As Abba’s children, we need only to define ourselves through His Son, just as the apostle John did—as one beloved by God. Through this timeless devotional, author and speaker Brennan Manning brings you from a lukewarm, distant faith to being close enough to lean against Jesus—the Great Rabbi—and listen to His heartbeat. Adapted from the best-seller Abba’s Child, this daily reminder of the Father’s relentless love will help you accept your identity as a child of God as you grow in spiritual formation.

In volume one of this multi-volume series, Marc Ellis explores the essence of the prophetic by intertwining the context of ordinary life and the explosive reality of Jewish identity, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine. But Ellis's prophetic challenge extends to people of all faiths and backgrounds. For Jews, Christians and Muslims, where does the prophetic come from and how do we define it? Is the heartbeat of the prophetic, God or our own commitment? In our time where belief in God is more difficult does the prophetic suggest only the possibility of God? With or without God is the prophetic worth the suffering that comes the exile's way? Ellis's unfolding narration of the prophetic is unique and probing for those who take life, justice and faith seriously.

The Rav here explores the crucial interface between living religious experience and halakhic norms. He analyzes the Amidah, the Shema and other liturgical texts, and considers the tension between human dependence and exaltation.

"In reading Rabbi Menachem Creditor's 11-year compilation of poems, stories and meditations, I am once again reminded that the journey towards truth is anything but linear. With the passage of time, what might have once been considered fallacy is now revisited with a deepened maturity and awareness; the same can be said in reverse. So while it is true that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, when it comes to Creditor's own spiritual sojourning, his act of relating personal recollections and later entwining them in this collection of evocative written word creates a most wondrous textured and woven shared lived (and living) history." - Daphne Lazar-Price, Executive Director, Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance"Everything feeds into Rabbi Creditor's observations about the world and about the soul. He is a Magid, a storyteller, and a Musarnick, a moral counselor and advisor. Menachem Creditor is a Rabbi. These are not essays that demand to be read in sequence but they demand to be read with seriousness. Don't get me wrong - they are not difficult to read or to understand. But each one has many levels, and you can skip from one part to the other and find your appreciation deepening with each reading. The Talmud teaches, in one of its most beautiful and fanciful statements, that behind each blade of grass is an angel that whispers 'grow.' Behind each essay here is the same whisper, urging us to grow. Only it does not come from an angel; it comes from a Rabbi. Read, and grow." - from the Foreword by Rabbi David Wolpe

"This work is not addressed only to scholars of Judaism or theologians, but also, and primarily, to all Jews and non-Jews who would like to share the thoughts and struggles of a person who loves Torah and Halakhah, who is committed to helping make room for and celebrate the religious and cultural diversity present in the modern world, and who believes that a commitment to Israel and to Jewish particularity must be organically connected to the rabbinic teaching, 'Beloved are all human beings created in the image of God.'" --from the Introduction With clarity, passion and outstanding scholarship, David Hartman addresses the spiritual and theological questions that face all Jews and all people today. From the perspective of traditional Judaism, he helps us understand the varieties of twentieth-century Jewish practice and shows that commitment to both Jewish tradition and to pluralism can create bridges of understanding between people of different religious convictions.

Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives invites readers into the lives of twenty women for whom Jewish language and texts provide a lens for understanding their experiences. The authors don't just use religious words (texts, theologies, or liturgies) like a cookbook. Instead they serve readers something closer to a real meal, prepared with love and intention. Each essay shares one piece of its writer's heart, one chapter of experience as refracted through the author's particular Jewish optic. The authors write about being daughters, mothers, sisters, partners, lovers, and friends. They share their experiences of parenting, infertility, and abortion. One describes accompanying her young husband through his life-threatening illness. Another tells of her daughter's struggle with an eating disorder. Still another reflects on long decline of a parent with Alzheimer's. All these writers wrestle with Jewish texts while growing as rabbis, as feminists, and as interfaith leaders. They open their hearts and minds, telling when Jewish tradition has helped make meaning and, on occasion, when it has come up empty. The results are sometimes inspiring, sometimes provocative. Readers will find new insights into God, into Judaism, and into themselves.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church explores our human connections--with each other, with other nations, with the whole of our environment--and the intersections of faith with issues like poverty, climate change, the economy and healthcare.