The first few decades of the eighteenth century witnessed an important moment in Jewish-Christian relations, as influential Christian scholars increasingly looked to Jewish texts to reveal the truths of their own faith. To what extent could postbiblical writings help them better understand the New Testament? And who would best be able to explicate these connections?Connecting the Covenants focuses on two separate but entwined stories, the first centering around the colorful character of Moses Marcus. The English-born son of wealthy parents and the grandson of the famous autobiographical author Glikl of Hameln, Marcus was a prominent Jew educated in the Ashkenazic yeshivah at Hamburg. On New Year's Day, 1723, Marcus was baptized as a Christian, later publishing a justification of his conversion and a vindication of his newly discovered faith in a small book in London. A trophy convert, he was promoted by figures at the highest levels of the Anglican Church as a cultural mediator between Judaism and Christianity. His modest successes in the world of the elite clerical establishment were followed, however, by conspicuous failures, both intellectual and material.The second story that David Ruderman tells emerges against the background of Marcus's professional decline. In the end, the prize convert proved to be a theologian of limited ability, far outstripped in sophistication and openness to rabbinic learning by a circle of Enlightenment Protestant scholars. It was not the Jew who had abjured Judaism who was willing or able to apply the Mishnah and Talmud to Christian exegesis, but figures such as William Whiston, Anthony Collins, William Wotton, and the Dutch scholar William Surenhusius who seized upon the ways to connect the covenants.

Berend's memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the "objective" historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a dictatorial state: 1. remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; 2. be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; 3. remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within. Ivan T. Berend, is Distinguished Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Director of the European Studies Program. He was one of the masterminds of regime change in Hungary. He made a career in Hungary as a university professor, Rector of the University of Economics (1973-79), and President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1985-90). He was President of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (1995-2000), and Vice-President of the International Economic History Association (1986-1994). His research interests are the complex economic, social, ideological, and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th-20th century; economic modernization; problems of European backwardness; transition from state socialism to capitalism. He published 26 books and more than 120 studies.--Publisher's description

This book is a biography of one of the most famous and influential living mathematicians, Peter Lax. He is virtually unique as a preeminent leader in both pure and applied mathematics, fields which are often seen as competing and incompatible. Although he has been an academic for all of his adult life, his biography is not without drama and tragedy. Lax and his family barely escaped to the U.S. from Budapest before the Holocaust descended. He was one of the youngest scientists to work on the Manhattan Project. He played a leading role in coping with the infamous "kidnapping" of the NYU mathematics department's computer, in 1970. The list of topics in which Lax made fundamental and long-lasting contributions is remarkable: scattering theory, solitons, shock waves, and even classical analysis, to name a few. His work has been honored many times, including the Abel Prize in 2005. The book concludes with an account of his most important mathematical contributions, made accessible without heavy prerequisites. Reuben Hersh has written extensively on mathematics. His book with Philip Davis, The Mathematical Experience, won the National Book Award in science. Hersh is emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of New Mexico.

"Tearing down stereotypes about Jews, Richard Marceau tells us about himself, using his own story to convey Jewish history and culture. He draws an original portrait of the State of Israel, the role it plays in today's Jewish identity, and helps us discover Quebec's Jewish community. Denouncing prejudices and intellectual dishonesty, identifying himself as a pro-Palestinian Zionist, Richard Marceau calls for a respectful dialogue, promoting both the legitimacy of the Jewish State of Israel and the creation of an independent Palestinian state."--Pub. desc.

"Whether we are to regard Friedrich Nietzsche as a philosopher, a cultural critic, and 'amoralist' or a pre-fascist ideologist, it is certain that his work is one of the main sources of twentieth-century western thought. Formulations such as 'God is dead' or 'the world is the product of the will to power and nothing else besides', and Nietzsche's belief that true value lies in a morality of strenuousness have become part of the experience of our age. His aim is to unmask what he considered the intellectual self-deception of his time and to create a new rejuvenating mythology. His assault on the abstraction and over-systematization of traditional philosophy resulted in a body of writing - much of it published posthumously - which is unsystematic and often contradictory, yet all unmistakably characterized by his philosophical imaginativeness. J. P. Stern's new study offers a careful exegesis of what Nietzsche said and a critical assessment of its importance. In a series of analyses of Nietzsche's 'philosophical experiments' Professor Stern unwinds the many strands of the work - the moral-existential, the religious, the linguistic, the aesthetic - and shows how they all interweave in a single, powerful philosophical enterprise: The enhancement of man in Nietzsche's time and ours. The means to this end Nietzsche saw as the pursuit of truth in all its uncompromising harshness and essential relativity. Stern also considers the political implications of the writings in the light of later developments in German history; he includes a detailed survey of Nietzsche's life; and he contrasts Nietzsche's achievement with that of Marx and Freud as the two thinkers who were to exercise a comparable influence in the twentieth century. This is the only full-scale study of Nietzsche's philosophy which takes issue with the language and literary forms in which his writings are cast. It will provide an exhilarating introduction for those who are unfamiliar with or only beginning to explore the writings of this most vibrant and paradoxical of writers. In addition the book will offer new insights for those who find in the work of Nietzsche an enduring source of fascination and stimulation." -- Book jacket.

"In Catbird: The Ballad of Barbi Prim, the world meets an insightful, opinionated eight-year-old who's already taken a few steps toward becoming a pioneer--but also a shadow of her quirky self. Although she's corroded--sometimes literally--by a toxic but familiar social atmosphere, her love of singing propels her to become the first ordained woman cantor in 3,000 years of Jewish history. A family crisis exposes old and enduring wounds, but she begins to rescue herself--by diligently going to therapy--and embarks on an imperfect but perpetual metamorphosis, becoming the well-coiffed heroine of her own story. Barbara Ostfeld shows us that we are all brave pioneers--at becoming our true selves." -- Amazon.com.

Allan Spear had a long and distinguished career as a historian and as a Minnesota state senator. Perhaps best known for coming out as openly gay during his first term in the Minnesota Senate-becoming one of the first elected officials in the nation to do so-Spear was also a leader of Eugene McCarthy's run for the presidency, an organizer against the war in Vietnam, and a key proponent for the establishment of the African-American studies department at the University of Minnesota. Spear's memoirs are fascinating and moving: in early chapters on his childhood and college years, he writes with great introspection about his growing self-awareness of being gay. Later he writes about his development as an intellectual, particularly as a white man fighting to win legitimacy for the study of African-American history and culture. During his time at the University of Minnesota, Spear became deeply involved with the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) and the antiwar movement. At the same time, Spear became increasingly active in the emerging gay rights movement and began the process of coming out to his friends and colleagues. After a failed run for the Minnesota House in 1968, Spear was elected to the Minnesota Senate in 1972 and served as Senate president from 1993-2000. In 1993, he was instrumental in the passage of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which protected LGBT people from discrimination in housing, education, and employment-an achievement he considered one of the finest of his career. A skilled parliamentarian, he remained a progressive leader in the legislature until his retirement in 2000. Spear passed away on October 11, 2008, leaving his memoir slightly incomplete. A stirring afterword by John Milton completes the story of Spear's life, chronicling the recognition of his accomplishments as a politician and activist during his final years.

Thea: To Alexandria, Jerusalem and Freedom - is a movng and exciting story of life in Egypt during the tumultuous thirties and forties. The kaleidoscope of human events described, over sixty years of our century, gives the reader a sense of having lived and witnessed important moments of history. It is a book which makes a strong protest against war. But most of all it is the story of ordinary people performing extraordinary feats of love for their fellowmen. This is a sincere, well-written and poignant book with universal appeal.

"Inspired by a search for the origin of his Lithuanian-immigrant grandfather's unlikely name - Charles Beresford Price - Stanley Price sets out to assemble his own identity from a multitude of fragments: rugby-playing, patriotic Irish; rebellious orthodox Jewish; Cambridge, anti-Establishment British; 1960s immigrant to America; not to mention, eventually, successful novelist and playwright." "Price introduces us to a varied, Woody Allen-esque cast: the eccentric grandfather who was once famously asked by a Dublin policeman whether he was 'a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew'; the ageing spinster aunts Minnie and Hilda, aka 'The Girls'; a wind-obsessed rabbi; and guest appearances from Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Marilyn Monroe." "Criss-crossing both the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic, this perfectly paced and witty memoir also tells a little-known story: that of the Jews of Ireland - their history, culture and contribution."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Selected by his daughter, Vivien, from Max Perutz's voluminous correspondence, the letters reproduced here portray their author with a spontaneity and directness no autobiography could have matched. They chronicle Perutz's adventurous life through his own vivid, erudite and humorous pen, documenting the hopes, roadblocks and moments of elation of his sixty-year quest to understand the molecular biology of hemoglobin. The first great step in this quest ― unraveling the molecular structure of hemoglobin ― earned Perutz the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Narrated against a backdrop of family and friends, politics and war, literature, travels, and Max's beloved mountains, these letters provide rare insight into the thoughts of a remarkable and very human scientist, and delightful sketches of some of the people he encountered. Starting with lively letters to a girlfriend written in his youth in Vienna and the impressions of a young scientist in Cambridge, the letters progress to the desperate pleas of an "enemy alien" interned in Canada during World War II. The diary of Perutz's subsequent super-secret war work for the British to build a floating ice airstrip in the North Atlantic, ardent campaigning letters to scientists and politicians, and self-deprecating stories of his own mishaps written to amuse his children and grandchildren are some of the many highlights of these fascinating letters, unique in the annals of recent scientific history. This book is a companion to Georgina Ferry's Max Perutz and the Secret of Life. Together these volumes provide a portrait of an extraordinary character in the development of molecular biology.

Hannah Rochel Verbermacher, a Hasidic holy woman known as the Maiden of Ludmir, was born in early-nineteenth-century Russia and became famous as the only woman in the three-hundred-year history of Hasidism to function as a rebbe—or charismatic leader—in her own right. Nathaniel Deutsch follows the traces left by the Maiden in both history and legend to fully explore her fascinating story for the first time. The Maiden of Ludmir offers powerful insights into the Jewish mystical tradition, into the Maiden’s place within it, and into the remarkable Jewish community of Ludmir. Her biography ultimately becomes a provocative meditation on the complex relationships between history and memory, Judaism and modernity. History first finds the Maiden in the eastern European town of Ludmir, venerated by her followers as a master of the Kabbalah, teacher, and visionary, and accused by her detractors of being possessed by a dybbuk, or evil spirit. Deutsch traces the Maiden’s steps from Ludmir to Ottoman Palestine, where she eventually immigrated and re-established herself as a holy woman. While the Maiden’s story—including her adamant refusal to marry—recalls the lives of holy women in other traditions, it also brings to light the largely unwritten history of early-modern Jewish women. To this day, her transgressive behavior, a challenge to traditional Jewish views of gender and sexuality, continues to inspire debate and, sometimes, censorship within the Jewish community.

Translated from the original Kindheit, written in 1958 and published in German in 2003, David Dollenmayer’s edition makes this remarkable work available to a much-deserved wider audience. Moses Rosenkranz came from impoverished roots in rural Bucovina and gained acclaim for his poetry only late in his life. He survived the same Rumanian fascist work camp as his fellow poet Paul Celan, only to be arrested by the Russians in 1947 and interned in the Gulag for ten years. With his richly detailed recollections of rural life among Jews, Ukrainians, Rumanians, Poles, and Germans in Bucovina, a colorful parade of characters, and a remarkable eloquence, Rosenkranz recaptures a vanished moment of cultural history. The author’s unvarnished portraits of love, jealousy, and passion in his extensive family bring a fresh resonance to his poetry.

The captivating memoirs of a Political heavyweight, detailing more than 40 years in government. Sir Malcolm Rifkind's political career has been as glittering as it has been long-lived. Indeed, he served as a minister for eighteen years, longer uninterrupted service than anyone since Lord Palmerston in the nineteenth century. Informed and stimulating, but also more relaxed, amusing and readable than most books of this genre, Rifkind's memoirs include his battles with Margaret Thatcher over Scotland, explain how he helped change Polish history during the Cold War, describe his presence at the Gorbachev-Thatcher summit and tell how he served as both Defence Minister and Foreign Secretary during some of the most turbulent years of the late twentieth century.The book also covers Rifkind's five pivotal years as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, working with MI6, the CIA and both spies and those spied upon. For his robustness, he is currently banned from Russia by President Putin. Rifkind's memoir is serious and funny, wise and self-deprecatory. This is a book about the past and the future.

"The author has constructed a chronicle of the life of Ilia Zdanevich (known as Iliazd), an important writer and artist in Russian and French modernism, and enriched this chronicle with commentary on the process of writing a biography and a discussion of the twentieth-century avant-garde. The author originally researched Iliazd with the help of his widow many years ago, and she revisited her notes taken at that time with an experienced scholar's critical distance"--

This volume completes the biography of Peter Struve (1870-1944), one of the most remarkable and influential Russian intellectuals of this century. More than anyone else in his time, Struve was the master of history, journalism, economics, international relations, and practical politics. A scholar and activist, he helped found the Marxist movement in Russia, initiated Marxist Revisionism there, and launched Lenin's career, and he was the theoretician and a cofounder of the Constitutional Democratic Party. After 1905--the years covered in this self-contained volume--Struve became the principal critic of the Russian intelligentsia and the main political ideologist of the anti-Bolshevik opposition during the Civil War and in emigration. His life was a part of the life of Russia as he struggled to craft a liberal democracy and wound up defeated and faced with an emerging totalitarian state. In writing about Struve, Richard Pipes turns biography into history. He lays bare the split soul of the Russian intellectuals--their irresponsibility, unwillingness to compromise, intolerance. Struve, the liberal turned conservative, preached to his countrymen physical and spiritual freedom based on law. He was a Westerner in his championing of social reform, legality, private property, and a vigorous state and foreign policy. This long and rich tradition of liberal-conservatism is recounted against the background of a "monstrous growth of political claims on the individual that caused intellectual and moral independence increasingly to be punished with ostracism, confinement, exile, and death."