Life On The Fringes

Part memoir, part commentary, Life on the Fringes charts a startling Jewish feminist journey both solitary and engaging. Haviva Ner-David draws us into the many facets of her life's story: a complex modern Orthodox childhood (including a battle with anorexia); adherence to a unique combination of Jewish observances; the emergence of her feminist commitments and support of gays and lesbians in Jewish life; a serious engagement with Jewish texts -- and now, studying for rabbinic ordination with an Orthodox rabbi in Israel, where Ner-David and her family have made their home. Over time, we see Ner-David take on both traditionally male practices -- donning a tallit and tefillin every day, wearing tzitzit at all times -- as well as those of traditional Jewish women -- covering her head, and observing in great detail the laws of niddah which govern a woman's separation from her husband in the days surrounding her menstrual period. Her personal wrestling and her halakhic analysis help us see Jewish tradition in new, more textured ways -- and lets us see new possibilities for our own lives. Writing with warmth, vision, and passion, Ner-David unwraps her often startling package of Jewish choices, inviting readers into her many worlds, even as she challenges us to examine and deepen our own allegiances and Jewish feminist journeys. No one who takes seriously the intersection of feminism and traditional Judaism will be able to ignore this book.

Updated edition of the #1 Amazon Bestseller LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE 2020 Sports books tend to detail extraordinary achievements, triumphs against the odds or commemorate World Cup winning captains. This book does not do that. For many, playing professional sport is the Dream Job. Few manage it, very few make it to the top and for the rest, life is very different. This is their story. In Fringes, Ben Mercer invites you to witness life at the outer edges of professional rugby. This is a first hand account of what life is like as a journeyman professional athlete. You play, but to the wider public you don't exist. You earn but you don't drive a flash car. You sometimes pack out a stadium but sometimes, you play in a deserted park. This is the story for the majority of sports professionals. Only the minority taste the top, only one person gets to lift the cup or win the medal, only 15 get to play for England at any one time. For the rest, that’s not the case. Ben Mercer is a former professional rugby player who after becoming disillusioned and uninspired plying his trade in the English Second Division, accepted an offer out of the blue to go to France and do something different - help an amateur team turn professional. This is a first hand account of what life is like in the lower reaches of professional sport - where your employment status is as precarious as your health and barely anyone will know your name. It's about how it feels to live year to year, with teammates constantly on the move. It's about how professionalism irreversibly changes the French club Stade Rouennais as they move up the divisions, about the tension between progress and identity in a rugby team. It's also about how it feels to actually be out there on the field, how it feels to occasionally do something extraordinary and how it feels when this is no longer enough for you to make the sacrifices that you need to make to keep playing. There's no ghostwriting, it's an unmitigated meditation on how it feels and what it means to play rugby for a living, to dedicate yourself to an uncompromising but occasionally beautiful game. If you've wanted to know what life is really like as a professional athlete, on the Fringes, away from the glitz and glamour of the international game then look no further.

What was it like to grow up on the fringes of our modern society? Life in the Fringes presents a collection of short stories and poetry that marks the transition from the innocence of childhood to the understanding of adult life. It examines the situations a child experiences as life takes its twists and turns. Author David de Tremaudan uses autobiographical storytelling that combines old oral traditions with a personal, modern perspective. Each short story offers tale of de Tremaudans life, described from his unique perspective. It explores the personal view of a child maturing towards adulthood and his growing awareness of the values, morals, and beliefs that frame his life. Evil We look for evil apart from man Someone to personify But, the true face of evil With humankind does lie Evil is not an entity That to Satan gives a face But the truth is in the lot of us The total human race We travel the world to seek our fates For our selves and truth we search And in our search we see the ways That evil will besmirch When Rome took the world renown And its legions where conquering all Ask a Roman citizen then If it was wrong to conquer Gaul

Nonfiction. Harlan Hubbard's PAYNE HOLLOW: LIFE ON THE FRINGE OF SOCIETY provides an account of a self-made alternative lifestyle in early 1950's America. Anna and Harlan Hubbard, refusing to adopt the industrial positioning provided, built a simple home at Payne Hollow and documented their "basic relationship of need to fulfillment within the carefully circumscribed wholeness of [their] honest, sensitive, extraordinary lives"--Edward Lueders. PAYNE HOLLOW creates its own self-referential world written as "a painter's prose" that fills its environment with a Thoreau-esque "ecstasy...expressed with sober simplicity"--The Louisville Courier-Journal.

Life on the Fringe is the tale of a woman plagued by the effects of manic depression and seasonal affective disorder whose condition is greatly aggravated by the birth of her sixth child, which leads to poor living conditions and isolation for the family. The woman resents the child from her birth, and a struggle between the two escalates out of proportion, resulting in the torture of the girl that she must endure in order to keep the family together. The girl adores her father and competes with her mother for his love and attention. Although the father takes a special interest in the girl and a strong bond forms between them, his unwavering love for his wife is no match for the girl. When the father contracts tuberculosis and is sent to a sanatorium for over two years, the young girl is left vulnerable to the vicious attacks from her mother, and the hatred they feel for one another fuels their struggle, causing the girl to rebel, which leads to even greater abuse by her mother. By the time the father returns to the home, the mother has sunk into a deep despair, never to recover. Her death is greeted with relief by the young girl, but also the loss of her fathers attention, whose life has become meaningless without his wife. The girl does find love outside the home and is finally able to look forward to a brighter future.

Patrick White, 1912-1990, Australian novelist and playwright.

Seeking atonement for past crimes, Breq takes on a mission as captain of a troublesome new crew of Radchai soldiers, in the sequel to the New York Times bestselling, award-winning Ancillary Justice.​ Breq is a soldier who used to be a warship. Once a weapon of conquest controlling thousands of minds, now she has only a single body and serves the emperor. With a new ship and a troublesome crew, Breq is ordered to go to the only place in the galaxy she would agree to go: to Athoek Station to protect the family of a lieutenant she once knew -- a lieutenant she murdered in cold blood. Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy has become one of the new classics of science fiction. Beautifully written and forward thinking, it does what good science fiction does best, taking readers to bold new worlds with plenty explosions along the way.

Part memoir, part commentary, this book recounts a Jewish feminist journey: a modern Orthodox childhood, emergence of feminism and other social justice commitments, a serious engagement of Jewish text and studying for rabbinic ordination with an orthodox rabbi.