Learn ways to address domestic and sexual abuse in your community Breaking the cycle of domestic violence and abuse poses unique problems for the Jewish community, owing to the internal divisions of politics, religious practice, and culture. However, creating strategies to work together based upon the shared values of Judaism can strip away those differences. Domestic Abuse and the Jewish Community: Perspectives from the First International Conference brings together an outstanding and diverse selection of notable presentations from the First International Conference on Domestic Abuse in the Jewish Community held in July 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland. The conference, entitled Pursuing Truth, Justice, and Righteousness: A Call to Action, brought to the forefront the disturbing, many times hidden issue of domestic abuse within the Jewish community. Respected scholars, clergy, social service professionals, and survivors provide insightful presentations that lay an essential foundation for the building of a collaborative global Jewish movement to respond to this sensitive issue. Domestic Abuse and the Jewish Community: Perspectives from the First International Conference marks the start of a quiet revolution aimed at ending domestic abuse in various Jewish communities by revealing the many facets of the problem while offering ways to address them. Sexual and domestic abuse issues in the Jewish communities of the US, Israel, South Africa and the UK are illuminated and described, and practical strategies are discussed, keeping in mind the common goals within the varied communities. Jewish religious law is reviewed, along with an analysis of Maimomides' response to domestic abuse, and a vision is offered to respond to child sexual abuse. Domestic Abuse and the Jewish Community: Perspectives from the First International Conference is separated into five categories of presentations: Illuminating the Issue; Healing and Wholeness; Promising Practices; Creating Change; and Breaking the Cycle, each section progressing logically to present a unified discussion of the issues. The book discusses: helping religious women escape domestic abuse the Jewish tradition and the treatment of battered women the widespread claim that Maimonedes condoned wife-battering the spiritual movement called neohasidism the issues of reconciliation between survivors and former perpetrators the Ayelet Programa project which provides long-term mentoring to past victims starting a new life organizing the community to address domestic violence in immigrant populations the response to domestic violence in the South African Jewish community services for victims in Israel child sexual abuse and incest Domestic Abuse and the Jewish Community: Perspectives from the First International Conference is informative, eye-opening reading for social workers, clergy, direct service providers for survivors of domestic/sexual abuse, directors/staff of Jewish Family Service agencies, Jewish Federations, Jewish women's organizations, and Jewish foundations.

This single volume traces three approaches to the "study" of the Holocaust--through notions of history, theories of memory, and a focus on art and representation. It introduces readers to the different ways we have come to "understand" the Holocaust, gives them an opportunity to ask questions about those conclusions, and examines how this event can be understood once all the survivors are gone. In addition, the book looks at the different disciplines -- history, sociology, religious studies, and literary interpretation, among others -- through which studies of the Holocaust take place. A three section organization covers history, the treatment of eyewitness and the testimonies produced by them, and the possibility of literature and other arts presenting a better understanding of Holocaust events than the former. MARKET For individuals interested in a historical interpretation of the Holocaust-- even more complex and troubling than the event itself.

The image of Jews in East Asia is a strange mixture of opposites, a paradoxical blend of admiration and mockery, identification and denial. This book explores what 'Jew' means to many East Asians, and whether it is anything that Jewish people themselves would recognise. There is clearly a positive fascination: various bestsellers entitled Talmud are found in vending machines and public schools, while private 'Jewish education' institutions have opened across South Korea, claiming to improve children's IQ. People can stay at the Talmud Business Hotel in Taiwan, or attend Chinese centres for Jewish Studies with academics who have never met a Jew. There is a legend that Japanese people are a Lost Tribe of Israel, and 'Anne's day', named after Anne Frank, is a euphemism for menstruation. Yet the region also shows some of the world's highest rates of antisemitism, manifesting in disturbing ways: Taiwan's concentration camp-themed restaurant, or South Korea's 'Adolf Hitler Techno Bar & Cocktail Show'. By integrating scholarship on antisemitism, East Asian Studies and cognitive science, Schilling uncovers antisemitism's global, sometimes dualistic nature; not Western, and always persistent. He offers ground-breaking insight, redefining how we understand East Asia, antisemitism, and Judaism as a globalised religion.

'If we had held one minute's silence for each of the six million Jews who were murdered, we would have remained silent for twelve years.' Blanche Major. In Time's Witnesses: Women's Voices from the Holocaust, Major and nine other Jewish women testify about their horrific experiences in Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi camps.This book tells of humiliation, hunger, death and despair, but also of dignity, unity and hope-and an indomitable will to live. Each woman's experience is unique; yet their reflections share a common hope for reconciliation and understanding. They are a testament to the Nazi atrocities and a caution for the future. Theirs are stories the world must never forget.

First published in 1930. The wandering Jew is a very real character in the great drama of history. He has travelled as nomad and settler, as fugitive and conqueror, as exile and colonist and as merchant and scholar. Of necessity bilingual and therefore the master of many languages, the Jew was the ideal commercial traveller and interpreter.
Based on the volume of 24 Hebrew texts of Jewish travellers by J D Eisenstein, this volume begins with the ninth century. After the sixteenth century geographical discoveries had made the whole world familiar to most people. Consequently, the wandering Jew becomes less the diplomatist or scientist but still remains a link between the scattered members of the Diaspora. The volume ends in the middle of the eighteenth century and taken as a whole provides a survey of Jewish travel during the Middle Ages. For this translation, some of the texts have been abridged, whilst retaining many of the original notes.

The Banality of Denial examines the attitudes of the State of Israel and its leading institutions toward the Armenian Genocide. Israel's view of this issue has special significance and deserves an attentive study, as it is a country composed of a people who were victims of the Holocaust. The Banality of Denial seeks both to examine the passive, indifferent Israeli attitude towards the Armenian Genocide, and to explore active Israeli measures to undermine attempts at safeguarding the memory of the Armenian victims of the Turkish persecution.

Such an inquiry into attempts at denial by Israeli institutions and leading figures of Israel's political, security, academic, and Holocaust "memory-preservation" elite has not merely an academic significance. It has considerable political relevance, both symbolic and tangible.

In The Banality of Denial--as in Auron's previous work--moral, philosophical, and theoretical questions are of paramount importance. Because no previous studies have dealt with these issues or similar ones, an original methodology is employed to analyze the subject with regard to four domains: political, educational, media, and academic.

Studies of the Jewish experience among peoples with whom they live share some similarities with the usual histories of anti-Semitism, but also some differences. When the focus is on anti-Semitism, Jewish history appears as a record of unmitigated hostility against the Jewish people and of passivity on their part. However, as Werner J. Cahnman demonstrates in this posthumous volume, Jewish-Gentile relations are far more complex. There is a long history of mutual contacts, positive as well as antagonistic, even if conflict continues to require particular attention.

Cahnman's approach, while following a historical sequence, is sociological in conception. From Roman antiquity through the Middle Ages, into the era of emancipation and the Holocaust, and finally to the present American and Israeli scene, there are basic similarities and various dissimilarities, all of which are described and analyzed. Cahnman tests the theses of classical sociology implicitly, yet unobtrusively. He traces the socio-economic basis of human relations, which Marx and others have emphasized, and considers Jews a "marginal trading people" in the Park-Becker sense. Simmel and Toennies, he shows, understood Jews as "strangers" and "intermediaries." While Cahnman shows that Jews were not "pariahs," as Max Weber thought, he finds a remarkable affinity to Weber's Protestantism-capitalism argument in the tension of Jewish-Christian relations emerging from the bitter theological argument over usury.

The primacy of Jewish-Gentile relations in all their complexity and variability is essential for the understanding of Jewish social and political history. This volume is a valuable contribution to that understanding.

Lina is trying to lead a normal girl's life in Baghdad, but being Jewish in an Arab country is not easy as politics keep intruding. Violent government coups are almost annual events and it's difficult for a child to understand what's going on or who to believe. The need for secrecy means Lina cannot tell her best friend that her family is just waiting for the right moment to flee. It is the 1960s and Lina is part of the dwindling Jewish community

What does it mean to be Jewish? What is an anti-Semite? Why does the enigmatic identity of the men who founded the first monotheistic religion arouse such passions? We need to return to the Jewish question. We need, first, to distinguish between the anti-Judaism of medieval times, which persecuted the Jews, and the anti-Judaism of the Enlightenment, which emancipated them while being critical of their religion. It is a mistake to confuse the two and see everyone from Voltaire to Hitler as anti-Semitic in the same way. Then we need to focus on the development of anti-Semitism in Europe, especially Vienna and Paris, where the Zionist idea was born. Finally, we need to investigate the reception of Zionism both in the Arab countries and within the Diaspora. Re-examining the Jewish question in the light of these distinctions and investigations, Roudinesco shows that there is a permanent tension between the figures of the universal Jew and the territorial Jew . Freud and Jung split partly over this issue, which gained added intensity after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the Eichmann trial in 1961. Finally, Roudinesco turns to the Holocaust deniers, who started to suggest that the Jews had invented the genocide that befell their people, and to the increasing number of intellectual and literary figures who have been accused of anti-Semitism. This thorough re-examination of the Jewish question will be of interest to students and scholars of modern history and contemporary thought and to a wide readership interested in anti-Semitism and the history of the Jews.

This book provides a general introduction to the history of Jewish life in 14th century Asia at the time of the conqueror Tamerlane (Timur). The author defines who are the Central Asian Jews, and describes the attitudes towards the Jews, and the historical consequences of this relationship with Tamerlane. Left alone to live within a stable empire, the Jews prospered under Tamerlane. In founding an empire, Tamerlane had delivered Central Asia from the last Mongols, and brought the nations of Transoxonia within the orbit of Persian civilisation. The Central Asian Jews accepted this spirit and preserved it until modern times in their language and culture.

The story of dealers of Old Masters, champions of modern art, and victims of Nazi plunder. Since the late-1990s, the fate of Nazi stolen art has become a cause celebre. In Belonging and Betrayal, Charles Dellheim turns this story on its head by revealing how certain Jewish outsiders came to acquire so many old and modern masterpieces in the first place - and what this reveals about Jews, art, and modernity. This book tells the epic story of the fortunes and misfortunes of a small number of eminent art dealers and collectors who, against the odds, played a pivotal role in the migration of works of art from Europe to the United States and in the triumph of modern art. Beautifully written and compellingly told, this story takes place on both sides of the Atlantic from the late nineteenth century to the present. It is set against the backdrop of critical transformations, among them the gradual opening of European high culture, the ambiguities of Jewish acculturation, the massive sell-off of aristocratic family art collections, the emergence of different schools of modern art, the cultural impact of World War I, and the Nazi war against the Jews.

Jews of the Dutch Caribbean addresses identity and ethnicity, through a detailed study of a little-known group in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. It asks readers to take a broad perspective on the contexts that play a role in ethnicity and draws on ethnographic research to analyse ethnic identity and look at how it is shaped and negotiated.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203218450

Israelis form a unique case in the field of diaspora studies. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948 it was seen as the longed-for end to the wandering and oppression which had characterised the Jewish diaspora over the centuries. For various reasons, however one per cent of the Israeli population chooses to live abroad despite the condemnation of those who see emigration as a threat to the ideological, demographic and moral viability of Israel itself. In this study, based on extensive field work in the major Israeli communities of New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Sydney, Steven J. Gold looks at their reasons for leaving - existing links abroad, political and economic dissatisfaction at home and in the case of the Sephardim or Israelis of non-European origin often a feeling of being treated as second class citizens - the tensions, compromises and satisfactions involved in their relations with Israelis who have not left and with the Jewish and non Jewish communities in the countries in which they settle. In a final chapter, he talks to those who after years as emigrants have made the decision to return. The end result is a contribution to the study not just of the Isra

Judaism has long derived its identity from its sacred books. The book or scroll--rather than the image or idol--has been emblematic of Jewish faith and tradition. The People of the Book presents a study of a group of Orthodox Jews, all of whom live in the modern world, engaged in the time-honored practice of lernen, the repeated review and ritualized study of the sacred texts. In preserving one of the activities of Jewish life, Samuel C. Heilman argues, these are the genuine "People of the Book."

For two years, Heilman participated in and observed five study circles in New York and Jerusalem engaged in the avocation of lernen the Talmud, the great corpus of Jewish law, lore, and tradition. These groups, made up of men who felt the ritualized study of sacred texts to be not only a religious obligation but also an appealing way to spend their evenings, weekends, and holidays, assembled together under the guidance of a teacher to review the holy books of their people. Having become part of this world, the author is able to provide first-hand observation of the workings of the study circle.

Heilman's study moves beyond the merely descriptive into an analysis of the nature and meaning of activity he observed. To explain the character and appeal of the study groups, he employs three concepts: drama, fellowship, and religion. Inherent to the life of the study circle are various sorts of drama: "social dramas" playing out social relationships, "cultural performances" reenacting the Jewish world view, and "interactional dramas" and "word plays" involving the intricacies of the recitation and translation process. This book will be of interest to anthropologists and those interested in the academic study of religion.

The genocide of Armenians by Turks during the First World War was one of the most horrendous deeds of modern times and a precursor of the genocidal acts that have marked the rest of the twentieth century. Despite the worldwide attention the atrocities received at the time, the massacre has not remained a part of the world's historical consciousness. The parallels between the Jewish and Armenian situations and the reactions of the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv) to the Armenian genocide, which was muted and largely self-interested, are explored by Yair Auron. In attempting to assess and interpret these disparate reactions, Auron maintains a fairminded balance in assessing claims of altruism and self-interest, expressed in universal, not merely Jewish, terms.

While not denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust, Auron carefully distinguishes it from the Armenian genocide reviewing existing theories and relating Armenian and Jewish experience to ongoing issues of politics and identity. As a groundbreaking work of comparative history, this volume will be read by Armenian area specialists, historians of Zionism and Israel, and students of genocide. Yair Auron is senior lecturer at The Open University of Israel and the Kibbutzim College of Education. He is the author, in Hebrew, of Jewish-Israeli Identity, Sensitivity to World Suffering: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, We Are All German Jews, and Jewish Radicals in France during the Sixties and Seventies (published in French as well)

Describes how queer Jews are changing Jewish American culture, creating communities and making room for themselves, as openly, unapologetically queer and Jewish. Combining political analysis and personal memoir, these essays explore the various ways queer Jews are creating new forms of Jewish communities and institutions, and demanding that traditional Jewish communities become more inclusive.

The author's grasp of the vast, often obscure, but highly interesting body of literature which emerged in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries commands the attention of a wide readership outside purely academic boundaries. Stagl weaves together a series of separate studies, emphasizing links between the figures, the philosophies and the literature of early modern times; links which have previously only been suspected.
In focusing on the "ars apodemica," or "art of travelling," a body of formal instruction on how to travel, observe and record the information gathered, Stagl demonstrates the origins of the characteristic inquisitive and systematizing spirit of the modern West.
"A History of Curiosity" examines the early methodology of anthropological and social research from a critical-historical perspective. The two principal methods of research, travel and the questionnaire, are studied in the context of the social conditions and intellectual trends of early modern times.

The Jewish Philosophy Reader is the first comprehensive anthology of classic writings on Jewish philosophy from the Bible to the present. Complementing the History of Jewish Philosophy, the Reader is divided into four parts:
* Foundations and First Principles
* Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Philosophy
* Modern Jewish Thought
* Contemporary Jewish philosophy

eBook available with sample pages: PB:0415168600

First comprehensive account of antisemitism on social media Covers a broad range of different social media Examines a variety of ideological manifestations of antisemitism and conspiracy theories

The historical consciousness of medieval Jewry has engendered lively debate in the scholarly world. The focus in this book is on the historical consciousness of the Jews of Spain and southern France in the late Middle Ages, and specifically on their perceptions of Christianity and Christian history and culture. In his detailed analysis of Jews' understanding of the history of the communities they lived among, Ram Ben-Shalom shows that in these southern European lands Jews experienced a relatively open society that was sensitive to and knowledgeable about voices from other cultures, and that this had significant consequences for shaping Jewish historical consciousness. Among the topics that receive special attention are what Jews knew of the significance of Rome, of Jesus and the early days of Christianity, of Church history, and of the history of the Iberian monarchies. Ben-Shalom demonstrates that, despite the negative stereotypes of Jewry prevalent in Christian literature and increasing familiarity with that literature, they were more influenced by their interactions with Christian society at the local level. Consequently there was no single stereotype that dominated Jewish thought, and frequently little awareness of the two societies as representing distinct cultures. This book contributes to medieval Jewish intellectual history on many levels, demonstrating that, in Spain and southern France, Jews of the later Middle Ages evinced a genuine interest in history, including the history of non-Jews, and that in some cases they were deeply familiar with Christian and sometimes also classical historiography. In providing a comprehensive survey of the multiple contexts in which historiographical material was embedded and the many uses to which it was put, it enriches our understanding of medieval historiography, polemic, Jewish-Christian relations, and the breadth of interests characterizing Provencal and Spanish Jewish communities.

"An expedition into the troubled soul of one of the world's greatest songwriters."-Haaretz "Not only is a hidden side of Cohen revealed but so too a hidden side of Israel."-David Bezmozgis The little-known story of Leonard Cohen's concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War, including never-before-seen selections from an unfinished manuscript by Cohen and rare photographs In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen-thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end-traveled from his home on the Greek island of Hydra to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a guitar and a group of local musicians, Cohen met hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen. He had announced that he was abandoning his music career, but he instead returned to Hydra and to his family, had a second child, and released one of the best albums of his career. In Who by Fire, journalist Matti Friedman gives us a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai, drawing on Cohen's previously unpublished writing and original reporting to create a kaleidoscopic depiction of a harrowing, formative moment for both a young country at war and a singer at a crossroads.

Why in America should the most sinister of European social diseases have taken root? Why should that disease have spread from its seemingly anachronistic beginning in the Gilded Age until it infected many of our great magazines and newspapers? Until it determined not only where a man might stay the night, but where he got his education and how he earned his living? This book answers such questions by exposing the myths with which the anti-Semite surrounds his position. By taking away the "mask of privilege" it reveals the source of such prejudice for what it is--the determination of the forces of special privilege, with their hangers-on, to maintain their select and exclusive status regardless of the consequences to other human beings.

Like Carey McWilliams's other books on minorities in America, "A Mask for Privilege "reveals the facts of discrimination so that the fogs of prejudice may be dispersed by the truth. It traces the growth of discrimination and persecution in America from 1877 to 1947, shows why Jews are such good scapegoats, and contrasts the Jewish stereotype--"too pushing, too cunning" with that of other minority groups. Then it looks at the anti-Semitic personality and concludes, with Sartre, that here is "a man who is afraid"--of himself.

In his stirring new introduction, Wilson Carey McWilliams calls this a work of recovery "evoking names and moods and incidents now either half-forgotten or lost to memory." This brilliant analysis of anti-Semitism is a documented and forceful attempt to inform Americans about the danger of the undemocratic, antisocial practices in their midst, and to suggest a positive program to arrest a course too similar to that which led to the Holocaust. It transcends majority-minority relations and becomes an analysis of antidemocratic practices, which affect the whole fabric of American life.

From its founding in the late seventeenth century, Newark, New Jersey, was a vibrant and representative center of Jewish life in America. Geographically and culturally situated between New York City and its outlying suburbs, Newark afforded Jewish residents the advantages of a close-knit community along with the cultural abundance and social dynamism of urban life. In Newark, all of the representative stages of modern Jewish experience were enacted, from immigration and acculturation to upward mobility and community building. The Enduring Community is a lively and evocative social history of the Jewish presence in Newark as well as an examination of what Newark tells us about social assimilation, conflict and change.

Grounded in documentary research, the volume makes extensive use of interviews and oral histories. The author traces the growth of the Jewish population in the pre-Revolutionary period to its settlement of German Jews in the 1840s and Eastern European Jews in the 1880s. Helmreich delineates areas of contention and cooperation between these groups and relates how an American identity was eventually forged within the larger ethnic mix of the city. Jewish population in politics, the establishment of Jewish schools, synagogues, labor unions, charities, and community groups are described together with cultural and recreational life. Despite the formal and emotional bonds that formed over a century, Jewish neighborhoods in Newark did not survive the postwar era. The trek to the suburbs, the erosion of Newark's tax base, and deteriorating services accelerated a movement outward that mirrored the demographic patterns of cities across America. By the time of the Newark riots in 1967, the Jewish presence was largely absent.

This volume reclaims a lost history and gives personalized voice to the dreams, aspirations, and memories of a dispersed community. It demonstrates how former Newarkers built new Jewish communities in the surrounding suburbs, an area dubbed "MetroWest" by Jewish leaders. The Enduring Community is must reading for students of Jewish social history, sociologists, urban studies specialists, and readers interested in the history of New Jersey. The book includes archival photographs form the periods discussed.

Like most 19th and 20th century national movements, culture played a focal role in the shaping of Jewish-Israeli national identity, and with Zionism being the secular movement that it is, culture became the effective prism through which religious and historical notions of Jewish nationalism were filtered. As Israel reaches its 50th year of statehood, Israeli society faces a deepening crisis of identity. This is particularly evident in Israeli culture which, for quite some time, has been effectively disintegrating into several simultaneous sub-cultures. This process has gained momentum during the 1990s due to a relaxation of national cohesiveness following the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations on the one hand, and the growing post-modern influences on Israeli culture, on the other. This, in turn, has brought to the fore a whole range of questions which have hitherto been ignored, not least the inter-relationship between the Hebrew and Jewish aspects of Israeli culture.

This innovative, ethnographic study of a neighborhood beauty salon investigates how customers constitute a lively, affirming community of peers during their weekly visits. Facing the Mirror gives voice to older women, who, in a sexist and ageist society, are frequently devalued and rendered invisible. These older, mostly Jewish women articulate their experiences of bodily self-presentation, femininity, aging, and caring pertaining to their lives within and outside Julie's International Salon. This book explores the socio-moral significance of these experiences which reveals as much about society as about older women themselves. Women's narratives expose structures of power, inequality, and resistance in the ways women perceive reality, make choices and live in their worlds.