Wrestling With Angels
What Genesis Teaches Us About Our Spiritual Identity, Sexuality and Personal Rel ationships
-
- USD 11.99
-
- USD 11.99
Publisher Description
Wrestling with Angels
For over twenty years, psychotherapist, lecturer, and Bible teacher Naomi H. Rosenblatt has been leading some of the nation's best and brightest minds through the Bible, from Wall Street boardrooms to weekly sessions in the U.S. Congress, in what William Safire has called "the best Bible class for the layman." Drawing upon insights into human nature gleaned from decades of private practice and a lifelong study of the Bible, she sifts through the Bible's epic stories, filled with vivid characters in dramatic circumstances, to show how the lessons of their lives empower us today as parents, spouses, businesspeople, citizens, and lovers.
In Wrestling with Angels, she and her co-author Joshua Horwitz retell and interpret the multigenerational saga of the first family of the Bible, showing how their all-too-human struggles are decidedly relevant to the issues confronting us today.
The Bible? Relevant today? Many readers will be surprised by how truly relevant the Book of Genesis is. It discusses, among other things, the first recorded case of sexual harassment; surrogate parenting and the problems it raises; siblings battling over the love of a parent; rape and its consequences; and vigilante justice. The issues faced by Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and their descendants are remarkably similar to those that arise in all of our lives, including:
The strenuous demands of adulthood
The challenges of faith
The joys of sexuality
The nature of leadership and heroism
The responsibilities of parenting
The role of values in building character
The empowerment of a spiritual identity
In this extraordinary book of timeless and profound wisdom, Naomi Rosenblatt invites both Christians and Jews to revisit our common spiritual heritage: "For the humanist, the religious, the agnostic, or the merely inquisitive, Wrestling with Angels is an open invitation to probe the mystery, the miracle, and the drama of adult life in an imperfect world."
A book to be read again and again, Wrestling with Angels is a poignant and pragmatic guide to the bestselling self-help book of all time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Few stories resonate through our collective consciousness like the stories from the Book of Genesis: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; Noah and the flood; Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac; Jacob wrestling with an angel; the stories of Rachel, Leah and Joseph. Even the most biblically illiterate among us can usually recount their basic elements, including all the passions of lust, greed, deceit, power, sibling rivalry, parental love and neglect and, ultimately, faith and faithfulness that are at play in them. It is to these fundamental stories that Rosenblatt returns as she acts as a guide to an exploration of Genesis from an utterly contemporary perspective. Rosenblatt, a practicing psychotherapist born and raised in Israel, has taught Bible classes for 20 years; for the past four, she has led weekly Bible study groups in Washington, D.C., that are attended by a grand variety of people, including senators and news personalities as well as ordinary working folk (Horwitz, her co-writer, has been a student since 1978). Here, her observations on the Bible are notable for two qualities: a remarkable understanding of human endeavor and an intimate knowledge of the lands of the Bible. She treats the people of Genesis as universal figures who are, nevertheless, of a particular time and place. She advances no particular religious agenda; instead, she asks that we reacquaint ourselves with those profiled in Genesis, the people who dreamed and struggled, triumphed and failed, just as we do today, and that we seek to understand, rather than to prove. Throughout, Rosenblatt skillfully interweaves her own insights with the wisdom of a variety of writers and thinkers, from Abraham Heschel and Paul Tillich to M. Scott Peck. It is as if she has orchestrated the sweetest of family reunions, one where we are reintroduced to the people that have shaped our lives, only to discover that, as adults, we more clearly understand their strengths and flaws, because we now recognize the same in ourselves. It is a recognition, Rosenblatt posits, that provides us with comfort and hope and also challenges us to change and grow. BOMC, QPB, Jewish Book Club selections; 15-city author tour.