Jews in Gotham follows the Jewish saga in ever-changing New York City from the end of the First World War into the first decade of the new millennium. This lively portrait details the complex dynamics that caused Jews to persist, abandon, or be left behind in their neighborhoods during critical moments of the past century. It shows convincingly that New York retained its preeminence as the capital of American Jews because of deep roots in local worlds.

"Part activist memoir, part crash course in Jewish and Palestinian history, Genocide Bad dismantles Zionist propaganda and maps a course towards collective liberation in ten unapologetic essays. Drawing connections between Biblical promises and exploding pagers, medieval dress codes and modern-day apartheid, Kern sketches a sweeping history of imperialism with their characteristic blend of far-ranging research, pop-culture insights, and scathing humor. Kern, a former teacher, journalist, novelist, and book influencer, gained international recognition as an anti-Zionist Jewish activist in the days after October 7th, 2023. At a time when social media was flooded with 'I Stand with Israel' posts, Kern started sharing content encouraging their followers to read Palestinian books, learn Palestinian history, and question Western reporting on Palestine--videos which went viral into tens of millions of views. Despite facing hate messages, death threats, and exile from the Zionist Jewish community, Kern has remained steadfast in their advocacy over the past year. They've posted daily videos on Palestinian, Jewish, and colonial history, and they've raised over $500,000 in direct aid for families in Gaza--all while navigating the challenges of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting a newborn. In Genocide Bad, Kern reflects on the life experiences that led them to anti-Zionist activism, while capturing and expanding upon their online educational content. Kern doesn't flinch when confronting the horrors of genocides past and present, but there is also tremendous hope contained in these pages--hope that springs from examples of courage and resilience in the face of extreme violence, and from the kinds of resistance that might just lead to our collective liberation."--

"The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture is a comprehensive and engaging overview of Jewish life, from its origins in the ancient Near East to its impact on contemporary popular culture. The twenty-one essays, arranged historically and thematically, and written specially for this volume by leading scholars, examine the development of Judaism and the evolution of Jewish history and culture over many centuries and in a range of locales. They emphasize the ongoing diversity and creativity of the Jewish experience. Unlike previous anthologies, which concentrate on elite groups and expressions of a male-oriented rabbinic culture, this volume also includes the range of experiences of ordinary people and looks at the lives and achievements of women in every place and era. The many illustrations, maps, timeline, and glossary of important terms enhance this book's accessibility to students and general readers"--Provided by publisher.

"Jewish History For Dummies provides unbiased, factual history of Jewish life, culture, and history. You'll take a look at the roots of Jewish history, beginning in 2000 B.C.E. with Abraham and his descendants. Chapter by chapter, you'll trace the evolution of the Jewish people through the biblical record and other sources, learning how King David united Israel, how the Jews were exiled under Babylonian rule, and how Jewish people have adapted to life in the diaspora, from ancient times all the way up to today. Whatever era of Jewish history you're interested in, you'll find comprehensive coverage in this Dummies guide."--

"Mr. Yerushalmi's previous writings . . . established him as one of the Jewish community's most important historians. His latest book should establish him as one of its most important critics. Zakhor is historical thinking of a very high order - mature speculation based on massive scholarship." - New York Times Book Review

Israel Shahak was a remarkable man. Born in the Warsaw ghetto and a survivor of Belsen, Shahak arrived in Israel in 1945. Brought up under Jewish Orthodoxy and Hebrew culture, he consistently opposed the expansion of the borders of Israel from 1967. In this extraordinary and highly acclaimed book, Shahak embarks on a provocative study of the extent to which the secular state of Israel has been shaped by religious orthodoxies of an invidious and potentially lethal nature. Drawing on the Talmud and rabbinical laws, Shahak argues that the roots of Jewish chauvinism and religious fanaticism must be understood before it is too late. Written from a humanitarian viewpoint by a Jewish scholar, this is a rare and highly controversial criticism of Israel that will both excite and disturb readers worldwide.

A comprehensive historical survey of the Jewish presence in Central Europe from the seventeenth century to the Holocaust, German-Jewish History in Modern Times is a four-volume collective project by a team of leading scholars, offering a vivid portrait of Jewish History. The series is sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute, established in 1955 in Jerusalem, London, and New York for the purpose of advancing scholarship on the Jews in German-speaking lands. Integration in Dispute 1871-1918 comprises the third volume and focuses on a period of political, economic, and social change that fundamentally transformed German Jewry. Eminent scholars consider a broad range of topics: religious and cultural life, demographics, political, legal, and socioeconomic status, relations between Jews and non-Jews, and Jewish participation in the larger context of European history. Volume 3 begins with the establishment of civil equality for Jews in Germany and Austria-Hungary and describes the complexities of their economic and social integration. The contributors explore the challenges that confronted Jews as they encountered both unprecedented opportunities and continued resistance to their full emancipation and participation in public life. The book discusses their standing as a minority group within German political and professional life and as a differentiated portion of the German middle class; how they coped with successive waves of political antisemitism; how they continued to adapt traditional religious practices to modernity; and how urban middle-class life transformed Jewish families as well as the role of Jewish women in the domestic and public spheres. The forces of social change, coupled with the persistence of antisemitism formed the context for the emergence of Zionism, which posed a powerful challenge to the dominant principle of integration. This volume also seeks to understand the nature and timing of the exceptional contributions of German Jews to the thriving modern culture of such cities as late imperial Vienna and Berlin as well as to the specific religious culture of Judaism. Each volume includes a bibliographical essay referring readers to the most important secondary literature, a chronology covering the major events discussed, and a series of maps and illustrations. Encompassing the most up-to-date research on the topic, German Jewish History in Modern Times is an achievement to be valued by historians, educators, and any reader seeking to understand the singular heritage of the Jewish people in Central Europe.

In graphic novel format, presents 4,000 years of Jewish history culminating in the modern state of Israel.

Joan Nathan's knowledge, enthusiasm, and experience have made her prize-winning books on Jewish cooking a staple in every Jewish kitchen. Now, drawing upon the recipes, stories, and secrets of a baker's dozen of bakers from around the world, she captures the art of Jewish baking. Here are fifty original recipes for the traditional baked goods associated with the major holidays -- challah for Shabbat, hamantashen for Purim, macaroons and matzah for Passover, jelly doughnuts for Chanukah -- as well as delicious and exotic alternatives from around the world: Yemenite kubbanah, Turkish boyos, German schnecken, Russian babka, Hungarian strudel, Parisian pletzel, Mexican banana cake, Syrian ka'ak. But why wait for the holidays? Along with challah, bialys, and bagels, you will want to bake and enjoy all of these cakes and breads with your family and friends throughout the year. The bakers who have perfected these recipes represent the breadth of Jewish history and geography: they come from America, Israel, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Syria, and Egypt. Their personal stories offer a fascinating window into the Jewish experience of this century. With step-by-step instructions on kneading, rising, braiding, rolling, and folding dough, as well as tips on how to make baking a rewarding and even relaxing part of the busiest lifestyle, The Jewish Holiday Baker will turn any novice into a baker, and give any expert a command of the sweetness and craft of Jewish baking.

Synopsis: The last two centuries have witnessed a radical transformation of Jewish life. Marked by such profound events as the emancipation from the ghettoes of Europe, the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, Judaism's long journey through the modern age has been a complex and tumultuous one, leading many Jews to ask themselves not only where they have been and where they are going, but what it means to be a Jew in today's world. Tracing the dramatic changes in Jewish religion, culture, and identity from the seventeenth century to the present, The Jew in the Modern World, Third Edition, remains the most complete sourcebook on modern Jewish history available. Now thoroughly expanded and updated, this critically acclaimed volume of primary materials features previously unpublished and inaccessible sources concerning the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa; women in Jewish history; American Jewish life; the Holocaust; and Zionism and the nascent Jewish community in Palestine on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel. The documents are arranged chronologically in each chapter and are meticulously and extensively annotated and cross-referenced. Providing useful tables detailing Jewish demographic trends, this unique text is ideal for courses in modern Jewish history, Zionism and Israel, the Holocaust, or modern European history. New to this Edition: Over 100 new documents address important issues to understanding modern Jewish history, including the status of women, and debates between traditional and secular Jews and the role of Zionism in modern Jewish life; Two entirely new chapters-Chapter 8, "Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewry," and Chapter 12, "Jewish Identity Challenged and Redefined" -enhance the book's scope and chronology; Four new maps show the concentration of Jews throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. The Appendix has been completely updated with the latest population figures

A Comprehensive and Beautiful Treasury of Jewish Cooking There is a whole world of Jewish cooking beyond chopped liver and gefilte fish. Scattered across the globe, there are many distinctive, delicious, and authentic Jewish cuisines to be savored. Gil Marks, a rabbi, gourmet chef, and authority on Jewish food history and lore, guides us through this largely undiscovered world. He delights and enlightens with traditional recipes from Italian, Yemenite, Ethiopian, Indian, Eastern European, German, Hungarian, Georgian, Alsatian, and Middle Eastern Jewry; culinary conversations with contemporary members of these ancient and medieval communities; and fascinating commentary on Jewish food and Jewish history. The World of Jewish Cooking offers an astonishing array of delicacies, including: Pastilla (Moroccan "Pigeon" Pie) * Kik Wot (Ethiopian Split Peas Stew) * Muez con Almendrada (Moroccan Almond-Walnut Confection) * Khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread) * Yakhnat (Persian Lamb Stew) * Murgi Kari (Calcutta Chicken Curry) * Meggy Leves (Hungarian Cherry Soup) * Testine di Spinaci (Italian Spinach Stalks) * Hraimeh (Northwest African Red Fish) * Kubba (Iraqi Stuffed Dumplings) * Marunchinos (Sephardic Almond Macaroons)

"'A covenantal vision of life, with mitzvah (divine commandment) as the central organizing principle in the relationship between Jews and God, liberates the intellect and the moral will. I seek to show that a tradition mediated by the Sinai covenant can encourage the development of a human being who is not afraid to assume responsibility for the ongoing drama of Jewish history. Passive resignation is seen not to be an essential trait of one whose relationship to God is mediated by the hearing of mitzvot ." --from the Introduction This interpretation of Jewish teaching will appeal to all people seeking to understand the relationship between the idea of divine demand and the human response, between religious tradition and modernity. Hartman shows that a life lived in Jewish tradition need not be passive, insulated, or self-effacing, but can be lived in the modern pluralistic world with passion, tolerance, and spontaneity. The Judaic tradition is often seen as being more concerned with uncritical obedience to law than with individual freedom and responsibility. In A Living Covenant, Hartman challenges this approach by revealing a Judaism grounded in a covenant--a relational framework--informed by the metaphor of marital love rather than that of parent-child dependency. This view of life places the individual firmly within community. Hartman shows that the Judaic tradition need not be understood in terms of human passivity and resignation, but rather as a vehicle by which human individuality and freedom can be expressed within a relational matrix.

In February 1840 an Italian monk and his servant disappeared in Damascus. Many Jews in that city were charged with ritual murder and tortured until they "confessed." The case turned into a cause celebre across much of the Western world, even becoming a factor in the major diplomatic conflicts of the period. Jews in many countries groped for ways to save the surviving prisoners in Syria and their own good name. A Jewish delegation led by Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux was sent to the Middle East in the hope of discovering the real murderers. Jonathan Frankel assesses the affair as a factor in European and Jewish politics, as a chapter in Jewish history and historiography, and as the stuff of radically conflicting myths - myths that eventually fed into the extraordinary events of the mid-twentieth century: the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. This is the first book since the 1840s to analyze the Damascus affair.

The Damascus ritual murder affair, in sharp contrast to many previous blood libel cases, did not go unnoticed; it provoked a stormy reaction amongst Jews and non-Jews throughout the Western world. It coincided with a ritual murder affair in Rhodes and in other places. The Damascus case induced the Western Jewish leadership to intervene, and spurred the mission of Crémieux and Montefiore to the Middle East on behalf of Syrian Jews. Although the mission failed to overturn the ritual murder accusation, it became a cause célèbre of Western Jewry. The mission was carried out at a time of a complex international situation and itself became a factor of international relations. The affair aroused mixed reactions in the European press, which sometimes upheld the blood libel myth or was ambivalent about it, and in clerical and academic circles. It launched both Christian "restorationist" projects and early forms of Jewish nationalism. The affair was mythologized in Jewish historiography, which has tended to see it as a turning-point in modern Jewish history, as well as in antisemitic discourse, where it became a recurring argument for the "truth" of the blood libel.

An unprecedented portrait of Moses's inner world and perplexing character, by a distinguished biblical scholar No figure looms larger in Jewish culture than Moses, and few have stories more enigmatic. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, acclaimed for her many books on Jewish thought, turns her attention to Moses in this remarkably rich, evocative book. Drawing on a broad range of sources--literary as well as psychoanalytic, a wealth of classical Jewish texts alongside George Eliot, W. G. Sebald, and Werner Herzog--Zornberg offers a vivid and original portrait of the biblical Moses. Moses's vexing personality, his uncertain origins, and his turbulent relations with his own people are acutely explored by Zornberg, who sees this story, told and retold, as crucial not only to the biblical past but also to the future of Jewish history.

Idel's thesis is that the role of the golem concept in Judaism was to confer an exceptional status to the Jewish elite by bestowing it with the capability of supernatural powers deriving from profound knowledge of the Hebrew language and its magical and mystical values. This book is the first comprehensive treatment of the whole range of material dealing with creation of the golem beginning with late antiquity and ending with modern time. The author explores the relationship between these discussions and their historical and intellectual framework. Since there was in the medieval period a variety of traditions concerning the golem, it is plausible to assume that the techniques for creating this creature developed much earlier. This presentation focuses on the precise techniques for creating an artificial human, an issue previously neglected in the literature. A complete survey of the conceptions of the golem in North European and Spanish literature in medieval times, allows not only better understanding of the phenomenon, but also of the history of Jewish magic and mysticism in the Middle Ages. The Jewish and Christian treatments of the golem in renaissance are explored as part of the renaissance concern for human nature.

“It’s a great irony that Israel was more secure as an idea than it’s ever been as a nation with an army.” In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it—by taking what had been a national religion, identified with a particular place, and turning it into an idea. Jews no longer needed Jerusalem to be Jews. Whenever a Jew studied—wherever he was—he would be in the holy city. In this way, a few rabbis turned a real city into a city of the mind; in this way, they turned the Temple into a book and preserved their faith. Though you can burn a city, you cannot sack an idea or kill a book. But in our own time, Zionists have turned the book back into a temple. And unlike an idea, a temple can be destroyed. The creation of Israel has made Jews vulnerable in a way they have not been for two thousand years. In Israel Is Real , Rich Cohen’s superb new history of the Zionist idea and the Jewish state—the history of a nation chronicled as if it were the biography of a person—he brings to life dozens of fascinating figures, each driven by the same impulse: to reach Jerusalem. From false messiahs such as David Alroy (Cohen calls him the first superhero, with his tallis as a cape) and Sabbatai Zevi, who led thousands on a mad spiritual journey, to the early Zionists (many of them failed journalists), to the iconic figures of modern Jewish Sparta, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon, Cohen shows how all these lives together form a single story, a single life. In this unique book, Cohen examines the myth of the wandering Jew, the paradox of Jewish power (how can you be both holy and nuclear?), and the triumph and tragedy of the Jewish state—how the creation of modern Israel has changed what it means to be a Jew anywhere.

This encyclopedia provides the first standard reference work on the lives, history and activities of Jewish women in the United States. Covering a period which extends from the arrival of the first Jewish women in North America in 1654 to the present, this two-volume set presents the most comprehensive and detailed portrait of American Jewish women ever published, and brings together for the first time the wealth of recent scholarship on this subject. Includes: * Biographical entries on over 800 individual women. * 128 topical articles on organizations such as Hadassah, the National Council of Jewish Women, Mizrachi, and the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. * Major essays on Jewish women's participation in the movement for women's suffrage, social reform, civil rights, and the recent women's movement. * The activities of Jewish women in politics, business, education, the arts, and religion. * A readable, inviting format with over 500 large photographs. * Bibliographies at the end of each entry which include overviews of major scholarship in the field, complete citations of more general works and citations of additional bibliographical and reference sources. * The comprehensive index includes citations to every substantive discussion in the entries as well as all proper names appearing in the text, such as organizations, book, song and film titles, schools, and individuals. The "Encyclopedia" provides information on American Jewish women in all fields of endeavor, and pays special attention to the work of women in the arts, academics, law, the labor movement, education, science, medicine, journalism and publishing, and on the lives of ordinary Jewish women during all time periods and in all regions of the United States.

Here is an eye-opening look at one of baseball's most intriguing and little known stories: the many-faceted relationship between Jews and black baseball in Jim Crow America. In Out of Left Field, Rebecca Alpert explores how Jewish sports entrepreneurs, political radicals, and a team of black Jews from Belleville, Virginia called the Belleville Grays--the only Jewish team in the history of black baseball--made their mark on the segregated world of the Negro Leagues. Through in-depth research, Alpert tells the stories of the Jewish businessmen who owned and promoted teams as they both acted out and fell victim to pervasive stereotypes of Jews as greedy middlemen and hucksters. Some Jewish owners produced a kind of comedy baseball, akin to basketball's Harlem Globetrotters--indeed, Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein was very active in black baseball--that reaped financial benefits for both owners and players but also played upon the worst stereotypes of African Americans and prevented these black "showmen" from being taken seriously by the major leagues. But Alpert also shows how Jewish entrepreneurs, motivated in part by the traditional Jewish commitment to social justice, helped grow the business of black baseball in the face of the oppressive Jim Crow restrictions, and how radical journalists writing for the Communist Daily Worker argued passionately for an end to baseball's segregation. In fact, the campaign to convince manager Branch Rickey to integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers was initiated by Daily Worker sports writer Bill Mardo, in an open letter in the paper. Deftly written and meticulously researched, Out of Left Field offers a unique perspective on the economic and social negotiations between blacks and Jews in the first half of the 20th century, shedding new light on the intersection of race, religion, and sports in America.

Martin Buber was professor of the history of religions and Jewish religion & ethics from 1923 to 1933 at the University of Frankfurt. He resigned in 1933, after Hitler came to power, and immigrated to Israel where he taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Buber wrote numerous books during his lifetime (1878-1965) and is best known for I and Thou and Good and Evil. His philosophy of dialogue-that is, the 'I-Thou' relationship which affirms each individual as being of unique value-is extremely well-known and has influenced important Protestant theologians like Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr. There is truly no genuine understanding of contemporary Jewish and Christian theology without reference to Martin Buber. His appeal is vast - not only is he renowned for his translations of the Old Testament but also for his interpretation of Hasidism, his role in Zionism, and his writings in both psychotherapy and political philosophy.