rescued from anti-Semitic, scientific-medical discourse associating it with disease, madness, degeneracy, sexual perversity, and femininityeven with homosexuality. The Zionist movement was intent on transforming the very nature of European Jewish masculinity as it had existed in the diaspora. Zionist/Israeli films expressed this desire through visual and narrative tropes, enforcing the image of the hypermasculine, colonialist-explorer and militaristic nation-builder, an image dependent on the homophobic repudiation of the "feminine" within men. The creation of a new heterosexual Jewish man was further intertwined with attitudes on the breeding of children, bodily hygiene, racial improvement, and Orientalist perspectiveswhich associated the East, and especially Eastern bodies, with unsanitary practices, plagues, disease, and sexual perversity. By stigmatizing Israels Eastern populations as agents of death and degeneration, Zionism created internal biologized enemies, against whom the Zionist society had to defend itself. In the name of securing the life and reproduction of the new Ashkenazi Jewry, Israeli society discriminated against both its internal enemies, the Palestinians, and its own citizens, the Mizrahim (Oriental Jews). Yosefs critique of the construction of masculinities and queerness in Israeli cinema and culture also serves as a model for the investigation of the role of male sexuality within national culture in general.

Of all the perplexing mysteries in this world, none have endured longer or have captured the imaginations of men more than the mysterious fate of the Garden of Eden. What ever happened to man’s first home? What ever became of the Tree of Life and its awful counterpart, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Is the Bible silent on this subject, or have we simply missed something? Eden’s Fate shines new light upon this mystery by closely examining the Biblical record and promoting a literal interpretation of the events, people, and places recorded in Genesis chapters 1-3. Herein you will learn what Eden really was, what really happened in the misty dawn of mankind’s history, and most of all you will discover the truth about Eden’s fate.

The last decade has marked the growing visibility and worldwide interest in Israeli cinema. Films such as Walk on Water, Or, My Treasure, Beaufort and Waltz with Bashir have been commercially and critically successful both in Europe and the United States and have won a number of prestigious international awards. This book examines for the first time the new ideological and aesthetic trends in contemporary Israeli cinema. More specifically, it critically explores the complex and crucial role of Israeli cinema in remembering and restaging traumas and losses that were denied entry into the shared national past. One of the most striking phenomena in contemporary Israeli cinema is the number and scope of films dealing with past traumatic events – events that were repressed or insufficiently mourned, such as the memory of the Holocaust, traumas from wars and terrorist attacks, and the losses entailed by the experience of immigration. Current Israeli cinema exposes and highlights a radical discontinuity between history and memory. Traumatic events from Israeli society’s past are represented as the private memory of distinct social groups – soldiers, immigrants, women, queers – and not as collective memory, as a lived and practiced tradition that conditions Israeli society. This detachment from national collective memory pulls the films into a world marked by a persistent blurring of the historical context and by private and subjective impressions – a timeless world of dreams, hallucinations and myths. These groups feel duty-bound to remember the past, recasting repressed memories through the cinema in order to return and to give meaning to their identity.

Both John the Baptist and Jesus said, Behold, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Yet we know that heaven will only come when sin ends. Therefore, humankind needs to know which sin removed us from the first paradise Eden. In A Law from EdenSolving the Mystery of Original Sin, author Marilyn Taplin looks to the Bible to show that the true original sin is not pride or the seeking of knowledge about good and evil; rather, she shows that the true original sin is an act of sexual perversion. A misunderstanding of human sexuality has led to this morally wicked society, and biblical research shows how sexual acts originating in ancient pagan societies and now found in contemporary LGBT communities have distorted the way even those professing to be Christians view their own sexuality. Many believe that the world is moving in the wrong direction, and Jesus shows us how to reverse that direction and bring Eden to the earth once again. If those professing to be Christians learn the powerful truth about original sin and end this sexual act, then they will be able to help usher in the heaven on earth promised by God.

For many contemporary Jews, Israel no longer serves as the Promised Land, the center of the Jewish universe and the place of final destination. In New Jews, Caryn Aviv and David Shneer provocatively argue that there is a new generation of Jews who don't consider themselves to be eternally wandering, forever outsiders within their communities and seeking to one day find their homeland. Instead, these New Jews are at home, whether it be in Buenos Aires, San Francisco or Berlin, and are rooted within communities of their own choosing. Aviv and Shneer argue that Jews have come to the end of their diaspora; wandering no more, today's Jews are settled. In this wide-ranging book, the authors take us around the world, to Moscow, Jerusalem, New York and Los Angeles, among other places, and find vibrant, dynamic Jewish communities where Jewish identity is increasingly flexible and inclusive. New Jews offers a compelling portrait of Jewish life today.

How do we make sense of Ezekiel 40–48? Ezekiel’s temple vision has long mystified Bible readers and scholars. Is this a temple that is going to be built in the future? Or is this merely symbolic? Why so many details? Is there any relevance to this section of the Old Testament at all? This book addresses these important questions, showing how Ezekiel’s temple is more than just symbolic. Yet its ultimate fulfillment is not in any physical building, but, according to the New Testament, in Jesus and the new heavens and new earth. Not only will this book illuminate Ezekiel 40–48 for you, it will also help you understand important issues of interpretation in our day, such as typology, the role of the temple in biblical theology, and the New Testament use of the Old Testament. You will learn that yes, in fact, Ezekiel 40–48 is very relevant to the Bible’s storyline.

Hailed as "the most radical repackaging of the Bible since Gutenberg", these Pocket Canons give an up-close look at each book of the Bible.