In search of
Jewish Intellectual Identity
in the Modern
Judeo-Christian World
A Personal Intellectual Journey
to Discover Jewish Identity
(for Jews and Gentiles)
By Vladimir E. Minkov, PhD
Rabbinical guidelines define somebody’s Jewishness by their being born into a Jewish family – where both parents or at least their mother are Jewish. Is it enough for somebody to be born in a Jewish family to be identified as a Jew, or do you have to do something to be a true Jew?
This book is an attempt not to divide Jews as “correct” and “incorrect,” but to find what unites them intellectually as Jews. Moreover, it is an attempt to show that there is a fundamental spiritual commonality between Jews and Christians, despite all the historic difficulties of living together. Furthermore, it is an attempt to find what unites Jews and Christians with all others into a single mankind. Since a single mankind exists, there must be something spiritually the same thanks to which mankind spiritually exists, and there must be a power that created this mankind unity.
Hardcover: $26.99
Softcover: $16.99
Kol D’mamah Dakah
A RATIONALIST TAKE ON THE JEWISH AFTERLIFE
By Shmuel Pernicone
In an effort to reconcile religious and scientific truth, Kol D’mamah Dakah reinterprets the textual sources for the afterlife as metaphors for a person’s legacy. In the world that comes after we die, our body may return to dust but our spiritual shadow remains: children we reared, literature we wrote, study halls we built, lives we touched… everything but our body lives on.
The essay delves into Tanakh and Talmud, Rambam and Ramchal, neuroscience and near death experience, rabbis and philosophers both modern and ancient, and concludes that however disquieting this truth may seem, it too is for the best — ethically, scientifically, and spiritually.
“Be not like servants who serve the master on condition that they receive a reward. Rather be like servants who serve the master irrespective of any reward. And let the fear of heaven be upon you.”
(Pirkei Avot 1:3)