After Words

Nine contributors tackle questions about the nature of memory and forgiveness after the Holocaust. This book - created out of shared concerns about forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice, and out of a desire to investigate differences between religious traditions - represents an effort to spark meaningful dialogue between Jews and Christians and to encourage others to participate in similar inter- and intrafaith inquiries.

More than fifty years after it ended, the Holocaust continues to leave survivors and their descendants, as well as historians, philosophers, and theologians, searching for words to convey the enormity of that event. Efforts to express its realities and its impact on successive generations often stretch language to the breaking point--or to the point of silence. Words whose meaning was contested before the Holocaust prove even more fragile in its wake. David Patterson and John K. Roth identify three such "after-words": forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice. These words, though forever altered by the Holocaust, are still spoken and heard. But how should the concepts they represent be understood? How can their integrity be restored within the framework of current philosophical and, especially, religious traditions? Writing in a format that creates the feel of dialogue, the nine contributors to After-Words tackle these and other difficult questions about the nature of memory and forgiveness after the Holocaust to encourage others to participate in similar inter- and intrafaith inquiries. The contributors to After-Words are members of the Pastora Goldner Holocaust Symposium. Led since its founding in 1996 by Leonard Grob and Henry Knight, the symposium’s Holocaust and genocide scholars--a group that is interfaith, international, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational--meet biennially in Oxfordshire, England.

Mehl offers this heart-to-heart talk that every father desires to have with a son or daughter who is about to the nest. Pastor Mehl offers godly, biblical counsel on issues of faith and integrity.

Poetry. AFTER WORDS, like First Words (Red Dragonfly Press, 2010), is both memoir and elegy, but the losses are more apparent in this volume, as the author knowingly celebrates lives that have ended and things that have nearly disappeared. The deaths of a sister, of beloved uncles, aunts, and grandparents happen in a world where the old homesteads are divided to build highways and new houses—and yet telling what it was like to live on one of those farms, to be caught in those ancient chores and rhythms, makes them lasting and beautiful.

Reading both philosophical and theological texts, this book presents an argument against nostalgia: against the myth of a Golden Age, against the posture that sees "modernity" as a problem to be solved.

I have had many dreams in my life. I’ve always wanted to be an author. When I published my first book, my author dream shifted to writing three books. AfterWords is the second of the three books I hope to publish, the second book in my Words collection.

Afterwords brings together the commentaries, speeches and book reviews of Gar Pardy following his retirement from the Canadian Foreign Service. The commentaries and book reviews have been published in a variety of Canadian newspapers and magazines and deal with world events from a Canadian perspective. Afghanistan, the Middle East, migration, national security, the RCMP, CSIS, Omar Khadr, Maher Arar, the courts, Canadians in dangers overseas, nuclear proliferation and the Arctic are all extensively covered. All are written by a person who was on the inside of government but was never part of the system.

Books of speeches are rarely published as a compendium of work by one person. After Words is unique in Australian publishing by virtue of its scale and range of subjects, and that all the speeches are the work of one eye and one mind: former Prime Minister Paul Keating. Each speech has been conceptualised, contextualised and crafted by Paul Keating. Subject to subject, idea to idea, the speeches are related in a wider construct, which is the way Paul Keating has viewed and thought about the world. The speeches reveal the breadth and depth of his interests - be they cultural, historical, or policy - focused - dealing with subjects as broad as international relations, economic policy and politics. Individual chapters range from a discussion of Jorn Utzon's Opera House through to the redesign of Berlin, the history of native title, the challenge of Asia, the role of the monarchy, to the shape of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, and more. After Words contains an analytic commentary on Australia's recent social and economic repositioning, in the minds of many, by its principal architect. The speeches, more often than not, go beyond observations, as Paul Keating sketches out new vistas and points to new directions. For those interested in matters that go to the future of Australia and the world, After Words presents, unmediated, a panoply of issues which the policy mind and writing style of Paul Keating has sculpted into a recognisable landscape.