LITMIR.BIZ

Studying the Jewish Future explores the power of Jewish culture and assesses the perceived threats to the coherence and size of Jewish communities in the United States, Europe, and Israel. In an unconventional and provocative argument, Calvin Goldscheider departs from the limiting vision of the demographic projections that have shaped predictions about the health and future of Jewish communities and asserts that «the quality of Jewish life has become the key to the future of Jewish communities.»Through the lens of individual biographies, Goldscheider shows how context shapes Jewish senses of the future and how conceptions of the future are shaped and altered by life experiences. Goldscheider�s distinctive comparative approach includes a critical review of population issues, a consideration of biographies as a basis for understanding Jewish values, and an analysis of biblical texts for studying contemporary values. He combines demographic and sociological analyses in historical and comparative perspectives to dispel the notion that quantitative issues are at the heart of the challenge of Jewish continuity in the future.Numbers are clearly the building blocks of community. But the interpretations of these demographic issues are often confusing and biased by ideological preconceptions. As a basis for studying the core themes of the Jewish future, �hard facts� are less �hard� and less «factual» than interpreters have made them out to be. Population projections are limited by the vision of those who prepare them.Goldscheider concludes that the futures of Jewish communities–in America, Europe, and Israel–are much more secure than has been presented in most scholarly and popular publications, and discussions about the Jewish future should shift to other patterns of distinctiveness.This book will appeal to the general Jewish reader as well as to social scientists and modern Jewish historians. It is appropriate for Jewish studies courses, particularly, but not exclusively, those focusing on Jews in the United States, the American Jewish community, and modern Jewish society, and in courses on ethnicity, multiculturalism, cultural diversity, and ethnic relations.

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British forces conducted operations short of war in Northern Ireland for twenty-five years, yet they were unable to defeat the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). In this heretofore unpublished dissertation from 1994, McFate identifies how certain cultural, legal, and political factors contributed to the longevity of violence in Northern Ireland. Viewing counterinsurgency as a self-reproducing cultural system with its own complex logic, McFate argues that limitations on violence prescribed by the counterinsurgency principle of minimum force paradoxically resulted in a very high degree of sustainability of conflict. Certain other factors—such as emergency security legislation, reverence of military competence, and geo-strategic compression of violence within a cordon sanitaire—enabled normalization and reproduction of the conflict. In opposition to this order, the 1981 Republican hungerstrikes used the silence of the body to incriminate the state, 'embodying' a resistance to the war system of counterinsurgency.

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While staying as the guest of a factory owner in pre-First World War France, Stephen Wraysford embarks on a passionate affair with Isabelle, the wife of his host. The affair changes them both for ever. A few years later Stephen finds himself back in the same part of France, but this time as a soldier in the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest encounter in British military history. As his men die around him, Stephen turns to his enduring love for Isabelle for the strength to continue and to save something for future generations.For the first time, this beautiful and terrible story about love, courage and the endurance of the human spirit is brought to the stage in a version by Rachel Wagstaff, directed by famed director Trevor Nunn.

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Elka is the sinister Mare Rider, in myth she haunts new mothers and rides bareback through mountains and across the plains of Anatolia. Selma is about to give birth at Homerton Hospital in Hackney, Elka takes her on a fantastical journey, probing the spaces between Selma's nightmarish visions and the reality of those around her.

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Includes the plays A Voyage Around My Father, The Collaborators, The Dock Brief, Lunch Hour, and What Shall We Tell Caroline?An unsuccessful barrister and even more unsuccessful murderer are the subject of Mortimer’s first play, The Dock Brief. This was followed by What Shall We Tell Caroline? and then Lunch Hour, another short play, about love and lies in the lunch-hour. The Collaborators covers the wear and tear of married life subsequently united by the threat of a third party. A Voyage Round My Father, one of Mortimer’s greatest theatrical successes, is a celebration of the Shakespeare-quoting, eccentric, brave and impossible barrister the author had as a father.

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Oliver Cotton is a British stage and screen actor, well known for his work on stage, TV and film. In this, his first published stage play, Cotton draws on his own experience as he presents two actors – one English, the other American – marooned on location miles from anywhere, confined in their tiny dressing space by the unrelenting rain. Growing increasingly frustrated, they engage in a magnificently sustained verbal duel, a love-hate clash of cultures, countries and personalities.

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White people in their big shiny cars drive many kilometres with their sickness which I heal; sickness of the mind, body and of the soul. I charge a bit more for the soul' At night, a young black boy is 'questioned' by a white South African policeman…..36 years later, when the truth is dug up, a tortured Jennifer watches over her dying husband. But does her maid Beauty have the power to 'save' him, and is the price of remembering a dreadful secret one that Jennifer is prepared to pay?Bones is a ruthless excavation of South Africa in 2005, and in an age of threats, retribution and bloody revenge, it is an anthem for hope. A production directed by Adshead opened at the Bush Theatre in October 2006.

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Includes the plays They Came to a City, Summer Day's Dream and The Glass CageWith an introduction by Tom Priestley.All three dramas in this second volume of J B Priestley's plays investigate the question of an individual's responsibility towards his or her family and community. In They Came to a City, written at the height of the Second World War, a mixed bag of Britons mysteriously find themselves outside a strange city. What kind of 'New Jerusalem' is this, and will it suit everybody?Summer Day's Dream, first performed in 1949, is set in the future – 1975. In a Britain bombed back into pre-industrial past, three representatives of the new world order disturb the tranquil lives of three generations of an English family. The themes of hypocrisy and redemption are brought to the fore in The Glass Cage, when three black sheep of a respectable Toronto clan are grudgingly welcomed back into the family home.

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Dylan Singer needs to leave London. With his alcoholic ex-fiancée he heads to Central Asia, to research the book he's always dreamt of writing. But it's 2002, the height of the War on Terror, and Uzbekistan isn't the belly-dancing opium den they have been led to believe.From 11th Century Samarkand, through the Great Fire of London, to a disused weapons facility in the remotest place on earth, Salt Meets Wound is an epic odyssey spanning a thousand years.Tom Morton-Smith's debut is a magnificent delve into the jigsaw pieces of modern events and history. It opened at the Theatre503 in May 2007.

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Ladies and gentlemen! Let us present the romantic tenor, the couthy comedian, the speciality act and the equilibrist – a real Concert Party! In its halycon days variety theatre was part of the social life blood of the country. But in the shadow of the enemy – the technological wonder of the talkies – only the bravest or saddest of performers are left reading the boards, in cine-variety.The death throes of one of Scotland's most popular entertainments are chronicled in this world premiere of a new play by Scots playwright Douglas Maxwell, the traditions brought briefly back to pulsating life. Variety was a co-production between Grid Iron Theatre Company and the Edinburgh International Festival.

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