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

This book offers a prophetic vision of a postdigital future that reveals a paradigm shift from the Hellenistic to the Hebraic roots of Western culture. Alexenberg surveys new art forms emerging from a postdigitial age and explores postdigital perspectives rising from creative encounters between art, science, technology, and human consciousness.

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.

This book is the first to examine closely the interaction between Jewish culture, medicine, and science during Europe's age of 'scientific revolution'. Most students of Jewish history have treated the period from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries as a mere extension of the Jewish Middle Ages, a time when the Jewish world was cut off from intellectual developments in the Christian world. The eminent scholar David Ruderman here argues, however, that during this era Jewish culture and society became increasingly aware of medical and scientific advances, and that a new Jewish scientific discourse evolved that had significant repercussions for Jewish religious concerns.

This volume brings together thirty-four essays and ar- ticles by Werner J. Cahnman representing four decades (1940-1980) of work by an extraordinary, multidisciplinary scholar. Cahnman's work encompasses the experiences of a German Jewish refugee, an economist turned sociologist, and a scholar of Judaism. Part 1 contains personal and autobiographical writings and includes analyses of the cultural ambiguities of Jewish assimilation in Germany and Austria. Part 2 is devoted to sociological essays ranging from a critical assessment of Gunnar Myrdal's landmark study of the problems of race and democracy, An American Dilemma , to a probing look at the stigma of obesity, based on empirical research, a subject very much in the news today and that shows Cahnman ahead of his time. Part 3 offers some of Cahnman's most perceptive essays dealing with geopolitical themes. Included are theoretically based writings that help to clarify the methods and concepts of geopolitics, marking the intellectual beginnings of the global approach to world affairs. Here Cahnman broached the possibility of a united Europe (1944), realized sixty years later in the formation of the European Union. The twelve essays of Part 4 return to Cahnman's ever-present concern with Jews and Judaism. They present a wide-ranging historical-sociological view, from the Jews of Vienna in the 1930s to the American scene in the 1960s, to the still-unresolved problematics of Arab-Israeli relations, with Cahnman arguing for coexistence and a two-state solution for Jews and Arabs. The volume, carefully selected and assembled by the editors, presents for the first time essays representing the full range of Werner Cahnman's scholarship and thought. It will be of interest to students of sociology, history, political science, and Judaic studies.

Review An expert weaver, Stollman brings together themes of religion, science, and love into an emotional whole. -- Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2003 Stollman's weightier fictions - elegantly written and wise - returns literature to its rightful role. -- Miami Herald, March 2, 2003 Product Description A collection of short stories by the author of The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul represents his earlier works as published in such literary magazines as American Short Fiction, the Yale Review, and Tikkun and explores such themes as the impact of the past on the present and of one person on another. 12,500 first pirnting. From Library Journal A story collection from the author of two celebrated novels: The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author Aryehlev Stollman is a neuroradiologist and the author of two books, The Illuminated Soul and The Far Euphrates, which is an American Library Association Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Review Recommended Book of the Year, and the winner of a Wilbur Award and Lambda Award.