The Agony And The Glory Of Muted Silence is the last novel that I had completed the day before his second visit to my place of abode and is, therefore, dedicated to Abraham Oki for all the things that we both have been through from 1974 to present time. And it is also for the time that I have pinned to specific moments and, in particular, for the things that he said about me that I myself did not know before he spoke them nor would have not known if he did not. But he had decided instead to tow the path of the agony or the glory of muted silence with my poor gratitude to him and prayer to God for his continued favors in his life. The novel is, finally, as usual and as always, dedicated to God Almighty for making me the way that Abraham Oki says that I am. It’s with my adoration, thanks, and love for him forever.

Glory and Agony is the first history of the shifting attitudes toward national sacrifice in Hebrew culture over the last century. Its point of departure is Zionism's obsessive preoccupation with its haunting "primal scene" of sacrifice, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, as evidenced in wide-ranging sources from the domains of literature, art, psychology, philosophy, and politics. By placing these sources in conversation with twentieth-century thinking on human sacrifice, violence, and martyrdom, this study draws a complex picture that provides multiple, sometimes contradictory insights into the genesis and gender of national sacrifice. Extending back over two millennia, this study unearths retellings of biblical and classical narratives of sacrifice, both enacted and aborted, voluntary and violent, male and female—Isaac, Ishmael, Jephthah's daughter, Iphigenia, Jesus. Glory and Agony traces the birth of national sacrifice out of the ruins of religious martyrdom, exposing the sacred underside of Western secularism in Israel as elsewhere.

“Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice. https://vidjambov.blogspot.com/2023/01/book-inventory-vladimir-djambov-talmach.html · Biography - hagiography · 5 titles in 1 volume : o Serbia in Light and Darkness; o The Pyramid of Paradise; o The Religious Spirit of the Slavs; o The Agony of the Church; o Prayers by the Lake ... The aim of this volume is to give to the English-speaking people some glimpses into the past struggles, sufferings and hopes of the Serbian nation. I have tried to describe the Serbian life in light, in its peace, its peaceful work, its songs and prayers; in darkness, in its slavery, its sins, its resistance to evil and battle for freedom.