The starting point for this compilation is the wish to rethink the concept of antisemitism, race and gender in light of Sartre's pioneering Reflexions sur la Question Juive seventy years after its publication. The book gathers texts by prestigious scholars from different disciplines in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, with the objective or revisiting this work locating it within the setting of two other pioneering - and we argue, related - publications, namely Simone De Beauvoir's Le deuxieme sexe of 1949 and Franz Fanon's Peau noire et masques blancs of 1952. This particular and original standpoint sheds new light on the different meanings and political functions of the concept of antisemitism in a political and historical context marked by the post-modern concepts of multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism.

Jewish radical thoughts and actions can be described in a variety of terms and dimensions. Often, there is a connection implied between left-wing ideas and activists as well as their radicalism. This volume surveys Jewish radicalisms and present different approaches on this global historical phenomenon which are conceptualised as three different phenomena: Cultural, political and religious radicalism. The volume is focussed on the 20th century and tries to grasp the manifold Ideas of Jewish radicalism and, thereby, wants to open up the discussion on this category. This discussion is needed not only within Jewish Studies to engage with this topic and broaden our understanding of Jewish Radicalism as well as to form a useful applicable category. This volume is to be understood as a call for and a contribution to this debate.

"This useful compilation of essays serves as an introduction and guide to the complexities arising from the theft of Jewish property during WWII...This anthology belongs in every library."
-- "Choice"

The campaign for the restitution of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust has touched a raw nerve within European society, bringing many nations to confront their wartime past. Together with the end of the Cold War and generational change, the campaign has created a need to reevaluate conventional historical truths.

Following an unprecedented media campaign, pressure from Jewish organizations, and public opinion, more than 40 European commissions were established to investigate their fellow countrymen's behavior during the war and to ascertain how stolen property was dealt with in its aftermath.

The Plunder of Jewish Property During the Holocaust brings together a range of distinguished international experts to examine the major cases concerning restitution in several countries, covering specific issues such as Nazi gold, wartime theft of works of art, and the ownership of dormant accounts in Swiss banks. The contributors incorporate insights from diverse disciplines such as international law, economics, history, and political science which, taken as a whole, make clear that some chapters of European history will have to be rewritten.

With a preface by Edgar Bronfman and Israel Singer

This chronology provides a detailed look at the history of Israel and the Jewish World from 1948 to the peace agreement with the PLO in September 1993. After a survey of the Holocaust and the immediate post-World War II years, the Edelheits begin their detailed chronology with the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. The volume is augmented by a glossary, bibliography, and name, place, and subject indexes.

The historic signing of the Israel-Palestinian Arab peace accord of September 1993 in Washington, D.C., signalled the dawn of a new era in Middle Eastern politics. But, the often bewildering speed of recent events means that the historical background to those events has been lost, leading to confusion, misunderstanding, and misinformation. Scholars and interested readers alike need a source of clear and concise information on Israeli and Middle Eastern history in the last half-century.

Following up on "A World in Turmoil," this book reviews the most important events in the 45 year history of the reestablished state of Israel. Risen from the ashes of the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century--the near destruction of European Jewry during the Nazi Holocaust--the state of Israel represents both the Jewish return to sovereignty and is a touchstone for values of peace, honor, and national self-determination. It covers a broad spectrum of events connected with Israel, the postwar Jewish world, and the Middle East. From the ever-turning developments in Israeli political life to the battlefields of six wars, the text provides a useful introduction to the history of one of the world's most crucial regions. An introductory essay helps to place the events in their broader context, while a glossary, bibliography, and name, place, and subject indexes allow readers to seek more information on topics of interest.

For 300 years, American culture and society have been shaped by ethnic conflict. This book reveals how the unique characteristics of the American socio-political system have impacted intergroup conflict. This contributed volume collects the most current thinking on intergroup dynamics and on specific conflicts and specific groups with a special emphasis on the Jewish-American experience. The demographic portrait of this country has undergone vast changes. Many newly emerging groups that promote building group pride and solidarity are obtaining greater economic and political power. This current emphasis on groups also sheds light on the tribal dimension of the past in American life. This contributed volume examines how these forces are to be reconciled and will be of interest to students of sociology, religion, and multicultural studies.

This is a landmark study on Aby Warburg's life and work, translated into English.In ""Aby Warburg and Anti-Semitism"", Charlotte Schoell-Glass provides an unprecedented look at the life and writings of cultural critic Aby Warburg through the prism of Warburg's little-known political views. Schoell-Glass argues provocatively based on archival research that Warburg's work and teachings developed as a reaction to the growing anti-Semitism in Germany, which he saw as a threat to classical education and university scholarship. Translated into English for the first time, ""Aby Warburg and Anti-Semitism"" sheds much needed light on Warburg's views on Judaism and the politics of his time.Aby Warburg, scion of a well-known Jewish banking family in Hamburg, sacrificed his birthright to pursue a career as a private scholar. As an independent art historian, he devoted himself almost exclusively to reinterpreting the revival of antiquity within the Renaissance, urging other art historians to approach their work as a brand of the larger study of image making and philosophy. In this study, Schoell-Glass examines Warburg's most influential essays on Durer, Rembrandt, and the Sassetti Chapel and his most innovative concepts - the accessories of motion, the pathos formula, and the afterlife of antiquity - to illustrate how Warburg persistently showed a deep concern over a disappointing and unstable outside world within his own work. Schoell-Glass shows how Warburg attempts to make a response to anti-Semitism the only way he knew how, despite his awareness of the diminishing societal relevance of that response.From this study of Warburg, Schoell-Glass produces a multilayered case study of the encounter between twentieth-century politics and scholarship. Art historians, German historians, and scholars of Jewish studies and cultural studies will be grateful for this volume.

Lament, mourning, and the transmissibility of a tradition in the aftermath of destruction are prominent themes in Jewish thought. The corpus of lament literature, building upon and transforming the biblical Book of Lamentations, provides a unique lens for thinking about the relationships between destruction and renewal, mourning and remembrance, loss and redemption, expression and the inexpressible. This anthology features four texts by Gershom Scholem on lament, translated here for the first time into English. The volume also includes original essays by leading scholars, which interpret Scholem's texts and situate them in relation to other Weimar-era Jewish thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan, who drew on the textual traditions of lament to respond to the destruction and upheavals of the early twentieth century. Also included are studies on the textual tradition of lament in Judaism, from biblical, rabbinic, and medieval lamentations to contemporary Yemenite women's laments. This collection, unified by its strong thematic focus on lament, shows the fruitfulness of studying contemporary and modern texts alongside the traditional textual sources that informed them.

This review of the evolution of Islamic fundamentalism and Western-Muslim relations-from the events of September 11, 2001, to the present day-offers insight into the movement's historical roots and growing contemporary influence. Given the volatile nature of relations between the Middle East and the Western world, many Westerners, particularly Americans, have a skewed view of what comprises Islamic fundamentalism. Many wonder, are these beliefs based in religious doctrine, political motivations, or even irrational rhetoric? This book offers a highly accessible introduction to the topic that covers the movement's origins, goals, and doctrine, and shows how it has developed into the modern force we see on today's global stage. The third edition includes important updates as well as a new chapter on the recent wave of demonstrations and protests known as the Arab Spring. Organized both chronologically and topically, Islamic Fundamentalism: An Introduction, Third Edition reviews the basis for the Islamic and Muslim worldviews, examines the modern phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism through the development of the Muslim states of Iran and Saudi Arabia, and analyzes the Western view of this ideology. A chronology, glossary, and primary documents accompany the text. Compares fundamentalism in Iran and Saudi Arabia Features short biographies of prominent Islamists Considers provocative issues such as Islam and democracy, and women's role in Muslim society

New Testament scholarship lacks an overall interpretive framework to understand Judean identity. This absence is quite acute in scholarship on the historical Jesus, where the issue of Judeanness ("Jewishness") is most strongly debated. It is a pictorial representation of the Judean "symbolic universe," which as an ethnic identity, is proposed to be essentially primordialist. The model is given appropriate content by investigating what would have been typical of first-century Judean ethnic identity. It is also argued that there existed a fundamental continuity between Judea and Galilee, as Galileans were ethnic Judeans themselves and they lived on the ancestral land of Israel.

Scholars, survivors, and other interested parties have offered, over the years, their own interpretations of the meaning of the Holocaust and the lessons we can learn from it. However, the quest to find a rational explanation for this seemingly irrational course of events has led to both controversy and continued efforts at assigning meaning to this most horrible of events. Examining oral histories provided by survivors, written accounts and explanations, scholarly analysis, and commonly held assumptions, Bolkosky challenges the usual collection of platitudes about the lessons or the meanings we can derive from the Holocaust. Indeed, he argues against the kind of reductionism that such a quest for meaning has led to, and he analyzes the nature of the perpetrators in order to support his position on the inconclusivity of the study of the Holocaust.

Dealing with the perpetrators of the Holocaust as manifestations of twentieth century civilized trends foreseen by the likes of Kafka, Ortega y Gassett, Arthur Koestler and Max Weber, Bolkosky suggests a new nature of evil and criminality along the lines developed by Hannah Arendt, Raul Hilberg, and Richard Rosenstein. Woven into the fabric of the text are insights from literary and historical writers, sociologists, and philosophers. This interdisciplinary attempt to shed new light on efforts to determine the meanings and lessons of the Holocaust provides readers with a challenging approach to considering the oral histories of survivors and the popular and professional assumptions surrounding this devastating moment in history.

The study discusses the history of the Jewish refugees within the Shanghai setting and its relationship to the two established Jewish communities, the Sephardi and Russian Jews. Attention is also focused on the cultural life of the refugees who used both German and Yiddish, and on their attempts to cope under Japanese occupation after the outbreak of the Pacific War. Differences of identity existed between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, religious and secular, aside from linguistic and cultural differences. The study aims to understand the exile condition of the refugees and their amazing efforts to create a semblance of cultural life in a strange new world.

In Jewish Integration in the German Army in the First World War David J. Fine offers a surprising portrayal of Jewish officers in the German army as integrated and comfortably identified as both Jews and Germans. Fine explores how both Judaism and Christianity were experienced by Jewish soldiers at the front, making an important contribution to the study of the experience of religion in war. Fine shows how the encounter of German Jewish soldiers with the old world of the shtetl on the eastern front tested both their German and Jewish identities. Finally, utilizing published and unpublished sources including letters, diaries, memoirs, military service records, press accounts, photographs, drawings and tomb stone inscriptions, the author argues that antisemitism was not a primary factor in the war experience of Jewish soldiers.

Historically leftist ideas and theories have had a profound impact on modern Jewish life. But, the left's impact on the Jewish community has greatly diminished today. Nonetheless, it can still be detected in the tendency of American Jews to vote for the liberal camp. This political tendency has also influenced Jewish communities actions as illustrated by the large numbers of Jews who participated in the civil rights movements of the post-World War II period and in the so-called new Left.

Essential Papers on Jews and the Left presents a sweeping portrait of the defining impact of the left on modern Jewish politics and culture in Europe, Palestine/Israel, and the New World. The contributions in the first part, entitled The Jewish Left, discuss specifically Jewish radical organizations such as the Bund and Poale Zion. The second section, Jews in the Left, explores the activities of Jews in general left wing politics, emphasizing their role in the Russian revolutionary movement. In the final section, The Left and the Jews, the essays examine the attitudes of the left in Europe and America toward the Jewish question, including the key issue of Karl Marx and his reputedly anti-Jewish attitudes.

After centuries of persecution, oppression, forced migrations, and exclusion in the name of Christ, the development of a Jewish "Quest for the Historical Jesus" might seem unexpected. This book gives an overview and analysis of the various Jewish perspectives on the Nazarene throughout the centuries, emphasizing the variety of German voices in Anglo-American contexts. It explores the reasons for a steady increase in Jewish interest in Jesus since the end of the eighteenth century, arguing that this growth had a strategic goal: the justification of Judaism as a living faith alongside Christianity.

There can be little doubt that the Holocaust was an event of major consequence for the twentieth century. While there have been innumerable volumes published on the implications of the Holocaust for history, philosophy, and ethics, there has been a surprising lack of attention paid to the theoretical and practical effects of the Shoah on biblical interpretation.

Strange Fire addresses the implications of the Holocaust for interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, bringing together a diverse and distinguished range of contributors, including Richard Rubenstein, Elie Wiesel, and Walter Brueggemann, to discuss theoretical and methodological considerations emerging from the Shoah and to demonstrate the importance of these considerations in the reading of specific biblical texts. The volume addresses such issues as Jewish and Christian biblical theology after the Holocaust, the ethics of Christian appropriation of Jewish scripture, and the rethinking of biblical models of suffering and sacrifice from a post-Holocaust perspective.

The first book of its kind, Strange Fire will establish a benchmark for all future work on the topic.

The phenomenon of national identities, always a key issue in the modern history of Bohemian Jewry, was particularly complex because of the marginal differences that existed between the available choices. Considerable overlap was evident in the programs of the various national movements and it was possible to change one's national identity or even to opt for more than one such identity without necessarily experiencing any far-reaching consequences in everyday life. Based on many hitherto unknown archival sources from the Czech Republic, Israel and Austria, the author's research reveals the inner dynamic of each of the national movements and maps out the three most important constructions of national identity within Bohemian Jewry - the German-Jewish, the Czech-Jewish and the Zionist. This book provides a needed framework for understanding the rich history of German- and Czech-Jewish politics and culture in Bohemia and is a notable contribution to the historiography of Bohemian, Czechoslovak and central European Jewry.

Can someone be considered Jewish if he or she never goes to synagogue, doesn't keep kosher, and for whom the only connection to his or her ancestral past is attending an annual Passover seder?

In Religion or Ethnicity? fifteen leading scholars trace the evolution of Jewish identity. The book examines Judaism from the Greco-Roman age, through medieval times, modern western and eastern Europe, to today. Jewish identity has been defined as an ethnicity, a nation, a culture, and even a race. Religion or Ethnicity? questions what it means to be Jewish. The contributors show how the Jewish people have evolved over time in different ethnic, religious, and political movements. In his closing essay, Gitelman questions the viability of secular Jewishness outside Israel but suggests that the continued interest in exploring the relationship between Judaism's secular and religious forms will keep the heritage alive for generations to come.

"The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law" offers a comprehensive and systematic legal treatment of Jewish national and political rights to all of the Land of Israel. The author, Howard Grief, is the originator of the thesis that de jure sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel and Palestine was vested in the Jewish People as a result of the San Remo Resolution adopted at the San Remo Peace Conference on April 24, 1920. Yuval Ne'eman, a former Israeli government minister said: "For about 400 years, the Ottoman Empire ruled over all the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa. The struggle for the liberation of those areas began in the Balkan lands at the beginning of the 19th century and ended in 1913. In the First World War, the job of liberation] was completed and Turkey was reduced to the Anatolian Peninsula. All of this was contained in the San Remo Agreement of April 1920. The fact that it was precisely at that place and time that Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the states of the Arabian Peninsula obtained thanks to the victory of the Principal Allied Powers over the Central Powers] the very same liberation from the Ottoman yoke, strengthens the approach of Grief who presents the proof for the inclusion of Palestine i.e., the Jewish People] in the list of beneficiaries in regard to the "settlement or disposition] of the inheritance of the Ottoman Empire." Dr. Ya'akov Meron, former Adviser on the Law of Arab Countries at the Ministry of Justice, Jerusalem, Israel and Professor of Moslem Law in the Faculties of Law of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv wrote: "The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law" is a forceful and erudite pleading for the respecting of the letter and spirit of the law, not only Israeli law but also the international law that came into existence in the wake of World War I. This law, now largely forgotten or neglected, is still relevant today in regard to the status and borders of the Land of Israel. The author makes a thorough analysis of the international documents which recognized the rights of the Jewish People to the land of their ancestors, most significantly the San Remo Resolution on Palestine, agreed to by the victorious Allies at the Peace Conference of April 1920.