Since World War II, the sub-Carpathian Mountain region once known as Maramarosh has remained "Judenrein" (free of Jews). Jewish Maramarosh lives on, however, through the contributions to scholarship and humanity of Maramarosh Holocaust survivors and their progeny, including Nobel laureate Elie Weisel and the Talmud scholar Professor David Halivni-Weiss. Maramarosh Shoah survivor and Talmud scholar Professor Elieser Slomovic here provides access to a collection of responsa literature, most of it out of print and previously available only or primarily in Yiddish. Through personal queries about how to live Torah instructed lives and rabbinic responses, the reader is invited to enter the world of Jewish Maramarosh, where Hasidism flourished and rabbinic scholarship reflected human nobility manifested through the pragmatics of poverty and the dynamics of living closely with nature. Professor Slomovic, recognizing the fluidity and balance over time provided by Talmudic thought as exemplified through rabbinic teaching, invites the reader to join the discourse on the everyday life of everyday people.

Berlin Jewry was the first major Jewish community to undergo the process of modernization which has since swept most of world Jewry. The process of adaptation to the cultural, linguistic and political life of the majority culture first proposed by intellectuals of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) was accompanied by a thoroughgoing crisis of Jewish identity. Berlin Jewry was soon faced by patterns of illegitimacy, marital breakdown and conversion to Christianity on a scale never witnessed before. Scholars have long debated the severity of the crisis of Berlin Jewry as well as its connection to the philosophy and practice of the Jewish Enlightenment. The Berlin Jewish Community endeavors to settle much of the debate through a collective biography of all 3,500 Jews in Berlin at the time. The extraordinarily rich documentation about the life of Berlin Jewry in the period makes it possible to trace the personal and family connections between those involved in modernizing activities with those involved in the later crisis. The results of this study show that one in four families had members that converted and that pro-Enlightenment families were more likely to have converted relatives than were traditionalists. This correlation is not simply a matter of Enlightenment "responsibility" for the crisis, but rather was produced by a very complex and often contradictory process of moving from traditional to modern Jewish life. In this original and imaginative book, Steven M. Lowenstein presents definitive data on the dimensions and social dynamics of the crisis of Berlin Jewry at the end of the eighteenth century. It will be of interest to scholars and students of modern Jewish history, Germanhistory, social history, and modern Jewish religious and intellectual developments.

Here, in one compact volume, is an illuminating survey of Jewish folkways on five continents. Filled with fascinating facts and keen insights, The Jewish Cultural Tapestry is a richly woven fabric that vividly captures the diversity of Jewish life. All traditional Jews are bound together by the common thread of the Torah and the Talmud, notes author Steven Lowenstein, but this thread takes on a different coloration in different parts of the world as Jewish tradition and local non-Jewish customs intertwine. Lowenstein describes these widely varying regional Jewish cultures with needlepoint accuracy, highlighting the often surprising similarities between Jewish and non-Jewish local traditions, and revealing why Jewish customs vary as much as they do from region to region. From Europe to India, Israel to America, The Jewish Cultural Tapestry offers an engaging overview of the customs and folkways of a people united by tradition, yet scattered to the far corners of the earth.