In parallel stories, a Ukrainian Jewish family prepares to immigrate to the United States in the late 1800s, and Frederic Auguste Bartholdi designs, raises funds for, and builds the Statue of Liberty in honor of the United States' centennial.

Simon, the oldest of five brothers, chronicles the transformation from farmers to soldiers of the five Maccabee brothers and of their struggle for freedom against the Syrian-Greek conquerers of Judea, in a historical novel that recreates the events celebrated by Jews during the holiday of Hanukkah.

"An eminent historian recounts the Nazi rise to power from his unique perspective as a young Jewish boy in Munich, living with Adolf Hitler as his neighbor. Watching events unfold from his window, Edgar bore witness to the Night of the Long Knives, the Anschluss, and Kristallnacht. Jews were arrested; his father was imprisoned at Dachau. In 1939 Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, a career, have a family, and strive to forget the nightmare of his past--a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of eighty-eight, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor"--Provided by publisher.

During the 1930s-40s, the American public favored inaction rather than the rescue of persecuted European Jews. Examines whether this reaction was due to callousness, anti-Jewish prejudice, or lack of access to information. The press, which provided that information and played a major role in White House decision-making, failed to understand the centrality of antisemitism in Nazi ideology and actions, and treated reports of the Holocaust as wartime privation stories, exaggerated by Jewish sources. Elements of the press fostered antisemitism, isolationism, and fear of espionage, contributing to the official decision to deny entry to Jewish refugees.

Swept up as a child in the events of Nazi-era Europe, Ruth Kluger saw her family's comfortable Vienna existence systematically undermined and destroyed. By age eleven, she had been deported, along with her mother, to Theresienstadt, the first in a series of concentration camps which would become the setting for her precarious childhood. Kluger's story of her years in the camps and her struggle to establish a life after the war as a refugee survivor in New York, has emerged as one of the most powerful accounts of the Holocaust. Interwoven with blunt, unsparing observations of childhood and nuanced reflections of an adult who has spent a lifetime thinking about the Holocaust, Still Alive rejects all easy assumptions about history, both political and personal. Whether describing the abuse she met at her own mother's hand, the life-saving generosity of a woman SS aide in Auschwitz, the foibles and prejudices of Allied liberators, or the cold shoulder offered by her relatives when she and her mother arrived as refugees in New York, Kluger sees and names an unexpected reality which has little to do with conventional wisdom or morality tales. Still Alive is a memoir of the pursuit of selfhood against all odds, a fiercely bittersweet coming-of-age story in which the protagonist must learn never to rely on comforting assumptions, but always to seek her own truth.

One of the most damaging and lasting anti-Semitic myths involves the relationship between Jews and money. In the advent of Wall Street's economic downturn and Bernie Madoff's ruinous schemes, these ideas have come back to rear their ugly heads. Stereotypes about Jews hoarding money, rich media moguls exerting undue influence, and a disproportionate amount of wealth and control in the hands of the Jewish community are not only false, but are also dangerous." "In his latest book, Jews and Money, Abraham Foxman, Director of the Anti-Defamation League, examines the origins, history, and politics of these ideas and how they contaminate dialogue and societies. With thorough research and powerful arguments, he shows the origins of the tendency to blame the Jews, the roots of misunderstanding "the chosen people," and the truth of Jewish philanthropy. Foxman shows how generalizations become part of common beliefs, and he lights the way to promoting fair treatment for people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds.

From the Publisher: A Short History of the Jews is the story of the Jewish people told in a sweeping and powerful historical narrative. Michael Brenner chronicles the Jewish experience from Biblical times to today, tracing what is at heart a drama of migration and change, yet one that is also deeply rooted in tradition. He surveys the latest scholarly perspectives in Jewish history, making this short history the most learned yet broadly accessible book available on the subject. Brenner takes readers from the mythic wanderings of Moses to the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust; from the Babylonian exile to the founding of the modern state of Israel; and from the Sephardic communities under medieval Islam to the shtetls of eastern Europe and the Hasidic enclaves of modern-day Brooklyn. This richly illustrated book is full of fascinating and often personal stories of exodus and return, from that told about Abraham, who brought his newfound faith into the land of Canaan, to that of Holocaust survivor Esther Barkai, who lived on a kibbutz established on a German estate seized from the Nazi Julius Streicher as she awaited resettlement in Israel. Brenner traces the major events, developments, and personalities that have shaped Jewish history down through the centuries, and highlights the important contributions Jews have made to the arts, politics, religion, and science. Breathtaking in scope, A Short History of the Jews is a compelling blend of storytelling and scholarship that brings the history of the Jewish people marvelously to life.

A reference guide to Jewish history and culture that includes coverage of historical events from the Old Testament to the present, profiles of key Jewish figures, and information about the arts, sciences, politics, and sports.

Presents a cultural history of German Jewry from Moses Mendelssohn's arrival in Berlin until the end of the Weimar Republic. Refers to antisemitism in a number of contexts: Mendelssohn is hailed by German intellectuals as an exception among the Jews; acceptance of the Jew was sometimes soon followed by rejection; despite or because of disproportionate Jewish contributions to culture and society, Jews are viewed as foreigners; rights are granted only to rich and useful Jews; despite Jewish patriotism, Jews are often portrayed as traitors and subversives. Among the prominent Jews discussed are Heinrich Heine, whose ambivalence toward Germans reflected their ambivalence toward him, and Walther Rathenau who was assassinated by radical nationalists whose activities the Weimar Republic was unable to curb. The section devoted to the latter reveals how Weimar's weaknesses opened the door of power to the Nazis.

"One hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln's death, the full story of his extraordinary relationship with Jews is told here for the first time. [This book] provides readers both with a ... narrative of his interactions with Jews, and with the opportunity to immerse themselves in rare manuscripts and images, many from the Shapell Lincoln Collection, that show Lincoln in a way he has never been seen before"--Amazon.com.

The Nation of Islam's Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews has been called one of the most serious anti-Semitic manuscripts published in years. This work of so-called scholars received great celebrity from individuals like Louis Farrakhan, Leonard Jeffries, and Khalid Abdul Muhammed who used the document to claim that Jews dominated both transatlantic and antebellum South slave trades. As Saul Friedman definitively documents in Jews and the American Slave Trade, historical evidence suggests that Jews played a minimal role in the transatlantic, South American, Caribbean, and antebellum slave trades.Jews and the American Slave Trade dissects the questionable historical technique employed in Secret Relationship, offers a detailed response to Farrakhan's charges, and analyzes the impetus behind these charges. He begins with in-depth discussion of the attitudes of ancient peoples, Africans, Arabs, and Jews toward slavery and explores the Jewish role hi colonial European economic life from the Age of Discovery tp Napoleon. His state-by-state analyses describe in detail the institution of slavery in North America from colonial New England to Louisiana. Friedman elucidates the role of American Jews toward the great nineteenth-century moral debate, the positions they took, and explains what shattered the alliance between these two vulnerable minority groups in America.Rooted in incontrovertible historical evidence, provocative without being incendiary, Jews and the American Slave Trade demonstrates that the anti-slavery tradition rooted in the Old Testament translated into powerful prohibitions with respect to any involvement in the slave trade. This brilliant exploration will be of interest to scholars of modern Jewish history, African-American studies, American Jewish history, U.S. history, and minority studies.

"In Peter Beinart's view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations' efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life." --

This encyclopedia provides the first standard reference work on the lives, history and activities of Jewish women in the United States. Covering a period which extends from the arrival of the first Jewish women in North America in 1654 to the present, this two-volume set presents the most comprehensive and detailed portrait of American Jewish women ever published, and brings together for the first time the wealth of recent scholarship on this subject. Includes: * Biographical entries on over 800 individual women. * 128 topical articles on organizations such as Hadassah, the National Council of Jewish Women, Mizrachi, and the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. * Major essays on Jewish women's participation in the movement for women's suffrage, social reform, civil rights, and the recent women's movement. * The activities of Jewish women in politics, business, education, the arts, and religion. * A readable, inviting format with over 500 large photographs. * Bibliographies at the end of each entry which include overviews of major scholarship in the field, complete citations of more general works and citations of additional bibliographical and reference sources. * The comprehensive index includes citations to every substantive discussion in the entries as well as all proper names appearing in the text, such as organizations, book, song and film titles, schools, and individuals. The "Encyclopedia" provides information on American Jewish women in all fields of endeavor, and pays special attention to the work of women in the arts, academics, law, the labor movement, education, science, medicine, journalism and publishing, and on the lives of ordinary Jewish women during all time periods and in all regions of the United States.

Jews in Nazi-occupied Warsaw during the 1940s were under increasing threat as they were stripped of their rights and forced to live in a guarded ghetto away from the non-Jewish Polish population. Within the ghettos, a small but distinct group existed: the assimilated, acculturated, and baptized Jews. Unwilling to integrate into the Jewish community and unable to merge with the Polish one, they formed a group of their own, remaining in a state of suspension throughout the interwar period. In 1940, with the closure of the Jewish residential quarter in Warsaw, their identity was chosen for them. Person looks at what it meant for assimilated Jews to leave their prewar neighborhoods, understood as both a physical environment and a mixed Polish Jewish cultural community, and to enter a new, Jewish neighborhood. She reveals the diversity of this group and how its members’ identity shaped their involvement in and contribution to ghetto life. In the first English-language study of this small but influential group, Person illuminates the important role of the acculturated and assimilated Jews in the history and memory of the Warsaw Ghetto.

A heartbreaking story of loss and love. As autumn turns toward winter in 1938 Berlin, life for Marianne Kohn, a young Jewish girl, begins to crumble. First there was the burning of the neighbourhood shops. Then her father, a mild-mannered bookseller, must leave the family and go into hiding. No longer allowed to go to school or even sit in a caf�, Marianne's only comfort is her beloved mother. Things are bad, but could they get even worse? Based on true events, this fictional account of hatred and racism speaks volumes about both history and human nature.

Although Hannah Arendt is not primarily known as a Jewish thinker, she probably wrote more on Jewish issues than on any other topic. As a young adult in Germany, she wrote about German Jewish history. After moving to France in 1933, she helped Jewish youth immigrate to Palestine. During her years in Paris, her principle concern was the transformation of antisemitism from prejudice to policy, which would culminate in the Nazi "final solution." After France fell, Arendt escaped from an internment camp and made her way to America. There she wrote articles calling for a Jewish army to fight the Nazis. After the war, she supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in a binational (Arab-Jewish) state of Israel .Arendt's original conception of political freedom cannot be fully grasped apart from her experience as a Jew. In 1961 she attended Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. Her report, Eichmann in Jerusalem, provoked an immense controversy, which culminated in her virtual excommunication from the worldwide Jewish community. Today that controversy is the subject of serious re-evaluation, especially among younger people in the United States, Europe, and Israel. The publication of The Jewish Writings–much of which has never appeared before–traces Arendt’s life and thought as a Jew. It will put an end to any doubts about the centrality, from beginning to end, of Arendt’s Jewish experience.

Sixty-two of the most accomplished Jews in America speak intimately—most for the first time—about how they feel about being Jewish. In unusually candid interviews conducted by former 60 Minutes producer Abigail Pogrebin, celebrities ranging from Sarah Jessica Parker to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, from Larry King to Mike Nichols, reveal how resonant, crucial or incidental being Jewish is in their lives. The connections they have to their Jewish heritage range from hours in synagogue to bagels and lox; but every person speaks to the weight and pride of their Jewish history, the burdens and pleasures of observance, the moments they’ve felt most Jewish (or not). This book of vivid, personal conversations uncovers how being Jewish fits into a public life, and also how the author’s evolving religious identity was changed by what she heard.

The Nazis came late to Hungary because, until early 1944, Germany and Hungary were allies. But when they did arrive, their orders were to put the "Final Solution" into effect with deliberate speed. Soros, a Jewish lawyer in Budapest, secured fake Christian identities for himself, his wife, and his two sons following the German invasion of Hungary on March 19, 1944. In a narrative reminiscent of the great Primo Levi, Soros recounts his experiences with a beguiling humor, deep humanity, and a wisdom that is humbling. Superbly translated by Humphrey Tonkin, Masquerade is.

A Jewish family fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938 endures innumerable separations before they are once again united.

All modern nation states have a story of their origins, passed down through both official and popular culture, and yet few of these accounts have proved as divisive and influential as the Israeli national myth. The well-known tale of Jewish exile at the hands of the Romans during the first century CE, and the assertion of both cultural and racial continuity through to the Jewish people of the present day, resonates far beyond Israel's borders. Despite its use as a justification for Jewish settlement in Palestine and the project of a Greater Israel, there have been few scholarly investigations into the historical accuracy of the story as a whole. Here, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times--when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation.--From publisher description.