Freud's collection of antiquities-his "old and dirty gods"-stood as silent witnesses to the early analysts' paradoxical fascination and hostility toward religion. Pamela Cooper-White argues that antisemitism, reaching back centuries before the Holocaust, and the acute perspective from the margins that it engendered among the first analysts, stands at the very origins of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The core insight of psychoanalytic thought- that there is always more beneath the surface appearances of reality, and that this "more" is among other things affective, memory-laden and psychological-cannot fail to have had something to do with the experiences of the first Jewish analysts in their position of marginality and oppression in Habsburg-Catholic Vienna of the 20th century. The book concludes with some parallels between the decades leading to the Holocaust and the current political situation in the U.S. and Europe, and their implications for psychoanalytic practice today. Covering Pfister, Reik, Rank, and Spielrein as well as Freud, Cooper-White sets out how the first analysts' position as Europe's religious and racial "Other" shaped the development of psychoanalysis, and how these tensions continue to affect psychoanalysis today. Old and Dirty Gods will be of great interest to psychoanalysts as well as religious studies scholars.

The Nazis asked him to swear allegiance to Hitler, betraying his country, his friends, and everything he believed in. He refused. Poland, 1939. Professional photographer Wilhelm Brasse is deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and finds himself in a deadly race to survive, assigned to work as the camp's intake photographer and take "identity pictures" of prisoners as they arrive by the trainload. Brasse soon discovers his photography skills are in demand from Nazi guards as well, who ask him to take personal portraits for them to send to their families and girlfriends. Behind the camera, Brasse is safe from the terrible fate that so many of his fellow prisoners meet. But over the course of five years, the horrifying scenes his lens capture, including inhumane medical "experiments" led by Josef Mengele, change Brasse forever. Based on the true story of Wilhelm Brasse, The Auschwitz Photographer is a stark black-and-white reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust. This gripping work of World War II narrative nonfiction takes readers behind the barbed wire fences of the world's most feared concentration camp, bringing Brasse's story to life as he clicks the shutter button thousands of times before ultimately joining the Resistance, defying the Nazis, and defiantly setting down his camera for good.

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.

First-hand testimony of survivors and eyewitnesses is compiled in this shocking and graphic account of the crimes committed during World War II at the largest death camp in Yugoslavia. At the small Croatian town of Jasenovac, the fascist "Independent State of Croatia" (a satellite state of the Nazi Third Reich) constructed a concentration camp where more than 200,000 people, mostly Orthodox Serbs, were systematically murdered. Among the participants in this genocide were members of the Roman Catholic clergy, from the Franciscan monk who became the camp commandant to the infamous Archbishop Stepinac, the spiritual advisor to the fascist state appointed by Pope Pius XII. Vladimir Dedijer, a close associate of Tito, has collected irrefutable documentary and photographic evidence, attesting to thousands of atrocities and the complicity of the Catholic Church in these crimes. The events described in this important volume provide a historical context to the current conflict in Yugoslavia and shed light on the motivations behind the apparently senseless ethnic and religious strife which is tearing Yugoslavia apart. The massacre at Jasenovac was the terrible culmination of centuries-old animosities between Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats and a dark episode in the history of the Catholic Church, one that the Church has attempted to hush up for fifty years.

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."

"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.

Gellman presents a new theology of the Jews as the Chosen People, addressing self-serving ethnocentric supremacy, cultural isolation, and defamation of religions other than Judaism. This book is traditional in taking chosenness and the truth of Judaism seriously, and in eschewing a theology of multiple covenants. At the same time, it is critical, rejecting previous concepts of chosenness, and innovative, offering for the twenty-first century a fresh way of seeing the Jews' place in the world. On this foundation, Gellman suggests a new approach to inter-religious understanding from a Jewish point of view, and examines the impact of his proposal on traditional Jewish liturgy.

A challenging look at two great Jewish philosophers, and what their thinking means to our understanding of God, truth, revelation and reason.

Moses Maimonides (11381204) is Jewish historys greatest exponent of a rational, philosophically sound Judaism. He strove to reconcile the teachings of the Bible and rabbinic tradition with the principles of Aristotelian philosophy, arguing that religion and philosophy ultimately must arrive at the same truth. Baruch Spinoza (163277) is Jewish historys most illustrious heretic. He believed that truth could be attained through reason alone, and that philosophy and religion were separate domains that could not be reconciled. His critique of the Bible and its teachings caused an intellectual and spiritual upheaval whose effects are still felt today.

Rabbi Marc D. Angel discusses major themes in the writings of Maimonides and Spinoza to show us how modern people can deal with religion in an intellectually honest and meaningful way. From Maimonides, we gain insight on how to harmonize traditional religious belief with the dictates of reason. From Spinoza, we gain insight into the intellectual challenges which must be met by modern believers.

Marc A. Krell analyzes the theologies of four twentieth-century Jewish thinkers - Hans Joachim Schoeps, Franz Rosenzweig, Richard Rubenstein, and Irving Greenberg - who have constructed theologies based on their interaction with Christian thought and culture. Their work reflects a common attempt to understand the impact of Christian culture on the historical events prior to and following the Holocaust, and to re-evaluate the relationship between the two religions in light of a history of theological anti-Judaism and modern, racial antisemitism. Krell argues that in their attempts to clarify Jewish identity in relation to Christianity, these thinkers reveal that the boundaries between the two faiths have always been blurred. The writing of these theologians illustrates a historical pattern in which Jewish theologies emerge out of a religious and cultural interchange with Christianity.

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 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 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.

What is fair? How and when can punishment be legitimate? Is there recompense for human suffering? How can we understand ideas about immortality or an afterlife in the context of critical thinking on the human condition? In this book L. E. Goodman presents the first general theory of justice in this century to make systematic use of the Jewish sources and to bring them into a philosophical dialogue with the leading ethical and political texts of the Western tradition. Goodman takes an ontological approach to questions of natural and human justice, developing a theory of community and of nonvindictive yet retributive punishment that is grounded in careful analysis of various Jewish sources-biblical, rabbinic, and philosophical, His exegesis of these sources allow Plato, Kant, and Rawls to join in a discourse with Spinoza and medieval rationalists, such as Saasidah and Maimonides, who speak in a very different idiom but address many of the same themes. Drawing on sources old and new, Jewish and non-Jewish, Goodman offers fresh perspectives on important moral and theological issues that will be of interest to both Jewish and secular philosophers.

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.

Millions of American Christians see U.S. support for the State of Israel as a God-ordained responsibility. Millions more see the ''special relationship'' between the two countries as a bond that should never be challenged, much less broken. Robert O. Smith provides an in-depth look at the English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation at the heart of this popular affinity. In 2006, John Hagee founded Christians United for Israel. Several high-level policymakers, both Christians and Jews, flocked to endorse the effort. Soon, however, questions rose about apparently anti-Catholic and anti-Islamic ideas contained in Hagee's preaching and writing. More Desired Than Our Owne Salvation explores the content of Christian Zionist attitudes, their resonance in popular American culture, and the history of the ideas that have contributed to present realities. After discussing polling data and exploring how Black Protestant views clarify general American attitudes, Smith revisits sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant interpretations of scripture and history. The Pope and the Turk figured significantly, identified by both Luther and Calvin as the two heads of the Antichrist. Protestant exiles from England carried these ideas back to Elizabethan England, provided a nationalist twist, and set Anglo-American history on a new path. The resulting English Protestant tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation shaped Puritan identity, which was then transferred to New England, where it began informing the foundations of American vocation and self-understanding. Through its developments and adaptations, this Judeo-centric tradition provided English colonists and Anglo Americans with purpose and vision. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, many Americans readily welcomed it as a prophetic counterpart, a country whose preservation ''may be more desired then our owne salvation.''

Representing Jewish Thought originated in the conference, convened in honour of Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert, on the theme of visual representations of Jewish thought from antiquity to the early modern period. The volume encompasses essays on various modes and media of transmitting and re/presenting thought, pertinent to Jewish past and present. It explores several approaches to the study of the transmission of ideas in historical sources, zooming in on textual and visual hermeneutics to material and textual culture to performative arts. The volume has brought together scholars from different subfields of Jewish Studies, covering thousands of years of Jewish history, who invite further scholarly reflection on the expression, transmission, and organisation of knowledge in Jewish contexts.

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.

Covering over a thousand years of history (from the Assyrian exile in the eighth century BCE to late Roman times), this book makes an important contribution to the fields of Jewish studies, biblical studies, ancient Near Eastern studies, Samaritan Studies, and early Christian history by challenging the oppositional paradigm that has traditionally characterized the historical relations between Jews and Samaritans. The approach is multi-disciplinary, engaging exciting new discoveries in archaeology, such as the site surveys of ancient Samaria and the major excavations at the holy site of Mt. Gerizim in central Israel; new discoveries in epigraphy, such as the publication of the Samaria papyri dating to the late-Persian period (375-335 BCE), the publication of hundreds of late-Persian period Samarian coins, and the publication of hundreds of fragmentary Mt. Gerizim inscriptions (dating mostly to the late-third and early-second centuries BCE); as well as new discoveries in biblical studies, such as the diverse collection of Pentateuchal manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Only by recognizing the close ties that developed between Samaria and Judah during the much of the first millennium BCE can one explain how the two communities became so similar in belief and practice, even sharing a common set of foundational scriptures (the Pentateuch). Paradoxically, accounting for how two such similar groups as the Samaritans and Jews became alienated from one another during the Maccabean and Roman periods involves explaining how the two were so closely related in the first place. The solution to this puzzle is to be found in earlier Israelite history.

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.