Cultural boundaries and group identity are often forged in relation to the Other. In every society, conceptions of otherness, which often reflect a group's fears and vulnerabilities, result in deep-rooted traditions of inclusion and exclusion that permeate the culture's literature, religion, and politics.

This volume explores the ways in which Jews have traditionally defined other groups and, in turn, themselves. The contributors, a distinguished international group of scholars, explore the discursive processss through which Jewish identity and culture have been constructed, disseminated, and perpetuated.

Among the topics addressed are: Others in the biblical world; the construction of gender in Roman-period Judaism; the Other as woman in the Greco-Roman world; the gentile as Other in rabbinic law; the feminine as Other in kabbalah; the reproduction of the Other in the Passover Haggadah; the Palestinian Arab as Other in Israeli politics and literature; the Other in Levinas and Derrida; Blacks as Other in American Jewish literature; the Jewish body image as symbol of Otherness; and women as Other in Israeli cinema.
Contributors to this interdisciplinary volume are: Jonathan Boyarin (New School for Social Research), Robert L. Cohn (Lafayette College), Gerald Cromer (Bar-Ilan University), Trude Dothan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Elizabeth Fifer (Lehigh University), Steven D. Fraade (Yale University), Sander L. Gilman (Cornell University), Hannan Hever (Tel Aviv University), Ross S. Kraemer (University of Pennsylvania), Orly Lubin (Tel Aviv University), Peter Machinist (Harvard University), Jacob Meskin (Williams College), Adi Ophir (Tel Aviv University), Ilan Peleg (Lafayette College), Miriam Peskowitz (University of Florida), Laurence J. Silberstein (Lehigh University), Naomi Sokoloff (University of Washington), and Elliot R. Wolfson (New York University).

A narrative complement to Eyes Toward Zion, Volume II (Praeger, 1986), this important new volume presents a comparative analysis of the influence of the Holy Land on Western Societies. Researched and written by a distinguished team of international scholars, Eyes III illuminates both parallelisms and unique elements in the idea of the Holy Land in the United States, Canada, Iberoamerica, Great Britain, France, and Germany. The pervasive Holy Land influence in these countries and the unique elements inherent in each culture are perceived through four constructs: diplomatic policy, Christian devotion, Jewish attachments, and cultural ties. The editors and contributors provide a detailed examination of the political and economic interests of the Western societies in the Holy Land, the role of Zion in Christian denominations, the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition and communal life, and the effect of the Holy Land on Western literature, art, and pilgrimage. Part I analyzes North America's early involvement with Palestine, focusing particularly on the writings of early Christian travellers from the U.S. and the role these visitors played in forming America's concept of the Holy Land. A separate chapter compares and contrasts the U.S. and Canadian experience. Parts II and III examine the Iberoamerican and European experience. The long, wide ranging, and significant relationships between the Holy Land and France, Germany, and the Latin American Republics are fully explored. Focusing primarily on the nineteenth century, Part IV documents the sturdy Biblical-Holy Land-British bond. The chapters in this volume are replete with references to the writings of archaeologists, historians, scientists, biblical scholars, novelists, consuls, missionaries, tourists and, above all, settlers and builders of the Land - all attesting to the intrinsic place of the Holy Land in the world imagination.

An unexpected immigration wave of Jews from the former Soviet Union mostly in the 1990s has stabilized and enlarged Jewish life in Germany. Jewish kindergartens and schools were opened, and Jewish museums, theaters, and festivals are attracting a wide audience. No doubt: Jews will continue to live in Germany. At the same time, Jewish life has undergone an impressing transformation in the second half of the 20th century - from rejection to acceptance, but not without disillusionments and heated debates. And while the 'new Jews of Germany,' 90 percent of them of Eastern European background, are already considered an important factor of the contemporary Jewish diaspora, they still grapple with the shadow of the Holocaust, with internal cultural clashes and with difficulties in shaping a new collective identity. What does it mean to live a Jewish life in present-day Germany? How are Jewish thoughts, feelings, and practices reflected in contemporary arts, literature, and movies? What will remain of the former German Jewish cultural heritage? Who are the new Jewish elites, and how successful is the fight against anti-Semitism? This volume offers some answers.

Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds examines the phenomenon of Jewish bureaucracy in the Russian empire-its institutions, personnel, and policies-from 1850 to 1917. In particular, it focuses on the institution of expert Jews, mid-level Jewish bureaucrats who served the Russian state both in the Pale of Settlement and in the central offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in St. Petersburg. The main contribution of expert Jews was in the sphere of policymaking and implementation. Unlike the traditional intercession of shtadlanim (Jewish lobbyists) in the high courts of power, expert Jews employed highly routinized bureaucratic procedures, including daily communications with both provincial and central bureaucracies. Vassili Schedrin illustrates how, at the local level, expert Jews advised the state, negotiated power, influenced decisionmaking, and shaped Russian state policy toward the Jews. Schedrin sheds light on the complex interactions between the Russian state, modern Jewish elites, and Jewish communities. Based on extensive new archival data from the former Soviet archives, this book opens a window into the secluded world of Russian bureaucracy where Jews shared policymaking and administrative tasks with their Russian colleagues. The new sources show these Russian Jewish bureaucrats to be full and competent participants in official Russian politics. This book builds upon the work of the original Russian Jewish historians and recent historiographical developments, and seeks to expose and analyze the broader motivations behind official Jewish policy, which were based on the political vision and policymaking contributions of Russian Jewish bureaucrats. Scholars and advanced students of Russian and Jewish history will find Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds to be an important tool in their research.

In the last half century, ways of thinking about the Holocaust have changed somewhat dramatically. In this volume, noted scholars reflect on how their own thinking about the Holocaust has changed over the years. In their personal stories they confront the questions that the Holocaust has raised for them and explore how these questions have been evolving. Contributors include John T. Pawlikowski, Richard L. Rubenstein, Michael Berenbaum, and Eva Fleischner.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, many perceived American Jewry to be in a state of crisis as traditions of faith faced modern sensibilities. Published beginning in 1909, Rabbi and Professor Louis Ginzberg's seven-volume The Legends of the Jews appeared at this crucial time and offered a landmark synthesis of aggadah from classical Rabbinic literature and ancient folk legends from a number of cultures. It remains a hugely influential work of scholarship from a man who shaped American Conservative Judaism. In Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews: Ancient Jewish Folk Literature Reconsidered, editors Galit Hasan-Rokem and Ithamar Gruenwald present a range of reflections on the Legends, inspired by two plenary sessions devoted to its centennial at the Fifteenth Congress of the World Association of Jewish Studies in August 2009. In order to provide readers with the broadest possible view of Ginzberg's colossal project and its repercussions in contemporary scholarship, the editors present leading scholars to address it from a variety of historical, philological, philosophical, and methodological perspectives. Contributors give special regard to the academic expertise and professional identity of the author of the Legends as a folklore scholar and include discussions on the folkloristic underpinnings of The Legends of the Jews. They also investigate, each according to her or his disciplinary framework, the uniqueness, strengths, and weakness of the project. An introduction by Rebecca Schorsch and a preface by Galit Hasan-Rokem further highlight the folk narrative aspects of the work in addition to the articles themselves. The present volume makes clear the historical and scholarly context of Ginzberg's milestone work as well as the methodological and theoretical issues that emerge from studying it and other forms of aggadic literature. Scholars of Jewish folklore as well as of Talmudic-Midrashic literature will find this volume to be invaluable reading. Contributors Include: David Golinkin, Daniel Boyarin, Hillel I. Newman, Jacob Elbaum, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Johannes Sabel, Ithamar Gruenwald, Rebecca Schorsch.

This book explores the Holocaust as a social process. Although the mass murder of European Jews was essentially the result of political-ideological decisions made by the Nazi state leadership, the events of the Holocaust were also part of a social dynamic. All European societies experienced developments that led to the social exclusion, persecution and murder of the continent's Jews. This volume therefore questions Raul Hilbergs category of the 'bystander'. In societies where the political order expects citizens to endorse the exclusion of particular groups in the population, there cannot be any completely uninvolved bystanders. Instead, this book examines the multifarious forms of social action and behaviour connected with the Holocaust. It focuses on institutions and persons, helpers, co-perpetrators, facilitators and spectators, beneficiaries and profiteers, as well as Jewish victims and Jewish organisations trying to cope with the dynamics of exclusion and persecution.

"[A] rich, engaging, scholarly, and nuanced chronicle of an . . . often-tormented interethnic, interreligious, interracial relationship."
"--MultiCultural Review"

"Bold and uncompromising. Cleverly, he turns a lot of revisionist race history on its head."
-- "Patterns of Prejudice"

"Insight, authority and scrupulousness are among the virtues of Seth Forman's account of the interaction of two conspicuous minorities in the postwar era. In its clarity and its wisdom, "Blacks in the Jewish Mind" constitutes a marvelous advance over previous scholarship; and in showing how frequently Jews misunderstood their own communal interests, this book offers a challenge to the present even as the past is illuminated."
"--Stephen Whitfield, Brandeis University"

Since the 1960s the relationship between Blacks and Jews has been a contentious one. While others have attempted to explain or repair the break-up of the Jewish alliance on civil rights, Seth Forman here sets out to determine what Jewish thinking on the subject of Black Americans reveals about Jewish identity in the U.S. Why did American Jews get involved in Black causes in the first place? What did they have to gain from it? And what does that tell us about American Jews?

In an extremely provocative analysis, Forman argues that the commitment of American Jews to liberalism, and their historic definition of themselves as victims, has caused them to behave in ways that were defined as good for Blacks, but which in essence were contrary to Jewish interests. They have not been able to dissociate their needs--religious, spiritual, communal, political--from those of African Americans, and have therefore acted in ways whichhave threatened their own cultural vitality.

Avoiding the focus on Black victimization and white racism that often infuses work on Blacks and Jews, Forman emphasizes the complexities inherent in one distinct white ethnic group's involvement in America's racial dilemma.

Jewish-American Identity and Critical Intercultural Communication: Never Forget, Tikkun Olam, and Kindness to Strangers explores what it means to be Jewish on a personal, sociocultural, and global-political level. This book employs 50+ interviews with diverse Jewish voices to provide a history of Jewish migration to the US and to privilege voices that are not necessarily White and Eastern European/Ashkenazic. Sobre argues for a more inclusive form of intercultural theorizing that favors intersectionality and allyship over oppression Olympics (stereotypes between members of different nondominant groups) and colorism (within nondominant group discrimination). Such siloing of differences, and further competing about whose differences are the most egregious, minimizes critical intercultural coalition opportunities allowing for such groups as those who gave power to Trump and Netanyahu to connect while inclusive progressives engage in in-fighting and separatism. The author calls for transversal dialogic politics, racially and historically accurate school curriculum, intersectionality and more inclusive intercultural communication scholarship and practice as various means of working together against white nationalism and white supremacy in the US and the world. Scholars of religious studies, cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication will find this book of particular interest.

A collection of essays that explore the effects of modernization on Jewish self-understanding. Over the last three centurles, the Jewish experience has been profoundly affected by modernity, which Meyer defines as not only technological advance, cultural innovation, and reliance upon human reason but also as the adaptation of Jews to a modern framework within non-Jewish economies, societies, and cultures. Judaism within Modernity begins with an exploration of Jewish historiography and the problems of periodization in modern Jewish history. In these beginning essays we see the range of Meyer's thinking about what constitutes modernization and how to determine its beginning. He discusses the role of history in defining identity among Jews and suggests that finding an adequate paradigm of continuity is essential to the historian's task. The essays in the second section focus on the Jews of Germany. Here Meyer writes about the influence of German Jews on Jews in the United States, comparing the historical experience of the two communities. These essays also address the intersection of religion, scholarship, and history with politics in nineteenth- and twentiety-century Germany. A third section deals with the European Reform movement, which brought a liberal Judaism to the majority of German Jews. Here Meyer likewise presents a fresh perspective on the way the Reform movement was viewed by those outside of it, especially by non-Jews. The essays in the final section explore Judaism in the United States. In particular, they show how reform Judaism and Zionism were able to recondle their initial differences. Judaism within Modernity is an impressive collection of essays written by a renowned Jewish historian and will be a standard volume for students and scholars of the modern Jewish experience.

An exploration of the work of Jewish women graphic novelists and the intricate Jewish identity is complicated by gender, memory, generation, and place-that is, the emotional, geographical, and psychological spaces that women inhabit. Victoria Aarons argues that Jewish women graphic novelists are preoccupied with embodied memory: the way the body materializes memory. This monograph investigates how memory manifests in the drawn shape of the body as an expression of the weight of personal and collective histories. Aarons explores Jewish identity, diaspora, mourning, memory, and witness in the works of Sarah Lightman, Liana Finck, Anya Ulinich, Leela Corman, and more. Memory Spaces begins by framing this research within contemporary discourse and reflects upon the choice to explore Jewish women graphic novelists specifically. In the chapters that follow, Aarons relates the nuanced issues of memory, transmission of trauma, Jewish cultural identity, and the gendered self to a series of meaningful and noteworthy graphic novels. Aarons's insight, close readings, and integration of contemporary scholarship are conveyed clearly and concisely, creating a work that both captivates readers and contributes to scholarly discourse in Jewish studies, women's literature, memory studies, and identity.

For Gustav Landauer, literary critic and anarchist, scholar of mysticism and participant of the Bavarian revolution, culture and politics occupied the same spiritual space. While identifying with ethical socialism, his Jewish sensibility increasingly gained over the years, not only, but in great measure due to Buber's influence. This volume brings together leading scholars to assess Landauer's ramified literary and political activities, his life as a Jew and anarchist, paying particular attention to his impact on Martin Buber.

In the State of Israel, the unique family law derives from ancient Jewish law, halakhic traditions, and an extensive legal tradition spanning many centuries and geographic locations. This book examines Israeli family law in comparison with the corresponding law in the United States and illuminates common issues in legal systems worldwide. The Israeli system is primarily controlled by the religious law of the parties. Thus, religious courts were also established and granted enforcement powers equivalent to those of the civil courts. This is a complex situation because the religious law applied in these courts is not always consistent with gender equality and civil rights practiced in civil court. This book seeks to clarify that tension and offer solutions. The comprehensive analysis in this book may serve as a guide for those interested in family law: civil court judges, rabbinical court judges, lawyers, mediators, arbitrators, and families themselves. Topics central to the book include issues subject to modification, the right of a minor to independent status, extramarital relationships, and joint property.

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"Contributes[s] interesting new dimensions to the literature on Jews and blacks in the United States."
--"The Journal of American History"

"A fascinating text which adds to our understanding of recent Jewish Left and feminist politics and activism"
"--Australian Jewish News, Aug. 2001"

"Blending together 15 oral histories and archival research, Schultz shows how northern Jewish women's commitment to social justice - informed in part by living in the shadow of the Holocaust - played out in a time of enormous political, social, and personal upheaval...Sharply observant of her informants' lives, Schultz opens a new window not only into the civil rights movement but also into the sociology of mid-century Jewish-American culture. Her analysis is most impressive at the book's end, when she perceptively describes the protean nature of Jewish identities in the U.S. Such insightful cultural readings and criticism make this a fine contribution to both the literature of the civil rights movement and the field of Jewish studies."
"--Publishers Weekly"

"Schultz's book makes a substantial contribution to feminist scholarship, but in the end it is also a call to renewed action - to never forget the sacrifices of previous generations."
--"The Journal of Southern History"

"A well-written, serious, and important book. I learned a great deal from this interesting and rich study."
"--Joyce Antler, author of The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America"

""Going South" is a heartfelt plea for incorporating women's activism into social movement history."
--Linn Shapiro, "American Jewish History"

"Going South is aremarkable book, reflecting the experiences of fifteen women who joined the 1960s civil rights movement showing how and why they got there, what role, if any religion played in their lives, and what happened to them afterwards."
--"Journal of American Studies"

"The strength of the book is that it is based on interviews; the reader is introduced to each women, her family, the work she performed in the South, the people she met and the difficulties she overcame while there."--"Jewish Observer"

Many people today know that the 1964 murder in Mississippi of two Jewish men--Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman--and their Black colleague, James Chaney, marked one of the most wrenching episodes of the civil rights movement. Yet very few realize that Andrew Goodman had been in Mississippi for one day when he was killed; Rita Schwerner, Mickey's wife, had been organizing in Mississippi for six difficult months.

Organized around a rich blend of oral histories, Going South followsa group of Jewish women--come of age in the shadow of the Holocaust and deeply committed to social justice--who put their bodies and lives on the line to fight racism. Actively rejecting the post-war idyll of suburban, Jewish, middle-class life, these women were deeply influenced by Jewish notions of morality and social justice. Many thus perceived the call of the movement as positively irresistible.

Representing a link between the sensibilities of the early civil rights era and contemporary efforts to move beyond the limits of identity politics, the book provides a resource for all who are interested in anti-racism, the civil rights movement, social justice, Jewish activism and radical women's traditions.

This study throws light for the first time on a neglected but very important aspect of Jewish life in the Third Reich, the Jewish press. This term does not refer to the significant number of Jews involved in the German media up to the Second World War but to the 65 newspapers and magazines published by 53 publishing houses with a specific German-Jewish readership in mind. These publications appeared until the end of 1938 and allow a valuable insight into the situation of the German Jews under the Nazi regime. They movingly document the efforts of the Jews to cope with the increasing precariousness of their existence in Germany and to find solutions to the growing problems of survival.

Military cemeteries are one of the most prominent cultural landscapes of Israel. Their story reflects largely the main social processes that Israeli society has been undergoing since the War of Independence (1948) until today. Until the end of the 1970s, the military tombstones and their surroundings were uniform and equal, according to rules set by the State. However, since the 1980s families of the fallen soldiers started to add on the tombstone personal expressions, as well as personal objects, photographs, military artifacts etc. Thus the military tombstone and the Israeli military cemetery became one of the expressions of the dramatic transformation, from a society which emphasized the importance of the collective, to a society which intensifies the significance of the individual. The book is based on many archival documents, as well as interviews and photographs, all of which shed light on one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli society and express its importance as a central component of Israeli identity.

Gershon Brin examines the development of biblical law, suggesting that it may be due to different authors with different legal outlooks, or that the differing policies were required in response to different social needs, etc. Biblical laws appearing in the Dead Sea Scrolls literature are treated in a separate unit. Study of this subject can shed light both on the biblical laws as such, as well as on the manner of their reworking by the Judaean Desert sect. Brin also discusses here questions of the style, the idea, and the historical and ideological background underlying the reworking of these laws in Qumran. The second part of the book presents a comprehensive picture of the issues involved in the laws of the first-born, a subject that has legal, social and religious implications.

Facing the dizzying array of changes commonly referred to as modernity, Jews in 19th-century Eastern Europe and early 20th-century America reflected the crises and opportunities of the modern world most eloquently in their speech, culture, and literature. Relying on those spoken and written words as eyewitnesses, Eli Lederhendler illustrates how the self- perceptions of Jews evolved, both in the Old World and among immigrants to America. He focuses on a wide range of subjects to provide an overview of this clash between old and new and to reveal ways in which cultural conflicts were reconciled.

How, for instance, was messianic language adapted to serve nationalistic goals? What did America signify to Jewish thinkers at the turn of the century? What do Jewish user's guides to the New World tell us about Jewish secular culture and its perspective on sex, love, marriage, etiquette, and health? More generally, what do Jewish letters and literature tell us about how communities adapt to radically new environments?

"Jewish Responses to Modernity" highlights the manner in which codes and symbols are passed from one generation to the next, reinforcing a group's sense of self and helping to define its relations with other. The book clearly demonstrates the importance of language as a vehicle for minority-group self-expression in the past and in the present.

This unique study makes an important contribution to our understanding of the changing problem of `Jewishness' in a German environment as it presented itself to a privileged group of Jews. Following on from Jews in the German Economy (OUP, 1987), which analysed the economic activities of this elite, it presents a detailed picture of the group's socio-cultural profile. Based largely on autobiographical material, it covers such matters as attitudes to Judaism, relations at different levels with Gentiles and with other Jews, marriage patterns, the public role, political culture, cultural activities, and patronage. The major underlying theme is the conflict between preservation of the Jewish identity, and integration into the surrounding society. Different forms of self-identification are examined, as well as various patterns of conformity.

In the second haft of the nineteenth century, Jewish nationalism developed in Europe. One vital form of this nationalism that took root at the beginning of the twentieth century in Eastern Europe was the Yiddishist movement, which held that the Yiddish language and culture should be at the center of any Jewish nationalist efforts. As with most European concepts of folklore, the romantic-nationalist ideas of J. G. Herder on the volk were crucial in the formulation of the study and collection of Yiddish folklore.

Herder's volk, however, denoted the peasantry, whereas Polish Jewry were an urban population. This difference determined the focus and pioneering work that this group of collectors accomplished. Defining the Yiddish Nation examines how these folklorists sought to connect their identity with the Jewish past but simultaneously develop Yiddishism, a movement whose eventual outcome would be an autonomous Jewish national culture and a break with the biblical past.

Itzik Nakhmen Gottesman analyzes the evolution of Yiddish folklore and its role in the creation of Yiddish nationalism in Poland between the two world wars. Gottesman studies three important folklore circles in Poland: the Warsaw group led by Noyekh Prilutski, the S. Ansky Vilne Jewish Historic-Ethnographic Society, and the Ethnographic Commission d the Yivo Institute in Vilne.

This book is much more than a study of the evolution of one particular folklore tradition, it is a look into the formation of a nationalist movement. Defining the Yiddish Nation will prove invaluable for scholars of Jewish studies and Yiddish folklore.

This book is a contribution to the development of the young discipline of the didactics of the Study of Religions (Religionswissenschaft) in international perspective. Integrative religious education refers to education about different religions in classrooms with children of various religious and non-religious backgrounds. Cornerstones of recent debates about theory and methodology in the academic study of religions and in education are discussed in the first chapter. They form the basis of the following analysis and evaluation of current approaches to integrative religious education in Europe, with a special focus on England and Sweden. Particular attention is paid to the different underlying concepts of religion, education and ways of representing religious plurality in these approaches. Building on a discussion of the current situation of teaching and learning about religions in schools in Europe in the context of wider cultural, social and political debates, the book concludes with the suggestion of a framework for integrative religious education in Europe, from a perspective that combines insights from the study of religions and education.