Biographies of Rabbi Aharon Kotler, Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahanemann and Sarah Schneirer.

Rabbi Ben Kamin has written a definitive personal expression about race, coming of age in the 1960s, a forbidden friendship, and his personal love for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This is a story that spans a four-decade search for a lost high school chum, a deep misunderstanding, and a coming to terms with an America painfully evolving from the blood of MLK to the promise of Barack Obama. The book is a remembrance of Kamin's life at Cincinnati's notorious Woodward High School, a microcosm of the 1960s and of America itself.

Rabbinic texts are often cited in New Testament and Old Testament studies, but hitherto there has been no easy way for a student to grasp the scope and variety of the relevant rabbinic writings. This book introduces the student to the full range of the early rabbinic writings, with a thorough introduction and notes, so that both a bird's eye view of the literature as well as close aquaintance with typical and important texts can be obtained. This will enable the reader to embark on further study with a clearer orientation. The book also aims to correct many mistaken views about rabbinic Judaism arising from outdated conceptions of the relation between Christianity and Judaism.

"Jacob Neusner (born 1932) is one of the most important figures in the shaping of modern American Judaism. He was pivotal in transforming the study of Judaism from an insular project only conducted by--and of interest to--religious adherents to one which now flourishes in the secular setting of the university. He is also one of the most colorful, creative, and difficult figures in the American academy. But even those who disagree with Neusner's academic approach to ancient rabbinic texts have to engage with his pioneering methods. In this comprehensive biography, Aaron Hughes shows Neusner to be much more than a scholar of rabbinics. He is a social commentator, a post-Holocaust theologian, and was an outspoken political figure during the height of the cultural wars of the 1980s. Neusner's life reflects the story of what happened as Jews migrated to the suburbs in the late 1940s, daring to imagine new lives for themselves as they successfully integrated into the fabric of American society. It is also the story of how American Jews tried to make sense of the world in the aftermath of the extermination of European Jewry and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and how they sought to define what it meant to be an American Jew. Unlike other great American Jewish thinkers, Neusner was born in the U.S., and his Judaism was informed by an American ethos. His Judaism is open, informed by and informing the world. It is an American Judaism, one that has enabled American Jews--the freest in history--to be fully American and fully Jewish."--Publisher's description

A biography of the leading halakhic authority Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, born in Ciechanowiecz, Poland. He was the last rector of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary. Ch. 5 (pp. 110-134), "Response to the New Nazi Government (1933-1934), " characterizes the early reaction of Weinberg to the Nazis as naive and apologetic. Weinberg helped the Orthodox Jews deal with problems of daily life under the Nazis (e.g. the ban on ritual slaughter). Ch. 6 (pp. 135-171), "The Nazi Era (1933-1945), " notes that Orthodox German Jews first adopted a policy of appeasement with the regime. With Jews excluded from general education and other aspects of German life, the role of the Seminary became more important. Weinberg had opposed Jewish emigration, and the "Kristallnacht" pogrom came as a tremendous shock to him; the Seminary was closed and most of the students and faculty emigrated. At the outbreak of the war he was in Warsaw, where he helped with communal affairs. As a Soviet citizen, Weinberg suffered less than others; in October 1941 he was transferred from the Warsaw ghetto to a detention camp in Wuelzburg, Germany, possibly in order to trade him for German citizens held captive in the USSR. He remained there until April 1945. Most of his family was murdered in the Holocaust. After the war he became head of a yeshiva in Montreux, Switzerland.

"This memoir of a radical Jew follows Jack Nusan Porter's journey from his birth in Ukraine during the Holocaust, through the radical 60s and 70s, to the present day, and details his experiences fighting anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, xenophobia, and hate"--

In Sparks Amidst the Ashes, Byron Sherwin demonstrates how the unprecedented works of intellect and spirit produced during the Jewish "Golden Age" in Poland can provide contemporary Jews with the spiritual and intellectual resources required to ensure Jewish continuity in the present and future. Sherwin introduces us to the vast range of mystical speculation, evocative stories, talmudic dialectics, theological ideas, and social realities that were muted by the destruction of Polish Jewry during the Holocaust. Sherwin critiques the tendency among contemporary Jews to disregard the precious legacy bequeathed by Polish Jewry, and presents a plan for re-creating contemporary Jewish life that draws from the wisdom of the spiritual maestros and from the rich communal experience characteristic of Jewish life in pre-World War II Poland. Sherwin concludes with a controversial proposal for the future of Polish-Jewish relations.

"Avraham Yitzhaq Ha-Cohen Kook (1865-1935) stands as a colossal figure of modern Jewish history and thought. Jurist, mystic, poet, theologian, communal leader, founder of the modern Chief Rabbinate and still the defining thinker of Religious Zionism, he is indispensable for understanding modern Jewish thought, the contemporary State of Israel, and the most fundamental interactions of religion, nationalism, ethics and spirituality. Despite countless studies of him, almost no full-fledged intellectual biography of him exists in any language. This study of the years before his momentous move to Jaffa in 1904, drawing on little-known works, including recently published manuscripts, begins to fill that gap. It traces his life and times in the remarkably intense Rabbinic intellectual milieu of late nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and his path from a profound, regularly rationalist traditionalism, towards a dynamic theology and spiritual practice weaving together Kabbalah, philosophy, universal ethics, and romantic mysticism."--

Presents the history of the early modern Jewish experience. Ranging from Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, this title examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society.

Why do people follow a leader, particularly a religious leader? And why, given that Americans are still an overwhelmingly religious people, is the clergy declining in influence? Byron Sherwin argues that what is missing is the perception that religious leaders today are capable of working wonders. Sherwin leads the reader through five periods of Jewish history: the era of biblical prophets, Jesus and first-century Israel; Babylonian rabbis of the third and fourth centuries; the east European Hasidic Masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and twentieth century North African rabbis. In all cases, the moral authority of the leaders came primarily from popular belief in their power to work wonders for the people. Sherwin applies history to the current situation. If the clergy is to be re-empowered, to reclaim leadership and authority as holy people, they must reassert the ability to work wonders. This is a book that every member of the clergy and every religious leader should read, ponder and take to heart.