Nobel Laureate Simon Kuznets, famous as the founder of modern empirical economics, pioneered the quantitative study of the economic history of the Jews. Yet, until now, his most important work on the subject was unpublished. This second collection of previously unavailable material issued by Transaction brings to the public, for the first time, the most important economic work written on Jewish migration since that of Werner Sombart a century ago.

This volume of Kuznets' work includes three main essays. The first, titled "Immigration and the Foreign Born," was Kuznets' first work on immigration and discusses the impact of the general foreign born on the U.S. Kuznets and his co-author, Ernest Rubin, offer the essay as a quantitative antidote to the misinformation that led many Jews to support the restrictions ending Jewish migration in the 1920s. The second, "Israel's Economic Development," discusses the impact of mass immigration and other factors on Israeli productivity, providing in English for the first time one of the first detailed studies of the economic development of the state of Israel. The final essay, on "Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States," is the most famous of Kuznets' writings and provides a clear view, backed by a seminal paper that launched the contemporary social scientific study of Jewry. It discusses the details of the labor force, skills, and general structure of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the U.S.

Can the teachings of Judaism provide a sacred framework for repairing the world?

In this groundbreaking volume, leading rabbis, intellectuals, and activists explore the relationship between Judaism and social justice, drawing on ancient and modern sources of wisdom. The contributors argue that American Jewry must move beyond mitzvah days and other occasional service programs, and dedicate itself to systemic change in the United States, Israel, and throughout the world. These provocative essays concentrate on specific justice issues such as eradicating war, global warming, health care, gay rights and domestic violence, offering practical ways to transform theory into practice, and ideas into advocacy.

Rich and passionate, these expressions will inspire you to consider your obligations as a Jew, as an American and as a global citizen, while challenging you to take thoughtful and effective action in the world.

Contributors:

Martha Ackelsberg, PhD Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, PhD Diane Balser, PhD Jeremy Benstein, PhD Rabbi Phyllis Berman Ellen Bernstein Marla Brettschneider, PhD Rabbi Sharon Brous Aryeh Cohen, PhD Stephen P. Cohen, PhD Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, PhD Aaron Dorfman Jacob Feinspan Rabbi Marla Feldman Sandra M. Fox, LCSW Julia Greenberg Mark Hanis Rabbi Jill Jacobs Rabbi Jane Kanarek, PhD Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla Joshua Seth Ladon Arieh Lebowitz Rabbi Michael Lerner, PhD Shaul Magid, PhD Rabbi Natan Margalit, PhD Ruth Messinger Jay Michaelson Rabbi Micha Odenheimer Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner Judith Plaskow, PhD Judith Rosenbaum, PhD April Rosenblum Adam Rubin, PhD Danya Ruttenberg Rabbi David Saperstein Joel Schalit Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, PhD Martin I. Seltman, MD Dara Silverman Daniel Sokatch Shana Starobin Naomi Tucker Abigail Uhrman Rabbi Arthur Waskow, PhD Rabbi Melissa Weintraub

This fascinating book has two aims. The first is to draw attention to the existence of a persisting and virtually unrecognised tradition of 'philosemitism' which manifested itself in Britain and elsewhere in the English-speaking world during every significant international outbreak of antisemitism during the century after 1840. The second is to offer a typology of philosemitism, distinguishing between varieties of support for the Jewish people.

Volume 19 of The Jewish Law Annual is a festschrift in honor of Professor Neil S. Hecht. It contains thirteen articles, ten in English and three in Hebrew. Several articles are jurisprudential in nature, focusing on analysis of halakhic institutions and concepts. Elisha Ancselovits discusses the concept of the prosbul, asking whether it is correct to construe it as a legal fiction, as several scholars have asserted. He takes issue with this characterization of the prosbul, and with other scholarly readings of Tannaitic law in general. The concepts of dignity and shame are addressed in two very different articles, one by Nahum Rakover, and the other by Hanina Ben-Menahem. The former discusses halakhic sources pertaining to the dignity inherent in human existence, and the importance of nurturing it. The latter presents a fascinating survey of actual legal practices that contravened this haklakhic norm. Attestations of these practices are adduced not only from halakhic and semi-halakhic documents, but also from literary, historical, and ethnographic sources. Three articles tackle topical issues of considerable contemporary interest. Bernard S. Jackson comments on legal issues relating to the concept of conversion arising from the story of the biblical heroine Ruth, and compares that concept to the notion of conversion invoked by a recent English court decision on eligibility for admission to denominational schools. An article by Dov I. Frimer explores the much agonized-over question of halakhic remedies for the wife whose husband refuses to grant her a get (bill of divorce), precluding her remarriage. Frimer s focus is the feasibility of inducing the husband to grant the get through monetary pressure, specifically, by awarding the chained wife compensatory tort damages. Tort remedies are also discussed in the third topical article, by Ronnie Warburg, on negligent misrepresentation by investment advisors. Two papers focus on theory of law. Shai Wozner explores the decision rules conduct rules dichotomy in the Jewish law context, clarifying how analysis of which category a given law falls under enhances our understanding of the law s intent. Daniel Sinclair explores the doctrine of normative transparency in the writings of Maimonides, the Hatam Sofer, and R. Abraham Isaac Kook, demonstrating that although transparency was universally endorsed as an ideal, some rabbinical authorities were willing to forego transparency where maintenance of the halakhic system itself was imperiled. An article by Alfredo M. Rabello reviews the primary and secondary literature on end-of-life issues, and contextualizes the much-discussed talmudic passage bAvoda Zara 18a. And an article by Chaim Saiman offers a critical survey of the main approaches to conceptualizing and teaching Jewish law in American universities; it also makes suggestions for new, and perhaps more illuminating pedagogic direction. In the Hebrew section, an intriguing article by Berachyahu Lifshitz presents a comparison of Persian and talmudic law on the status of promises and the role of the divine in their enforcement. Yuval Sinai discusses the halakhic law of evidence, particularly the well-known "two witnesses" requirement and departures from it. The volume closes with a historical article by Elimelech Westreich on the official rabbinical court in nineteenth century Jerusalem. It focuses on the rabbinical figures who served on the court, the communities for whom it adjudicated, and its role in the broader geopolitical and sociocultural context.

Nobel Laureate Simon Kuznets, famous as the founder of modern empirical economics, pioneered the quantitative study of the economic history of the Jews. Yet until now his most important work on the subject was unpublished. These volumes bring to the public, for the first time, the most important work written on Jewish economic history since that of Werner Sombart a century ago.

In the first volume, Kuznets uses extensive, original data to trace trends in the economic life of American Jews. He measures quantitatively for the first time the legendary economic success of American Jews and discusses the foundations of these achievements. Tracing their distinctive concentration in the professions, he exposes the causes of the extreme inequalities in American Jewish economic life. The immigrant origin of nearly all American Jews offers a unique case study in the process of assimilation that made American Jewry the ultimate American success story. This offers an ideal prelude to the second forthcoming volume, Comparative Perspectives on Jewish Migration.

The volume's editors also provide a unique perspective on Kuznets' work. In the introduction, Weyl shows that many of Kuznets' most influential ideas, were inspired by his study of the economic history of the Jews. Through careful analysis of shared themes, and dozens of hours of detailed interviews, Lo and Weyl reveal a new dimension of Kuznets' thought to historical inquiry.

What is the value of medical research? With contributions from anthropologists, sociologists and activists, this approach brings into focus the forms of value - social, epistemic, and economic - that are involved in medical research practices and how these values intersect with everyday living. Though their work covers wide empirical ground -from HIV trials in Kenya and drug donation programs in Tanzania to industry-academic collaborations in the British National Health Service - the authors share a commitment to understanding the practices of medical research as embedded in both local social worlds and global markets. Their collective concern is to rethink the conventional ethical demarcations betwweenpaid and unpaid research services in light of the social and material organisation of medical research practices. . Rather than warn against economic incursions into medical knowledge and health practice, or, alternatively, the reduction of local experience to the standards of bioethics, we hope to illuminate the array of practices, knowledges, and techniques through which the value of medical research is brought into being. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Cultural Economy.

The controversy over culture and British 20th century economic performance has raged for many decades. Now, through selecting a control population, the link between British and American cultural values and entrepreneurship is finally unearthed. Using new evidence of Jewish immigration, mobility, and assimilation, Andrew Godley shows that despite similar backgrounds and opportunities, the Jews in London were far less entrepreneurial, preferring to remain as workers. However, in America Jews moved en masse into self-employment creating an innovative, dynamic economy while Britain remained stagnant and conservative.

Professor Moshe Bar-Asher, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University and long-time president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, has published more than 200 articles and sixteen books and edited aboout 90 books and collections. The vast majority of his work has been accessible, however, only to specialists who read modern Hebrew or French. Bar-Asher's groundbreaking articles on the dialects of rabbinic literature are classics. In more recent years he has brought the same breadth and depth of grammatical knowledge, and philological acumen, to the study of older classical Hebrew texts, including literary and epigraphic texts. This volume presents studies of individual words and verses within the Bible, as well as broader thematic discussions of biblical language and its long reception-history, down through medieval scribes and modern lexicographers. Also represented are Bar-Asher's penetrating studies of Qumran texts and languages, which illuminate both the linguistic traditions reflected in these texts and the scribal culture from which they emerged. The third section contains studies of Mishnaic Hebrew. There are both sweeping surveys of the field and its accomplishments and challenges, and studies of specific phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical features.

Darwin provoked Jewish as well as Christian thinkers so that many felt obliged to establish oppositional, alternative, synthetic, or complimentary models relating Jewish religion to his theory of natural selection. This book examines a range of leading nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American progressive Jewish thinkers, with the primary focus being rabbis Kohler, Wise, Hirsch, Krauskopf, and Hahn, although many others are covered. Key themes include the widespread commitment to universal evolutionism, that is, the application of biological evolutionary theory to other realms (e.g. history, religion, cosmic), and the particular fascination with the evolution of ethical systems within human societies, bearing in mind mankind's bestial origins and the new challenges for understanding religious authority and revelation. It is argued that Reform Jewish discussions about the nature of God have been more profoundly shaped by engagement with evolutionary theory than has been recognized before, and that evolutionary thought provides the key framework for understanding Reform Judaism itself. The precise nature of Jewish Reform engagement with Christian proponents of theistic evolution are important, as are their interest in alternative evolutionists to Darwin, such as Spencer and Haeckel.

This book offers a creative and accessible exploration of two comic book series: Y: The Last Man and Saga It examines themes pertinent to the 21st century and its challenges, such as those of diversity and religious pluralism, issues of gender and war, heroes and moral failures, and forgiveness and seeking justice Through close interdisciplinary reading and personal narratives, the author delves into the complex worlds of Y and Saga in search of an ethics, meaning, and a path resonant with real world struggles Reading these works side-by-side, the analysis draws parallels and seeks common themes around four central ideas: seeking and making meaning in a meaningless world; love and parenting through oppression and grief; peacefulness when surrounded by violence; and the perils and hopes of diversity and communion This timely, attentive, and thoughtful study will resonate with scholars and students of comic studies, media and cultural studies, philosophy, theology, literature, psychology, and popular culture studies

This volume is a unique investigation of contemporary Jewish life in a Muslim country and the first ethnography of the Persian-Jewish diaspora, giving the reader a deep appreciation of this relatively unknown culture. The author describes in detail traditional Jewish life in the provincial city of Shiraz and the challenges of coexistence with a Muslim majority.

As in all fields and disciplines of the humanities, Jewish Studies scholars find themselves confronted with the rapidly increasing availability of digital resources (data), new technologies to interrogate and analyze them (tools), and the question of how to critically engage with these developments. This volume discusses how the digital turn has affected the field of Jewish Studies. It explores the current state of the art and probes how digital developments can be harnessed to address the specific questions, challenges and problems that Jewish Studies scholars confront. In a field characterised by dispersed sources, and heterogeneous scripts and languages that speak to a multitude of cultures and histories, of abundance as well as loss, what is the promise of Digital Humanities methods--and what are the challenges and pitfalls? The articles in this volume were originally presented at the international conference #DHJewish - Jewish Studies in the Digital Age, which was organised at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C(2)DH) at University of Luxembourg in January 2021. The first big international conference of its kind, it brought together more than sixty scholars and heritage practitioners to discuss how the digital turn affects the field of Jewish Studies.

The essays in this volume seek to confront some of the charged meeting points of European - especially German - and Jewish history. All, in one way or another, explore the entanglements, the intertwined moments of empathy and enmity, belonging and estrangement, creativity and destructiveness that occurred at these junctions.

This book reconstructs the intellectual and social context of several influential proponents of European unity before and after the First World War. Through the lives and works of the well-known promoter of Pan-Europe, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, and his less well-known predecessor, Alfred Hermann Fried, the book illuminates how transnational peace projects emerged from individuals who found themselves alienated from an increasingly nationalizing political climate within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the new nation states of the interwar period. The book's most important intervention concerns the Jewish origins of crucial plans for European unity. It reveals that some of the most influential ideas on European culture and on the peaceful reorganization of an interconnected Europe emerged from Jewish milieus and as a result of Jewish predicaments.

This book explores the diverse manner in which family dynamics shaped Jewish identities in ways that were unique and directly connected to their experiences within their families of origin. Highlighted is the diversity of experience of ethnic identity within members of a group of women who are similar in many respects and who belong to an ethnic group that is often invisible. Jewish people, like members of other ethnic groups are often treated as if their identities were homogeneous. However, gender, social class, sexual orientation, factors surrounding immigration status, proximity of family members to the holocaust or pogroms, the number of generations one's family has been in the US and other salient aspects of experience and identites transform and inform the meaning and experience by group members. The book explores these diversities of experience and goes on to highlight the way in which the intermingling of family dynamics and subsequent Jewish identity in these women is manifested in the practice of psychotherapy. In 2012, the book had been awarded the Jewish Women Caucus of the Association for Women in Psychology Award for Scholarship, for that year. This book was published as a special issue of Women and Therapy.

This book, in its 114th year, provides insight into major trends in the North American Jewish communities, examining the recently completed Pew Report (A Portrait of Jewish American), gender in American Jewish life, national and Jewish communal affairs and the US and world Jewish population. It also acts as an important resource with lists of Jewish Institutions, Jewish periodicals and academic resources as well as Jewish honorees, obituaries and major recent events. It should prove useful to social scientists and historians of the American Jewish community, Jewish communal workers and the press, among others.

A collection of articles which offer an insight into the opinions and attitudes of the German population, the East Europeans and the Poles towards Jews during the period of Nazi persecution. Historians are able to make important distinctions between various periods, groups and regions. At the close of this study is a selection of articles that deal with support for the Jews.

Religious encounters with mystery can be fascinating, but also terrifying. So too when it comes to encounters with the monsters that haunt Jewish and Christian traditions. Religion has a lot to do with horror, and horror has a lot to do with religion. Religion has its monsters, and monsters have their religion. In this unusual and provocative book, Timothy Beal explores how religion, horror, and the monstrous are deeply intertwined. This new edition has been thoughtfully updated, reflecting on developments in the field over the past two decades and highlighting its contributions to emerging conversations. It also features a new chapter, "Gods, Monsters, and Machines," which engages cultural fascinations and anxieties about technologies of artificial intelligence and machine learning as they relate to religion and the monstrous at the dawn of the Anthropocene. Religion and Its Monsters is essential reading for students and scholars of religion and popular culture, as well as for any readers with an interest in horror theory or monster theory.

A collection of articles which offer an insight into the opinions and attitudes of the German population, the East Europeans and the Poles towards Jews during the period of Nazi persecution. Historians are able to make important distinctions between various periods, groups and regions. At the close of this study is a selection of articles that deal with support for the Jews.

Written by the core faculty of the Hebrew Written by the core faculty of the Hebrew Program at Brandeis University, Brandeis Modern Hebrew is an accessible introduction to the Hebrew language for American undergraduates and high school students. Its functional and contextual elements are designed to bring students from the beginner level to the intermediate level, and to familiarize them with those linguistic aspects that will prepare them to function in advanced stages. This volume reflects some of the main principles that have shaped the Brandeis Hebrew curriculum during the past decade. These include: * an emphasis on the learner's ability to use the target language in all four skills areas: speaking, listening, reading, and writing * an effort to contextualize each unit within a specific subject or theme * exposing the student to authentic and semi-authentic materials (texts written by native speakers) * exploring different elements from Israeli and Jewish culture in the language drills, reading passages, and in selections of sources from the Hebrew literary canon The text in this edition comprises a short introduction to the instructor, 11 units, supplementary Hebrew proficiency guidelines, and a vocabulary list. Audio-visual components for all reading passages are available online for download.Program at Brandeis University, Brandeis Modern Hebrew is an accessible introduction to the Hebrew language for American undergraduates and high school students.

Zionism, as it emerged in the late 19th century, called for a grand effort to create an independent, self-governing Jewish nation. By publicly raising the flag of autonomy, it was the Zionists, ultimately, who accomplished this truly revolutionary change, transforming the structure of Jewry, its condition among the nations, and the play of conflicting religious and secular beliefs.
Completing the most comprehensive and thorough examination to date of the rise and consolidation of this remarkable movement, David Vital's Zionism: The Crucial Phase is the third and final addition to the critically acclaimed history of Zionism. The first volume in the series, The Origins of Zionism covered the years from 1881 to 1897, and was followed by Zionism: The Formative Years which continued the history through 1906--winning both the 1983 Kenneth B. Smilen/Present Tense Literary Award and the Jewish Chronicle/Wingate Award. The final volume considers the critical period on the eve of World War I, when Zionist leadership was faltering, the promise it had held out to the crushed and impoverished Jews of Europe had drastically diminished, and it appeared as if the movement was already in decline. Studying the sources and consequences of this decline and the dramatic and unexpected wartime recovery, Crucial Phase dispels the myths and legends surrounding British policy on Zionism under Lloyd George and Balfour and sheds light on the revolutionary nature of Zionism and its dedicated followers.

Ruth Kluger (1931 - 2020) passed away on October 5, 2020 in the U.S. Born in Vienna and deported to Theresienstadt, she survived Auschwitz and the Shoah together with her mother. After living in Germany for a short time after the War, she immigrated to New York. She was educated in the U.S. and received degrees in English literature as well as her Ph.D. in German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at several American universities. She has numerous scholarly publications to her credit, mostly in the fields of German and Austrian literary history. She is also recognized as a poet in her own right, an essayist, and a feminist critic. She returned to Europe, where she was a guest professor in Goettingen and Vienna. Her memoir, entitled weiter leben (1992), which she translated and revised in an English parallel-text as Still Alive, was a major bestseller and highly regarded autobiographical account of a Holocaust survivor. It was subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages. It has also generated a vigorous critical discussion in its own right. Ruth Kluger received numerous prestigious literary prizes and other distinctions. The present volume, The Legacy of Ruth Kluger and the End of the Auschwitz Century, aims to honor her memory by assessing critically her writings and career. Taking her biography and writings as points of departure, the volume includes contributions in fields and from perspectives which her writings helped to bring into focus acutely. In the table of contents are listed the following contributions: Sander L. Gilman, "Poetry and Naming in Ruth Kluger's Works and Life"; Heinrich Detering, "'Spannung': Remarks on a Stylistic Principle in Ruth Kluger's Writing"; Stephan Braese, "Speaking with Germans. Ruth Kluger and the 'Restitution of Speech between Germans and Jews'"; Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, "Writing Auschwitz: Jean Amery, Imre Kertesz, and Ruth Kluger"; Ulrike Offenberg, "Ruth Kluger and the Jewish Tradition on Women Saying Kaddish; Mark H. Gelber, "Ruth Kluger, Judaism, and Zionism: An American Perspective"; Monica Tempian, "Children's Voices in the Poetry of the Shoah"; Daniel Reynolds, "Ruth Kluger and the Problem of Holocaust Tourism"; Vera Schwarcz, "A China Angle on Memory and Ghosts in the Poetry of Ruth Kluger."

In this collection of writings by Ze''ev Jabo tinsky, the reader is offered an insight into his thinking o n Zionism, the Hebrew language, society & economics, the Jew ish-Arab conflict and the Diaspora amongst many things '