"Peace Corps volunteers seem to exemplify the desire to make the world a better place. Yet despite being one of history's clearest cases of organized idealism, the Peace Corps has, in practice, ended up cultivating very different outcomes among its volunteers. By the time they return from the Peace Corps, volunteers exhibit surprising shifts in their political and professional consciousness. Rather than developing a systemic perspective on development and poverty, they tend instead to focus on individual behavior; they see professions as the only legitimate source of political and social power. They have lost their idealism, and their convictions and beliefs have been reshaped along the way. The Death of Idealism uses the case of the Peace Corps to explain why and how participation in a bureaucratic organization changes people's ideals and politics. Meghan Elizabeth Kallman offers an innovative institutional analysis of the role of idealism in development organizations. She details the combination of social forces and organizational pressures that depoliticizes Peace Corps volunteers, channels their idealism toward professionalization, and leads to cynicism or disengagement. Kallman sheds light on the structural reasons for the persistent failure of development organizations and the consequences for the people involved. Based on interviews with over 140 current and returned Peace Corps volunteers, field observations, and a large-scale survey, this deeply researched, theoretically rigorous book offers a novel perspective on how people lose their idealism, and why that matters"--

Written at the height of Arab terror attacks against Jews in Israel, Rabbi Meir Kahane, head of the Kach Party, says the phenomenon could have been crushed in two days, but instead, has been permitted to fester. Israeli Jews are angry, frustrated and bitter. They are deeply concerned for themselves and their loved ones. They are eager to strike back against those Arabs who are allowed by the government to destroy them. Kahane warns that the situation cannot continue. If the govenment cannot or will not protect Jews lives and property, it loses its legitimate right to rule, and will force desperate Jews to take the law into their own hands. There is another alternative! Kahane suggest that the Israeli government allow its angry citizens to go to the polls themselves, to decide. A referendendum is the only alternative to save mainline Jews from both murderous Arabs and incited Jews.

Our Challenge, published in April 1974, offers a plan to infuse Jewish youth with an iron-clad sense of identity to make them impervious to modern Western influences and strong enough to overcome the weariness of an interminable struggle with the Arabs. Rabbi Kahane maintains that the State of Israel's foreign policy should include its role as the guardian of all Jews throughout the world. The government must realize that there are no permanent allies for Israel among the other nations. Jewish interests come first, no matter what the world may say. He wrote: The great tasks of our day are ... to define clearly and precisely the purpose and destiny of the Jewish people.... Our State must not seek merely to be like all the rest, but a distinctively Jewish one. The Jewish people stands or falls on the knowledge that it is NOT like other people... A review of the book by Rabbi Isaac L. Swift states that it shows "a serious mind grappling with problems of serious magnitude." 19 Professor Arnold Ages noted that Rabbi Kahane's "candor on the question of the Arabs in Israel is refreshing.... Kahane feels that Israel's future depends ultimately on the spiritual regeneration of the Israelis.... If this return to mitzvah Judaism is not accomplished, there is a danger that Israel's people will slip into the quagmire of leftist ideology which inevitably saps the life of a nation." The evaluation in Kirkus Reviews began: "When it comes to righteous wrath, Moses has nothing on Rabbi Kahane. The militant leader of the Jewish Defense League damns the "assimilationist rot" contaminating both young Israeli leftists and the children of Jews in the Diaspora. Strident and uncompromising, he hammers away at his fundamentalist precepts: divine ordinance guides Jewish destiny.... The Arabs are bent on the destruction of Israel; not an inch of the territory conquered in 1967 must be surrendered: only armed might can insure the political survival of the Jewish state." Ever since reading Ha'etgar, I've been amazed as events have proven, over and over, the extent of your foresight. You have a lot to contribute to the Israeli scene, if only as a catalyst.... It may take a while to get used to the Israeli mentality, but you have definitely touched a responsive chord. ... Besides the general need for spreading Jewish values, I think the most important problem you could tackle now is, once more, the problem of "Who is NOT a Jew" - the question of Arab residents of the State of Israel and your program for its solution.... The best thing is to take one issue and get people first to think about it.... Stepping on toes, even intellectual ones, gets action - You've already proven that. Choice, a journal for librarians, stated simply: ... This slim volume presents Kahane's views in their bluntest expression. He believes the Emancipation to have been a failure, trusts only Jewish self-defense, and predicts a coming wave of anti-Semitism in the U.S. Repudiated by the government of Israel and by large sectors of American Jewry, Kahane yet deals with real problems and issues.

Rabbi Meir Kahane wrote an entire book, Time to Go Home, published in 1972, to persuade American Jews to make their homes in Israel. The book shows the reality of Jew hatred in America; the likelihood that the current social, economic, political and psychological crisis in America would set off another Holocaust; and the rise of hate groups and their motivations. Rabbi Kahane saw the danger signs in 1971: "Governments speak of huge layoffs and breadwinners are confronted with the unique prospect of unemployment.... The cities stand under massive, cross-country threat of bankruptcy.... And the sudden economic crisis is heightened by the psychological fact that for 25 years we have lived a relatively good life and have come to look upon [it] as that which is our due. ... And so, in this year of 1971, as unemployment and fear reach the highest peaks since 1938 and when ... many millions of white, blue-collar workers face bleak and painful economic futures, the Jew must once again consider what may lie before him. People who are frightened of their economic future are desperate people and desperate people are dangerous... and all their antagonism against minorities and racial groups; all their insecurities and their pent-up rage over a world they dislike and cannot understand; all these are thrown into the witches' brew from which comes forth an explosion. That explosion means the destruction of democratic civilization and the substitution of a brutal, tyrannical totalitarianism. America ... is in great danger and the Jew in the greatest of perils." Reviewer Reuben Gross wrote: "Anticipating the outcry his book is bound to stir, Rabbi Kahane points out that Jabotinsky was called a fool for crying out in the 30s 'Jews, get moving. There is no time. A fire is burning, get out.' Considerable patience is not required to read this book. Rabbi Kahane's writing combines first-rate journalistic fluency with a touch of rabbinic rhetoric and well-organized forensic persuasiveness." Time to Go Home concludes with a practical program for American aliya and ends with the words, "Home. It calls us. Let us return."

In the nineteenth century, the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in Ottoman Iraq emerged as the most important Shi'i centres of learning. In a major contribution to the study of pre-modern Middle Eastern religious institutions, Meir Litvak analyses the social and political dynamics of these communities. Tracing the historical evolution of Shi'i leadership, he explores the determinants of social status amongst the ulama, the concept of patronage, the structure of learning, questions of ethnicity, and financial matters. He also assesses the role of the ulama as communal leaders who, in the face of a hostile Sunni government in Baghdad, were often obliged to adopt a more quietest political stance than their counterparts in Iran. This is an important book which sheds light on the formation of contemporary Shi'ism and the surrounding debates.

This book offers a prophetic vision of a postdigital future that reveals a paradigm shift from the Hellenistic to the Hebraic roots of Western culture. Alexenberg surveys new art forms emerging from a postdigitial age and explores postdigital perspectives rising from creative encounters between art, science, technology, and human consciousness.

Canadian politicians have, from time to time, proclaimed a war against poverty. What they are really prosecuting, however, is a war against the poor. Unemployment benefits are routinely denied to people who, over the course of a lifetime, have contributed a portion of their earnings to UI (now called EI). Welfare rolls have been slashed by provincial governments. The downloading of government services combined with tax cuts that benefit the rich have resulted in the reduction or elimination of countless programs, from hot lunches in the schools to subsidized housing. Politicians and bureaucrats have responded by inventing new definitions of poverty but people without food remain just as hungry as before and people without shelter are still without homes. At no time since the Great Depression has the gap between rich and poor been so wide and the outlook for poor people been so grim. Hard-hitting and outspoken, Hurtig builds a compelling portrait of Canadian society under the rule of the "neo-Neanderthals." He puts together the latest and most reliable statistics with stories told by people on the front lines of the poverty wars. Many of these stories are as heart-rending as the comments from politicians and their corporate supporters are callous. Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids challenges all Canadians to re-examine the society we are living in and to demand changes for the better.

Canadian nationalist Mel Hurtig exposes Paul Martin’s secret commitment to George W. Bush’s weaponizing of space. Mel Hurtig has five best-sellers to his credit but this is easily his most important book. Readers will be shocked to learn how both the American and Canadian governments are intentionally misleading their citizens about the Pentagon's unprecedented plans to weaponize space; about the huge new Russian and Chinese nuclear missile buildup resulting from U.S. Star Wars plans; about the destruction of vitally important, long-standing arms control agreements; and about the rapidly increasing danger of a nuclear apocalypse. Among the topics covered are why the so-called U.S. missile “defence”system is really about establishing a U.S. first-strike-from-space capability; why both Paul Martin’s government and Stephen Harper's Conservatives want to join in George W. Bush’s dangerous program; how numerous official U.S. documents reveal their plans to “dominate space” and place deadly lasers and nuclear weapons in space; how today’s nuclear weapons are up to 350 times more powerful than the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki; how the missile “defence” plans will mean the placement of missiles on Canadian soil making Canada much less secure. Hurtig provides remarkable and often devastating new information that will shock, anger, and appall readers. This is a book that every Canadian must read before Ottawa becomes an active partner in a tragic and potentially cataclysmic blunder.

For more than four decades, Canadian nationalist, publisher and best-selling author, Mel Hurtig, has been warning Canadians about the negative influences of the excessive corporate takeover of Canada, including the impacts of foreign ownership and so-called free-trade agreements. In this short but important book, Mel Hurtig turns his attention to the devastating impact that the Stephen Harper government has had on Canada, radically altering the democratic, social and economic fabric of the country. He shows how Stephen Harper's single-minded pursuit of big oil and the tar sands, at a time when the world must take dramatic action to arrest climate change, has inflicted enormous damage on our country and on our international reputation. He contends that Harper rose to power with an agenda so contrary to Canadian principles and values, that the only way he could pursue it was through a takeover of Canadian democracy. Mel Hurtig is the legendary Edmonton bookseller, publisher and creator of The Canadian Encyclopedia who became a political activist, then an author in 1991 with his huge bestseller The Betrayal of Canada. He is also the author of Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids, The Vanishing Country, Rushing to Armageddon and The Truth About Canada. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has received many honorary degrees and other honours. He lives in Vancouver.

In 1969 Mel Tanner had an aesthetic breakthrough, and both he and his wife Dorothy began to construct a theater where they could combine all their work with sculpture and painting into a form of visual music. The result of that inspiration was the Lumonics Theater. The performance space they built was composed of 50 sculptures, a battery of projectors, lasers, and the spontaneous creativity that transforms technology into virtuoso performance art. The entire performance was designed so that no two are alike. This book describes the more than thirty year history and development of their theater from its beginnings in the 1960s through its final days in 2003.

"Russell Woolfe, a faded TV producer, is struggling with his father's death. Deeply uncomfortable with his own Jewish identity, he is torn between anger with his father--estranged over Russell's marrying a non-Jewish woman - and grief over their failure to reconcile. At his father's memorial Russell meets Joe Kuchinsky, a Polish survivor who unaccountably latches on to him. Kuchinsky claims to possess an ancient Hebrew manuscript that has been in his family for generations and which he wants to have translated before he dies. Kuchinsky believes fervently that the manuscript contains some important ancient wisdom--perhaps, even, the key to the survival of the Jewish people. Despite his doubts, Russell agrees to inspect the manuscript and tell Kuchinsky what it contains. Thus begins an international mystery that stretches a thousand years in the past, is wrapped in the tragedy of the Holocaust, and which comes to a startling conclusion that has dire personal consequences for everyone caught up in the saga." -- Provided by publisher.

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Menasseh ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell, has been considered important throughout human history. In an effort to ensure that this work is never lost, we have taken steps to secure its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for both current and future generations. This complete book has been retyped, redesigned, and reformatted. Since these books are not scans of the authors' original publications, the text is readable and clear.

Israel's Mission to Oliver Cromwell is a historical account of the Jewish emissary Menasseh ben Israel's efforts to secure the readmission of Jews to England in the 17th century. The book recounts Menasseh's journey from Amsterdam to London in 1655, where he met with Cromwell and other prominent figures to argue for the rights of Jews to live and worship in England. The book provides insight into the political and religious climate of the time, as well as the challenges faced by Jewish communities throughout Europe. It also explores Menasseh's personal journey as a prominent Jewish leader and scholar, and his efforts to promote Jewish learning and culture. This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in Jewish history, the history of England, or the intersection of religion and politics in the 17th century.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

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