"Inspiring, mystical, and often surprising Chassidic tales combine with teachings and favorite Jewish recipes to nourish body and soul. Stories and food have always been central to Jewish life, and in this book, they are uniquely tied together. Thirty-nine Chassidic tales, revolving around food and eating and accompanied by spiritual teachings, delve into the mysteries of the Kabbalah, the joy of the Chassidim, and the power of religious faith and...

Through one woman's life at a moment of surprising change, the award-winning author Goldie Goldbloom tells a deeply affecting, morally insightful story and offers a rare look inside Brooklyn's Chasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Just a block or two up from the East River on Division Avenue, Surie Eckstein is soon to be a great-grandmother. Her ten children range in age from thirteen to thirty-nine. Her in-laws, postwar immigrants from Romania,...

A brutal homicide three thousand miles away has justshattered the tranquility of Lt. Peter Decker's household. The frantic phonecall sends him and his wife, Rina, on a plane east to the home of Decker's halfbrother, a rabbi whose brother-in-law's naked body was found in a sleazyManhattan hotel room/ Even more disturbing: the dead man's fifteen-year-oldniece-and possibly the last person to see him alive-has disappeared, leavingher family crazed with...

The inspiring story of the prominent yet deeply modest leader who rebuilt a dwindling post-holocaust community into the most influential Jewish organization in the world, the late Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. From a small synagogue In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the late Rebbe Schneerson impacted the policies of U.S. presidents and politicians, counseled some of our greatest thinkers, and spread his teachings of love and righteousness to the far...

"As the population of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the United States increases to record proportions after near-extinction during the Holocaust, award-winning New York Times journalist and author Joseph Berger takes us inside the notoriously insular world of the Hasidim to explore their origins, beliefs, and struggles--and the social and political implications of their expanding presence in America"--

"Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history--but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. This book tells the story of how this group of pious, Yiddish-speaking Jews has grown to become a thriving insular enclave and a powerful local government in upstate New York. While rejecting the norms of mainstream American society, Kiryas Joel...

In Uncovered, Leah Lax tells her story--beginning as a young teen who left her liberal, secular home for life as a Hasidic Jew and ending as a forty-something woman who has to abandon the only world she's known for thirty years in order to achieve personal freedom. In understated, crystalline prose, Lax details her experiences with arranged marriage, fundamentalist faith, and motherhood during her years with the Hasidim, and explores how her creative,...

Though their relationship is strictly forbidden, Devorah and Jax arrange secret meetings and risk everything to be together. But how far can they possibly go? Just how much are they willing to give up?

Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world--only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression--turning on the radio--is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into...