The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the central question confronting Jewish leaders in America is simple: Why be Jewish? Jonathan D. Sarna, acclaimed scholar of American Judaism, believes that “Why be Jewish?” is the wrong question. Judaism, he believes, is not so much a “why” as a way—a way of life, a way of marking time, a way of relating to the environment, to human beings, to family, and to God. Judaism is experienced through doing—doing things Jewish, doing things for fellow Jews in need, doing things as a Jew to improve the state of the world. The more Judaism one does, the more one comes to appreciate what Judaism is. Using the Jewish calendar as his starting point, Sarna reflects on the major themes of Jewish life as expressed in a full year of holidays—from Passover in the spring to Purim eleven months later. Passover, for instance, yields a discussion of freedom; Shavuot, a discussion of Torah; Yom Kippur, the role of the individual within the Jewish community; Chanukah, issues of assimilation and anti-assimilation. An essential brief introduction—or reintroduction—to the major practices of Jewish life as well as the many complexities of the American Jewish experience, this book will be essential reading for American Jews and the perfect gift for the holiday season.

The author of Seasons of Our Joy and his wife consider the Jewish life cycle from birth to death as celebrated through live event ceremonies, from those involving the celebration of a newborn to those honoring marriage, midlife, and the mourning period after a death. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Sunday is more like Monday than it used to be. The Fourth of July is more like the third. Although time is a feature of the natural world, it is at the same time not natural, but given its meaning by human action and, in our contemporary world, primarily through the law. Rakoff argues that legal regulation of the law has become weaker, with unfortunate results for both individuals and families.

A spellbinding pursuit of divine mysteries from the celebrated author of My Struggle “The writing glows with an intense awareness of the here and now, and loving observations of landscapes and objects . . . an extraordinary novel, and completely original.” —The Independent In the sixteenth century, Antinous Bellori, a boy of eleven, is lost in a dark forest and stumbles upon two glowing beings—one carrying a spear, the other a flaming torch. This event is decisive in Bellori’s life, and he thereafter devotes himself to the pursuit and study of angels, the intermediaries of the divine. Stretching from the Garden of Eden to the present, A Time for Everything reimagines key allegorical encounters between humans and angels: the glow of the cherubim watching over Eden; the profound love between Cain and Abel despite their differences; Lot’s shame in Sodom; Noah’s isolation before the flood; Ezekiel tied to his bed, prophesying ferociously; the death of Christ; and the emergence of sensual, mischievous cherubs in the seventeenth century. Alighting upon these dramatic scenes—from the Bible and beyond--Knausgaard’s imagination takes flight. The result is a dazzling display of storytelling at its majestic, spellbinding best. Incorporating and challenging tradition, legend, and the Apocrypha, these penetrating glimpses hazard chilling questions: can the nature of the divine undergo change, and can the immortal perish?