As the population of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the United States increases to astonishing proportions, veteran New York Times journalist Joseph Berger takes us inside the notoriously insular world of the Hasidim to explore their origins, beliefs, and struggles—and the social and political implications of their expanding presence in America.
Though the Hasidic way of life was nearly extinguished in the Holocaust, today the Hasidim—“the pious ones”—have become one of the most prominent religious subcultures in America. In The Pious Ones, New York Times journalist Joseph Berger traces their origins in eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, illuminating their dynamics and core beliefs that remain so enigmatic to outsiders. He analyzes the Hasidim’s codified lifestyle by telling the story of some of its followers, revealing the religion’s fascinating secrets, complexities, and paradoxes. Berger provides a nuanced and insightful portrayal of how their all-encompassing faith dictates nearly every aspect of life—including work, education, food, sex, clothing, and social relations—sustaining a sense of connection and purpose in a changing world.
From the intense sectarian politics to the conflicts that arise over housing, transportation, schooling, and gender roles, The Pious Ones also chronicles the ways in which the fabric of Hasidic daily life is threatened by exposure to the wider world and also by internal fissures within its growing population.

PIOUS ONES

Biographies & Memoirs

Berger, Joseph

Historical

Perennial

Examines the schools that have won the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, a prestigious national academic contest, and chronicles how these schools have created phenomenal science programs.

The Young Scientists: America's Future And The Winning Of The Westinghouse

Science & Math

Science for Kids

Basic Books

An intimate look at Elie Wiesel, author of the seminal Holocaust memoir Night and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize &nbsp; As an orphaned survivor and witness to Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) became a torchbearer for victims and survivors of the Holocaust at a time when the world preferred to forget. How did this frail, soft-spoken man from a small village in the Carpathians become such an influential presence on the world stage? Using Wiesel's writings and interviews with his family, close friends, scholars, and critics, Joseph Berger presents Wiesel as both revered Nobel laureate and man of complex psychological texture and contradictions. &nbsp; Berger explores Wiesel's Hasidic childhood in Sighet, his postwar years as a teenage orphan in France, his transformation into a Parisian intellectual, his fumbling attempts at romance, his hungry years scraping together a living in America as a working journalist, his emergence as a spokesperson for Holocaust survivors, and his difficult final years. Through this fully realized portrait, we see how this teenage survivor from a Hasidic family became the eloquent embodiment of Holocaust remembrance and of forceful opposition to indifference.

Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence (Jewish Lives)

Arts & Literature

Yale University Press

Types of Formalization in Small-Group Research:

Snell, J. Laurie

Cohen, B P.

Zelditch, M.

Business & Money

Praeger

“The whole world can be found in this city. . . .” –from the Preface Fifty years ago, New York City had only a handful of ethnic groups. Today, the whole world can be found within the city’s five boroughs–and celebrated New York Times reporter Joseph Berger sets out to discover it, bringing alive the sights, smells, tastes, and people of the globe while taking readers on an intimate tour of the world’s most cosmopolitan city. For urban enthusiasts and armchair explorers alike, The World in a City is a look at today’s polyglot and polychrome, cosmopolitan and culturally rich New York and the lessons it holds for the rest of the United States as immigration changes the face of the nation. With three out of five of the city’s residents either foreign-born or second-generation Americans, New York has become more than ever a collection of villages–virtually self-reliant hamlets, each exquisitely textured by its particular ethnicities, history, and politics. For the price of a subway ride, you can visit Ghana, the Philippines, Ecuador, Uzbekistan, and Bangladesh. As Berger shows us in this absorbing and enlightening tour, New York is an endlessly fascinating crossroads. Naturally, tears exist in this colorful social fabric: the controversy over Korean-language shop signs in tony Douglaston, Queens; the uneasy proximity of traditional cottages and new McMansions built by recently arrived Russian residents of Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Yet in spite of the tensions among neighbors, what Berger has found most miraculous about New York is how the city and its more than eight million denizens can adapt to–and even embrace–change like no other place on earth, from the former pushcart knish vendor on the Lower East Side who now caters to his customers via the Internet, to the recent émigrés from former Soviet republics to Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach and Midwood whose arrival saved New York’s furrier trade from certain extinction. Like the place it chronicles, The World in a City is an engaging hybrid. Blending elements of sociology, pop culture, and travel writing, this is the rare book that enlightens readers while imbuing them with the hope that even in this increasingly fractious and polarized world, we can indeed co-exist in harmony.

The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Ballantine Books

Sociological Theories in Progress

Sociological theories in progress

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Houghton/Mifflin

Status Characteristics and Social Interaction: An Expectation-States Approach

Greenwood Pub Group

In this touching account, veteran New York Times reporter Joseph Berger describes how his own family of Polish Jews -- with one son born at the close of World War II and the other in a "displaced persons" camp outside Berlin -- managed against all odds to make a life for themselves in the utterly foreign landscape of post-World War II America. Paying eloquent homage to his parents' extraordinary courage, luck, and hard work while illuminating as never before the experience of 140,000 refugees who came to the United States between 1947 and 1953, Joseph Berger has captured a defining moment in history in a riveting and deeply personal chronicle.

Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust

Community & Culture

Atria Books

"Although I may not have been able to articulate it, I already felt these alien streets would be a trial, filled with unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar tongues. How could I make a friend when I didn't even speak English? How could I understand a teacher or classmate? And how could I rely on my perplexed, frightened parents to help me cope?" So begins New York Times reporter Joseph Berger's beguiling account of how one family of Polish Jews - with one son born at the close of World War II and the other one in a "displaced persons" camp outside Berlin - managed to make a life for themselves in an utterly foreign landscape. Displaced Persons speaks directly to a little-known slice of Holocaust history, illuminating as never before the experience of 140,000 refugees who came to the United States between 1947 and 1953. The world of Manhattan's Upper West Side, in the shadow of Hitler's atrocities, has been the subject of some of Isaac Bashevis Singer's best fiction. But through the eyes of a bright and perceptive boy we come to understand the reality on a more visceral level. Like many immigrants and children of immigrants, Jospeh Berger lives in two worlds at the same time. On the one hand, there is this thrillingly rich American turf to explore as a child, and he does a brilliant job of bringing that adventure to life. On the other hand, he never lets us forget what it's like to feel intractably rooted in another, incompatible world of refugee parents who cannot speak English, a world of people dazed from unimaginable loss, and whose loneliness is unrelenting.

Scribner

Healing Yourself With Self-Hypnosis

Overcome nervous tension, pain, fatigue, insomnia, depression and addictive behaviors with these simple techniques. Now you can join the thousands of readers who have used hypnosis—a tool long used by professionals—to make dramatic improvements in their physical and emotional health . . . and achieve fabulous success and happiness in their relationships and career! In Healing Yourself with Self-Hypnosis you’ll learn how to quickly and easily achieve a hypnotic state—and achieve amazing results with virtually any problems or concern, including: excess weight, substance abuse, pain management, smoking, childbirth, and anxiety.

Caprio, Frank

Religion & Spirituality

Penguin Publishing Group

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