How to overcome emotional illness, especially the tendency to be overly critical of others and oneself, and grow spiritually.

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Modern science is the most accurate lens of reality that humanity has developed so far. Science is crucial to humanity’s health, safety, and development. Still, the lens of science only “sees” a thin slice of the totality of existence. Much of the human experience cannot be simply explained by standard quantifiable tests. Many people have become aware of the limits and shortcomings of scientific knowledge and have also realized that our perpetual hunger for spiritual understanding is real and undeniable. Many of us sense that there is something beyond. Throughout various periods of history and various cultures and societies, people have been interested in the mysterious and the paranormal. This yearning is rooted in the soul’s search for true spirituality. A Jewish Guide to the Mysterious, written by one of contemporary Judaism’s leading scholars and teachers, clearly explains classic Torah views on intriguing phenomena, such as dreams, astrology, time travel, alien life, reincarnation, ESP and auras, angels, demons, ghosts, and even such topics as the lost city of Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle. Read this fascinating book and be amazed.

Accounts of the history of Zionism usually trace its origins to the late nineteenth century. In this groundbreaking book, Arie Morgenstern argues that its roots go back even further. Morgenstern argues compellingly that the Jewish community in Israel may be traced back to a large-scale wave of immigration during the first half of the nineteenth century. Inspired by an expectation for the coming of the Messiah in the year 1840, thousands of Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and Eastern Europe relocated to Jerusalem. Morgenstern describes the messianic awakening in all these lands but focuses primarily on the concept of redemption through messianic activism that prevailed among the disciples of Rabbi Elijah, the Ga'on of Vilna. These immigrants believed that the Messiah's arrival would bring about the redemption of the Jews, but also that, in order for this redemption to come about, they needed to prepare the way for the Messiah by fulfilling the commandment to dwell in the land of Israel. Morgenstern offers a dramatic account of their relocation, their efforts to renew rabbinic ordination, their reestablishment of the Ashkenazi community, and the building of Jerusalem. He also explores the crisis of faith that followed the Messiah's failure to appear as expected, and its effects on the community. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, Morgenstern sheds important new light on the history of messianic Judaism and on the ideological trends that preceded, and eventually gave birth to, modern political Zionism.

"As a full-length study in English of a tremendously influential teacher, his times, and his legacy, The Gaon of Vilna will be welcomed by all students of Eastern European Jewish history; of Orthodoxy, Hasidism, and rabbinic scholarship; and of comparative religion."--BOOK JACKET.

No one theory of time is pursued in the essays of this volume, but a major theme that threads them together is Wolfson’s signature idea of the timeswerve as a linear circularity or a circular linearity, expressions that are meant to avoid the conventional split between the two temporal modalities of the line and the circle.

The inspiring life-story of the Vilna Gaon. Adapted by Yonason Rosenblum from Betzalel Landau's Hebrew, HaGaon HaChassid MiVilna.