From horned devils to greedy money lenders, images have been used as weapons against Jews for thousands of years. Even photojournalist social reformers of the early twentieth century reinforced derogatory stereotypes of Jews as wretched, immoral, and dirty. Little attention has focused, however, on the ways in which Jews themselves have attempted to counteract these views and to construct their own ethnic and political identities. In The Jewish Self-Image in the West , Michael Berkowitz examines dozens of visual renderings from the fin-de-siècle to the beginning of the Second World War to argue that Jews have exercised some control over representations of their own national communities and aspirations. In the decades before the Holocaust, organized segments of Jewry enthusiastically appropriated modern media in order to exert a greater influence over their public images. Presenting photographs and graphic images by Jews as attempts to disrupt or undermine prevailing perceptions, Berkowitz reconstructs the development of the Jewish self-image in the West over a crucial half-century.

A unique memoir that interweaves poetry, narrative, meditation, and social history, A Spiritual Life explores the complex facets of a Jewish woman's spiritual coming-of-age, capturing the emotional and spiritual reality of contemporary Jews as well as religious seekers of all types. From the experiences of early childhood, to the spiritual awakening of a secular adolescent encountering Jewish tradition, to the alternately funny and searing tales of new-found independence, early married life, young motherhood, and midlife, Feld comments with remarkable honesty and clarity on the many stages of spiritual and artistic exploration and growth. Overarching all these accounts is the picture of how the cycle of the Jewish calendar year comes to provide an ever-renewing source of sustenance for the author's deepening spiritual expression.

"During World War II, Marione and her family miraculously escape the firestorms of Hamburg and seek shelter with a contact in the countryside who grudgingly agrees to house them in a shed for more than a year. "--Provided by publisher.

Jacob G. Rosenberg was born in Lodz, Poland, the youngest member of a working-class family. After the Germans occupied Poland, he was confined with his parents, two sisters, and their little girls in the Lodz Ghetto, from whch they were eventually transported to Auschwitz.

EAST OF TIME is a rendezvous of history and imagination, of realities and dreams, hopes and disenchantments. This extraordinary book, by turns stark and poetic, unfolds in a succession of short reminiscences that weave together into a shimmering tapestry depicting a lost world. The setting is Lodz, Poland, in the years of the author's childhood, when he witnessed the grand belief in a just new world overtaken by the cataclysmic events of the 1930s, imprisoned between the walls of ghettos, and finally silenced at Auschwitz. The book's touchstone is the determination of an entire community to remain human, even at the last frontier of life.

An autobiography of Chaim Aronson (1825-1888). He was born in what is now Lithuania. He married three times. By 1887, four of his five sons had immigrated to New York. He immigrated from St. Petersburg, Russia in 1888 and died in New York.

The author shares the story of his family, their immigration, and the challenges of navigating two cultures.

A biography of Gertrude van Tijn (1891-1974), born as Gertrud Franzisca Cohn in Braunschweig, Germany. From 1911-15 she lived in London, but was forced to immigrate because of her status as an enemy alien. She then went to Holland, where she became a fervent Zionist. In 1920 she married Jacques van Tijn, a Dutch Jew, and gave birth to two children. As he was a mining engineer, they lived in different countries until 1932 when they returned to Holland; in 1937 they were divorced. Focuses on her life and activities during 1933-45, when she worked for organizations dealing with the resettlement of Jewish refugees from Germany who fled to Holland, as well as with emigration of Dutch Jews, in particular for the Committee for Jewish Refugees. In April-May 1941 van Tijn, with Nazi approval, traveled to Portugal to coordinate, together with Portuguese authorities and the Joint Distribution Committee, the transit of Jewish refugees through Portugal and across the Atlantic. Her task proved to be very difficult, but some Jews got through, including her daughter. Her son served in the Allied army in France and Belgium. Van Tijn became head of the emigration department of the Jewish Council in Amsterdam; however, her achievements in this capacity were modest. In September 1943 she was deported to Westerbork, and in March 1944 to Bergen-Belsen. In the summer of 1944 she was freed with a group of prisoners in exchange for Germans arrested in Palestine. She stayed in Palestine for a few months, traveled back to Europe in 1945, and eventually settled in the USA, living close to her daughter. While in Palestine she wrote a report of what she had witnessed, which is found in the Leo Baeck Archives in New York, but was never published. Soon after the war van Tijn was criticized and censured as a dupe of the Nazis, guilty at the least of false credulity and at the most of collaboration, but she was later exonerated.

Tradition has it that King Solomon knew everything there was to know -- the mysteries of nature, of love, of God himself -- but what do we know of him? Esteemed biblical scholar Steven Weitzman reintroduces readers to Solomon's story and its surprising influence in shaping Western culture, and he also examines what Solomon's life, wisdom, and writings have come to mean for Jews, Christians, and Muslims over the past two thousand years. Weitzman's Solomon is populated by a colorful cast of ambitious characters -- Byzantine emperors, explorers, rabbis, saints, scientists, poets, archaeologists, trial judges, reggae singers, and moviemakers among them -- whose common goal is to unearth the truth about Solomon's life and wisdom. Filled with the Solomonic texts of the Bible, along with lesser known magical texts and other writings, this book challenges both religious and secular assumptions. Even as it seeks to tell the story of ancient Israel's greatest ruler, this insightful book is also a meditation on the Solomonic desire to know all of life's secrets, and on the role of this desire in world history--From publisher description

A haunting consideration of the extraordinary mind of Saul Bellow's unjustly forgotten friend and literary rival and the extremes of the writing life Born in Chicago in 1918, the prodigiously gifted and erudite Isaac Rosenfeld was anointed a "genius" upon the publication of his "luminescent" novel, Passage from Home and was expected to surpass even his closest friend and rival, Saul Bellow. Yet when felled by a heart attack at the age of thirty-eight, Rosenfeld had published relatively little, his life reduced to a metaphor for literary failure. In this deeply contemplative book, Steven J. Zipperstein seeks to reclaim Rosenfeld's legacy by "opening up" his work. Zipperstein examines for the first time the "small mountain" of unfinished manuscripts the writer left behind, as well as his fiercely candid journals and letters. In the process, Zipperstein unearths a turbulent life that was obsessively grounded in a profound commitment to the ideals of the writing life. Rosenfeld's Lives is a fascinating exploration of literary genius and aspiration and the paradoxical power of literature to elevate and to enslave. It illuminates the cultural and political tensions of post-war America, Jewish intellectual life of the era, and--most poignantly--the struggle at the heart of any writer's life.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, born in 1903 and scion of a preeminent Lithuanian Orthodox family, was one of the most towering intellectual figures of American Orthodoxy in the twentieth century. After receiving rabbinic ordination and completing his studies toward a Ph.D., he immigrated to America where he served as the Rosh Yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. As the leader of centrist Orthodoxy in America for more than fifty years, his many accomplishments included his founding of the Maimonides School in Boston in 1937. Rabbi Soloveitchik served as the intellectual and spiritual force behind the Maimonides School from its founding and was responsible for its innovative curriculum. Synthesizing American educational methodologies and European Orthodox approaches to education, the Maimonides School became a prototype for an American Orthodox educational institution. Unique among contemporary Orthodox day schools, the coeducational nature of the classes at Maimonides, and to some extent the curriculum, was groundbreaking. Characterized by academic excellence in both Judaic studies and other subjects, the school offered boys and girls exactly the same education. Rabbi Soloveitchik’s school was particularly innovative by offering Talmud classes to girls on the same level as boys. The Maimonides School became a paradigm for the fledgling Orthodox Jewish day school movement nationwide. The character of the education there influenced later developments in the Orthodox community, such as the emphasis on higher level Torah study for women. By articulating a philosophy that advocated both traditional Orthodoxy as well as modernism and Americanism, the school gradually affected Boston’s Orthodox community, which came to be guided by its principles. As Seth Farber points out, the school, once rejected by the Jewish establishment in Boston, was eventually embraced by it. A community that saw no contradiction between democratic values and traditional Orthodox lifestyle emerged in Boston. This modern Orthodox community ultimately represented a significant voice in Boston’s Jewish and America's Orthodox cultures.

"Sasson Somekh's memoir takes shape like a series of telling snapshots from another time and place. The time is the 1930s and '40s and the place, Iraq, where Somekh and his family were part of the country's then-flourishing Jewish community. The book offers an intimate view of this milieu and manages both to describe vividly the young Somekh's intellectual and emotional growth and to map the now-vanished world of Baghdad's book stalls and literary cafes, its Arabic-speaking Jewish bank clerks, outdoor movies at the Cinema Diana, and bonfires by the Tigris. As the pieces of Somekh's unsentimental memoir accumulate, they also mount in meaning. The book celebrates the ups and downs of Iraqi Jewish life as it also portrays the eventual dissolution of the community in the early 1950s."--Jacket.

"This book tells the largely unknown story behind the rescue activities of several remarkable young Jewish women in Vichy France during World War II and their role in the resistance against Nazi and Vichy France deportation policies. Few studies of Vichy France and the Holocaust have looked at the rescue of Jews by those prepared to risk everything to escort them to safety in the border regions, and even fewer have considered Jewish rescue of Jews, specifically of Jewish children by women. This work will be arguably the first book in which the experiences and efforts of a number of female rescuers—all of whom knew or knew of each other—have been brought together in a single volume, with the object of honoring their memory and showing how the value of human life was sustained through the Holocaust. Focusing on a number of young Jewish women who defied the Nazis, this narrative highlights their courage and sacrifice in their efforts to rescue Jews in France during World War II. Additionally, it shows how these French women responded to Nazi and Vichy France policies of deportation through resistance activities. This is a story that will captivate anyone with an interest in the innate goodness of human beings that can shine even when confronted with the darkest expressions of depravity that occurred during the Holocaust." -- From publisher's website.

Tells the story of how wealthy businessman Julius Rosenwald came to financially support the building of 5,300 schools in rural African-American communities that desperately needed them over the course of twenty years.

This is an eloquent and deeply felt memoir exploring the author's complex relationship with his Jewish identity. "If I Am Not Myself" is a passionate, thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century. It traces the author's upbringing in 1960s Jewish-American suburbia, his anti-war and pro-Palestinian activism on the British Left, and life as a Jew among Muslims in Pakistan, Morocco, and Britain. Interwoven with this are the experiences of his grandfather's life in Jewish New York of the 1930s and '40s, his struggles with anti-Semitism and the twists and turns that led him from anti-Fascism to Militant Zionism. In the course of this deeply personal story, Marqusee refutes the claims of Israel and Zionism on Jewish loyalty and laments their impact on the Jewish Diaspora. Rather, he argues for a richer, more multi-dimensional understanding of Jewish history and identity, and reclaims vital political and personal space for those castigated as self-haters by the Jewish establishment.

A collection of lectures delivered in May 2002 under the auspices of the Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. Analyzes autobiographical works of seven Jews from antiquity to the 20th century. Two of these reflect despair in the midst and in the wake of World War II. Ch. 4 (pp. 103-138), "Autobiography as Farewell I: Stefan Zweig, " discusses the Austrian Jewish writer, who committed suicide in 1942, as a non-Zionist universalist even in the face of Nazism. Pp. 131-136 deal with the persecution of the Jews. Ch. 5 (pp. 139-174), "Autobiography as Farewell II: Sarah Kofman, " discusses the life and works of Kofman, who committed suicide in 1994. Focuses on her "Rue Ordoner, Rue Labat" and her Holocaust experiences as a child in Paris. Her father was killed in Auschwitz, and Kofman was looked after by a Christian woman to whom she felt closer than her mother. Deals with the conflicts in Kofman's sexual and religious identities.

Memoirs of Cohn, a Jew born in 1920 in Metz as Marthe Hoffnung. As a child, Cohn was confronted with the antisemitism of the local population. In September 1939 the family moved to Poitiers, where they experienced the German occupation and the Nazi anti-Jewish measures. Several of Cohn's seven siblings joined the resistance. One sister, Stéphanie, was arrested in summer 1942, interned in various camps, and murdered in Auschwitz. Cohn arranged for most of her family to escape to the south of France, with the help of her fiancé, Jacques Delaunay, who was executed in 1943 for his resistance activities. Cohn moved to Paris to live with one of her sisters. After the liberation she joined the French army and, being fluent in German, worked for intelligence, interrogating German POWs. In early 1945 she entered Germany to gather vital information for the advancing French army, for which she was awarded various medals. In 1956 she emigrated to the U.S.

The author describes his unusual life, from his birth in the Warsaw ghetto and escape to Russia, to his relentless efforts to bring about peace between Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis