R.B. Lemberg's poems are a manifesto of memories, unearthing worlds that are gone and poignantly present: their childhood in the Soviet Union, suspended between Ukraine and the permafrost of Siberia, among the traumatized, silent, persecuted members of their Jewish family; Lemberg's coming of age in Israel, being the other wherever they go, both internally and externally, in multiple identities, languages, genders; and the arrival in "the lost land" of their America, where they have put down "tentative roots." Every line in this stunning, lyrical memoir is chiseled with the poignant precision of ice into a coruscating cascade that engulfs us with the author's sensations of solitude, anger, grief; sometimes hurling like an avalanche, sometimes tenderly unfolding like constellations in a circumpolar sky - leaving open the possibility that with the disturbing truths covered for decades, the thawing permafrost from Lemberg's past might also lay bare layers of love.

This book, a follow-up to Kitaj's influential First Diasporist Manifesto (1989), is a personal reflection on the Jewish Question in contemporary art as it is lived and painted and imagined by one of today's most innovative and controversial artists. In 615 distinct propositions that deliberately echo the Commandments of Jewish Law, Kitaj here channels his ideas for a new Diasporist art in a daring stream of consciousness. Including 41 images of the artist's work chosen by him to accompany the text, this beautifully crafted volume is a unique and fascinating look into an artist's unusual life and work. From The Second Diasporist Manifesto is: 'But I swore to become myself - the new Jewish painter of a skeptical Diasporist art, born in Modernism, which cleaves to my own uncanny Jewish life of study, painting, unthinkable thoughts and near death...I admit that my Manifesto-poem is very personal, as a poem can be. But one would have to also unpack the cultural secrets of a book on Islamic Art, or Chinese or Egyptian or African Art. My Jewish Art lives a more Modernist Secret life. The Jewish Diaspora is not the only one. It's just mine.'

Poetry. With a voice as familiar as family, Rachel B. Glaser's second book of poems, HAIRDO, hilariously navigates the daily anxieties and fantasies of the writer's path through her own modern life. Writing through action movies, pornography, chat rooms, photo shoots on train tracks, crushes on teachers, and orchids in grocery stores, the poems in this book present us with emotional souvenirs of a curious and honest life lived. Bursting with Glaser's truly unique heart, her mega-watt wit and insightful eye, HAIRDO is a book you will find yourself reading at 3AM, not able to put it down. "I love every single piece of art that Rachel Glaser makes. If she dug a hole I would want to spend time in that hole, because I know it would be just as strange, delightful, and intriguing as her linguistic and pictorial creations. Hooray for HAIRDO, and long live this incomparable maker." -- Heather Christle "Rachel Glaser has shown me the paradise of this world with her poems. Every man, woman and the rest of us need to see ourselves as one another, as puddles, horses, as imperfect, and that is the paradise. And all of that is especially here in her newest book with a tremendous passion anyone who ever loved poetry must come back to life to read. If poetry is dead like some sad, weepy critics have declared, then Glaser is the resurrection the weepy along with her dedicated poetry citizens have needed " --CAConrad

Examines the personal values and philosophies of Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum in relation to the pressures and conditions under which they lived in the Nazi era. All had "strong Christian affinities." Under the challenge of terror they were "Christians by choice, Jews by decree." Each responded to her Jewishness in a distinct way: Stein felt close to the Jews; Weil had a hateful attitude toward them and tried to obliterate herself as a Jew; Frank and Hillesum both affirmed their Jewish identities. In the face of Hitler, each, in her own way, resisted.

In this moving account of the life, work, and ethics of four Jewish women intellectuals in the world of the Holocaust, Rachel Feldhay Brenner explores the ways in which these women sought to maintain their faith in humanity while aware of intensifying destruction. She argues that through their written responses of autobiographical self-assertion, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum resisted the Nazi terror in ways that defy its horrifying dehumanization. Personal identity crises engendered the intellectual-spiritual acts of autobiographical self-searching for each of these women. About to become a nun in 1933, Edith Stein embarked on her autobiography as a daughter of a Jewish family. Fleeing France and deportation in 1942, Simone Weil examined her inner struggle with faith and the Church in her "Spiritual Autobiography." Hiding for more than two years in the attic, Anne Frank poignantly confided in her diary about her efforts to become a better person. Having volunteered as a social worker in Westerbork, Etty Hillesum searched her soul for love in the reality of terror. In each case, autobiographical writing becomes an act of defiance that asserts humanity in a dehumanized/dehumanizing world. By focusing on the four women's accomplishments as intellectuals, writers, and thinkers, Brenner's account liberates them from other posthumous treatments that depict them as symbols of altruism, sanctity, and victimization. Her approach also elucidates the particular predicament of Western Jewish intellectuals who trusted the ideals of the Enlightenment and believed in human fellowship. While suffering the terror of physical annihilation decreed by the Final Solution, these Jews had to contend with their exclusion from the world that they considered theirs. On yet another level, this study of four extraordinary life stories contributes to a deeper understanding of the postwar development of ethical, theological, and feminist thought. In showing concern about a world that had ceased to care for them, Stein, Weil, Frank, and Hillesum demonstrated that the meaning of human existence consisted in the responsibility for the other, in the protection of the suffering God, in the primary value of relatedness through empathy. Arguing that their ethical tenets anticipated the thought of such postwar thinkers as Levinas, Fackenheim, Tillich, Arendt, and Nodding, Brenner proposes that the breakup of the humanist tradition of the Enlightenment in the Holocaust engendered the postwar exploration of humanist potential in self-givenness to the other.

"Translations of selected poetry concerning Jerusalem, for the 1930s to the present, with an introduction and notes"-- Provided by publisher.

The idea of peace is always enchanting, for it encompasses the tranquility and serenity for which every human yearns. The nation of Israel has never known peace, but it dreams of peace. In practice Israel navigates between the poles of war and peace, with endless middle-of the-road situations like cease-fire, truce, armistice, and other temporary cessations of hostilities.The Oslo Idea traces the roots of the current campaign to delegitimize Israel. The campaign is not linked to Israeli resistance, to the absence of an acceptable settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, or to Israel's reluctance to abandon territory. It results from a change of tactics by the Palestinian leadership. Israeli argues that these tactics have been used to exhaust, reduce, and replace Israel rather than produce a compromise. Half the Palestinian people and other uncompromising Arabs and Muslims have stated that goal openly and act to achieve it.Raphael Israeli deconstructs the immense illusion of the Oslo peace accords, which initiated the so-called 'peace process.' He shows how Oslo lured a naive Israeli leadership into a trap. He shows how outside factors, bent on finding and supporting an evasive peace, have helped perpetuate the fiasco Oslo represents. He shows how Oslo's supporters have advanced the 'peace process' by coaxing and threatening Israel behind the scenes, and binding Israel alone with the Oslo commitments and their derivatives. More importantly, the author outlines and analyzes the basic and seemingly unbridgeable points of contention that remain: security, refugees, settlements, water, borders, and the status of Jerusalem itself.

Anthropologist Patai analyses the cultural differences, and the problems of integration, of Israeli immigrants. This is an enlarged and revised edition of the 1953 publication. Since then, Dr. Patai has concluded that there can be no true occidental-oriental synthesis in Israel: the style of life is western, so western culture will predominate.

First published in 1989, this is the second of three volumes exploring the changing notions of patriotism in British life from the thirteenth century to the late twentieth century and constitutes an attempt to come to terms with the power of the national idea through a historically informed critique. This volume examines how national identity has competed with alternative, more personal forms of belonging such as Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Nonconformism as well looking at femininity in relation to the state. Contemporary British society s capacity to create outsiders is discussed and the introductory essay shows how this may shape our misunderstanding of earlier phases of national development. "

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"Listed from A to Z, this book looks at a broad range of issues arising out of modern and postmodern human and Jewish experience. Beginning with the first page, readers will want to read more - and ask more"--Back cover.

In the summer of 1950, Rebecca Lepkoff and her husband Gene bought land in Jamaica, Vermont, a small, south-central Green Mountain town on the West River. A 34-year-old photographer, Rebecca had already made a name for herself as a member of the Photo League, which viewed photography as a tool for social change. Her photographs of her native Lower East Side in the 1930s and ‘40s were already becoming renowned. The Lepkoffs were drawn to the communitarian homesteaders who populated the Pikes Falls area of Jamaica, clustered near Scott and Helen Nearing. Published here for the first time are some 60 photographs that Rebecca Lepkoff took of natives and transplants at work and play during that summer of 1950, as the Korean War engulfed the nation’s headlines. These intimate images are the work of an artist at the peak of her craft and they portray a rural Vermont town at a moment in time just before paved roads and postwar development would alter its character forever.

The hardcover is cloth-covered flexible paperboard. Picture shown is of spine and front cover.

This groundbreaking book, developed with a grant from the Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn Institute for Interreligious Understanding of the American Jewish Committee, is a stepping stone to dialogue. Descended from a common ancestor, Jews and Muslims share a special relationship and practice religions that exhibit remarkable moral and theological resemblance. But most Muslims know little about Judaism. In his volume, Rabbi Firestone presents Judaism with a Muslim sensibility in mind, and thus establishes unprecedented intimacy between Jewish and Muslim consciousness and worldviews. His work is the first of its kind to offer a comprehensive introduction to Judaism with a special emphasis on issues of particular concern to Muslims. A publication of the Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn Institute for International Interreligious Understanding of the American Jewish Committee.

For the believing Jew today, no less than for those in the past, the study of the weekly portion is a religious experience. For this reason it is customary to consider the section along with its traditional commentaries. It is important to know not only what the Torah meant when it was written, but also what it has meant within Judaism since then. It is also important for intellectual honesty to distinguish between the two. Moderns also have the advantage of using the results of linguistic studies and comparative studies of other ancient texts as well as archaeological finds to help us understand the text.The Torah reflects an entire worldview concerning the nature of God and of human beings, the task of Israel and the way in which we are to live. Thus it is an ancient text that is ever new and always renewing itself. One studies it not only to learn what was, but also to discover what we are and how we are to live. These prefaces are meant to complement and enrich your study of the portion by pointing out important ideas found therein and raising problems and questions for consideration. Enter into the Torah text with this lively companion and experience the full impact of the age-old - and totally new - weekly portion.