Jason Isaacs Books

I know the work of Rabbi Dresner. He is a warm extremely intelligent Jew and wonderful writer. I know many of the stories of Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev. I want to know more about his sefer 'The Kedushat HaLevi' which my own holy teacher Dovid Hertzberg of blessed memory would often learn from. There are so many beautiful stories about the Berditchever especially in regard to his love of Am Yisroel, and his finding blessing in them where others would only see fault. I am sure that this ' sefer' is done in a scholarly way and with great love of the subject. I so much want to get this book.

I want to thank Shalom Spencer for sending me this book, and giving me the chance to read it, and now review it. I also would thank Shalom for his reading of many of my reviews, and giving me the sense that in writing them I am not simply acting in vain.
This work tells the story of one of the greatest of all Hasidic Rabbis, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev.
The Berditchever is known as the great advocate and defender of the Jewish people. His path was a path of kindness and mercy, and seeing the good in people even where they were acting questionably.
This book retells many of the most well- known stories of his great and often miraculous deeds of kindness.
It also provides a basic history , tracing his story as he moved from Zholikov to Pinsk to Berditchev. It shows the difficulties he faced including those caused by the religious establishment which was opposed to Hasidism. The Berditchever suffered much in his life including the loss of his beloved son Rebbe Meir.
In one early incident in the book where he suffers at not being able to pray in a certain place Dresner writes of him," He burst into tears and wept until he cried his heart out over the sorrow of the Divine Presence, and he fell in a faint. Then he saw the glory of God in all its splendor and heard the words: "Be strong, My son! Great suffering will come upon you, but have no fear for I shall be with you.."
In all his wanderings in this world and through mystical visions in the next the Berditchever clung to God, and gave an example of the deepest devekut (adherence to God) and love of God.
Dresner tells the story of this great lover of God and Israel very well.
An inspiring work on one of the great teachers of the people of Israel.

This is a top notch book. It is written following the weekly Torah portion, read each week in the synagogue. Essentially it is Dr. Blumenthal's supra commentary on parts of Rabbi Levi of Berditchev's Kedushat Levi.

It's a book of Torah teaching and learning, not a staid academic reasearch book on Chassidim. The author is from the old line of conservative Rabbi's who lead the creation of Judaic Studies in America along the line's and learning of Abraham Joshua Heschel.
It's a level of scholarship and feeling for Judaism that is too missing by most non Orthodox teachers today.

'Orot' contains the profound spiritual reflections of one of the great Jewish thinkers of modern times.

Most Grandparents memory books do not address the view of life through the eyes of Judaism. Through the presentation of this unique book it give the grandparent an opportunity to transmit his/her family history, culture, traditions, values, feelings and aspirations to their grandchild. It helps to show the grandchild what it was like growing up in a beautiful Jewish environment. The statements in this book provide a framework for the grandparent to recall and share their Jewish memories with their grandchildren. It a sense, this book helps to root the grandchild in the family's heritage and offers the chance to look back and forward, to bridge the past with the future generations.

Kaplan's classic work in which he demonstrates how many advanced meditative techniques were used by the kabbalists. Aryeh Kaplan born in the Bronx, NY was a noted American rabbi and author, who had an MS in physics. In researching his books, Rabbi Kaplan once remarked: "I use my physics background to analyze and systematize data, very much as a physicist would deal with physical reality. A great primer for those not interested in pop Kabbalah books. Kaplan practiced what he wrote and it shows. A great text for serious students and those who want real Kabbalah.

Excellent introduction to the history of Kabbalah and how we can apply to our everyday lives.

Kaplan is a genius. He is well versed in Jewish Mysticism and the Kabbalah. A must read for all faiths as it is the fondation of all that is. Although some of Kaplans work is way beyond the PHD level in his writtings such as the book of formation. He offers diverse styles and intellectual levels. Someone is bound to find his writings they can relate too and understand. Meditation and the Kabbalah is an easy read but she read over time for the reader to truly enjoy the teachings. Kaplan does not write science fiction where you could read the book in a summer afternoon. He wants you to think. That is his gift.

This book is very complete, it presents historical, encyclopedic, theoretical and very practical knowledge about Kabala. You should be careful only to meditate when Rav Kaplan writes so, don't read or pronounce. This is an extremely daring book for an Orthodox Rabbi to write, especially because it is accessible to everyone, if you are Jewish the best results you'll get through this book are if you perform ALSO all the other "rituals", meaning being observant of prayer, Shabbat, Kosher, etc.

This book is not as potentially rewarding to a beginner but requires some knowledge before reading. It is a good idea to know a little bit about the various famed Rabbis, who they were, where they lived, and what they were famous for. It is also a good idea to have some reasonable level of experience of meditation and prayer, and to have had some direct experience with devekut and feel comfortable and validated in one's experience. It is also good to have a basic grounding in theoretical Kaballah and the sefirot. Maybe more than basic.

So, if the above paragraph describes you, this book is an astoundingly great book. First of all, the historical timeline of the rabbis and their interelationships is easy to understand and is very synthetic. I also found the presentation of Abulafia's permutation methods to be easily understandable and surprisingly easy to put into practice (the first one anyway). I can hear the angels now whining about my newfound attempts to permute the Tetragrammation, who do these puny humans think they are anyway?

I have edited this review as I recently finished the book. This is a phenomenal book. The first text that I have read which provides an organized understanding of the timeline and rabbinic players in the ongoing tradition of Jewish mysticism. From Abulafia to Cordovero to Reb Vitale to the Ari and the Baal Shem Tov, all of the important rabbinic figures, their contributions and their historical relevance are coherently summarized. I wish that I had read this book a lot earlier. But even better, Kaplan provides a summary of the yichudim and meditations used by the masters here in the text. Although there is a slightly amusing warning in the beginning of the text that you cannot read the text in a bathroom because it contains the names of God, there emerges a much clearer understanding why the publishing of this material can be considered potentially dangerous. The clear meaning of the commandment regarding not taking God's name in vain is apparent after reading this book. The use of these meditations and yichudim without near perfect intent by people is the ultimate meaning of taking God's name in vain. In other words, it is misuse of the names of God. Used in the correct manner, the book is fabulous.

Understood the book, but how are you going to retrain providers until they are sued! Why aren't they trained in medical school from the beginning the golden rule (Treat others as you want to be treated)? Every organization needs to make this mandatory reading before they are allowed to see patients within their facility! Who knows, if they learned that patients are real people, their patient capacity might fill real fast!

Written by a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Healing Words: The Power of Apology in Medicine is a call to doctors and medical professionals everywhere to question the widespread belief that an apology is an admission of guilt and an open door to a costly lawsuit. Woods reveals how the value of a proper apology and cultivated communication skills can actually prevent lawsuits, and promote emotional healing in doctors, patients, and patient's families even in the wake of terrible medical tragedies. Healing Words discusses the components of a proper apology, how doctors can improve their ability to communicate with patients, matters of medical ethics, and much more. Strongly recommended for physicians, Healing Words is a much-needed counterbalance to the defensive hostility widely promulgated by today's modern sue-happy society.

Given all that has been recently reported on physicians saying "I'm sorry," this short, straightforward book couldn't have come at a better time.

Dr. Michael Woods has written a practical, motivational book directed at physicians on the why's, how's, and what's of apologizing to patients. Drawing from personal experience, stories from other doctors, examples from other industries, and research data, Dr. Woods does not hold back in making an impassioned plea for physicians to master this tricky part of the patient-doctor relationship.

At ~82 pages, you can probably read this book in one or two sittings (In fact, I read most of it in the waiting room as I waited to see my doctor. Luckily he didn't have to apologize for anything that day). Dr. Woods moves quickly from topic to topic, breaking down just about every aspect of "I'm sorry" - why it's so difficult for physicians in particular to apologize, what an meaningful apologize entails, what the patient is thinking/feeling in apology-worthy situations, how to build more authentic relationships with patients, and even what exact words you could say in difficult situations.

Overall, doctors should apologize appropriately (and probably more often)- it's the right thing to do, it's the compassionate thing to do, and if that's not enough, it might even prevent some lawsuits.

I'm just sorry that I didn't read this book sooner.

I loved this movie. It is far from the best Blu-ray conversion however as it is barely better than regular DVD. To be expected I supposed as it was one of the earlier titles.

Black Hawk Down is indeed a story of modern warfare. Even though it occurred 15 years ago, there is really no other comparable, true-life story of the modern U.S. military in action against an enemy that is well-matched, with sheer numbers facing technological superiority. It is for this reason that I bought the 3-disc edition, to get the extra documentaries and commentaries. The former I've watched, with the History channel's 2-hour documentary, with Mark Bowden's comments more interesting than the 1-hour Frontline piece. I look forward to watching the movie again and again with the various commentaries. After watching this movie, with it's often painful realism, other military movies seem almost unwatchable they are so cliched and Hollywood. This is a fascinating collection of discs to watch.

everyone who loves a was movie needs to buy this movie and at 15 bucks you can't go wrong. this is a great blu ray conversion. a must have.

Had this already in DVD, I think it is a much better film in 1080P. Good story, great director and cast. Buy it.
GG

Black Hawk Down is easily one of the best wat movies ever made. The war seqeunces are intense and hard to watch at times. But Ridley Scott has made a brilliant film with amazing cinematography and a fast paced film. Josh Hartnett really made his name in film in the lead role and I'm surpised he didn't get more action roles in the later years of his carrer.

I loved this movie. It is far from the best Blu-ray conversion however as it is barely better than regular DVD. To be expected I supposed as it was one of the earlier titles.

Black Hawk Down is indeed a story of modern warfare. Even though it occurred 15 years ago, there is really no other comparable, true-life story of the modern U.S. military in action against an enemy that is well-matched, with sheer numbers facing technological superiority. It is for this reason that I bought the 3-disc edition, to get the extra documentaries and commentaries. The former I've watched, with the History channel's 2-hour documentary, with Mark Bowden's comments more interesting than the 1-hour Frontline piece. I look forward to watching the movie again and again with the various commentaries. After watching this movie, with it's often painful realism, other military movies seem almost unwatchable they are so cliched and Hollywood. This is a fascinating collection of discs to watch.

everyone who loves a was movie needs to buy this movie and at 15 bucks you can't go wrong. this is a great blu ray conversion. a must have.

Had this already in DVD, I think it is a much better film in 1080P. Good story, great director and cast. Buy it.
GG

Black Hawk Down is easily one of the best wat movies ever made. The war seqeunces are intense and hard to watch at times. But Ridley Scott has made a brilliant film with amazing cinematography and a fast paced film. Josh Hartnett really made his name in film in the lead role and I'm surpised he didn't get more action roles in the later years of his carrer.

Mozeson is a genius and makes us wonder if , after all, we are not one humanity on one planet and even speak the same language.

The Word demonstrates how totally saturated English is with Biblical Hebrew roots. (As all languages are). Some words like LAD are given an Origin Unknown in the standard dictionaries. Mozeson shows how the root for young child, YeLeD, is the probable source. YeLeD iself contains the root meaning born. So now English has sense if Mozeson is right. And more and more researchers are beginning to think that the monogenesis theory of world languages having one main root language at their origins is correct, (as the Bible indicates in Genesis 11:1). The book is a must for anybody with a taste for the truth. This book is an eye opener par excellance.

There is an introduction and preface to the dictionary, but most readers will need more essays about this mind-blowing topic before trying to take on the 22,000 words the book traces back to their ultimate source in "Edenic" (Biblical Hebrew +.) I strongly suggest first visiting the Edenic website. Once you have a good grasp of the thesis, and words grouped into fun topics, like animal names, you'll then be able to appreciate the reference book. A future edition has to do what these essays, and the audio and video lectures do. Break the examples down into words that had root letters shift or change place, etc. In the book, you have to keep all the babble effects from Babel in your mind at the same time. The dictionary attempts to make this clear, but most readers will want the easier overviews first.

As a historical linguist, I have examined Mozeson's proposals and samples of his treatment of individual words. I do not deal here with the religious issues that arise but rather with the linguistic evidence and associated argumentation, in terms of what we have learned across the 200 years of scientific linguistic scholarship. The main problem with Mozeson's proposal is the comparative methods which are used, which are long outdated and are now used only by fringe amateurs. The probability of pairs of superficially similar words in apparently unrelated languages having very similar or the same senses by chance is in fact MUCH higher than Mozeson suggests. And in this particular case most of the alleged correspondences do indeed appear to be unsystematic and arbitrary; each correspondence is invoked as it is needed to 'explain' specific forms, but there is typically no good explanation for why different correspondences apply in different cases, or even an admission that this is a problem or an issue that needs to be addressed. It is already known that language change does not occur in this way. Using such methods one can 'prove' (spuriously) that almost any two languages share large amounts of vocabulary. The statistics involved here have recently been formalised by Ringe and other historical linguists, and while there is some debate about specifics the overall case is overwhelming. In addition: (a) in many of the cases cited here, other etymologies are already known or proposed with good evidence; (b) the proposal contradicts a large amount of well-grounded information about the genetic relationships of languages; (c ) the analysis ignores the fact that genetic relatedness (as opposed to influential contact) always involves specific elements of grammar and phonology as well as shared vocabulary. Because of all this, Mozeson's sweeping claims about the derivation of all other languages from Hebrew/'Edenic' are invalid. In addition, many of Mozeson's introductory remarks about linguistics are badly confused. There have been many other attempts to reanalyse language origins in terms such as these; they all fail, for the same reasons.

This is a really fascinating book. I have often wondered why the etymology sections in dictionaries stop at the ancient Greek or Latin and only very occasionally go back to more ancient languages like Arabic or Sanskrit. Mozeson has collected English words which he claims have clear connections to the Hebrew. For example the (Hebrew) word "marah" is found in the Bible to mean mirror, "derekh" means trek or track, "deo" means die and so on. Some of the connections might seem teneous but most are real eye openers. Oh, and in case you are worried Mozeson is not a fundementalist Bible basher although it must be said that according to Jewish tradition Genesis 11:1 refers to the Hebrew Language (look it up) which would make it the orignal language. Mozeson has written other books on slang language and on teenagers. If you are not at least a little familiar with Hebrew this book will be of less interest to you.

This book goes step by step through each commandment, giving the text from the Torah, a brief explanation, and then short commentaries by various scholars. Short and to the point, and easy to use as a reference book.