This Year Book, now in its 115th year, provides insight into major trends in the North American Jewish communities and is the Annual Record of the North American Jewish Communities. The first two chapters of Part I examine Jewish immigrant groups to the US and Jewish life on campus. Chapters on "National Affairs" and "Jewish Communal Affairs" analyze the year's events. Three chapters analyze the demography and geography of the US, Canada, and world Jewish populations. Part II provides Jewish Federations, Jewish Community Centers, social service agencies, national organizations, overnight camps, museums, and Israeli consulates. The final chapters present national and local Jewish periodicals and broadcast media; academic resources, including Jewish Studies Programs, books, articles websites, and research libraries; and lists of major events in the past year, Jewish honorees, and obituaries. For those interested in the North American Jewish community-scholars, service providers, volunteers-this volume undoubtedly provides the single best source of information on the structure, dynamics, and ongoing religious, political, and social challenges confronting the community. It should be on the bookshelf of everyone interested in monitoring the dynamics of change in the Jewish communities of North America. Sidney Goldstein, Founder and Director, Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University, and Alice Goldstein, Population Studies and Traini ng Center, Brown University The American Jewish Year Book is a unique and valuable resource for Jewish community professionals. It is part almanac, directory, encyclopedia and all together a volume to have within easy reach. It is the best, concise diary of trends, events, and personalities of interest for the past year. We should all welcome the Year Book's publication as a sign of vitality for the Jewish community. Brenda Gevertz, Executive Director, JPRO Network, the Jewish Professional Resource Organization

This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.

A timely analysis of the new antisemitism, by the historian who defeated Holocaust denier David Irving in court.

What is antisemitism? Does it come from the right or the left? Is anti-Zionism the same as antisemitism? Are there different kinds of antisemites? And what can be done to combat this extremely damaging racist ideology?

Antisemitism has been on the rise worldwide for the last ten years. From violent white-nationalist protests in Charlottesville, USA, to attacks on synagogues across Europe and the US, and from the targeting of Jewish students at American universities to the antisemitism row raging in the British Labour Party, does this resurgence of anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence mark a return to the brutality of the 1930s?

In this penetrating and provocative analysis, Deborah Lipstadt connects distinct currents in contemporary culture, such as the resurgence of racist right-wing nationalisms, left-liberal tolerance of hostility to Jews, the plight of the Palestinians, and the rise of Islamic extremism, to explore how contradictory forces have found common scapegoats.

Lucid and convincing, Antisemitism will calm the fearful, rouse the complacent, and demand a response from readers.

The second volume of the series Yiddish Editions & Research, presents the poetry of Avrom Sutzkever (1913-2010), one of the greatest Yiddish writers of the 20th century. The themes of his work span his early childhood in Siberia, youth in Vilna, Lithuania, the catastrophe of the Holocaust, and a new life in Israel. Sutzkever is a modernist poet of great originality whose work is rooted in the cultural heritage of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.This ist the first bilingual edition of Sutzkever's work to present a substantial selection of poetry from all periods of his creative life. A previously unpublished lecture by the poet sheds light on his poetic credo and an literary-biographical essay by the translator, Heather Valencia, together with notes on the poems, make this literary oeuvre accessible to a wide readership.

Part I of each volume will feature 5-7 major review chapters, including 2-3 long chapters reviewing topics of major concern to the American Jewish community written by top experts on each topic, review chapters on "National Affairs" and "Jewish Communal Affairs" and articles on the Jewish population of the United States and the World Jewish Population. Future major review chapters will include such topics as Jewish Education in America, American Jewish Philanthropy, Israel/Diaspora Relations, American Jewish Demography, American Jewish History, LGBT Issues in American Jewry, American Jews and National Elections, Orthodox Judaism in the US, Conservative Judaism in the US, Reform Judaism in the US, Jewish Involvement in the Labor Movement, Perspectives in American Jewish Sociology, Recent Trends in American Judaism, Impact of Feminism on American Jewish Life, American Jewish Museums, Anti-Semitism in America, and Inter-Religious Dialogue in America. Part II-V of each volume will continue the tradition of listing Jewish Federations, national Jewish organizations, Jewish periodicals, and obituaries. But to this list are added lists of Jewish Community Centers, Jewish Camps, Jewish Museums, Holocaust Museums, and Jewish honorees (both those honored through awards by Jewish organizations and by receiving honors, such as Presidential Medals of Freedom and Academy Awards, from the secular world). We expand the Year Book tradition of bringing academic research to the Jewish communal world by adding lists of academic journals, articles in academic journals on Jewish topics, Jewish websites, and books on American and Canadian Jews. Finally, we add a list of major events in the North American Jewish Community.

This book explores how fin de siecle Britain and Britons displaced spatially-charged apprehensions about imperial decline, urban decay and unpoliced borders onto Jews from Eastern Europe migrating westwards. The myriad of representations of the 'alien Jew' that emerged were the product of, but also a catalyst for, a decisive moment in Britain's legal history: the fight for the 1905 Aliens Act. Drawing upon a richly diverse collection of social and political commentary, including fiction, political testimony, ethnography, travel writing, journalism and cartography, this volume traces the shifting rhetoric around alien Jews as they journeyed from the Russian Pale of Settlement to London's East End. By employing a unique and innovative reading of both the aliens debate and racialized discourse concerned with 'the Jew', Hannah Ewence demonstrates that ideas about 'space' and 'place' critically informed how migrants were viewed; an argument which remains valid in today's world.

This is the first biography in English of a World War II heroine of the Greek resistance, who joined the British secret intelligence services (SIS) shortly after the German occupation of Athens and was betrayed, arrested and executed one month before the Germans' departure. She was a prosperous housewife with seven children, who had no experience in politics or military affairs, and yet she managed to build a formidable escape, espionage and sabotage organization that interacted with the highest levels of SIS agents in Occupied Greece. Book Presentation with Prof. Stylianos Perrakis (Concordia University), Prof. Stathis Kalyvas (University of Oxford), and Prof. Gonda van Steen (King's College London)

This book explores the transformative impact that the immigration of large numbers of Jews from the former Soviet Union to Germany had on Jewish communities from 1990 to 2005. It focuses on four points of tension and conflict between existing community members and new Russian-speaking arrivals. These raised the fundamental questions: who should count as a Jew, how should Jews in Germany relate to the Holocaust, and who should the communities represent? By analyzing a wide range of source material, including Jewish and German newspapers, Bundestag debates and the opinions of some prominent Jewish commentators, Joseph Cronin investigates how such conflicts arose within Jewish communities and the measures taken to deal with them. This book provides a unique insight into a Jewish population little understood outside Germany, but whose significance in the post-Holocaust world cannot be underestimated.

Between the 1933 Nazi seizure of power and their 1941 prohibition on all Jewish emigration, around 90,000 German Jews moved to the United States. Using the texts and images from a personal archive, this Palgrave Pivot explores how these refugees made sense of that experience. For many German Jews, theirs was not just a story of flight and exile; it was also one chapter in a longer history of global movement, experienced less as an estrangement from Germanness, than a reiteration of the mobility central to it. Private photography allowed these families to position themselves in a context of fluctuating notions of Germaness, and resist the prescribed disentanglement of their Jewish and German identities. In opening a unique window onto refugees' own sense of self as they moved across different geographical, political, and national environments, this book will appeal to readers interested in Jewish life and migration, visual culture, and the histories of National Socialism and the Holocaust.

A unique way to create and preserve the spiritual memories of pregnancy, birth, and the first years of a new life. There are enough baby memory books available today to fill a nursery, but finding one that acknowledges birth as a spiritual celebration is like trying to find a binky in the bottom of the diaper bag. More than just a memory book, The New Jewish Baby Album shows you how and why it's important to create a Jewish home and a Jewish life. It includes a section to describe the naming ceremony, space to write encouragements, and pages for writing original blessings and creating original prayers, as well as meaningful quotes throughout. Other highlights include a section for the parents to express personal prayers for the baby; pages for each of the major Jewish holidays; a family tree; room for photos; space to commemorate baby's first Shabbat at home; and much more. This is the perfect baby book for any Jewish family, a spiritual keepsake that will be treasured for generations."

A dramatisation of Martin Monath's short life (1913-1944) would need little artistic embellishment; his identity shrouded in mystery, and executed by the Gestapo - twice - the historical record reads like a detective novel. Pieced together for the first time by Wladek Flakin, this biography tells the story of the Jewish socialist and editor of Arbeiter und Soldat ('Worker and Soldier'), and his efforts to turn German rank-and-file soldiers against their Nazi officers in occupied France. Born in Berlin in 1913, Martin Monath was a child of war and revolution. In the 1930s he became a leader of the socialist Zionist youth organisation Hashomer Hatzair in Germany. Fleeing from Berlin to Brussels in 1939, he joined the underground Trotskyist party led by Abraham Leon, and soon became a leading member of the Fourth International in Europe. His relocation to Paris in 1943 saw the birth of Arbeiter und Soldat and his work organising illegal cells of German soldiers for a revolutionary struggle against the Nazis. Drawing on extensive archival research, Flakin uses letters, testimonies and unpublished documents to bring Monath's story to life - weaving a tale rich with conviction and betrayal, ideology and espionage.

This book articulates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of Jew hatred as a metaphysical aspect of the human soul. Proceeding from the Jewish thinking that the anti-Semites oppose, David Patterson argues that anti-Semitism arises from the most ancient of temptations, the temptation to be as God, and thus to flee from an absolute accountability to and for the other human being.

The postwar decades were not the "golden era" in which American Jews easily partook in the religious revival, liberal consensus, and suburban middle-class comfort. Rather it was a period marked by restlessness and insecurity born of the shock about the Holocaust and of the unprecedented opportunities in American society. American Jews responded to loss and opportunity by obsessively engaging with the East European past. The proliferation of religious texts on traditional spirituality, translations of Yiddish literature, historical essays , photographs and documents of shtetl culture, theatrical and musical events, culminating in the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, illustrate the grip of this past on post-1945 American Jews. This study shows how American Jews reimagined their East European past to make it usable for their American present. By rewriting their East European history, they created a repertoire of images, stories, and ideas that have shaped American Jewry to this day.

Israel is a modern state whose institutions were clearly shaped by an ideological movement. The declaration of independence in 1948 was an immediate expression of the fundamental Zionist idea: it gave effect to a plan advocated by organized Zionists since the 1880s for solving the Jewish Problem. Thus, major Israeli political institutions, such as the party structure, embody principles and practices that were followed in the World Zionist Organization.
In this respect, Israel is similar to other new states whose political institutions directly derive from the nationalist movements that won their independence. History and social structure are inseparably joined; the contemporary social problems of the new state are clearly rooted in its history, while the shape of its future is being decided by the very policies through which it is trying to solve these problems. At the same time, there are many unique aspects to the birth of Israel. The problem to be solved by acquiring sovereignty in Israel (and establishing a free Jewish society there) was the problem of a people living in exile. The first stage, therefore, was to return to the people a homeland to which they were intimately attached, not only in their dreams but in the minute details of their ways of life.
This important book studies the birth of the State of Israel and analyzes the elaborately articulated and variegated ideological principles of the Zionist movement that led to that birth. It examines conflicting pre-state ideals and the social structure that emerged in Palestine's Jewish community during the Mandate period. In particular, Zionism and the Creation of a New Society reflects upon Israel's existence as both a state and a social structure--a place conceived before its birth as a means of solving a particular social malady: the modern Jewish Problem. Jehuda Reinharz and the late Ben Halpern carefully trace the development of the Zionist idea from its earliest expressions up to the eve of World War II, setting their study against a broad background of political and social development throughout Europe and the Middle East.

The relationship between Israel, American Jews, and the peace process has been a subject of passionate debate among scholars, political activists, and lay observers alike. This book is the first rigorous attempt to chart the impact of the peace process on the American Jewish community and its relationship with Israel, as mediated by the changing identity needs of American Jews. Overall, the trajectory of this relationship has been from a wide consensus of support for Israeli foreign policy, toward increasing polarization.

On one side is the peace camp composed mainly of those whose Jewish-American identity is based on a religious-universalistic definition of Judaism; on the other, those who identify as nationalistic, or orthodox in religious terms, and support a hard-line vision of Greater Israel. The acrimony between the two, combined with demographic change, has undermined Israel as a symbol of Jewish identity in America, and impeded effective lobbying for Israel.

These essays, written in the course of half a century of research and thought on German and Jewish history, deal with the uniqueness of a phenomenon in its historical and philosophical context. Applying the "classical" empirical tools to this unprecedented historical chapter, Kulka strives to incorporate it into the continuum of Jewish and universal history. At the same time he endeavors to fathom the meaning of the ideologically motivated mass murder and incalculable suffering. The author presents a multifaceted, integrative history, encompassing the German society, its attitudes toward the Jews and toward the anti-Jewish policy of the Nazi regime; as well as the Jewish society, its self-perception and its leadership.

In the Hebrew Bible and stories loyal to it, Goliath is the stereotypical giant of folklore: big, brash, violent, and dimwitted. Goliath as Gentle Giant sets out to rehabilite the giant's image by exploring the origins of the biblical behemoth, the limitations of the "underdog" metaphor, and the few sympathetic treatments of Goliath in popular media. What insights emerge when we imagine things from Goliath's point of view? How might this affect our reading of the biblical account or its many retellings and interpretations? What sort of man was Goliath really? The nuanced portraits analyzed in this book function as a catalyst to challenge readers to question stereotypes, reexamine old assumptions, and humanize the "other."

In 1932, Isay Rottenberg, a Jewish paper merchant, bought a cigar factory in Germany: Deutsche Zigarren-Werke. When his competitors, supported by Nazi authorities, tried to shut it down, the headstrong entrepreneur refused to give up the fight. Isay Rottenberg was born into a large Jewish family in Russian Poland in 1889 and grew up in Lodz. He left for Berlin at the age of eighteen to escape military service, moving again in 1917 to Amsterdam on the occasion of his marriage. In 1932 he moved to Germany to take over a bankrupt cigar factory. With newfangled American technology, it was the most modern at the time. The energetic and ambitious Rottenberg was certain he could bring it back to life, and with newly hired staff of 670 workers, the cigar factory was soon back in business. Six months later, Hitler came to power and the Nazi government forbade the use of machines in the cigar industry so that traditional hand-rollers could be re-employed. That was when the real struggle began. More than six hundred qualified machine workers and engineers would lose their jobs if the factory had to close down. Supported by the local authorities he managed to keep the factory going, but in 1935 he was imprisoned following accusations of fraud. The factory was expropriated by the Deutsche Bank. When he was released six months later thanks to the efforts of the Dutch consul, he brought a lawsuit of his own. His fight for rehabilitation and restitution of his property would continue until Kristallnacht in 1938. The Cigar Factory of Isay Rottenberg is written by two of Rottenberg's granddaughters, who knew little of their grandfather's past growing up in Amsterdam until a call for claims for stolen or confiscated property started them on a journey of discovery.

Translating the Hebrew Bible in Medieval Iberia provides the princeps diplomatic edition and a comprehensive study of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hunt. 268. The manuscript, produced in the Iberian Peninsula in the late thirteenth century, features a biblical glossary-commentary in Hebrew that includes 2,018 glosses in the vernacular and 156 in Arabic, and to date is the only manuscript of these characteristics known to have been produced in this region. Esperanza Alfonso has edited the text and presents here a study of it, examining its pedagogical function, its sources, its exegetical content, and its extraordinary value for the study of biblical translation in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Sephardic Diaspora. Javier del Barco provides a detailed linguistic study and a glossary of the corpus of vernacular glosses. For a version with a list of corrections and additions, see https://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/265401.

During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, and experientially diverse, to an extent that resists containment within a simple historical narrative. While antisemitism and Jewish disillusionment have dominated many previous studies of the topic, this collection aims to recapture the multifariousness of Central European Jewish life in the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike during the First World War. Here, scholars from multiple disciplines explore rare sources and employ innovative methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, cultural legacies of the war, and memory politics.

Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment), or the trends of continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds. In Antiquity, knowledge was cherished as a scarce good, cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to a Shi'ite Islamic tradition, this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by the Dead Sea to Alexandria, both normative and heterodox approaches to knowledge in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities are explored. Biblical and qur'anic passages, as well as gnostic, rabbinic and esoteric Islamic approaches are discussed. In this volume, a range of scholars from Assyrian studies to Jewish, Christian and Islamic studies examine diverse approaches to, and modes of, knowledge transmission and concealment, shedding new light on both the interconnectedness, as well as the unique aspects, of the monotheistic faiths, and their relationship to the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent.

The book about the Westerweel Group tells the fascinating story about the cooperation of some ten non-conformist Dutch socialists and a group of Palestine Pioneers who mostly had arrived in the Netherlands from Germany and Austria the late thirties. With the help of Joop Westerweel, the headmaster of a Rotterdam Montessori School, they found hiding places in the Netherlands. Later on, an escape route to France via Belgium was worked out. Posing as Atlantic Wall workers, the pioneers found their way to the south of France. With the help of the Armee Juive, a French Jewish resistance organization, some 70 pioneers reached Spain at the beginning of 1944. From here they went to Palestine. Finding and maintaining the escape route cost the members of the Westerweel Group dear. With some exceptions, all members of the group were arrested by the Germans. Joop Westerweel was executed in August 1944. Other members, both in the Netherlands and France, were send to German concentration camps, where some perished.

Blakeslee examines the history and current status of Jews and antisemitism in the United States to reveal what we know of antisemitism and the ways in which this knowledge is seriously flawed. He explores the significant historical role antisemitism played in the formation of Jewish advocacy organizations and the subsequent success they enjoyed over several decades of publicly combating antisemitism. He then examines three specific incidents in the 1990s and the ways the advocacy organizations responded.

Antisemitic attitudes and incidents in the United States have dropped steadily since the post World War II revelations about the Holocaust. While antisemitism has not disappeared entirely from the American scene, it has dwindled to the point where the Anti-Defamation League considers the average American not antisemitic. Blakeslee probes why, if this statement is accurate--and prevailing statistics suggest it is--prominent Jewish advocacy organizations continue to lavish so much attention and money on an issue of little actual significance. A provocative study for all sociologists, researchers, and concerned lay people involved with the heated debate over antisemitism, Jewish identity, assimilation, Black-Jewish relations, and organizational studies.

Rabbi Samuel Hirsch (Thalfang 1815 - Chicago 1889) was instrumental in the development of Reform Judaism in Europe and the USA. This volume is the first lengthy publication devoted to this striking personality whose significance was no less than that of his contemporaries Abraham Geiger and David Einhorn. En route from Thalfang via Dessau and Luxembourg to Philadelphia, Hirsch left his mark on societal, religious, and philosophical developments in manifold ways. By the time he was appointed Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community in Luxembourg in 1843, he had already written many of his most important works on the philosophy of religion. In them he engaged in debate with the Young Hegelians on the importance of Judaism, the religion that, more than any other, enabled the human actualization of freedom so central to Hegel's philosophy. Over time Hirsch took an increasingly radical stance on issues such as Jewish rituals and mixed marriage. The goal of his reforms was not assimilation. He strove to strengthen Judaism to meet the demands of modernity and enable its survival in the modern era. Hirsch's story is key to understanding the transnational history of Reform Judaism and the struggle of Jews to secure a place in history and society.

It is an all too common belief that Jews did nothing to resist their own fate in the Holocaust. However, the parallel realities of disintegrating physical and psychological conditions in the ghetto, and the efforts of ghetto undergrounds to counter both collaborationist judenrat policies and the despair of a beaten down population, could not but lead to a breakdown in spiritual life. James M. Glass examines spiritual resistance to the Holocaust and the place of this within political and violent resistance. He explores Jewish reactions to the murderous campaign against them and their creation of new spiritual and moral rules to live by. He argues that the Orthodox Jewish response to annihilation, often seen as unduly passive, was predicated in the insanity of the times and can be seen as spiritually noble.