With the help of over one hundred illustrations spanning three centuries, Richard Cohen investigates the role of visual images in European Jewish history. The interaction of Jews with the visual arts takes place, as Cohen says, in a vast gallery of prints, portraits, books, synagogue architecture, ceremonial art, modern Jewish painting and sculpture, political broadsides, monuments, medals, and memorabilia. Pointing to recent scholarship that overturns the stereotype of Jews as people of the text, unconcerned with the visual, Cohen shows how the coming of the modern period expanded the relationship of Jews to the visual realm far beyond the religious context. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the study and collecting of Jewish art became a legitimate and even passionate pursuit, and signaled the entry of Jews into the art world as painters, collectors, and dealers.

In this authoritative guide to Judaism, respected scholar M. Friedlander provides a comprehensive overview of Jewish history, beliefs, and practices. This book is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of one of the world's oldest and most influential religions. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Winner of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, Anthologies and Collections The year 1929 represents a major turning point in interwar Jewish society, proving to be a year when Jews, regardless of where they lived, saw themselves affected by developments that took place around the world, as the crises endured by other Jews became part of the transnational Jewish consciousness. In the United States, the stock market crash brought lasting economic, social, and ideological changes to the Jewish community and limited its ability to support humanitarian and nationalist projects in other countries. In Palestine, the anti-Jewish riots in Hebron and other towns underscored the vulnerability of the Zionist enterprise and ignited heated discussions among various Jewish political groups about the wisdom of establishing a Jewish state on its historical site. At the same time, in the Soviet Union, the consolidation of power in the hands of Stalin created a much more dogmatic climate in the international Communist movement, including its Jewish branches. Featuring a sparkling array of scholars of Jewish history, 1929 surveys the Jewish world in one year offering clear examples of the transnational connections which linked Jews to each other—from politics, diplomacy, and philanthropy to literature, culture, and the fate of Yiddish—regardless of where they lived. Taken together, the essays in 1929 argue that, whether American, Soviet, German, Polish, or Palestinian, Jews throughout the world lived in a global context.

The central addressed the conference question by reported on in this book was posed by Salo Wittmayer Baron, then a young Jewish historian, in his 1928 essay "Ghetto and Emancipation". In it he challenged what he called "the lachrymose conception" of Jewish history in which the Jewish Middle Ages were all evil and Jewish post-Emancipation was all good. In asserting that medieval Jews possessed "more rights than the great bulk of the population...and enjoyed full internal autonomy" in the corporatist order of medieval civilization, he also found much to criticize in the loss of communal autonomy and the recasting of Judaism into a narrow confessional mold in the wake of the Enlightenment. In other words, how can a group seeking to preserve a measure of collective identity survive within a liberal society that values individual rights and obligations above all else? This became the basis for a conference in 1995 at the University of Scranton attended by a distinguished roster of scholars on various fields of Jewish studies from across the United States.

The Celebrities Of The Jews offers a comprehensive overview of Jewish history from the destruction of Jerusalem to the late medieval period. In Part I (70-1290), Moses Avigdor Chaikin surveys the historical circumstances and prominent figures that shaped the Jewish experience during this tumultuous era. This volume provides valuable insights into the resilience, intellectual contributions, and cultural adaptations of the Jewish people throughout centuries of change. "The Celebrities Of The Jews" remains a vital resource for understanding the enduring legacy of Jewish history and the individuals who helped define it. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Jewish philosophy is often presented as an addendum to Jewish religion rather than as a rich and varied tradition in its own right, but the History of Jewish Philosophy explores the entire scope and variety of Jewish philosophy from philosophical interpretations of the Bible right up to contemporary Jewish feminist and postmodernist thought. The links between Jewish philosophy and its wider cultural context are stressed, building up a comprehensive and historically sensitive view of Jewish philosophy and its place in the development of philosophy as a whole. Includes: · Detailed discussions of the most important Jewish philosophers and philosophical movements · Descriptions of the social and cultural contexts in which Jewish philosophical thought developed throughout the centuries · Contributions by 35 leading scholars in the field, from Britain, Canada, Israel and the US · Detailed and extensive bibliographies

"Historical Dictionary of Judaism, Fourth Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and the dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries on important personalities in Jewish religious history, including biblical personalities with an emphasis on how they are understood in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition"--

The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain is a detailed study of the events surrounding this infamous chapter in Spanish history. Based on hundreds of documents discovered, deciphered, and analyzed during decades of intensive archival research, this work focuses on the practical consequences of the expulsion both for those expelled and those remaining behind. It responds to basic questions such as: What became of property owned by Jewish individuals and communities? What became of outstanding debts between Jews and Christians? How was the edict of expulsion implemented? Who was in charge? How did they operate? What happened to those who converted to Christianity in order to remain in Spain or return to that country? The material summarized and analyzed in this study also sheds light on Jewish life in Spain preceding the expulsion. For example, Jews are shown to have been present in remote villages where they were not hitherto known to have lived, and documents detailing lawsuits between Christians related to debts left behind by Jews reveal much about business and financial relations between Jews and Christians. By focusing on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in such detail - for example, by naming the magistrates who presided over the confiscation of Jewish communal property - Professor Beinart takes history out of the realm of abstraction and gives it concrete reality.

This volume gathers sixteen essays on monarchy and power in the Hellenistic period and charts a new approach to Hellenistic history by focusing attention on biblical and Jewish evidence and reading that evidence in new ways. The essays consider the kings, queens, and power figures of the Hellenistic dynasties, as well as ancient Israelite kings, the Babylonian and Persian rulers of the Bible, Parthians, and Romans. The volume also represents a new kind of interpretation of the Greek Bible (Septuagint) and of the Jewish literature of the period, setting them in the context of Hellenistic political thought and practice.

"Matzah and Flour: Recipes from the History of the Sephardic Jews offers a tantalizing exploration of the central role of matzah and flour in Sephardic cuisine. Journey through centuries of tradition as flour, from various grains like chickpea, corn, and barley, intertwines with cultural narratives and religious observance. Delve into the symbolism of matzah, from its origins in the Exodus story to its embodiment of resilience and identity. Each of this cookbook's thoughtfully prepared recipes is a testament to the transformative power of flour in Sephardic culinary heritage. From savory delicacies to sweet delights, these timeless flavors have sustained Sephardic families through history. Matzah and Flour is a celebration of tradition, history, and the enduring legacy of Sephardic Jewish cuisine."--

Now in paperback and "brimming with wondrous surprises . . . There's magic in The Pinch " ( The Boston Globe ) Steve Stern's prodigious imagination finds a wondrous home in the Pinch, a once-thriving Jewish community in Memphis. The Pinch revolves around a single enchanted day containing years, during which the antics of a group of Jewish mystics threaten to ravage the life of general store proprietor Pinchas Pin with miracles, and his nephew Muni's ardor for an alluring tightrope walker collides with his passion for chronicling the wonders of North Main Street. Their stories, gleaned by a hapless bookseller from a fabulist history book, transform the fate of the neighborhood. Now in paperback, The Pinch is a sparkling reminder that Steve Stern is one of our most talented and inimitable storytellers. "[A] big, rangy, saturated, antic new novel, a Pynchonian tragicomedy . . . Stern, an ebullient maestro of words and mayhem, wonder and conscience, orchestrates a cacophonous, whirling, gritty, tender, time-warping saga that encompasses a cavalcade of horror, stubborn love, cosmic slapstick, burlesque humor, and a scattering of miracles." -- Booklist (starred review) "Weird and wonderful . . . [ The Pinch is] a backdrop to Stern's poignant and antic drama, a playground on which his exuberant, larger-than-life characters can run wild . . . The Pinch is composed of . . . perfectly calibrated moments, all of which pulse with a dynamic inventiveness." -- Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Examines three medieval Jewish accounts of the First Crusade massacres in the Rhine area: the "Mainz Anonymous, " the "Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, " and the "Eliezer bar Nathan Chronicle." Discerns five voices or perspectives in these narratives due to the fact that the "Solomon bar Simson Chronicle" is a compilation of several prior compositions. Suggests that the narratives were composed in order to provide important time-bound information (the course of events, apology of the Jews - both those who chose martyrdom and those who converted, etc.), as well as to address critical timeless issues (including guidance for the future, theodicy, "Kiddush Hashem, " etc.). Believes that the data provided by the two early narratives - the "Mainz Anonymous" and the Speyer-Worms-Mainz unit of the "Solomon bar Simson Chronicle" - are historically reliable, while the other narratives are less reliable. Concludes that the combination of time-bound and timeless concerns reflects an innovative style of historical writing and new views on the relationship between God, humanity, and history.

The history of Jews in interwar Germany and Austria is often viewed either as the culmination of tremendous success in the economic and cultural realms and of individual assimilation and acculturation, or as the beginning of the road that led to Auschwitz. By contrast, this volume demonstrates a reemerging sense of community within the German-speaking Jewish population of these two countries in the two decades after World War I. The fresh research presented here shows that although Jews may have experiences a deepening sence of impending crisis and economic decline, a renewal of Jewish communal life was taking place, as new groupings sprang up, including organizations for youth, for rural Jews, and for political groups such as Zionists and Bundists. Several chapters consider the impact of economis and political crises on German Jewish family life. Together, these engrossing essays form a complex mosaic of German Jewry on the eve of its demise.

This essay in the history of ideas seeks to trace the development of creed formation in Judaism from its inception with Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) to the beginning of the sixteenth-century, when systematic attention to the problem disappeared from the agenda of Jewish intellectuals. Dr Kellner describes, analyses, and compares the dogmatic systems of Maimonides, Duran, Crescas, Albo, Bibado, Abravanel, among others. English translations are presented for relevant texts, which, for the most part, have never before been critically edited or translated.

This volume, first published in 1973, brings together a wide range of Professor Landau's work on recent Middle Eastern history and politics, reflecting the breadth of the author's concern and research. The first section deals with aspects of political organisation in the Middle East, largely Egypt, towards the end of the nineteenth century. A little-known plan of the Islamic reformer al-Afghani is discussed, showing him in a rather more political light than the religious haze which normally surrounds this pan-Islamic campaigner. The role of the influential secret societies in modern Egypt is outlined, and the politics behind the fluctuations in the degree of responsibility allowed to Egyptian ministers is examined. This section is concluded by a chapter on two proposals for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Sudan in the early days of Zionism, throwing interesting light on the differing aims of early Zionists and alternative historical paths that might have been taken. The second section of the book contains studies on the Jewish situation in nineteenth-century Egypt, focusing on their position within the larger Muslim society and on socio-economic factors, as well as on the career of James Sanua ('Abu Naddara'), an Egyptian Jew who played a prominent part in nationalist agitation. The two final parts of the book turn to recent and contemporary electoral politics in the Middle East, with special attention being paid to the political leadership and voting behaviour of the Arabs in Israel. Other studies deal with elections in Lebanon and Turkey, and the final chapter analyses the militant right-wing elements in the Turkish political spectrum.

According to the 1990 census, New York, for the first time in a century, had more foreign-born inhabitants than native-born residents. A city of continual immigration, New York's people have been documented by major artists and photographers from the earliest European settlers to the present. In this majestic illustrated history, with over 500 prints, paintings, and photographs, many never before published, we see the arrival of the first wave of Dutch and Anglo-Saxon settlers in the seventeenth century. We progress through Irish and German immigrations in the mid-nineteenth century, the immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of vast numbers of Italians and Eastern European Jews as well as Greeks and Slavs, followed by African Americans moving from the South after World War I. Finally, as the twentieth century comes to a close, Caribbeans, Latinos, Africans, and Asians have become the dominant new New Yorkers. As he did with Harlem on My Mind, The Lower East Side, American Jewish Album, and The Italian Americans, Allon Schoener has brought together wonderful images as well as documentary accounts from diaries, letters, news articles, and other sources, giving us the rich history and texture of this great city.

In 1818, with a single essay of vast scope and stunning detail, Leopold Zunz launched the turn to history in modern Judaism. Despite unending setbacks, he persevered for more than five decades to produce a body of enduring scholarship that would inspire young Jews streaming into German universities and alter forever the understanding of Judaism. By the time of his death in 1886, his vision and labor had given rise to a historical discourse and intellectual movement that devolved into vibrant sub-fields as it expanded to other geographic centers of Jewish life. Yet Zunz was a part-time scholar, at best, in search of employment that would leave him time to study. In addition to his pioneering scholarship, he was as deeply engaged in ending the political tutelage of German Christians as the civil disabilities of German Jews. And to his credit, these commitments did not come at the expense of his loyalty to the Jewish community, which he was ever ready to serve. Zunz once quipped that "those who have read my books are far from knowing me." To complement his books, Zunz left behind a treasure trove of notes, letters and papers, documents that the distinguished scholar of German Jewish culture, Ismar Schorsch, has zealously utilized to write this, the first full-fledged biography of a remarkable man

The Jordan Rift Valley, stretching from the Red Sea to Lebanon, was ripped open millions of years ago by vast forces within the earth. This geological object has also been a part of human history ever since early humans used it as a path in their journey out of Africa. And for a quarter of a century it has been part of the biography of Israeli writer Haim Watzman. In the autumn of 2004, as his country was riven by a fierce debate over its borders, Watzman took a two-week journey up the valley. Along the way he met scientists who try to understand the rift through the evidence lying on its surface--an archaeologist who reconstructs the fallen altars of a long-forgotten people, a zoologist whose study of bird societies has produced a theory of why organisms cooperate, and a geologist who thinks that the valley will some day be an ocean. He encountered people whose life and work on the shores of the Dead Sea and Jordan River have led them to dream of paradise and to seem to build Gardens of Eden on earth--a booster for a chemical factory, the director of a tourist site, and an aging socialist farmer who curates a museum of idols. And he discovered that the geography’s instability is mirrored in the volatility of the tales that people tell about the Sea of Galilee. As an observant Jew who has written extensively about science and scholarship, Watzman tries to understand the valley in all its complexity--its physical facts, its role in human history and his own life, and the myths it has engendered. He realizes that human beings can never see the rift in isolation. "It is the stories that men and women have told to explain what they see and what they do as a result that create the rift as we see it,” he writes. "As hard as we try to comprehend the landscape itself, it is humanity that we find. Watzman’s poetic evocation of the scientific and the human is a unique chronicle of a quest for knowledge. Finalist, Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, 2008.

Approximately 200 years of Spanish history (1300-1500) are the focus of this book. Paris sketches the medieval history of the Iberian peninsula, stressing the tolerance of most of the Islamic dynasties, the relative amity between the three major religions of the area, and the flourishing culture that this relatively peaceful era nourished. The 14th century brought division within the Catholic Church itself; a plague that killed 25-30% of the population of Europe; and, in Valencia in 1391, a pogrom that gave its Jewish residents the choice of conversion or death. The "end of days" refers to the second coming of Christ, which would happen only if all the Jews were converted. Over half of the Jewish residents of Spain converted in the 14th and 15th centuries. These "conversos" were the primary target of the early Inquisition. Paris describes the early period of the Inquisition, the motives and actions of the inquisitors, and the fate of those accused. The actual expulsion of the Jews (not the conversos) in 1492 and the Moors (who were also given the opportunity to convert) in 1502 mark the climax of the events of this book.