"We will be judged in our own time and in the future by measuring the aid that we, inhabitants of a free and fortunate country, gave to our brethren in this time of greatest disaster." This declaration, made shortly after the pogroms of November 1938 by the Jewish communities in Sweden, was truer than anyone could have forecast at the time. Pontus Rudberg focuses on this sensitive issue - Jewish responses to the Nazi persecutions and mass murder of Jews. What actions did Swedish Jews take to aid the Jews in Europe during the years 1933-45 and what determined their policies and actions? Specific attention is given to the aid efforts of the Jewish Community of Stockholm, including the range of activities in which the community engaged and the challenges and opportunities presented by official refugee policy in Sweden.

This title tells the history of the early American Jews, focusing on the objects of everyday life used and created by Jews, such as ritual baths, food, gravestones, portraits, furniture, as well as the synagogue.

Volume XXIV of the distinguished annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry explores the question of relations between Jews and Protestants in modern times. One of the four major branches of Christianity, Protestantism is perhaps the most difficult to write about; it has innumerable sects and churches within it, from the loosely organized Religious Society of Friends to the conservative Evangelicals of the Bible Belt. Different strands of Protestantism hold vastly different views on theology, social problems, and politics. These views play out in differing attitudes and relationships between mainstream Protestant churches and Jews, Judaism, and the State of Israel. In this volume, established scholars from multiple disciplines and various countries delve into these essential questions of the "Protestant-Jewish conundrum." The discussion begins with a trenchant analysis of the historical framework in which Protestant ideas towards Jews and Judaism were formed. Contributors delve into diverse topics including the attitudes of the Evangelical movement toward Jews and Israel; Protestant reactions to Mel Gibson's blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ."; German-Protestant behavior during and after Nazi era; and mainstream Protestant attitudes towards Israel and the Israeli-Arab conflict.. Taken as a whole, this compendium presents discussions and questions central to the ongoing development of Jewish-Protestant relations. Studies in Contemporary Jewry seeks to provide its readers with up-to-date and accessible scholarship on questions of interest in the general field of modern Jewish studies. Studies in Contemporary Jewry presents new approaches to the scholarly work of the latest generation of researchers working on Jewish history, sociology, demography, political science, and culture.

British-Jewish writers are increasingly addressing challenging questions about what it means to be both British and Jewish in the twenty-first century. "Writing Jewish" provides a lively and accessible introduction to the key issues in contemporary British-Jewish fiction, memoirs and journalism, and explores how Jewishness exists alongside a range of other different identities in Britain today.
By interrogating myths and stereotypes and looking at themes of remembering and forgetting, belonging and alienation, location and dislocation, Ruth Gilbert examines how these writers identify the particularity of their difference - while acknowledging that this difference is neither fixed nor final, but always open to re-interpretation.
Ruth Gilbert is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Winchester, UK and Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute Research Centre at the University of Southampton, UK. She has published a number of articles on Jewish literature and is the author of "Early Modern Hermaphrodites: Sex and Other Stories."

The association of Nazism with the symbol of ultimate evil - the devil - can be found in the works of Klaus and Thomas Mann, Else Lasker-Schuler, and Rolf Hochhuth. He appears either as Satan of the Judeo-Christian tradition, or as Goethe's Mephisto. The devil is not only a metaphor, but a central part of the historical analysis. Barasch-Rubinstein looks into this phenomenon and analyzes the premise that the image of the devil had a substantial impact on Germans' acceptance of Nazi ideas. His diabolic characteristics, the pact between himself and humans, and his prominent place in German culture are part of the intriguing historical observations these four German writers embedded in their work. Whether writing before the outbreak of WWII, during the war, or after it, when the calamities of the Holocaust were already well-known, they all examine Nazism in the light of the ultimate manifestation of evil.

This book is a detailed critical study of Libeskind's Berlin Jewish Museum in its historical, architectural and philosophical context. Emphasizing how the Holocaust changed our perception of history, memory, witnessing and representation, it develops the notion of 'memorial ethics' to explore the Museum's difference from more conventional post-World War Two commemorative sites. The main focus is on the Museum as an experience of the materiality of trauma which engages the visitor in a performative duty to remember. Arleen Ionescu builds on Levinas's idea of 'ethics as optics' to show how Libeskind's Museum becomes a testimony to the unpresentable Other. Ionescu also extends the Museum's experiential dimension by proposing her own subjective walk through Libeskind's space reimagined as a 'literary museum'. Featuring reflections on texts by Beckett, Celan, Derrida, Kafka, Blanchot, Wiesel and Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger (Celan's cousin), this virtual tour concludes with a brief account of Libeskind's analogous 'healing project' for Ground Zero.

The ninth volume of this edition, translation, and commentary of the Jerusalem Talmud contains two Tractates. The first Tractate, "Documents", treats divorce law and principles of agency when written documents are required. Collateral topics are the rules for documents of manumission, those for sealed documents whose contents may be hidden from witnesses, the rules by which the divorced wife can collect the moneys due her, the requirement that both divorcer and divorcee be of sound mind, and the rules of conditional divorce. The second Tractate, "Nazirites", describes the Nasirean vow and is the main rabbinic source about the impurity of the dead. As in all volumes of this edition, a (Sephardic rabbinic) vocalized text is presented, with parallel texts used as source of variant readings. A new translation is accompanied by an extensive commentary explaining the rabbinic background of all statements and noting Talmudic and related parallels. Attention is drawn to the extensive Babylonization of the Gittin text compared to genizah texts.

"Avi doesn't only talk the talk, or even walk the walk. He writes the instruction manual. This book shows a way, perhaps not the only way but one indispensable way, of being an activist on behalf of the Jewish people. Read it and learn." from the Foreword by Alan M. Dershowitz I

n this age of perpetual strife and conflict, we need now more than ever to find out how to be proactive in repairing our broken world. Rabbi Avraham Weiss's provocative and challenging guidebook will show you just that and so much more.

With easy-to-follow steps, accessible explanations of the principles of spiritual activism and an exploration into the foundations of spiritual activism as rooted in the Torah, Weiss offers more than simply a user manual he provides an in-depth approach to changing your role in the world.

Topics include: Why, How and When Do We Engage in Spiritual Activism? Choosing the Cause Making Partners Designing the Strategy Leading Other People Seeing the Big Picture And more "

Abu'l-Barakat is a renowned philosopher of the Arabic-Jewish milieu who composed in his magnum opus the Kitab al-Mu'tabar, a comprehensive metaphysics which challenged the accepted notions of the traditional metaphysical philosophy. 'Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdadi's Metaphysical Philosophy' examines the novel philosophical conceptions of the first book of the Metaphysics of the Kitab al-Mu'tabar. The aim is to present a developed conception of Abu'l-Barakat's systematic metaphysics. This is accomplished by following the order of topics discussed, while translating the relevant passages. These different topics comprise stages of cognition that move from an analysis of time, creation and causality to the conception of a higher spiritual realm of mental entities and a conception of God as the First Knower and Teacher. The epistemological and ontological conceptions are analyzed at each culminating stage. 'Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdadi's Metaphysical Philosophy' analyzes vast portions of the metaphysical study for the first time. The book will thus be a valuable resource for all those seeking an original and broad metaphysics, and for students and scholars of Jewish and Islamic Philosophy. Furthermore, it is of importance for those seeking a metaphysics related to scientific theories and those interested in the history of science and metaphysics.

This study examines by a meticulous analysis of abundant rabbinic citations the pluralism of the Halakhah in the pre-70 period which stands in contrast to the fixed Halakhah of later periods. The Temple's destruction provoked, for political motives, the initiation of this significant shift, which protracted itself, in developmental stages, for a longer period. The transition from the Tannaitic to the Amoraic era was a consequential turning point on the extended path from flexibility to rigidity in Jewish law.

This book deals with fundamental questions relating to outstanding changes in Jewish Intellectual history from the time of the Bible to the present. These questions include the following: How did Israel evolve from being a people which oscillated to and from belief in one God to exclusive monotheism? Which circumstances led to the transition among the Jews in the Roman empire from being a militant, state-based people to being a pacifist, scripture-based people? Which social forces attracted the Jews under medieval Islamic rule to secular life and identity? How did emancipation after the American and French revolutions lead to the end of rabbinic dominance? How did nationalism transform modern Jewish life and culture?

Sicker provides a synthesis from a wide range of sources that have not previously been integrated to present an unromanticized recapitulation of the events and personalities that led to the troubled birth of modern Israel. Much historical writing on modern Israel, Sicker asserts, is apologetic and editorially filtered in conformity with a traditional Zionist historiography that tends to obscure as much as it reveals. As a result, the emergence of modern Israel is shrouded in a mythology that has little or no place for inconvenient facts or dissonant voices. Sicker examines the nature of the struggles within the Zionist community over the national idea and its implications, and the evolving interactions of that community with the external political environment. This leads him to assign a far more significant role to the so- called right-wing movements than is usually allotted to them in the traditional left-oriented historiography and a more critical assessment of the Zionist leadership.

He shows that virtually every major problem faced by contemporary Israel, a half-century after it came into existence, was foreshadowed by the events and circumstances that precipitated and conditioned its emergence. Sicker examines the seemingly irreconcilable differences between the left and right extremes of the political spectrum; between the religious community and the secular; and between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists. Today, a half-century later, these same issues are causing an increasing polarization of Israeli society, with uncertain ramifications for the future.

A groundbreaking history of anti-Semitism, from the Roman Empire to the twentieth century The question of whether anti-Semitism is a transitory phenomenon, appearing randomly in Western history, or whether it reflects a deep seated tradition inherent in Western culture has been often debated. This volume traces the image of the Jew and the attitudes toward the Jew over the past two thousand years, from the Roman Empire to the reunification of Germany, showing the consistent pattern of anti-Semitism in Western societies. With essays on the religious, social, political, and economic origins of European and American anti- Semitism, as well as some Jewish responses, this volume is the most wide-ranging history of anti-Semitism ever compiled. Contributors to this volume include Nicholas de Lange, Cambridge University; Pinchas Hachoen Peli, University of the Negev; David Menashri, Tel Aviv University; Bernard Lewis, Princeton University (retired); Liliane Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania; and Jeremy Cohen, Ohio State University.

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world. BZAW welcomes submissions that make an original and significant contribution to the field; demonstrate sophisticated engagement with the relevant secondary literature; and are written in readable, logical, and engaging prose.

Within the last decade, the kibbutzim of Israel have experienced a fundamental transformation that poses challenges to their values of collectivism and solidarity. This collection by leading scholars of the kibbutz not only updates knowledge of this innovative society, but also draws parallels to changes occurring in the West. Kibbutz society is currently experiencing major change. Economic crises that erupted ten years ago have transferred into major social and ideological crises. The underlying debate is about what values should govern kibbutzim, as collectivism and altruism clash with individual and egocentric values in offering policies and directions for the future of the kibbutz society. An important result of the changes is the irrelevance of much past research about kibbutzim. This book updates that research. With chapters by leading scholars of the kibbutz, this book not only updates knowledge of this innovative society, but also draws parallels to changes occurring in the West. This collection will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers of the kibbutz and the cooperative phenomenon, and those interested in alternative approaches to aging, education, management, and women's studies.

This is the first major work on the interrelationship between Liberal Judaism and Rabbinic Law (Halachah) ever to have been produced in Britain, and in Europe since the nineteenth century. It represents a plea for a positive yet forthrightly critical approach to Rabbinic Law in general aswell as to a variety of specific topics such as the language of prayer, the status of women, medical confidentiality, euthanasia, Jewish identity, contraception, divorce, and Jewish territorial rights in Palestine/Israel.

John D. Rayner graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge and Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. He is Emeritus Rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, Hon. Life-President of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, and Lecturer in Liturgy at Leo Baeck College, London.

This book describes the vibrant activity of survivors who founded Jewish historical commissions and documentation centers in Europe immediately after the Second World War. In the first postwar decade, these initiatives collected thousands of Nazi documents along with testimonies, memoirs, diaries, songs, poems, and artifacts of Jewish victims. They pioneered in developing a Holocaust historiography that placed the experiences of Jews at the center and used both victim and perpetrator sources to describe the social, economic, and cultural aspects of the everyday life and death of European Jews under the Nazi regime.
This book is the first in-depth monograph on these survivor historians and the organizations they created. A comparative analysis, it focuses on France, Poland, Germany, Austria, and Italy, analyzing the motivations and rationales that guided survivors in chronicling the destruction they had witnessed, while also discussing their research techniques, archival collections, and historical publications. It reflects growing attention to survivor testimony and to the active roles of survivors in rebuilding their postwar lives. It also discusses the role of documenting, testifying, and history writing in processes of memory formation, rehabilitation, and coping with trauma.
Jockusch finds that despite differences in background and wartime experiences between the predominantly amateur historians who created the commissions, the activists found documenting the Holocaust to be a moral imperative after the war, the obligation of the dead to the living, and a means for the survivors to understand and process their recent trauma and loss. Furthermore, historical documentation was vital in the pursuit of postwar justice and was deemed essential in counteracting efforts on the part of the Nazis to erase their wartime crimes. The survivors who created the historical commissions were the first people to study the development of Nazi policy towards the Jews and also to document Jewish responses to persecution, a topic that was largely ignored by later generations of Holocaust scholars.

This is the first major work on the interrelationship between Liberal Judaism and Rabbinic Law (Halachah) ever to have been produced in Britain, and in Europe since the nineteenth century. It represents a plea for a positive yet forthrightly critical approach to Rabbinic Law in general aswell as to a variety of specific topics such as the language of prayer, the status of women, medical confidentiality, euthanasia, Jewish identity, contraception, divorce, and Jewish territorial rights in Palestine/Israel.

This volume interweaves concepts and methods from psychology and other social sciences with Jewish ideas and practices in order to address contemporary social issues. This volume brings together pioneering research from scholars in such fields as psychology, education, and religious studies. The authors integrate insights from Jewish texts and practices with the methods and concepts of the social sciences to create interventions that promote the well-being of children, adults, families, communities, and society. Divided into three sections - Education, Psychological Well-Being, Society and Beyond- this book shows how this integrationist approach can deepen our understanding and generate new insights around pressing social challenges to impact positive change in the lives of people and communities.

By the late nineteenth century, physical anthropologists were engaged in debates about the "Jewish Racial Question," asking whether there was a biological basis for Jewish distinctiveness and social development. This fascinating book describes for the first time the response of Jewish race scientists to these debates, demonstrating that in their participation, the scientists were involved in a complex process of Jewish self-definition, one that was impelled by two factors: the external threat of antisemitism and the internal need to reassert a Jewish ethnic pride that had been battered by assimilation. John Efron examines the racial science of Jewish anthropologists and physicians in Germany, England, Russia, and Austria, showing that their work differed from place to place because it was contingent on such historical factors as the nature of Jewish integration in a given country, the character of a nation's Jewish community or communities, and the level of antisemitism there. Efron sketches the growth of race science from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and considers how Jews were represented in it. He then studies the image of Jews in British anthropology, discusses the first Jewish race scientist, Joseph Jacobs, an Anglo-Australian who focused on the Jews of Western Europe, and the Russian Jewish race scientist Samuel Weissenberg, who studied the Jews of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Near East. Finally he examines the link between race science and the politics of Zionism, showing how Zionist scientists used race science not to assert Jewish superiority but to bolster a political cause that was concerned with Jewish spiritual and physical regeneration.

Lays to rest the controversial myth of Jewish involvement in the slave trade In the wake of the civil rights movement, a great divide has opened up between African American and Jewish communities. What was historically a harmonious and supportive relationship has suffered from a powerful and oft-repeated legend, that Jews controlled and masterminded the slave trade and owned slaves on a large scale, well in excess of their own proportion in the population. In this groundbreaking book, likely to stand as the definitive word on the subject, Eli Faber cuts through this cloud of mystification to recapture an important chapter in both Jewish and African diasporic history. Focusing on the British empire, Faber assesses the extent to which Jews participated in the institution of slavery through investment in slave trading companies, ownership of slave ships, commercial activity as merchants who sold slaves upon their arrival from Africa, and direct ownership of slaves. His unprecedented original research utilizing shipping and tax records, stock-transfer ledgers, censuses, slave registers, and synagogue records reveals, once and for all, the minimal nature of Jews' involvement in the subjugation of Africans in the Americas. A crucial corrective, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade lays to rest one of the most contested historical controversies of our time.