When God created man, He did so with the intention that man would live in perfect harmony with his Creator and with the rest of natural creation; however, man’s disobedience fractured the relationship and opened the door for pain, heartache, disaster, and even death to enter the world. God’s original intention has not changed—He still desires that His children enjoy the fullness of all He has to offer. The Garden and the Ghetto is a collection of stories that illustrate the continued effects of obedience and disobedience, as well as essays that teach us how to return to a garden existence with the One who made us. Just as disobedience pushed mankind out of the perfect environment Father created for him, obedience is the key to once again living in a spiritual place where the abundance of His blessings are real every day. The stories are based on the lives of men and women with whom we have shared victories and defeats at City of Refuge through the years. Some have decided to live in a pattern of “long obedience” and continue to thrive. Some are still in the process of deciding which way to go, and others chose their own way. The results of the decisions made by Russell, Roxy, Shawn, Vanessa, Harold, Greg, and Dennis are representative of all of humanity. Some choose to rely on the words and pictures of God; others choose to believe they can make their own way. The results speak for themselves

“Remarkable . . . provides a graphic and unparalleled description of the conditions under which the Jews of Kaunas tried to live and survive.” —The Forward As a force that had to serve two masters, both the Jewish population of the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania and its German occupiers, the Kovno Jewish ghetto police walked a fine line between helping Jews survive and meeting Nazi orders. In 1942 and 1943 some of its members secretly composed this history and buried it in tin boxes. This book details the creation and organization of the ghetto, the violent German attacks on the population in the summer of 1941, the periodic selections of Jews to be deported and killed, the labor required of the surviving Jewish population, and the efforts of the police to provide a semblance of stability. A substantial introduction by distinguished historian Samuel D. Kassow places this powerful work within the context of the history of the Kovno Jewish community and its experience and fate at the hands of the Nazis. “No book I've read in recent time about the Holocaust has so moved me, evoking the utter helplessness of the Jew, the plight of the Jewish police and the cunning cruelty of the German. This is a gripping story, page by page, and it reminds us again that there but for the grace of God go we all.” —Marvin Kalb, Senior Advisor to the Pulitzer Center and Edward R. Murrow Professor, Emeritus, Harvard Kennedy School “A landmark of Holocaust historiography.” —Slavic Review

Imagine being nine years old and walking to the market with your mother while tripping over the debris from WWII bombing. And then suddenly seeing a child’s toy lying half-covered beneath black char and rubble. This was Bill Walkey’s reality growing up. He depicts such scenes in this book of heartfelt short stories. With both sadness and rays of understanding, he explores themes such as the poverty and pride of the local people amid war-torn Birmingham during the early 1950s. Bill takes us through a period of history that was not experienced by many or has now been forgotten. However, it has not been forgotten by him. The book began as a way to clear memories that have long haunted Bill. Now, they find expression on the pages he wishes to share with his children and their children: “Personal reflections relevant today” Bill calls them. Birmingham’s bombed areas were cleared in the 1960s and the city was rebuilt and pedestrianized. Nothing of what Bill has shared in Escape from the White Ghetto remains today.

Ghetto Religiosity 2000 is the first of a three-part series. It is the result of Mr. Amani's many years of study and disillusionment with organized religion. Often angry and filled with ebonics and gangsta language, the author's quest is to reach those who have been removed from religion... those of us who have seen the church and the preacher manipulate the laity for their own selfish filthy lucre. If you're looking to read a watered-down "Jesus loves the world" text, this is not for you! This book is a hardcore, tellin'-it-like-it-is, new-jack, diatribe on the errors of Judeo-Christian Thought. WHO SHALL MAKE IT PLAIN? WHO SHALL TEACH THE YOUTH? WHO SHALL SET THEM FREE? —Khalil Amani, a religious gangsta Khalil Amani is a native of Miami, Florida where he was baptized at the age of seven into the Baptist Church. After high school, Khalil was introduced to Black Nationalism, fraternal brotherhood, Freemasonry, the Nation of Islam, and the Five Percent Nation. None of these held his attention until he was introduced to the Nation of Yahweh where he joined and quickly rose to the rank of Elder. By age 23, Khalil headed the Temple of Yahweh in Newark, New Jersey. After five years and the realization that he was part of a murderous cult, headed by a man claiming to be God, he left the sect in search of his identity and the true meaning of religion. Left spiritually devastated by this experience, Khalil resorted to the street-life where he indulged in every vice, from selling drugs to becoming an exotic dancer to stick-up man to womanizer. Finally, Khalil became the "Unofficial Spokesman" for ex-members of the Yahweh cult and testified against the man he once called father. For this he had to enter the Witness Protection Program. This brotha has been through some sect! At the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he majored in Black Studies and Religion and graduated from San Diego Mesa College, San Diego, California with a degree in English.

Is South Los Angeles on the mend? How is it combating the blight of crime, gang violence, high unemployment, and dire poverty? In provocative essays, the contributing authors to "Post-Ghetto" address these questions by pointing out robust signs of hope for the area's residents--an increase in corporate retail investment, a decrease in homicides, a proliferation of nonprofit service providers, a paradigm shift in violence- and gang-prevention programs, and progress toward a strengthened, more racially integrated labor movement. By charting the connections between public policy and the health of a community, the authors offer innovative ideas and visionary strategies for further urban renewal and remediation. Contributors: Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, Andrea Azuma, Edna Bonacich, Robert Gottlieb, Karen M. Hennigan, Jorge N. Leal, Jill Leovy, Cheryl Maxson, Scott Saul, David C. Sloane, Mark Vallianatos, Danny Widener, Natale Zappia

How have Jews experienced their environments and how have they engaged with specific places? How do Jewish spaces emerge, how are they contested, performed and used? With these questions in mind, this anthology focuses on the production of Jewish space and lived Jewish spaces and sheds light on their diversity, inter-connectedness and multi-dimensionality. By exploring historical and contemporary case studies from around the world, the essays collected here shift the temporal focus generally applied to Jewish civilization to a spatially oriented perspective. The reader encounters sites such as the gardens cultivated in the Ghettos during World War II, the Israeli development town of Netivot, Thornhill, an Orthodox suburb of Toronto, or new virtual sites of Jewish (Second) Life on the Internet, and learns about the Jewish landkentenish movement in Interwar Poland, the Jewish connection to the sea and the culinary landscapes of Russian Jews in New York. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, with a strong foothold in cultural history and cultural anthropology, this anthology introduces new methodological and conceptual approaches to the study of the spatial aspects of Jewish civilization.

When French troops occupy the Italian port city of Ancona, freeing the city’s Jews from their repressive ghetto, it unleashes a whirlwind of progressivism and brutal backlash as two very different cultures collide. Mirelle, a young Jewish maiden, must choose between her duty—an arranged marriage to a wealthy Jewish merchant—and her love for a dashing French Catholic soldier. Meanwhile, Francesca, a devout Catholic, must decide if she will honor her marriage vows to an abusive and murderous husband when he enmeshes their family in the theft of a miracle portrait of the Madonna. Set during the turbulent days of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Italian campaign (1796–97), Beyond the Ghetto Gates is both a cautionary tale for our present moment, with its rising tide of anti-Semitism, and a story of hope—a reminder of a time in history when men and women of conflicting faiths were able to reconcile their prejudices in the face of a rapidly changing world.

The primary focus of this book is our religious understanding of sex. It is the author's premise that the sexual attitudes of today were erroneously and maliciously set up by men whose ultimate aim was to control the sexual practices of the ancient Jews and the rights of women. Most controversial is our present view of homosexuality and how the Bible has thoroughly misshaped our ideas about homosexual love. The case is made that homosexuality is not a sin against God but rather a conspiracy conjured up by the machinations of the ancient Levitical priests."It's high-time someone came along with a voice that speaks the truth about our 'Western' brainwashing without trying to proselytize to a particular brand of religion. Someone that doesn't skirt the issues because of denominational ties. I cannot be excommunicated, defrocked, or untenured! Neither am I bound by the Masonic sword. I speak freely! ...Many preachers merely parrot the party-line to keep their congregation in a religious coma, extracting thousands and millions of dollars to feed their ostentatious lifestyle If you want to know the truth, here it is! Peep it and recognize!" -The Author

Trained in philosophy and medicine, the writer, translator, scholar, and political and cultural activist Siegfried Kapper (1821–1879) devoted significant effort to the advancement of Jewish culture in Bohemia, Jewish emancipation, and to the commitment of Jews to contemporary Czech society. The three stories in this collection, which first appeared in the press in the 1840s and were posthumously published as a collection at the end of the century, offer a Romantic and folkloric vision of Jewish culture in Prague. The first story, “Genenda,” displays Kapper’s operatic eye for detail and drama with its account of a dutiful rabbi’s daughter being swept away by a dashing young man, a Christian nobleman disguised as a Jew, a deceit that ends in tragedy. “The Curious Guest” is an intricate tale of a quest for wisdom and power that inevitably leads to the undoing of the arrogant protagonist. The final story, “Glowing Coals,” is a supernatural tale of romantic desire and revenge, displaying Kapper’s skill at deploying the tropes of folklore for dramatic literary effect. The collection not only provides a colorful snapshot of nineteenth-century Czech-Jewish culture but also resonates with universal human themes that transcend a single national experience.

This remarkable chronicle of life and death in the Jewish Ghetto of Kovno, Lithuania, from June 1941 to January 1944, was written under conditions of extreme danger by a Ghetto inmate and secretary of the Jewish Council. After the war, in order to escape from Lithuania, the author was forced to entrust the diary to leaders of the Escape movement; eventually it made its way to his new home in Israel. The diary incorporates Avraham Tory’s collections of official documents, Jewish Council reports, and original photographs and drawings made in the Ghetto. It depicts in grim detail the struggle for survival under Nazi domination, when—if not simply carted off and murdered in a random “action”—Jews were exploited as slave labor while being systematically starved and denied adequate housing and medical care. Through it all, Tory’s overriding purpose was to record the unimaginable events of these years and to memorialize the determination of the Jews to sustain their community life in the midst of the Nazi terror. Of the surviving diaries originating in the principal European Ghettos of this period, Tory’s is the longest written by an adult, a dramatic and horrifying document that makes an invaluable contribution to contemporary history. Tory provides an insider’s view of the desperate efforts of Ghetto leaders to protect Jews. Martin Gilbert’s masterly introduction establishes the authenticity of the diary, presents its events against the backdrop of the war in Europe, and considers the crucial questions of collaboration and resistance.