Wartime sermons reveal how Jews perceive themselves in relation to the majority society and how Jewish and national values are reconciled when the fate of a nation is at stake. They also illustrate how rabbis guide their communities through the challenges of their times. The sermons reproduced here were delivered by American and British rabbis from across the Jewish spectrum-Orthodox to Liberal, Ashkenazi and Sephardi-from the Napoleonic Wars to the attacks of 9/11. Each sermon is prefaced by a comprehensive introduction explaining the context in which it was delivered. Detailed notes explain allusions unfamiliar to a present-day readership and draw comparisons where appropriate to similar passages in contemporary newspapers and other sermons. A general introduction surveys more broadly the distinctive elements of modern Jewish preaching-the new preaching occasions bound up with the history of the countries in which Jews were living; new modes for the dissemination of the sermons (printed pamphlets and the Jewish and general press), and the emergence of women's voices from the pulpit. It also surveys the distinctive themes of modern Jewish sermons, including responses to Jewish suffering, social justice, eulogies for national leaders, Zionism, and war. What Jewish religious leaders said to their congregations when their countries went to war (or, in some cases, were considering going to war) raises questions of central significance for both modern Jewish history and religious thinking in the civic context. What evidence do these sermons present concerning the degree of patriotism felt by Jews? Where and when do we find examples of dissent from the policies taken by their governments, or explicit criticism? What theological problems are raised by the preachers in the context of unprecedented and unimagined destruction, and how do they respond to these problems? How is the enemy presented in these texts? How is the problem of Jews fighting and killing other Jews addressed? Are the preachers functioning to articulate traditions that challenge the consensus of the moment, or as instruments of social control serving the needs of governments looking for unquestioning support from their citizenry? In all these areas, this book makes an important contribution to the American- and Anglo-Jewish history of this period while also making available a collection of mostly unknown Jewish texts produced at dramatic moments of the past two centuries.

This masterly collection of essays offers a multifaceted analysis of how Jewish leaders in medieval and early modern times responded to the challenges presented by a changing world. Based largely on the study of sermons and response - genres that show them addressing real situations in the lives of their people - the book reveals how they handled intellectual, social, and political diversity and conflict. As medieval Jews were exposed to new philosophical ideas, many began to question and challenge rabbinical leadership. Leadership and Conflict explores the process by which these ideas became more accessible, the doubts that consequently arose regarding certain biblical and rabbinic texts, and the attempt by some leaders to ban the study of philosophical texts altogether. The book also addresses the rhetoric of rebuke used by preachers to criticize behavior within their community that they considered to be a violation of Jewish law and tradition. Another set of challenges to traditional Jewish life emerged from political developments in the wider world, including the unification of France, the Spanish Inquisition and Edict of Expulsion, and the beginning of the Counter-Reformation. Leadership and Conflict asks whether criticism of the talent and leadership of rabbis in such times of crisis was justified. The final section of the book is devoted to conflicting attitudes within Jewish society: towards the Holy Land, exile and diasporic existence, and messianic movements and personalities. Leadership and Conflict represents three decades of scholarship by Professor Marc Saperstein, a distinguished historian. Bringing his perceptive essays together in a single volume allows a new generation of students and scholars to have access to his insights and conclusions.

The messianic idea that a redeemer sent by God will come to end the suffering of a persecuted people and inaugurate a new age of justice and peace has been one of the most powerful and influential concepts given by the Jewish people to western civilization. This book represents a sample of the most penetrating and provocative scholarly interpretations of Jewish messianic movement from various perspectives- historical, sociological, psychological, and religious.

Many scholars have focused on contemporary sources pertaining to the Nazi persecution and mass murder of Jews between 1933 and 1945--citing dated documents, newspapers, diaries, and letters--but the sermons delivered by rabbis describing and protesting against the ever-growing oppression of European Jews have been largely neglected. Agony in the Pulpit is a response to this neglect, and to the accusations made by respected figures that Jewish leaders remained silent in the wake of catastrophe. The passages from sermons reproduced in this volume--delivered by 135 rabbis in fifteen countries, mainly from the United States and England--provide important evidence of how these rabbis communicated the ever-worsening news to their congregants, especially on important religious occasions when they had peak attendance and peak receptivity. A central theme is how the preachers related the contemporary horrors to ancient examples of persecution. Did they present what was occurring under Hitler as a reenactment of the murderous oppressions by Pharaoh, Amalek, Haman, Ahasuerus, the Crusaders, the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian Pogroms? When did they begin to recognize and articulate from their pulpits an awareness that current events were fundamentally unprecedented? Was the developing cataclysm consistent with traditional beliefs about God's control of what happened on earth? No other book-length study has presented such abundant evidence of rabbis in all streams of Jewish religious life seeking to rouse and inspire their congregants to full awareness of the catastrophic realities that were taking shape in the world beyond their synagogues.

The Devil and the Jews presents the medieval conception of the Jew as devil-literally and figuratively. Through documents, analysis, and illustrations, the book exposes the full spectrum of the Jew's demonization as devil, sorcerer, blasphemer, and ritual murderer; as desecrator and heretic; as usurer infidel. Trachtenberg reveals, in a chilling study, how these myths, peculiar to Christian Europe in the late Middle Ages, still exist transmuted form today.

Harold I. Saperstein served as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Lynbrook, N.Y., from 1933 until his retirement in 1980. The specific contours of his career reflect a sustained effort to use the pulpit of this suburban temple to communicate a Jewish perspective based on personal encounters with great issues of the day-including the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, the civil rights era, the McCarthy era, and other turning points in American history. The fifty-two sermons in this book have been selected, introduced, and annotated by Marc Saperstein, whose award-winning books on the history of Jewish preaching have established him as a leading expert on this subject. No other book illustrates as effectively the value of the sermon as a resource for understanding the challenges faced by American Jews at some of the most dramatic moments in the turbulent history of this century.

First published in 1938, Jacob Rader Marcus's The Jews in The Medieval World has remained an indispensable resource for its comprehensive view of Jewish historical experience from late antiquity through the early modern period, viewed through primary source documents in English translation. In this new work based on Marcus's classic source book, Marc Saperstein has recast the volume's focus, now fully centered on Christian Europe, updated the work's organizational format, and added seventy-two new annotated sources. In his compelling introduction, Saperstein supplies a modern and thought-provoking discussion of the changing values that influence our understanding of history, analyzing issues surrounding periodization, organization, and inclusion. Through a vast range of documents written by Jews and Christians, including historical narratives, legal opinions, martyrologies, memoirs, polemics, epitaphs, advertisements, folktales, ethical and pedagogical writings, book prefaces and colophons, commentaries, and communal statutes, The Jews in Christian Europe allows the actors and witnesses of events to speak for themselves.

Exile in Amsterdam is based on a rich, extensive, and previously untapped source for one of the most important and fascinating Jewish communities in early modern Europe: the sermons of Saul Levi Morteira (ca. 1596-1660). Morteira, the leading rabbi of Amsterdam and a master of Jewish homiletical art, was known to have published only one book of fifty sermons in 1645, until a collection of 550 manuscript sermons in his own handwriting turned up in the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. After years of painstaking study from microfilms and three trips to Budapest to consult the actual manuscripts, Marc Saperstein has written the first comprehensive analysis of the historical significance of these texts, some of which were heard by the young Spinoza. Saperstein reviews the broad outlines of Morteira's biography, his treatment by scholars, and his image in literary works. He then reconstructs the process by which the preacher produced and delivered his sermons. Morteira's sermons also provide a trove of information about individuals and institutions in Morteira's Amsterdam, enabling Saperstein to analyze the shortcomings of behavior and the lapses in faith criticized by the preacher. The sermons also presented an ongoing program of adult education that transmitted the Jewish tradition on a high yet accessible level to a congregation of new Jews-immigrants who had lived as Christians in Portugal and were now assuming a Jewish identity with minimal prior knowledge. Here Saperstein focuses on themes Morteira considered crucial: memories of the historical past, confrontations with Christianity, ideas of exile and messianic redemption, and attitudes toward the New Christians who remained in Portugal. These historical reflections on Amsterdam's community of new Jews are illustrated by eight of Morteira's sermons, which Saperstein presents in English and with full annotation for the first time. Exile in Amsterdam offers those interested in European Jewish history and homiletics access to primary source documents and the scholarship of one of the premier historians of Jewish preaching.