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The Glory of Ukraine: Golden Treasures and Lost Civilizations

Foundation for International Arts and Education, 2010

This book offers sumptuous images covering over 6,000 years of history and culture from the territory of Ukraine. All the items shown and discussed - from pottery to weapons to jewelry to religious artifacts - derive from the PlaTar collections in Kiev. The book was published by the Foundation in confunction with an exhibition of the same name (See the Exhibition page of this website.

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Untangling the Web

This book offers a concise yet detailed overview of the complex issues that have defined the Middle East for thousands of years: religion, politics, ethnicity, nationality and economics as individual threads of complication interwoven with threads of conflicting and confusing definitions, aspirations and interferences. This is a guide to the morass that offers essential background to understanding the present realities in the region, and is accessible to anyone.

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Fixing the World: Jewish American Painters in the Twentieth Century

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (July 15, 2009)

Focusing on a dazzling array of work by over eighty artists, Dr. Soltes explores themes ranging from the trials of immigration, depictions of urban life and politics, renderings of the Holocaust, and the spiritual yearnings of contemporary feminist painters. Despite such dramatic differences in content, he illuminates a common thread among these paintings - the concept of tikkun olam - of repairing or fixing the world.

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Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Searching for Oneness

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (July 15, 2009)

This unique volume presents the common roots, divergences and convergences of mysticism in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. It offers both a conceptual discussion—what is mysticism within religion? what are its goals and purposes? what are its basic methods?—and a historical sweep that carries from the Bible to the modern era. The final chapter offers interesting insights into a handful of contemporary works of literature, visual art and film as a demonstration of the ongoing search for oneness with the One in an age far less secular than one might suppose.

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Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source

Basic Books; illustrated edition edition (November 1, 2005)

This unusual volume examines a fascinating array of visual images to suggest three fundamental ideas. One, that the visual traditions within Judaism, Christianity and Islam are linked to each other in myriad ways, even as each form of faith refracts the symbolism of such linked imagery according to its own specific spiritual needs. Two, that all three traditions draw from conceptual and visual issues and ideas that pre-date any and all of them. Three, that the impulse to explore and express the abstract and ultimately unfathomable realm of divinity in visual terms, both directly and through indirect symbols, continues into the modern era and up to the present day.

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Art Across the Ages DVD series (The Teaching Company)(DVD-ROM)

Teaching Company (2008)

This unique group of 48 lavishly illustrated lectures covers the sweep of primarily Western art in half-hour sessions. It was taped for the Teaching Company's "Ourstanding Professors" series.

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The Ashen Rainbow

Eshel Books (February 9, 2007)

This splendid collection of essays considers much of the range of ways in which, by paradox, the ineffably destructive Holocaust has, particularly in the last forty years, provoked an outpouring of creative responses to it. From the prose words of Elie Wiesel and the poetry of Nobel Prize-winner Nellie Sachs to a range of media that extend beyond words: music, visual art, theater and film, humans have striven to record, combat  and later to explore if not explain the massive trauma of the Holocaust. The essays were written over the course of twenty years and may be read together or individually.

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Heilige Zeichen

Parthas Verlag (June 30, 2007)

This well-crafted translation into German of Our "Sacred Signs", includes more illustrations (most of them in color) than are found in the original English-language version.

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Jewish Artists: On the Edge

Sherman Asher Publishing (March 10, 2005)

A path-breaking discussion of the myriad ways in which Jewish artists pushed against the envelope of art toward the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. The thesis of this book is that Jewish artists are more often than not on the cutting edge of artistic thinking, contrary to a still-prevailing stereotype that assumes that Jews shy away from visual art or produce shlock.

The Life and Legacy of the Roman Empire, Parts 1 and 2 (Teaching Company) (Audio Cassette)

Teaching Company (1994)

Twenty illustrated, half-hour lectures for the Teaching Company on the Roman world, covering general history, art, literature and music.

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National Treasures of Georgia: Art and Civilisation Through the Ages

Philip Wilson Publishers (January 1, 2003)

A stimulating exploration of the richness of Georgian culture going back through eight thousand years. In particular, metallurgy, pottery, illuminated manuscripts and textiles from the Neolithic period to the early twentieth-century modernist era are discussed. Essays by 21 scholars from around the world are included, together with stunning illustrations.

Other titles on Amazon.com:

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Art and Soul

Chautauqua Institution, 2005

This is a lecture in the Chautauqua Institution of Religion's "Great Lecture Library" (CD-Rom). Other lectures by Dr. Soltes are also available directly from the Chautauqua Institution.

Earth, Fire, Water and Wind: The Ceramics of Otto Natzler

Bnai Brith Books (January 1992)

This brief work—based on the retrospective exhibition of the same name that took place in the mid-1990s at the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum—discusses the extraordinary work of Otto Natzler, an Austrian-born chemist turned ceramist, who over the course of sixty years developed thousands of unique glazes. These were first devised for the pots thrown by his first wife, Gertrud, but after her death were directed to the handsome hand-built pots that Natzler himself began to create.

Ideas in Western Culture: The Medieval and Renaissance World (The SuperStar Teacher's Series) (Audio Cassette)

The Teaching Company (1995)

Sixteen illustrated, half-hour lectures for the Teaching Company on the Medieval and Renaissance world, covering general history, art, literature and music.