The nine American Jews of whom Milton Konvitz writes are philosophers, jurists, or rabbis, widely known and readily accepted as American Jewish thinkers. Their work reflects all essential Jewish values. Each person in his own way has dedicated his work to the betterment of life and the advancement of human ideals. In this sense, their Jewishness is not defined by religion alone. Americanism permeated all they thought and all they did. Konvitz argues that in the complex modern world, secularists often serve God more handsomely than do members of synagogues or churches. For example, when the Supreme Court in 1954 (with Felix Frankfurter playing a key role behind the scenes) agreed to outlaw segregation of the races in public schools, was the Court's action secular or religious? When Congress passed the statute known as the Americans with Disabilities Act, requiring equal treatment of handicapped persons, was the action secular or religious? Is a minimum wage act secular or religious? Is Medicaid a secular or a religious act? Konvitz believes the distinction is not useful, or even possible. The book is divided into three parts, reflecting Konvitz's range of intellectual interests. The nine essays offer concise intellectual biographies of three American Jewish philosophers, three Supreme Court Justices, and three rabbis. The philosophers-Horace M. Kallen, Morris Raphael Cohen, and Sidney Hook-are world-renowned. The jurists-Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin N. Cardozo, and Felix Frankfurter-hold prominent places in American legal history. And the three rabbis-Leo Jung, Robert Gordis, and Jacob Agus-are known wherever Jewish thought is studied. By treating with equal seriousness the lives and writings of both religious and secularist thinkers, the author intentionally minimizes the conventional antagonism and frequent conflict between religion and secularism. An unusual feature of the book is the fact that the author was a close friend of six of the persons whose lives and work are examined, allowing him a perceptive insight into their character and thought. Although the book is about serious subjects, its graceful style makes the contents easily accessible to lay persons as well as scholars and students of Judaica.

he time between the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Maccabaean wars is one of the obscurest periods of Jewish history. Yet it is vitally important for our understanding of Judaism in the period up to and including the New Testament era because it was then that the foundations of first-century Judaism were being laid.In his now classic — and encyclopaedic — study/tic/aim and Hellenism, Martin Hengel demonstrated how Greek influence on Judaism at this stage was far greater than has usually been supposed, and painted a fascinating picture of a hitherto unexplored culture. Here, in a much slimmer book, he summarizes the results of that larger volume and in some aspects takes it further. First he outlines the history of Palestine from Alexander's expedition to the death of Antiochus III in 187 BC. He then shows the political, social and cultural features of the Hellenistic world, asking in particular how it was possible for a non-Greek to become accepted in it. Finally, he explores the development of Judaism in the various countries of the Diaspora and in Palestine itself.

This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people. Probing more than eight centuries of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, Seth Schwartz reaches some startling conclusions--foremost among them that the Christianization of the Roman Empire generated the most fundamental features of medieval and modern Jewish life. Schwartz begins by arguing that the distinctiveness of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods was the product of generally prevailing imperial tolerance. From around 70 C.E. to the mid-fourth century, with failed revolts and the alluring cultural norms of the High Roman Empire, Judaism all but disintegrated. However, late in the Roman Empire, the Christianized state played a decisive role in ''re-Judaizing'' the Jews. The state gradually excluded them from society while supporting their leaders and recognizing their local communities. It was thus in Late Antiquity that the synagogue-centered community became prevalent among the Jews, that there re-emerged a distinctively Jewish art and literature--laying the foundations for Judaism as we know it today. Through masterful scholarship set in rich detail, this book challenges traditional views rooted in romantic notions about Jewish fortitude. Integrating material relics and literature while setting the Jews in their eastern Mediterranean context, it addresses the complex and varied consequences of imperialism on this vast period of Jewish history more ambitiously than ever before. Imperialism in Jewish Society will be widely read and much debated.

Pp. 243-359 deal with the Holocaust in Yugoslavian Macedonia and in the town of Pirot (southeastern Serbia). These territories were annexed to Bulgaria in 1941, and it was the Bulgarian authorities who carried out the annihilation of local Jews. Discusses the Bulgarian Law for the Protection of the Nation, as well as other anti-Jewish laws, and their implementation in Macedonia. In contrast to the Macedonians and the Slavs in Pirot, Jews were denied Bulgarian citizenship; their property was pillaged and they were subjected to humiliating restrictions. In March 1943, 7,358 Jews of Macedonia and 187 Jews of Pirot were deported to Treblinka. Only a small number of Jewish physicians were exempted from deportation. Some Macedonian Jews took part in the resistance movement. Some Jews were rescued by righteous Macedonians and Albanians, as well as by the Spanish Consulate in Skopje. Discusses, also, the dubious role of King Boris of Bulgaria - whether he was a savior of Bulgarian Jews or a hangman of Macedonian Jews.

"The theme of this book involves the Holocaust [...]. Itzkoff's main concern is to understand and explain this event in the context of Jewish history and the unfolding meaning of Western civilizational experience"--Front flap.

What has given the Jewish people their resilience, their power of survival, and their ability to adapt to radically new conditions without losing their identity? What combination of religious faith, social organization, intellectual toughness, and poetic imagination constitutes Jewishness? Eighteen eminent scholars address these questions in this richly illustrated survey of Jewish history from its earliest days to the foundation of Israel. Equal weight is given to Judaica and to the ways in which Judaism has coped with the challenges of modernity. This unparalleled work of scholarship is enhanced throughout by a plethora of superbly reproduced illustrations, from manuscript illuminations and liturgical objects to medieval prints and popular art. 436 illustrations, 135 in color. Edited by Elie Kedourie, a distinguished historian and political philosopher, the book includes essays by Haim Beinart, T. Carmi, Amnon Cohen, S. Ettinger, Shelomo Dov Goitein, A. Grossman, Oscar Handlin, Arthur Hertzberg, Arthur Hyman, Lionel Kochan, Hyam Maccoby, Jacob Neusner, H. W. F. Saggs, Amnon Shiloah, Ezra Spicehandler, David Vital, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, and Zvi Yavetz.

Focusing on the cultural invention of Zionism, Michael Berkowitz explores how and why the Jewish nationalist movement was embraced by assimilated Jews of Western Europe before World War I. He pays special attention to the symbolism, artistic representations, and mythology that attracted European Jews to Zionism, which coexisted equally with the nationalisms of their home countries. The book was originally published in 1993.

In a world of relentless and often violent change, what does it take for a culture to survive? Steven Weitzman addresses this question by exploring the "arts of cultural persistence"--the tactics that cultures employ to sustain themselves in the face of intractable realities. Surviving Sacrilege focuses on a famously resilient culture caught between two disruptive acts of sacrilege: ancient Judaism between the destruction of the First Temple (by the Babylonians) in 586 B.C. and the destruction of the Second Temple (by the Romans) in 70 C.E. Throughout this period Jews faced the challenge of preserving their religious traditions in a world largely out of their control--a world ruled first by the Persians, then by the Hellenistic Seleucid Kingdom, and finally by the Roman Empire. Their struggle to answer this challenge yields insight into the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and creativity of a distinctive period in Jewish history, but one with broad implications for the study of religious and cultural survival. Detecting something tenaciously self-preserving at the core of the imagination, Weitzman argues that its expression in storytelling, fantasy, imitation, metaphor, and magic allows a culture's survival instinct to maneuver within, beyond, and even against the limits of reality.

Scholars have struggled for decades to explain why Jews have succeeded extravagantly in modern science. A variety of controversial theories from such intellects as C. P. Snow, Norbert Wiener, and Nathaniel Weyl have been promoted. Snow hypothesized an evolved genetic predisposition to scientific success. Wiener suggested that the breeding habits of Jews sustained hereditary qualities conducive for learning. Economist and eugenicist Weyl attributed Jewish intellectual eminence to "seventeen centuries of breeding for scholars." Rejecting the idea that Jews have done well in science because of uniquely Jewish traits, Jewish brains, and Jewish habits of mind, historian of science Noah J. Efron approaches the Jewish affinity for science through the geographic and cultural circumstances of Jews who were compelled to settle in new worlds in the early twentieth century. Seeking relief from religious persecution, millions of Jews resettled in the United States, Palestine, and the Soviet Union, with large concentrations of settlers in New York, Tel Aviv, and Moscow. Science played a large role in the lives and livelihoods of these immigrants: it was a universal force that transcended the arbitrary Old World orders that had long ensured the exclusion of all but a few Jews from the seats of power, wealth, and public esteem. Although the three destinations were far apart geographically, the links among the communities were enduring and spirited. This shared experience of facing the future in new worlds, both physical and conceptual provided a generation of Jews with opportunities unlike any their parents and grandparents had known. The tumultuous recent century of Jewish history, which saw both a methodical campaign to blot out Europe's Jews and the inexorable absorption of Western Jews into the societies in which they now live, is illuminated by the place of honor science held in Jewish imaginations. Science was central to their dreams of creating new worlds - welcoming worlds - for a persecuted people. This provocative work will appeal to historians of science as well as scholars of religion, Jewish studies, and Zionism

Most Americans are ill-prepared to engage thoughtfully in the increasingly serious debate about Israel, its place in the Middle East, and its relations with the United States. Essential Israel examines a wide variety of complex issues and current concerns in historical and contemporary contexts to provide readers with an intimate sense of the dynamic society and culture that is Israel today. The expert contributors to this volume address the Arab-Israeli conflict, the state of diplomatic efforts to bring about peace, Zionism and the impact of the Holocaust, the status of the Jewish state and Israeli democracy, foreign relations, immigration and Israeli identity, as well as literature, film, and the other arts. This unique and innovative volume provides solid grounding to understandings of Israel's history, politics, culture, and possibilities for the future.

In this comprehensive study Paul Wexler demonstrates that Yiddish is a Slavic language largely relexified to genuine and artificial German and Hebrew, as a cryptic language of trade in the Khazar Empire in the 9-10th centuries for the use of multilingual Jewish merchants, who enjoyed special privileges on the Afro-Eurasian Silk Roads until the 13th century. Other Judaized trade languages (Turkic, Chinese, Arabic) were also coined at this time in the Khazar and Iranian Empires. In both empires, Yiddish absorbed over 5,000 overt influ-ences mainly from Judaized Persian, and secondarily from Judaized Turkic and Chinese. Yiddish mainly has Hebraisms wherever Persian employs Arabisms (but has almost no overt Arabisms) and preserves Asianisms with greater accuracy and volume than most Iranianized non-Jewish target languages. Until c. 1000, almost all Jews in the world resided in the Iranian Empire and were mainly of Iranian and only partly of Palestinian Judaean descent. Conversion to Judaism was common among Iranians, Turks, Slavs and Berbers (because of a desire to participate in the lucrative Silk Road trade dominated by Jews, and to escape the status of slavery often imposed on them); conversion led to the rise of new diverse Jewish "ethnicities" and forms of Judaism. The book also examines the Iranianization of other cryptic Jewish trade languages, of Slavic and German, and the common Hebrew-like lexicon used by all Jewish merchants to overcome varied language backgrounds. Yiddish can help to reconstruct the Iranian speech of mixed Irano-Slavic confederations (such as the Galician White Croats).

Ammiel Alcalay's groundbreaking work, After Jews and Arabs, published in 1993, redrew the geographic, political, cultural, and emotional map of relations between Jews and Arabs in the Levantine/Mediterranean world over a thousand-year period. Based on over a decade of research and fieldwork in many disciplines-including history and historiography; anthropology, ethnography, and ethnomusicology; political economy and geography; linguistics; philosophy; and the history of science and technology-the book presented a radically different perspective than that presented by received opinion. Given the radical and iconoclastic nature of Alcalay's perspective, After Jews and Arabs met great resistance in attempts to publish it. Though completed and already circulating in 1989, it didn't appear until 1993. In addition, when the book was published, there wasn't enough space to include its original bibliography, a foundational part of the project. A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs presents the original bibliography, as completed in 1992, without changes, as a glimpse into the historical record of a unique scholarly, political, poetic, and cultural journey. The bibliography itself had roots in research begun in the late 1970s and demonstrates a very wide arc. In addition to the bibliography, we include three accompanying texts here. In "Behind the Scenes: Before After Jews and Arabs, " Alcalay takes us behind the closed doors of the academic process, reprinting the original reader reports and his detailed rebuttals, and in "A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs A Brief Introduction," Alcalay contextualizes his own path to the work he undertook, in methodological, historical, and political terms. Also included is "A Poetics of Bibliography." Poet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay teaches at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. His books include After Jews and Arabs, Keys to the Garden, Memories of Our Future, Islanders, and neither wit nor gold: from then. A 10th-anniversary edition of from the warring factions, a book-length poem dedicated to Srebrenica, and a book of essays, a little history, came out in 2013. a little history also came out in a Portuguese translation with Editor Lumme, São Paolo in 2019. During the wars in ex-Yugoslavia, he was the primary translator of texts from Bosnia, and translations include Sarajevo Blues and Nine Alexandrias by poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic, as well as works by journalist Zlatko Dizdarevic, and many others. Alcalay is the General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, a series of student and guest-edited archival texts emerging from New American Poetry, and he was the recipient of a 2017 Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award for this work.

Traversing farflung Jewish communities in South Africa, Australia, Texas, Brazil, China, New Zealand, Quebec, and elsewhere, this collection explores the compelling notion of "frontier" in the Jewish experience as a historical/geographical reality and a conceptual framework. Articulating the tension between the center/periphery model and the frontier model. Jewries at the Frontier shows how the dynamic confrontation between and among cultures and peoples brings marginalized experiences to the center and provides a new, multivocal account of Jewish history.

Two creative centres of Jewish life rose to prominence in the twentieth century, one in Israel and the other in the United States. Although Israeli and American Jews share kinship and history drawn from their Eastern European roots, they have developed divergent cultures from their common origins, often seeming more like distant cousins than close relatives. This book explores why this is so, examining how two communities that constitute eighty percent of the world's Jewish population have created separate identities and cultures. Using examples from literature, art, history, and politics, leading Israeli and American scholars focus on the political, social, and memory cultures of their two communities, considering in particular the American-Jewish challenge to diaspora consciousness and the Israeli struggle to forge a secular, national Jewish identity. At the same time, they seek to understand how a sense of mutual responsibility and fate animates American and Israeli Jews who reside in distant places, speak different languages, and live within different political and social worlds.