Originally published in 1990, this book focuses on the challenge to Jewish identity posed by the conflicting forces of enlightenment, emancipation, modern political antisemitism, and secular ideologies like Zionism, nationalism, and socialism. At the heart of his discussion stands the intense, tortured, and ultimately tragic encounter of Jews with Germans and Austrians. He also deals at length with the new problems of Jewish cultural and political identity posed by the existence of the state of Israel and its embattled position among the nations. In the course of the analysis the book looks at the tragedy of assimilation in central Europe, with the optimistic dream of Enlightenment and Bildung coming to a climax in the nightmare of racial antisemitism and the Holocaust. He explores the ambivalent relationship of the Jews with the European Left, showing how many Jewish intellectuals found a new political home in radical and socialist movements, though these movements often retained negative stereotypes of Jews and Judaism and exhibited a fierce opposition to the maintenance of any separate Jewish identity. The role of Zionism is discussed and the more recent challenges to its legitimacy examined.

Originally published in 1987, this book explores the emergence, structure and ultimate fate of the Viennese Jewish community. Thirteen eminent specialists on Viennese social, political and cultural history combine to cover a wide variety of topics, including the social and psychological causes of the highly successful and intellectually creative position held by the Jewish community as a minority within the larger Viennese society. They also analyse the conservative politics of the pre-1914 Jewish community, and their relationship both to Zionism and to Austro-Marxism. The book also traces the continuities with the past in interwar Austria and analyse the stages leading to the expulsion, expropriation and annihilation of the Jews in Nazi-dominated Austria. The book concludes with an examination of post-Holocaust antisemitism in Vienna.

Upheavals of the modern period have dramatically changed the traditional pattern of the rescue of Jews by Jews. Whereas until the mid-nineteenth century rescue was carried out by community leaders in accordance with the religiously rooted injunction for the redemption of captives, in the modern period largely secular international Jewish organizations and the State of Israel have emerged as the primary instruments of expressing Jewish national solidarity. The campaigns to restore the exodus from the Soviet Union and to rescue Ethiopian Jews through Operation Moses are the most recent expressions of the imperative to save threatened Jewish communities and reconstitute them elsewhere. The dynamics and achievements of organized rescue in the modern period are critically assessed in this volume, which includes 18 interpretive essays and case studies by leading European, American and Israeli scholars. Organizing Rescue is divided into four sections. The introductory essays examine the roots of Jewish solidarity in Jewish law, and trace the transformation of rescue activity from a religious to a largely secular undertaking. The three sections that follow group selected case studies chronologically. Part I, from the Damascus Affair to the First World War (1840-1914), deals with new patterns of response to the persecution of Jews in Europe, Asia and Africa under the impact of emancipation, nationalism and antisemitism. Part II, World Wars and the Shadow of the Holocaust (1914-1948), deals with the transitional period that brought hope and bitter disillusion to Jews in Europe and the Middle East. Part III, The Contemporary Period (1948 to the present), examines the different manifestations of Jewish national solidarity that developed in response to the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. These studies illuminate and evaluate the efforts of Jews to defend and preserve communities separated by vast distances and diverse cultural and political systems. By placing these studies in an integrated historical and comparative framework, Organizing Rescue provides a timely and unique perspective for understanding national Jewish solidarity in the modern period.

From the 1880s, when systematic pogroms in Russia led to massive emigration, there have been two themes in Jewish history - persecution, culminating in the holocaust, and the corresponding search for a place in the world, which led to emigration to America, the rise of Zionism and the emergence of the State of Israel. In spite of these factors, Jews throughout the world have maintained their sense of identity and their cohesion as a people. One factor which has enabled them to do this has been the formation of an ideological vision of themselves - a sense of Jewishness - and one major way in which this ideology expresses itself is through the contributions by Jews to literature and thought. This book, originally published in 1982 by an established authority on Hebrew and Israeli literature, analyses the characteristics of the Jewish sense of identity as it appears in twentieth-century Jewish literature. It considers the work of a variety of authors who wrote in different periods and countries, and shows how their Jewish background pervades their writing. Some of the authors discussed are Franz Kafka, Osip Mandelstam, Henry Roth, Giorgio Bassani, S.Y. Agnon, Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer. This book will be particularly useful since a complete understanding of the Jews in the twentieth century can only be gained by appreciating their literary and intellectual achievements.

Originally published in 1951, this book explores the development in England of the Sephardi branch of the Jewish community, the co-heirs, with their kinsmen in Holland, in Italy, in North America and in the Middle East, of the Golden Age of Jewish history in Spain. Based on archival history from within the community, it was the first full-length history of the Sephardi community in England and describes how this little Jewish community, the first in England since the Middle Ages, grew, prospered and contributed the wealth and influence of London, and eventually producing in Disraeli one of England's greatest Prime Ministers.

Originally published in 1964, this volume aims to convey global perspectives on the Jewish situation in the late 20th Century by discussing research in Jewish social structure and social problems. Historians and social scientists from around the world contributed to the volume to discuss subjects as diverse as oral history, communal organizing and Jewish education.

Originally published in 1987, this collection of essays is a major contribution toward developing a realistic picture of the Latin American Jewish communities in the late 20th Century. The book will be of interest to students of comparative studies, Jewish studies and Latin American studies and responds to the need to learn more about the Jewish communities of Latin America, both as a fragment of the Jewish diaspora and as an element in the economic and social life of the continent.

Originally published in its sixth edition in 1929, this volume was one of the first to have appeared in England which was written from a liberal standpoint. It gives a comprehensive account of Jewish belief and practice as conceived by those of moderate views. A significant part of the book covers Jewish ethics, and specifically their practical aspects as well as advice for Jewish teenagers of Confirmation age.

Originally published in 1930, this book was intended to be an effective inspiration to faith and duty and emphasizes the importance of Judaism as a living creed. Although inevitably a product of the time in which it was originally published, the author's experience and wisdom from many years of preaching means that book has enduring relevance for many aspects of Jewish life: Family, Leadership, Anti-Semitism, Morality, Faith, Reason and the Nation of Israel are all topics which are covered.

The essays in this volume address the conundrum of how Jewish believers in the divine character of the Sinaitic revelation confront the essential questions raised by academic biblical studies. The first part is an anthology of rabbinic sources, from the medieval period to the present, treating questions that reflect a critical awareness of the Bible. The second part is a series of twenty-one essays by contemporary rabbis and scholars on how they combine their religious beliefs with their critical approach to the Bible.

The Bible is harshly opposed to participation by Israelites in the worship of other nations' gods. Was this strict command to the nation of Israel not to worship other deities extended to other nations? Or was it legitimate and acceptable for other nations to worship their own gods just as Israel worshipped the God of the Covenant?

In The Nations That Know Thee Not, Robert Goldenberg takes a historical look at attitudes towards foreign religions that are found in Israel's scriptures and in post-Biblical Judaism, and he traces an ambivalent attitude toward foreign religions as it developed through the history of Judaism. How did Jewish outlooks on gentile religions vary so much over time? As Jewish acceptance of paganism grew under rabbinic leadership, did Christianity become heir to other, harsher biblical attitudes toward other religions?

Systematically covering the entire range of Jewish literature of antiquity from the Bible through the rabbinic canons, Goldenberg sheds light on the ways in which ancient Jews understood the religious worlds in which they lived.

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"Younger scholars have much to gain by their encoutner with these brilliant essays especially where the authors generously gesture precisely to those lacunae in excisting scholarship that may prove to be the foundations of future careers."
--"Midwest Jewish Studies Association- Shofar Book Reviews"

Sephardic Jews trace their origins to Spain and Portugal. They enjoyed a renaissance in these lands until their expulsion from Spain in 1492, when they settled in the countries along the Mediterranean, throughout the Ottoman Empire, in the Balkans, and in the lands of North Africa, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, mixing with the Mizrahi, or Oriental, Jews already in these locations. Sephardic Jews have contributed some of the most important Jewish philosophers, poets, biblical commentators, Talmudic and Halachic scholars, and scientists, and have had a significant impact on the development of Jewish mysticism.

Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry brings together original work from the world's leading scholars to present a deep introductory overview of their history and culture over the past 1500 years. The book presents an overarching chronological and thematic survey of topics ranging from the origin of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry and their history to kabbalah, philosophy, and biblical commentary, and Sephardic Jewish life in the modern era. This collection represents the most up-to-date scholarship about Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry available.

Contributors include: Mark R. Cohen, Norman Stillman, David Bunis, Jonathan Decter, Yitzhak Kalimi, Moshe Idel, Annette B. Fromm, Zvi Zohar, Morris Fairstein, Pamela Dorn Sezgin, Mark Kligman, and Henry Abramson.

Born to a Jewish immigrant shopkeeper in a small Alabama town, Morris Ernst used aggressive self-promotion and exaggeration-what he called "exhibitionism"-to transcend his insecurities and his part-time legal training to become one of America's most famous lawyers. During the first half of the twentieth century, Ernst championed free speech, sexual education, birth control, and reproductive health, and his landmark defense of James Joyce's Ulysses in 1933 cemented Ernst's reputation as the top progressive attorney of the era. To promote himself, Ernst befriended newspaper writers, authors, actors, politicians, any practically anyone whose work carried some weight in popular culture. But his hunger for respect and recognition, and his need for excitement, led Ernst to lavish praise on J. Edgar Hoover and to publicly defend, and profit from, a Dominican dictator. Ernst thereby undermining his own credibility and largely fell out of favor with the public. By examining key moments of his life and career, The Legal Exhibitionist describes how Ernst's exhibitionism led to his rise and fall and suggests how his strategy of exaggeration anticipated the rise of today's celebrity lawyers.

This book provides a social and cultural history of Jewish art in Nazi Germany, with a focus on the Jewish artists, art critics, and audiences in Nazi Bavaria. From the time of its conceptualization in the autumn of 1933 until its final curtain call in November 1938, the Jewish Cultural League in Bavaria sustained three departments: music, visual arts, and adult education. The Bavarian example steps outside the highly professional cultural milieu of Jewish Berlin, and instead looks at relatively unknown efforts of Bavarian Jewish artists as they used art to define what it now meant, to them, to be Jewish under Nazism. Insightful and engaging, this book is ideal for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars interested in social and cultural histories of Jews in Germany.

Offering a radical critique of contemporary Israeli and diaspora fiction by major writers of the generation after Amos Oz and Philip Roth, this book asks searching questions about identity formation in Jewish spaces in the twenty-first century and posits global, transnational identities instead of the bipolar Israel/diaspora model. The chapters put into conversation major authors such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Michael Chabon, and Nathan Englander with their Israeli counterparts Zeruya Shalev, Eshkol Nevo, and Etgar Keret and shows that they share common themes and concerns. Read through a postmodern lens, their preoccupation with failed marriage and failed ideals brings to the fore the crises of home, nation, historical destiny, and collective memory in contemporary secular Jewish culture. At times provocative, at others iconoclastic, this innovative study must be read by anyone concerned with Jewish culture and identity today, whether scholars, students, or the general reader.

Communist Poland: A Jewish Woman's Experience is the first-person account by Jewish journalist Sara Nomberg-Przytyk of surviving Auschwitz then rising to various leadership roles in the newly-formed postwar Polish Communist Party. Building a just and equitable Poland for the common Pole through communism was her dream. The reality was neither simple nor successful. Working for heavily censored newspapers and periodicals, Nomberg-Przytyk witnessed firsthand the inner workings of a communist government plagued by the same Kafkaesque bureaucracy and antisemitism that she had been certain it would fix. Her memoir provides a comprehensive account as she slowly changed from enthusiastic practitioner to witness of a system that failed her and many others. This is the first published edition of this text, originally recorded as oral testimony in Polish but translated into English by Paula Parsky, and includes a critical introduction by the co-editors, American and Polish academics Holli Levitsky and Justyna Wlodarczyk, as well as extensive annotations.

German Jews and Migration to the United States, 1933-1945 is a collection of first-person accounts, many previously unpublished, that document the flight and exile of German Jews from Nazi Germany to the USA,. The authors of the letters and memoirs included in this collection share two important characteristics: They all had close ties to Munich, the Bavarian capital, and they all emigrated to the USA, though sometimes via detours and/or after stays of varying lengths in other places of refuge. Selected to represent a wide range of exile experiences, these testimonies are carefully edited, extensively annotated, and accompanied by biographical introductions to make them accessible to readers, especially those who are new to the subject. These autobiographical sources reveal the often-traumatic experiences and consequences of forced migration, displacement, resettlement, and new beginnings. In addition, this book demonstrates that migration is not only a process by which groups and individuals relocate from one place to another but also a dynamic of transmigration affected by migrant networks and the complex relationships between national policies and the agency of migrants.

Maimonideanism, the intellectual culture inspired by Maimonides' writings, has received much recent attention. Yet a central aspect of Maimonideanism has been overlooked: the formal reception of the Guide of the Perplexed through commentary. In Rewriting Maimonides, Igor H. De Souza offers a comprehensive analysis of six early philosophical commentaries, written in Italy, Spain, and France, by some of Maimonides' most loyal followers. The early commentaries represent the most creative period of exegesis of the Guide. De Souza's analysis dispels the notion that the tradition of commentary on the Guide is monolithic. Rather, De Souza's study illuminates how each commentator offers distinctive readings. Challenging the hierarchy of text and commentary, Rewriting Maimonides studies commentaries on the Guide as texts in their own right. De Souza approaches the form of commentary as a multifaceted cultural practice. Employing historical, philosophical, and literary methods, this publication fills a lacuna in the history of the Guide through a global perspective on commentary.

This book is about the experiences of Jewish children who were members of armed partisan groups in Eastern Europe during World War II and the Holocaust. It describes and analyze the role of children as activists, agents, and decision makers in a situation of extraordinary danger and stress. The children in this book were hunted like prey and ran for their lives. They survived by fleeing into the forest and swamps of Eastern Europe and joining anti-German partisan groups. The vast majority of these children were teenagers between ages 11 and 18, although some were younger. They were, by any definition, child soldiers, and that is the reason they lived to tell their tales. The book will be of interest to general and academic audiences. There is also great interest in children and childhood across disciplines of history and the social sciences. It is likely to spark considerable debate and interest, since its argument runs counter to the generally accepted wisdom that child soldiers must first and foremost be seen as victims of their recruiters. The argument of this book is that time, place, and context play a key role in our understanding of children's involvement in war and that in some contexts children under arms must be seen as exercising an inherent right of self-defense.

This comprehensive and analytical history of American Jews and Judaism from the Colonial Era to the present explores the impact of America on Jews and of Jews on America. Covering more than four centuries from the Colonial Era forward, Jewish American Chronology offers an introduction to the history of American Jews and Judaism, using individual examples, personality profiles, and illustrations to bring fundamental patterns and major themes to life. Arranged chronologically, the entries illustrate how a variety of different Jewish groups and individuals have adapted to America, both changing in accordance with time and place and retaining tradition and culture, even as they became thoroughly American. Readers will learn how Jews have created community and institutions, confronted anti-Semitism, and interacted among themselves and with other groups. They will read about immigration, migration, and socioeconomic mobility. And they will discover how Jews have filled critical economic niches, contributed disproportionately in a variety of endeavors, and changed over time and in reaction to circumstances. In this wide-ranging work, Jewish Americans are depicted in a balanced and accurate manner, describing Nobel Prize winners and standout economic success stories as well as those who achieved fame and notoriety in other ways. Hundreds of entries, organized chronologically, explain and analyze America's impact on Judaism and Jews, and Jews' impact on America Photographs of individuals, businesses, synagogues, and orphans' homes, striking workers, suffragettes, and statuary with explanatory labels Dozens of glossary entries that define and clarify key terms from "anti-Semitism" to "Zionism," as well as historical jargon like "colonial charters" and "established churches" A select bibliography of books, journals, and web pages guides the reader in further study

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."