Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived so many years after the establishment of the Israeli state. Zionism: An Emotional State expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement's history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world.

Jews and Armenians are often perceived as peoples with similar tragic historical experiences. Not only were both groups forced into statelessness and a life outside their homelands for centuries, in the 20th century, in the shadow of war, they were threatened with collective annihilation. Thus far, academic approaches to these two "classical" diasporas have been quite different. Moreover, Armenian and Jewish questions posed during the 19th and 20th centuries have usually been treated separately. The conference "We Will Live After Babylon" that took place in Hanover in February 2019, addressed this gap in research and was one of the first initiatives to deal directly with Jewish and Armenian historical experiences, between expulsion, exile and annihilation, in a comparative framework. The contributions in this volume take on multidisciplinary approaches relating to the conference's central themes: diaspora, minority issues and genocide.

The chapters in this volume examine a few facets in the drama of how the beleaguered Jewish people, as a phoenix ascending of ancient legend, achieved national self-determination in the reborn State of Israel within three years of the end of World War II and of the Holocaust. They include the pivotal 1946 World Zionist Congress, the contributions of Jacob Robinson and Clark M. Eichelberger to Israel's sovereign renewal, American Jewry's crusade to save a Jewish state, the effort to create a truce and trusteeship for Palestine, and Judah Magnes's final attempt to create a federated state there. Joining extensive archival research and a lucid prose, Professor Monty Noam Penkower again displays a definitive mastery of his craft.

The volume contains some of the most incisive texts of the New School of Polish Jewish studies. The chapters present new ways of thinking about modern Polish-Jewish history and the Holocaust. The authors are reformulating the terms of current discourses in various fields of research. Introduced by Jan T. Gross, the book includes chapters by several important scholars and an extraordinary poem by Jacek Podsiad(3)o, translated and commented upon by Alissa Valles.

This book analyzes the ways in which literary works and cultural discourses employ the construct of the Jew's body in relation to the material world in order either to establish and reinforce, or to subvert and challenge, dominant cultural norms and stereotypes. It examines the use of physical characteristics, embodied practices, tacit knowledge and senses to define the body taxonomically as normative, different, abject or mimetically desired. Starting from the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky through to contemporary Russian-Jewish women's writing, the book argues that materiality also embodies fictional constructions that should be approached as a culture-specific material-semiotic interface.

A Story of YHWH investigates the ancient Israelite expression of their deity, and tracks why variation occurred in that expression, from the early Iron Age to the Persian period. Through this text, readers will gain a better appreciation for the complexities and contexts in the development of YHWH, from its earliest origins to the Persian period. Two interpretive frameworks-cultural translation and subversive reception-are offered for filtering through the textual data and contexts. Comparative study with ancient Near Eastern deities and select biblical texts lead readers through early YHWHism, YHWH's original outsider status, and the eventual impact of urbanization on the expression. Perceived and real pressures then challenge urbanite YHWHism and invite new directions for forming a unique expression of divinity in the ancient world. This book is intended for those interested in the study of ancient divinity broadly as well as those who study ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible. The work provides generalists with a better appreciation for the particular challenges in working in the ancient Near East and with the bible specifically, while it provides specialists with a broad theory that can be continually tested. For both, the study provides two reading lenses to work through similar questions and an accounting of why the many contextually driven and varied constructions of YHWH may have occurred.

The Hebrew Bible is a philosophical testament. Abraham, the first biblical philosopher, calls out to the world in God's name exactly as Plato calls out in the name of the Forms. Abraham comes forward as a critic of pagan thought about, specifically, persons. Moses, to whom the baton is passed, spells out the practical implications of the Bible's core anthropological teachings. In Persons and Other Things Mark Glouberman explores the Bible's philosophy, roughing out in the course of a defence of it how men and women who see themselves in the biblical portrayal (as he argues that most of us do once the "religious" glare is reduced) are committed to conduct their personal affairs, arrange their social ties, and act in the natural world. Persons and Other Things is also the author's testament about the practice of philosophy. Glouberman sets out the lessons he has acquired as a lifelong learner about thinking philosophically, about writing philosophy, and about philosophers.

Advances in genetics are renewing controversies over inherited characteristics, and the discourse around science and technological innovations has taken on racial overtones, such as attributing inherited physiological traits to certain ethnic groups or using DNA testing to determine biological links with ethnic ancestry. This book contributes to the discussion by opening up previously locked concepts of the relation between the terms color, race, and "Jews", and by engaging with globalism, multiculturalism, hybridity, and diaspora. The contributors-leading scholars in anthropology, sociology, history, literature, and cultural studies-discuss how it is not merely a question of whether Jews are acknowledged to be interracial, but how to address academic and social discourses that continue to place Jews and others in a race/color category.

A pathbreaking study of the Parisian press's attempts to claim Richard Wagner's place in French history and imagination during the unstable and conflict-ridden years of the Third Reich. Richard Wagner was a polarizing figure in France from the time that he first entered French musical life in the mid nineteenth century. Critics employed him to symbolize everything from democratic revolution to authoritarian antisemitism. During periods of Franco-German conflict, such as the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, Wagner was associated in France with German nationalism and chauvinism. This association has led to the assumption that, with the advent of the Third Reich, the French once again rejected Wagner. Drawing on hundreds of press sources and employing close readings, this book seeks to explain a paradox: as the German threat grew more tangible from 1933, the Parisian press insisted on seeing in Wagner a universality that transcended his Germanness. Repudiating the notion that Wagner stood for Germany, French critics attempted to reclaim his role in their own national history and imagination. Claiming Wagner for France: Music and Politics in the Parisian Press, 1933-1944 reveals how the concept of a universal Wagner, which was used to challenge the Nazis in the 1930s, was gradually transformed into the infamous collaborationist rhetoric promoted by the Vichy government and exploited by the Nazis between 1940 and 1944. Rachel Orzech's study offers a close examination of Wagner's place in France's cultural landscape at this time, contributing to our understanding of how the French grappled with one of the most challenging periods in their history.

After 1945, Jewish writing in German was almost unimaginable-and then only in reference to the Shoah. Only in the 1980s, after a period of mourning, silence, and processing of the trauma, did a new Jewish literature evolve in Germany and Austria. This volume focuses on the re-emergence of a lively Jewish cultural scene in the German-speaking countries and the various cultural forms of expression that have developed around it. Topics include current debates such as the emergence of a post-Waldheim Jewish discourse in Austria and Jewish responses to German unification and the Gulf wars. Other significant themes addressed are the memorialization of the Holocaust in Berlin and Vienna, the uses of Kafka in contemporary German literature, and the German and American-Jewish dialogue as representative of both the history of exile and the globalization of postmodern civilization. The volume is enhanced by contributions from some of the most significant representatives of German-Jewish writing today such as Esther Dischereit, Barbara Honigmann, Jeanette Lander, and Doron Rabinovici. The result is a lively dialogue between European and North American scholars and writers that captures the complexity and dynamism of Jewish culture in Germany and Austria at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Covering the period from 200 BCE to 600 CE, this book describes important aspects of identity formation processes within early Judaism and Christianity, and shows how negotiations involving issues of ethnicity, stereotyping, purity, commensality, and institution building contributed to the forming of group identities. Over time, some of these Jewish group identities evolved into non-Jewish Christian identities, others into a rabbinic Jewish identity, while yet others remained somewhere in between. The contributors to this volume trace these developments in archaeological remains as well as in texts from the Qumran movement, the New Testament and the reception of Paul's writings, rabbinic literature, and apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, such as the Book of Dreams and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. The long timespan covered in the volume together with the combined expertise of scholars from various fields make this book a unique contribution to research on group identity, Jewish and Christian identity formation, the Partings-of-the-ways between Judaism and Christianity, and interactions between Jews and Christians.

In this uplifting memoir in the vein of The Last Lecture and Man’s Search for Meaning, a Holocaust survivor pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom, and living his best possible life.

Born in Leipzig, Germany, into a Jewish family, Eddie Jaku was a teenager when his world was turned upside-down. On November 9, 1938, during the terrifying violence of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Eddie was beaten by SS thugs, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp with thousands of other Jews across Germany. Every day of the next seven years of his life, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors in Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and finally on a forced death march during the Third Reich’s final days. The Nazis took everything from Eddie—his family, his friends, and his country. But they did not break his spirit.

Against unbelievable odds, Eddie found the will to survive. Overwhelming grateful, he made a promise: he would smile every day in thanks for the precious gift he was given and to honor the six million Jews murdered by Hitler. Today, at 100 years of age, despite all he suffered, Eddie calls himself the “happiest man on earth.” In his remarkable memoir, this born storyteller shares his wisdom and reflects on how he has led his best possible life, talking warmly and openly about the power of gratitude, tolerance, and kindness. Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. With The Happiest Man on Earth, Eddie shows us how.

Filled with his insights on friendship, family, health, ethics, love, and hatred, and the simple beliefs that have shaped him, The Happiest Man on Earth offers timeless lessons for readers of all ages, especially for young people today.

Between 1941 and 1945, thousands of German Jews, in fear for their lives, made the choice to flee their impending deportations and live submerged in the shadows of the Nazi capital. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that "hidden" Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.

The family tomb as a physical claim to the patrimony, the attributed powers of the dead and the prospect of post-mortem veneration made the cult of the dead an integral aspect of the Judahite and Israelite society. Over 850 burials from throughout the southern Levant are examined to illustrate the Judahite form of burial and its development. Vessels for foods and liquids were of paramount importance in the afterlife, followed by jewellery with its protective powers. The cult of the dead began to be an unacceptable feature of the Jerusalem Yahwistic cult in the late eighth to seventh century BCE. This change of attitude was precipitated by the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel and the consequent theological response.

This monograph examines the problem of universally inclusive language in the book of Revelation and the resulting narrative tension created by narrowly exclusive language. Analysis is conducted by placing relevant texts within their literary-narrative context and through consideration of how the author understood and appropriated biblical traditions. A key feature of this study is its examination of four early Jewish documents with significant similarities to the problem being examined in Revelation. From these documents (Tobit; Similitudes of Enoch [1 Enoch 37-71]; 4 Ezra; and, Animal Apocalypse [1 Enoch 85-90]) a contextual picture emerges which allows a fuller understanding of Revelation's distinctive approach toward the problem of the fate of the nations. This study contends that the interpretive strategies applied to biblical traditions in Revelation have their roots in the wider early Jewish milieu. From this comparative analysis, identifiable patterns with regard to the role of 'universal terminology' in the communicative strategy of John's Apocalypse emerge.

Increasing numbers of Jews are returning to their religious roots in a search for meaning, eager to explore a heritage that is deeply embedded in history and at the same time rapidly changing. But what is Judaism today? And what does it mean -- culturally, spiritually, and ritually -- to be Jewish in the twenty-first century?
In "Being Jewish," Ari L. Goldman offers eloquent, thoughtful answers to these questions through an absorbing exploration of modern Judaism. A bestselling author and widely respected chronicler of Jewish life, Goldman vividly contrasts the historical meaning of Judaism's heritage with the astonishing and multiform character of the religion today. The result will be a revelation for those already involved with Judaism and a fascinating introduction for those whose interests are newly minted or rekindled.
This inspiring volume encourages us to find our own place within the tradition and leads us into a deeper understanding not just of the details of the religion but, ultimately, of what it means to be Jewish.

Boleslaw Prus and the Jews shows the complexity of the so-called "Jewish question" in nineteenth-century Congress Poland and especially its significance in Prus' social concept reflected in his extensive body of journalistic work, fiction, and treatises. The book traces Prus' evolving worldview toward Jews, from his support of the Assimilation Program in his early years to his eventual support of Zionism. These contrasting ideas show us the complexity of the discourse on Jewish issues from the individual perspective of a significant writer of the time, as well as the dynamics of the Jewish modernization process in a "non-existent" partitioned Poland. The portrait of Prus that emerges is surprisingly ambivalent.

While the ideologies of Territorialism and Zionism originated at the same time, the Territorialists foresaw a dire fate for Eastern European Jews, arguing that they could not wait for the Zionist Organization to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. This pessimistic worldview led Territorialists to favor a solution for the Jewish state ""here and now""-and not only in the Land of Israel. In Zionism without Zion: The Jewish Territorial Organization and Its Conflict with the Zionist Organization, author Gur Alroey examines this group's unique perspective, its struggle with the Zionist movement, its Zionist rivals' response, and its diplomatic efforts to obtain a territory for the Jewish people in the first decades of the twentieth century. Alroey begins by examining the British government's Uganda Plan and the ensuing crisis it caused in the Zionist movement and Jewish society. He details the founding of the Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO) in 1903 and explains the varied reactions that the Territorialist ideology received from Zionists and settlers in Palestine. Alroey also details the diplomatic efforts of Territorialists during their desperate search for a suitable territory, which ultimately never bore fruit. Finally, he attempts to understand the reasons for the ITO's dissolution after the Balfour Declaration, explores the revival of Territorialismwith the New Territorialists in the 1930s and 1940s, and describes the similarities and differences between the movement then and its earlier version. Zionism without Zion sheds new light on the solutions Territorialism proposed to alleviate the hardship of Eastern European Jews at the start of the twentieth century and offers fresh insights into the challenges faced by Zionism in the same era. The thorough discussion of this under-studied ideology will be of considerable interested to scholars of Eastern European history, Jewish history, and Israel studies.

She's an iconic Jewish storyteller. She's a widely acclaimed professor and folklorist. She's the one and only Peninnah Schram, and Peninnah's World: A Jewish Life in Stories is her authorized biography, told through individual stories. What is a biography told through stories? Because Schram's art form is storytelling, Peninnah's World dramatizes in vivid scenes her extraordinary trajectory from the New London, Connecticut-born child of immigrant parents steeped in Jewish tradition in the 1930s and '40s to award-winning, New York-based performer, writer and scholar. The book features landmarks such as the old Mohican Hotel in New London and Stern College for Women in Manhattan. Along the way, Schram enjoys close encounters with such luminaries as Noble Laureates Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer, as well as famed Yiddish-theater actress Molly Picon, actor Jeff Goldblum, singer/ethnomusicologist Ruth Rubin and others. Written by storytelling studies professor and performer Caren Schnur Neile, the stories are in a form tailor-made to enjoy and share aloud. At the same time, they serve as models for all those interested in creating their own life and family stories, whatever their background, whether on the page, on the stage, or among neighbors and loved ones. Welcome to Peninnah's World. Prepare to explore your own.

The Jewish community in America is currently undergoing profound changes, and American Jews are experiencing personal and communal realities that differ markedly from those of their parents and grandparents. To meet the needs of this population, a complex human service delivery system has evolved, with a vast array of agencies and organizations providing health care, housing, nutrition programs, counseling, child care, Jewish education, and many other services. In this work, the editors have brought together a collection of essays that explore the nature of these services, the profound implication they are having for the Jewish community, and the planning issues that confront today's American Jews. The editors have divided the essays into three subject groups, all of which explore the numerous issues crucial to understanding the nature of planning in contemporary Jewish communities. The first section examines transformations in the behavior of American Jews and Jewish identity, covering such topics as education and careers, ethnic clustering, and Jewish fundraising. Section two explores issues involved in providing services to specific populations, including social, educational, and recreational services for singles, families, and children. The final section addresses the planning strategies necessary to meet the changing needs of the community. The four essays here focus on understanding the planning paradigms and realities in the Jewish community, and the roles professionals play in implementing change. This work will be an important resource for students of sociology and Jewish studies, and a valuable addition to most library collections.