What makes Jewish thought Jewish? This book proceeds from a view of the Hebrew language as the holy tongue; such a view of Hebrew is, indeed, a distinctively Jewish view as determined by the Jewish religious tradition. Because language shapes thought and Hebrew is the foundational language of Jewish texts, this book explores the idea that Jewish thought is distinguished by concepts and categories rooted in Hebrew. Drawing on more than 300 Hebrew roots, the author shows that Jewish thought employs Hebrew concepts and categories that are altogether distinct from those that characterize the Western speculative tradition. Among the key categories that shape Jewish thought are holiness, divinity, humanity, prayer, responsibility, exile, dwelling, gratitude, and language itself. While the Hebrew language is central to the investigation, the reader need not have a knowledge of Hebrew in order to follow it. Essential reading for students and scholars of Judaism, this book will also be of value to anyone interested in the categories of thinking that form humanity's ultimate concerns.

First published in 2004. It may well be that genius begins where fear ends: not to be afraid to question what is known, not to be afraid to be original. David Ben-Gurion did not try to imitate anyone...He was endowed with a mind that sought out whats was new and was capable of penetrating the deepest recesses. First and foremost, he challenged every Jew who believed it was the fate of Jews to live in the Diaspora, and he believed that the Jews could be a nation of farmers, industrialists, soldiers, pioneers, and not only scientists and intellectuals. He decided that the time had come to establish a Jewish state, yet once it had been founded, he was not satisfied- it must be an exemplary state, a chosen state.

This book focuses on the bilateral and multilateral relations between Britain, the "former proprietor" and Israel, the "successor state," during the period following their armed clash in January 1949, to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza and the Sinai in March 1957. It highlights: the formulation of foreign policy decisions in Britain and Israel; Britain's special responsibility and influence, which affected Israel's relations with neighboring Arab states; Israel's complex policy towards Britain; Anglo-Jewry's attitude towards Israel; and the distinctive relationship between Israel's embassy in London and the Jewish community.

What makes Israeli law Israeli? Why is the word 'Jewish' almost entirely absent from Israeli legislation? How did Israel succeed in eluding a futile and dangerous debate over identity, and construct a progressive, independent, original and sophisticated legal system? Law and Identity in Israel attempts to answer these questions by looking at the complex bond between Zionism and the Jewish culture. Forging an original and 'authentic' Israeli law that would be an expression and encapsulation of Israeli-Jewish identity has been the goal of many Jewish and Zionist jurists as well as public leaders for the past century. This book chronicles and analyzes these efforts, and in the process tackles the complex meaning of Judaism in modern times as a religion, a culture, and a nationality. Nir Kedar examines the challenges and difficulties of expressing Judaism, or transplanting it into, the laws of the state of Israel.

This book writes itself off the guide map of familiar literary forms and melts down conceptual barriers, offering a new kind of reading and thinking experience as it tells the life and travel stories of fascinating women and examines women's physical mobility in a culture of gendered, postcolonial space that restricts their movement. Straddling the divide between fiction and scholarship, it combines fictional narrative, contemplation, theoretical thinking, scholarly discussion, and interviews. The book examines and crosses boundaries on various ontological levels--between genders, languages, historical epochs, and literary genres--as it questions reality, identity, knowledge, culture, truth, and mind.
While openly confronting the author's location in Israel, the book looks at women's ability to take themselves from place to place, viewing space and spatial freedom as deeply gendered in modern Western cultures. From this perspective, "home" is imagined as a protective holding space for one gender, and girls are systematically deskilled for spatial competence. The author tells of women whose lives embody a powerful project of travel, realizing exceptional degrees of independence, and also tells of women who refrain from driving, a major contemporary tool of autonomous movement.
The book imagines a movement-nurturing space that subverts the confining construct of home. From this nonexistent yet tangibly welcoming home space, the "glass corridors" of home--analogous to the "glass ceiling" of professional life--can be brought into full view and denaturalized. This cannot be accomplished, however, without a compelling, painful look at the patriarchal, colonial, and militarized structures underpinning all Western travel, women's emancipatory journeys included--a look influenced by the still-colonial structure of the author's Israeli placement.

Although the period leading up to the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews has been well recorded, few sources convey the incremental effect of specific decrees aimed to dehumanize the Jews who were caught in Hitler's net, and how their everyday lives were transformed. These letters, written by Malvina Fischer to her daughter Mimi Weisz, have been translated and edited by her granddaughter Edith Kurzweil. They convey with vivid immediacy the fears and premonitions, the ghettoization and escape attempts that were the common experience of Viennese and German Jews in the years preceding the implementation of the "Final Solution." In the first section of the volume, Kurzweil establishes the personal and political contexts of the letters (written between April 6, 1940 and December 1941, when Malvina Fischer and her family were deported) and links them to the then emerging "Jewish laws." The second section contains the letters themselves and documents the throttling grip in which the authorities held every Viennese Jew who had not managed to escape. The third section consists of translations of official summaries of the relevant laws, ordinances, and edicts--many of them marked "secret"--which inexorably determined that Kurzweil's family become part of the "final solution." From these letters and documents we become aware, also, of the profusion of legal entities dealing with Jews, the rivalries among them, and the free-floating dimensions of victims' fear and dread. Because the letters are full of allusions rather than straightforward information, and characterized by self-censorship, Edith Kurzweil has annotated them and inserted the relevant numbers of the specific laws as these were being applied.

Hasidism has been a seminal force and source of controversy in the Jewish world since its inception in the second half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, almost every ideological trend that has made itself felt among Jews since that time-from Zionism and Orthodoxy to contemporary Jewish feminism and movements within the yeshiva world-has claimed to have derived some inspiration from this vibrant movement. While this is sure testimony to its vitality and originality, it has also given rise to many misconceptions as to what hasidism is about. This major work, the first comprehensive critical study of hasidism in English, offers a wide-ranging treatment of the subject in all its aspects by what is effectively the entire present generation of scholars working in the field. With contributions ranging from the history of theology and of ideas through social and economic history to contemporary sociology, Hasidism Reappraised encompasses a complete field of modern scholarship in a discipline that is central to the understanding of modern Jewish history and the contemporary Jewish world. The twenty-eight authors who have contributed to the main body of the book are almost without exception established scholars with international reputations. The volume as a whole is dedicated to the memory of Joseph Weiss, and its opening section assesses his contribution to the study of hasidism in the context of his relationship with Gershom Scholem and Scholem's long-standing influence on the field. The remaining contributions are arranged thematically under seven headings: the social history of hasidism; the social functions of mystical ideals in the hasidic movement; distinctive outlooks and schools of thought within hasidism; the hasidic tale; the history of hasidic historiography; contemporary hasidism; and the present state of research on hasidism. The book also incorporates an extensive introduction that places the various articles in their intellectual context, as well as a bibliography of hasidic sources and contemporary scholarly literature. Hasidism Reappraised shows an intellectual world at an important juncture in its development and points to the direction in which scholarly study of hasidism is likely to develop in the years to come. CONTRIBUTORS: Jacob Barnai, Israel Bartal, Joseph Dan, Rachel Elior, Immanuel Etkes, Shmuel Ettinger, Morris M. Faierstein, Roland Goetschel, Arthur Green, Zeev Gries, Karl Erich GROZINGER, Moshe Hallamish, Gershon David Hundert, Moshe Idel, Louis Jacobs, Jacob Katz, Naftali Loewenthal, Daniel Meijers, Yehoshua Mondshine, Gedaliah Nigal, Mendel Piekarz, Ada Rapoport-Albert, Moshe J. Rosman, Bracha Sack, Yoseph Salmon, Chone Shmeruk, Sara Ora Heller Wilensky, Elliot R. Wolfson.

WINNER OF THE 2022 WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES, ESQUIRE, O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE, TIME MAGAZINE, LITHUB AND BUSTLE 'Superb' New York Times 'Masterful ... Supremely intelligent' Guardian 'Dazzling ... A marvel' Mail on Sunday Deftly weaving from one end of life to another - from ageing parents to newborn babies, from a young girl's coming-of-age to an old woman's unexpected delivery of a strange new second youth, from mystery and wonder at a life at its close or at a future waiting to unfold, Nicole Krauss's stories illuminate the moments in the lives of women in which the forces of sex, power and violence collide. Beautiful, taut and dark, spinning across the world, from Switzerland, Japan and New York to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles and South America, To Be a Man fearlessly delves into questions of masculinity and violence, regret and regeneration, control and desire. 'How much do we really know ourselves and each other? These questions linger long after the final pages of this supremely intelligent collection' Aminatta Forna, Guardian

During the late nineteenth century, many Jewish workers and intellectuals considered their integration into the general labour movement as a good way to counter the double disadvantage they suffered in society as Jews and workers. Whilst in Amsterdam this process encountered few obstacles, it was more problematical in London and Paris. Through a detailed examination of the collaborative efforts of Jewish labour in these three cities, Jewish Workers and the Labour Movement reveals the multi-layered and unique position of Jewish workers in the labour market. It shows how various factors such as economic change, political upheaval, state intervention and anti-Semitism all affected the pace of integration, and draws conclusions that highlight the similarities as well as the differences between the efforts of Jewish workers to improve their lot in France, Britain and Holland.

Although the Bene Israel community of western India, the Baghdadi Jews of Bombay and Calcutta, and the Cochin Jews of the Malabar Coast form a tiny segment of the Indian population, their long-term residence within a vastly different culture has always made them the subject of much curiosity. India is perhaps the one country in the world where Jews have never been exposed to anti-Semitism, but in the last century they have had to struggle to maintain their identity as they encountered two competing nationalisms: Indian nationalism and Zionism. Focusing primarily on the Bene Israel and Baghdadis in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Joan Roland describes how identities begun under the Indian caste system changed with British colonial rule, and then how the struggle for Indian independence and the establishment of a Jewish homeland raised even further questions. She also discuses the experiences of European Jewish refugees who arrived in India after 1933 and remained there until after World War II.To describe what it meant to be a Jew in India, Roland draws on a wealth of materials such as Indian Jewish periodicals, official and private archives, and extensive interviews. Historians, Judaic studies specialist, India area scholars, postcolonialist, and sociologists will all find this book to be an engaging study. A new final chapter discusses the position of the remaining Jews in India as well as the status of Indian Jews in Israel at the end of the twentieth century.

Since the end of the 1980s the field of Holocaust studies has burgeoned, diversified, and experienced a series of important controversies. Drawing on the best research of the past sixty years, this collection brings together the most significant secondary literature on the Nazi persecution and mass murder of the Jews. Care is taken to set the work in a context of historical breadth and depth.

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.

Churchill's exalted position in the pantheon of Jewish and Zionist heroes has been almost taken for granted. This book looks beyond the myth and makes a sober reappraisal of the British statesman's attitudes and policies towards the Jews and to Zionism.

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What prompts a well-renowned scientist in molecular biology to write memoirs about a part of his life? In the case of Gunther Stent, it was not to reflect on his career as a scientist, but to come to an understanding of his own soul. In his seventies, he had come to see that he had been, throughout his life, an emotional sleepwalker, especially as regards women and, in addition, that he had been troubled by Jewish self-hatred. His story may have more to do with St. Augustine's Confessions than with a scientist's memoirs. Stent provides insight into the power of political correctness, and the ability of a government to establish a perverse vision of reality. For readers interested in bioethics, Stent's memoirs help to explain how Germany could have been the first country to enact an all-encompassing protection for human research subjects while it was also the country that produced the medical experiments of the Nazis and the greatest perversion of medical morality in history. Stent is a person of intelligence and subtlety, an accomplished writer, a deep and wise man, and a loyal friend. His narrative is centered emotionally on a youth spent in Berlin in the Nazi period. As a boy of fourteen he was an eyewitness of the horrors of the Kristallnacht pogrom.On New Year's Eve 1938 he escaped from Germany across the "green frontier." He came to America in his teens, only to return to Berlin at the end of World War II as a scientific consultant for the U.S. Military. On his return to the States, Stent participated in the exciting early scientific breakthroughs of molecular biology that transformed the twentieth-century life sciences. His Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology is a piercing self-examination, and as its review in Science Newsletter says, "an act of self-exposure, abnegation, contrition, and expiation." It will be of keen interest to those who have inhabited Stent's worlds or shared his experiences, as well as those who wish to learn more about them. Gunther S. Stent is professor emeritus of neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of such classic texts as Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses and Molecular Genetics, as well as philosophical books, such as The Coming of the Golden Age, Paradoxes of Progress, and, most recently (2002), Paradoxes of Free Will.

The nine American Jews of whom Milton Konvitz writes are philosophers, jurists, or rabbis, widely known and readily accepted as American Jewish thinkers. Their work reflects all essential Jewish values. Each person in his own way has dedicated his work to the betterment of life and the advancement of human ideals. In this sense, their Jewishness is not defined by religion alone. Americanism permeated all they thought and all they did.Konvitz argues that in the complex modern world, secularists often serve God more handsomely than do members of synagogues or churches. For example, when the Supreme Court in 1954 (with Felix Frankfurter playing a key role behind the scenes) agreed to outlaw segregation of the races in public schools, was the Court's action secular or religious? When Congress passed the statute known as the Americans with Disabilities Act, requiring equal treatment of handicapped persons, was the action secular or religious? Is a minimum wage act secular or religious? Is Medicaid a secular or a religious act? Konvitz believes the distinction is not useful, or even possible.The book is divided into three parts, reflecting Konvitz's range of intellectual interests. The nine essays offer concise intellectual biographies of three American Jewish philosophers, three Supreme Court Justices, and three rabbis. The philosophers-Horace M. Kallen, Morris Raphael Cohen, and Sidney Hook-are world-renowned. The jurists-Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin N. Cardozo, and Felix Frankfurter-hold prominent places in American legal history. And the three rabbis-Leo Jung, Robert Gordis, and Jacob Agus-are known wherever Jewish thought is studied. By treating with equal seriousness the lives and writings of both religious and secularist thinkers, the author intentionally minimizes the conventional antagonism and frequent conflict between religion and secularism.An unusual feature of the book is the fact that the author was a close friend of six of the persons whose lives and work are examined, allowing him a perceptive insight into their character and thought. Although the book is about serious subjects, its graceful style makes the contents easily accessible to lay persons as well as scholars and students of Judaica.

These essays address Jewish identity, Jewish survival, and Jewish continuity. The authors account for and analyze trends in Jewish identification and the reciprocal effects of the relationship between the Diaspora and Israel at the end of the twentieth century.Jewish identification in contemporary society is a complex phenomenon. Since the emancipation of Jews in Europe and the major historic events of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, there have been substantial changes in the collective Jewish identity. As a result, Jewish identity and the Jewish process of identification had to confront the new realities of an open society, its economic globalization, and the impacts of cultural pluralism. The trends in Jewish identification are toward fewer and weaker points of attachment: fewer Jews who hold religious beliefs with such beliefs held less strongly; less religious ritual observance; attachment to Zionism and Israel becoming diluted; and ethnic communal bonds weakening. Jews are also more involved in the wider society in the Diaspora due to fewer barriers and less overt anti-Semitism. This opens up possibilities for cultural integration and assimilation. In Israel, too, there are signs of greater interest in the modern world culture. The major questions addressed by this volume is whether Jewish civilization will continue to provide the basic social framework and values that will lead Jews into the twenty-first century and ensure their survival as a specific social entity.The book contains special contributions by Professor Julius Gould and Professor Irving Louis Horowitz and chapters on "Sociological Analysis of Jewish Identity"; "Jewish Community Boundaries"; and "Factual Accounts from the Diaspora and Israel."

A hundred years before the League of Nations gave Britain the Mandate over Palestine, the emissaries of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, a Protestant organization, were the first to take root in the Holy Land. From 1820 onwards, their pioneering efforts compelled other churches, and the European powers that they represented, as well as the Jewish world, to become more engaged in the vigorous activities taking place in the Land of Israel, in order not to allow the Protestants to hold sway. Thus, the Society initiated a process that was to be of significant value in the restoration of the country when it was transformed, mainly as a result of mass Jewish immigration, from a remote and isolated region into one of the most flourishing provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The initial hopes of the Society to hasten the second advent of the Christian Messiah through the conversion of the Jews were not realized. Only a handful of the Jews in the country were caught in the Mission's net. Yet the society - by establishing the first modern institutions of medical care, education and charity - made a valuable contribution to progress in general. Although the Lond

The central aim of this book is to attempt to determine the response of the classic texts of Jewish traditions to the famous dilemma posed in Plato's Euthyphro: does God freely determine morality, or is morality independent of God?
The author argues that the picture that emerges from Jewish texts is significantly more complex and nuanced than most of the contemporary Jewish philosophical literature is prepared to concede. While providing an extensive discussion of the perspective of Jewish tradition on divine command ethics, this book develops a position that is distinct from and critical of other views that have recently been advanced in Jewish scholarship. At the same time, the book provides a substantial analysis of some Christian perspectives on divine command ethics. Relevant biblical, rabbinic and later Jewish texts are discussed, as well as some of the relevant views that have been taken in philosophical literature and in Christian and Jewish thought.

The volumes in this set, originally published between 1940 and 1994, draw together research by leading academics in the area of welfare and the welfare state, and provide a rigorous examination of related key issues. The volumes examine welfare policy, equality, poverty, class, government, social policy, unemployment, and social services, whilst also exploring the general principles and practices of welfare and the welfare state in various countries. This set will be of particular interest to students of sociology, health, and political studies respectively.

The first scholarly biography of Levi Yitshak of Berdychiv in English in over thirty-five years. Defender of the Faithful explores the life and thought of Levi Yitshak of Berdychiv (1740-1809), one of the most fascinating and colorful Hasidic leaders of his time. This is an intellectual and religious biography, a reading of the development of his thought and career. Featuring examples of Levi Yitshak's extraordinary texts alongside insightful analysis by scholar and theologian Arthur Green, Defender of the Faithful is a compelling study of both Levi Yitshak's theology and broader philosophy.

The present publication is the first that has attempted to portray the separate and progressive history of the Jews in the different countries which they have made their homes, since their expulsion from the land which they had been identified for something like thirty centuries. In these pages the author has endeavoured to compile a narrative of a great part of what has occurred to the Jews of Asia in the last eighteen and a half centuries.

The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World examines Judaism in Palestine throughout the Hellenistic period, from Alexander the Great's conquest in 334BC to its capture by the Arabs in AD 636. Under the Greek, Roman and finally Christian supremacy which Hellenism brought, Judaism developed far beyond its biblical origins into a form which was to influence European history from the Middle ages to the present day. The book focuses particularly on the social, economic and religious concerns of this period, and the political status of the Jews as both active agents and passive victims of history.
The author provides a straightforward chronological survey of this important period through analysis and interpretation of the existing sources. With its accessible style and explanation of technical terms, the book provides a useful introduction to students and anybody with an interest in post-biblical Judaism.

The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World examines Judaism in Palestine throughout the Hellenistic period, from Alexander the Great's conquest in 334BC to its capture by the Arabs in AD 636. Under the Greek, Roman and finally Christian supremacy which Hellenism brought, Judaism developed far beyond its biblical origins into a form which was to influence European history from the Middle ages to the present day. The book focuses particularly on the social, economic and religious concerns of this period, and the political status of the Jews as both active agents and passive victims of history.
The author provides a straightforward chronological survey of this important period through analysis and interpretation of the existing sources. With its accessible style and explanation of technical terms, the book provides a useful introduction to students and anybody with an interest in post-biblical Judaism.