Rivers Of Babylon

They were forced to meet by the rivers of Babylon... In Israel, two Concorde jets take off for a UN conference that will finally bring peace to the Middle East. Covered by F-14 fighters, accompanied by security men, the planes carry warriors, pacifists, lovers, enemies, dignatories - and a bomb planted by a terrorist mastermind. Suddenly they're forced to crash-land at an ancient desert site. Here, with only a handful of weapons, the men and women of the peace mission must make a desperate stand against an army of crack Palestinian commandos - while the Israeli authorities desperately attempt a rescue bid. A story of compulsive excitement, rich in personal drama and political tension that must rank as one of the greatest of our times.

German poet Heinrich Heine was bedridden with a debilitating illness for the last eight years of his life, during which time he reassessed many of his previous views on life. By the Rivers of Babylon examines the changes in his thinking about history, philosophy, and religion during that period and shows how those changes are reflected in his later poetry. Roger Cook offers an analysis of Heine's vehement renunciation of the Hegelian ideas that had shaped his earlier conception of history. Refuting accepted opinions that this shift in thought was a displaced opposition to social developments, Cook contends that these late writings represent Heine's consistent rejection of idealist philosophy and reveal Heine's new understanding of poetry's role as a transmitter of myth. Cook shows how Heine transcended the boundaries of European culture and Judeo-Christian religion by aligning his work with alternative cultures on the margins of society.

It is 1989. Across Central Europe, socalism is crumbling, and robber capitalism is being born. Rivers of Babylon tells this story of a Central Europe, where criminals, intellectuals and secret policemen have infiltrated a new democracy, through the eyes of Racz, sociopathic gangster and idiot of genius. Slovak readers acknowledge Peter Pist'anek as their most flamboyant and fearless writer, stripping the nation of its myths and false self-esteem.

The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods-this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons-it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden- they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.

Culled from various books, journals, and festscrifts, the most important essays by Sara Japhet on the biblical restoration period and the books of Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles appear in this accessible collection. Japhet, who is Yehezkel Kaufmann Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received the Israel Prize for biblical scholarship in 2004, has been a leading scholar on these topics for more than 30 years. Included here are studies on the question of common authorship of Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles, the temple during the restoration period, the use of the law in Ezra-Nehemiah, postexilic historiography, the “remnant” and self-definition during the restoration period, the historical reliability of Chronicles, and conquest and settlement in Chronicles. Scholars and students with an interest in the history, historiography, and theology of the restoration period, and in the interpretation of Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles will want to own this compendium of valuable essays.

Rowing upon the Tigris River to enjoy a summer campfire on the tiny islands that emerged every summer, teenaged Joseph Samuels never could have imagined that these waters would soon become his only hope for freedom. At the age of 19, he was forced to leave his family behind as he smuggled out of Iraq in the secret hold of a Basra riverboat to escape the violent and repressive anti-Semitism that, over the next few years, would spell the end of the two-millennium old Iraqi Jewish community. Beyond the Rivers of Babylon follows Joe's remarkable journey, from his colorful childhood in the Old Jewish Quarter of Baghdad, to his life-altering service in the Israeli Navy, to starting a family and building a real estate empire in Montreal and Los Angeles. Blessed with a remarkably vivid memory and a keen ability to look inward, Joe paints a sensory landscape of a home that is no more, and in the process imparts the lessons of a life lived to its fullest.

A gritty, sophisticated, supernatural street thriller that explores the nature of forbidden love and its power to transform even the hardest of hearts. Lincoln Duvall is the Third Ward's most notorious criminal, a drug lord and known murderer who has sold his soul to the devil and abandoned his early roots of religious upbringing. But when he falls in love with Gabriella Sinclaire, a street-savvy Christian journalist with the power to reveal his secrets and dismantle his entire organization, good is pitted against evil in a dramatic showdown. Wealthy, powerful, and connected, Lincoln has always been untouchable—until Gabriella invades his heart. Is spiritual redemption possible for Lincoln, or will he pull Gabriella away from her life of virtue down to the darkness of his world?