The widespread and long-held preconception that all Jews lived in ghettos and were relentlessly subject to discrimination prior to the Enlightenment has only slowly eroded. Geographically speaking, Jews rarely lived in ghettos and have never been confined within the borders of one nation or country. Power struggles and wars often led to the creation of new national borders that divided communities once united. But if identity formation is subject to change and negotiation, it does not depend solely on shifting geographical borders. A variety of boundaries were and are still being constructed and maintained between ethnic and other collective identities. The contributors to this book, like other post-modernist historians, turn their gaze to a wide range of identities once taken for granted, identities located on the border lines between one country and the next, between Jews and non-Jews as well as on those between one group of Jews and another.

'A wonderful memoir, written with great linguistic brio. Candid, shrewd and moving - a classic of its kind,' William Boyd Howard Jacobson's funny, revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer. It's my theory that only the unhappy, the uncomfortable, the gauche, the badly put together, aspire to make art. Why would you seek to reshape the world unless you were ill-at-ease in it? And I came out of the womb in every sense the wrong way round. In Mother's Boy, Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson reveals how he became a writer. It is an exploration of belonging and not-belonging, of being an insider and outsider, both English and Jewish. Born to a working-class family in 1940s Manchester, the great-grandson of Lithuanian and Russian immigrants, Jacobson was raised by his mother, grandmother and aunt Joyce. His father was a regimental tailor, as well as an upholsterer, a market-stall holder, a taxi driver, a balloonist, and a magician. Grappling always with his family's history and his Jewish identity, Jacobson takes us from the growing pains of childhood to studying at Cambridge under F.R. Leavis, and landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor on campus, through to his first marriage, the birth of his son and beyond. Full of Jacobson's trademark humour and infused with bittersweet memories of his parents, this is the story of a writer's beginnings. 'Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious of course - but don't let the self-ribbing fool you; this is deep and poignant,' Simon Schama

This book consists of a range of essays covering the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating individuals and thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals, politicians (and occasionally spies!) sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new, sometimes profound, sometimes fanciful, options of thought and action. It also delves critically into the attacks on liberal and Enlightenment humanism. In almost all the essays the fragility of things is palpably present and the book touches on some of the ironies, problematics and functions of responses to that condition. The work mirrors the author's ongoing fascination with the always fraught, fragile and creatively fecund confrontation of Jews (and others) with European modernity, its history, politics, culture and self-definition. In a time of increasing anxiety and feelings of fragility, this work may be helpful in understanding how people at an earlier (and sometimes contemporary) period sought to come to terms with a similar predicament.

The anti-apartheid struggle remains one of the most fraught episodes in the history of modern Jewish identity. Just as many American Jews proudly fought for principles of justice and liberation in the Civil Rights Movement, so too did they give invaluable support to the movement for racial equality in South Africa. Today, however, the memory of apartheid bedevils the debate over Israel and Palestine, viewed by some as a cautionary tale for the Jewish state even as others decry the comparison as anti-Semitic. This pioneering history chronicles American Jewish involvement in the battle against racial injustice in South Africa, and more broadly the long historical encounter between American Jews and apartheid. In the years following World War II and the Holocaust, Jewish leaders across the world stressed the need for unity and shared purpose, and while many American Jews saw the fight against apartheid as a natural extension of their Civil Rights activism, others worried that such critiques would threaten Jewish solidarity and diminish Zionist loyalties. Even as the immorality of apartheid grew to be universally accepted, American Jews continued to struggle over persistent analogies between South African apartheid and Israel's Occupation. As author Marjorie N. Feld shows, the confrontation with apartheid tested American Jews' commitments to principles of global justice and reflected conflicting definitions of Jewishness itself.

A comprehensive view of the history, beliefs and practices, and sociology of the Hasidic movement founded by Israel Baal Sheen Tov, this simultaneously provides a reflection of the development of the scholarly understanding of Hasidism from the 18th century to the present.

Homeland, Exile, Imagined Homelands are features of the modern experience and relate to the cultural and historical dilemmas of loss, nostalgia, utopia, travel, longing, and are central for Jews and others. This book is an exploration into a world of boundary crossings and of desired places and alternate identities, into a world of adopted kin and invented allegiances.

Sicker examines the fundamental norms of civic conduct considered essential to the emergence and moral viability of the good society envisioned in the source documents and traditions of Judaism. The principles underlying the desired behavioral norms constitute the ethical underpinnings of the unique civilization envisioned by Mosaic teaching, a Judaic civilization characterized by instituted norms of civil conduct deemed necessary to ensure appropriate civil relations between persons, individually and collectively.The tensions in Judaic thought regarding the concept of democracy as a paradigm for Judaic government are examined, including the theological as well as moral implications of democracy that cast doubt on its appropriateness as a political ideal. Sicker considers the role of popular consent as a legitimating factor in the Judaic polity, and the distinctively Judaic approach to the ordering of civil relations in society within the constitutional context of a nomocratic regime based on halakhah, Judaism's own dynamic system of canon law. Three fundamental societal issues are then explored. The status of the individual within the properly constituted society and the relationship of the citizen to the state. Included in this discussion is the question of the legitimacy of civil disobedience. Sicker examines the practical implications for public policy of the Judaic imperatives regarding social justice and the idea of prescriptive equality. He then takes a hard look at the classical Judaic approach to dealing with the problems of ensuring national security within the context of Judaic norms.

"This book is basic for any attempt to understand interwar Polish Jewry as well as the holocaust period and offers many new points of view."
--"Religious Studies Review"

The Bund was the first modern Jewish political party in Eastern Europe and, arguably, the strongest Jewish party in Poland on the eve of the Second World War. Though 100 years have passed since its inception, the Bund and its legacy continue to be of abiding interest.

Founded illegally and operated under the most adverse conditions, the Bund grew dramatically in the years immediately after its 1897 creation in Czarist Russia. It helped to organize the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, it organized armed self-defense groups to fight against pogroms, and it played a significant role in the Russian Revolution of 1905. The Bundist became for many the symbol of the new Jew--enlightened, willing to fight for Jewish rights and needs, and unwilling to accept the status quo of Jewish communities dominated by the orthodox and the wealthy, and of a Russia oppressed by the Czar. Later, Bundist members were among those who contributed substantially to armed resistance in Nazi occupied Poland.

"Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe" makes use of previously unexamined source materials to offer a range of new perspectives on the significance of the Bund and its ideas. Its fresh and insightful approaches will be of interest to all those concerned with Eastern European Jewry, Russian, Polish, and Ukranian history, and the history of socialist and labor movements.

Critical presentation of the whole evidence concerning Jewish history, institutions, and literature from 175 BC to AD 135; with updated bibliographies.

Judah Loew, better known as the Maharal of Prague, was a pivotal personality in late medieval European Judaism. Best known from the popular legend that credited him with the creation of a golem - an artificial human with superhuman powers - his true importance lay in his comprehensive exposition of a unique expression of Jewish mystical theology, his call for a reformation of Jewish communal life, and his influence on subsequent Jewish life and thought. Byron Sherwin's lucid exposition of the life, legend, works, and ideas developed in Loew's massive writings 'reveals the concealed' by unravelling the often obscure nature of his mystical theology, his polemical jousts against past and contemporary Jewish scholars, and his innovative programme for social and educational reform.

Since 1648, Eastern Jews have moved west in large numbers. They brought with them skills learned in ghettos that could be adapted to fit social problems and commercial niches in the industrialized societies of the west. Jews from Eastern Europe played a particularly strong role in the fields of social work, the fur trade, textiles, and entertainment. They have also played a major part in the ideologies of Zionism and Marxism. This book examines the migration of Jews from the east and describes the roles they have taken in the west.

Covering the period between the Munich Agreement and the Communist Coup in February 1948, this volume provides the first full account of the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in London. In examining attitudes towards the Jews during World War 2 and its aftermath Jan Lani ek explores the notion that Czechoslovak treatment of the Jews was shaped by resurgent Czech and Slovak nationalism/s caused by the war and by the experience of the occupation by the German army. He challenges the official history of Czechoslovak policy towards the Jews between 1918 and 1948, which still presents Czechoslovakia as an exceptional case study of an East-Central European state that rejected antisemitism and treated the Jews decently. This groundbreaking work offers a novel, provocative analysis of the political activities and plans of the Czechoslovak exiles during and after the war years, and of the implementation of the plans in liberated Czechoslovakia after 1945.

This translation of "The Jewish State" (Der Judenstaat) is based on a revised translation published by the Scopus Publishing Company. It has further been revised by Jacob M. Alkow, editor of this book. The biography was condensed from Alex Bein's "Theodor Herzl," published by the Jewish Publication Society of America. The bibliography and the chronology were prepared by the Zionist Archives and Library.

Reading a wide range of novels from post-war Germany to Israeli, Palestinian and postcolonial writers, The Politics of Jewishness in Contemporary World Literature is a comprehensive exploration of changing cultural perceptions of Jewishness in contemporary writing. Examining how representations of Jewishness in contemporary fiction have wrestled with such topics as the Holocaust, Israeli-Palestinian relations and Jewish diaspora experiences, Isabelle Hesse demonstrates the 'colonial' turn taken by these representations since the founding of the Jewish state. Following the dynamics of this turn, the book demonstrates new ways of questioning received ideas about victimhood and power in contemporary discussions of postcolonialism and world literature.

In recent decades, religious fundamentalism has played an increasingly significant role in Western and Middle Eastern politics and culture. In this volume, an international group of scholars from fields such as religious studies, sociology, political science, history, and anthropology explore diverse dimensions of religious fundamentalism and relate it to a range of cultural and political issues. Although the focus is on fundamentalism in its Jewish guise, the methodological and comparative emphases make it valuable to specialists in a variety of fields.

Among the issues examined are: the characteristics that link fundamentalist movements within various religious traditions; the study of fundamentalist motifs as they appear specifically in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (and whether or not this is a useful approach); the relationship between religion and modernity; the impact of fundamentalism on the Arab-Israeli conflict; and the interaction of modern Jewish fundamentalist movements with traditional Judaism. The book also provides important insights into the emergence of religious fundamentalism as a powerful social and political force in Jewish life, particularly in Israel.

Contributing to the volume are: Gerald Cromer (Bar-Ilan Univ.), Menachem Friedman (Bar-Ilan Univ.), Susan Harding (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz), James Davison Hunter (Univ. of Virginia), Aaron Kirschenbaum (Tel Aviv University), Hava Larazus-Yafeh (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem), Ian Lustick (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Alan Mittleman (Muhlenberg College), James Piscatori (Univ. College of Wales), Elie Rekhess (Tel Aviv Univ.), Laurence J. Silberstein (Lehigh Univ.), and Ehud Sprinzak (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem).