"From Suburb to Shtetl" is an outstanding ethnography that moves beyond simple demographics. Mayer weaves an intricate tapestry of how family, school, and community leaders influence each other. Whether discussing the role of the rebbe or the matchmaker, those who know these communities will find what he says as relevant today as it was when first penned. This is hardly surprising, for the ultra-Orthodox community takes great pride in not changing, in maintaining itself as it was in Europe despite the allure of modern American society. His discussion of synagogue life is particularly informative and evocative. Those in charge of helping immigrants adopted the path of least resistance, allowing and even encouraging them to retain their identities except for those few aspects that might threaten the country's national interests. The American Orthodox community was tremendously augmented by the arrival from Europe, after World War Two, of thousands of Orthodox Jews who remained devoted to that way of life. Egon Mayer was himself part of a smaller, but significant group of Jews who came to the U.S. and settled mostly in Boro Park in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The interaction between the Hasidim and their less fervent Orthodox counterparts described and analyzed in this volume tells us a great deal about how people negotiate their beliefs, values, and norms when forced into close contact with each other in an urban setting within the larger American culture. By exploring these and many other related issues Mayer has given us the chance to assess and forecast the future of American Jewish life as a whole.

Greater Ethiopia combines history, anthropology, and sociology to answer two major questions. Why did Ethiopia remain independent under the onslaught of European expansionism while other African political entities were colonized? And why must Ethiopia be considered a single cultural region despite its political, religious, and linguistic diversity? Donald Levine's interdisciplinary study makes a substantial contribution both to Ethiopian interpretive history and to sociological analysis. In his new preface, Levine examines Ethiopia since the overthrow of the monarchy in the 1970s. "Ethiopian scholarship is in Professor Levine's debt. . . . He has performed an important task with panache, urbanity, and learning."--Edward Ullendorff, Times Literary Supplement "Upon rereading this book, it strikes the reader how broad in scope, how innovative in approach, and how stimulating in arguments this book was when it came out. . . . In the past twenty years it has inspired anthropological and historical research, stimulated theoretical debate about Ethiopia's cultural and historical development, and given the impetus to modern political thinking about the complexities and challenges of Ethiopia as a country. The text thus easily remains an absolute must for any Ethiopianist scholar to read and digest."-J. Abbink, Journal of Modern African Studies

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.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the pueblos of the Southwest frequently inspired Anglo-American visitors to express their sense of wonder and enchantment in biblical references. Frank Hamilton Cushing's first account of Zuni pueblo described a setting that looked like "The Pools of Palestine." Drawn to the Southwest, Mabel Dodge imagined "a garden of Eden, inhabited by an unfallen tribe of men and women." There she was attracted to Tony Luhan, a Taos Indian who looked "like a Biblical figure." When historian Jerold Auerbach first saw Edward S. Curtis's early twentieth-century photograph Taos Water Girls , he realized that "here, indeed, was the biblical Rebecca, relocated to New Mexico from ancient Haran, where Abraham's faithful servant had journeyed to find a suitable wife for Isaac. Rebecca with her water pitcher is as familiar a biblical icon as Noah and his ark or Moses with the stone tablets. Curtis had recast her as the archetypal Pueblo maiden." Explorers in Eden uncovers an intriguing array of diaries, letters, memoirs, photographs, paintings, postcards, advertisements, anthropological field studies, and scholarly monographs. They reveal how Anglo-Americans disenchanted with modern urban industrial society developed a deep and rich fascination with pueblo culture through their biblical associations.

"[Ernest Gellner] began the association with Morocco and the Berbers of the Central High Atlas that resulted in Saints of the Atlas. It was a study of how holy men kept a fragile and broken peace among the shepherds who moved each spring from the plains of the ante-Atlas into the high pastures, and back again each autumn: a hundred thousand people, a million or so sheep traversing the bottle-necks of the mountain passes twice each year. It was an ideal opportunity for theft and rustling, and the Saints were there to maintain the peace without establishing any acceptable claim to political control. His book, criticised by scholars who have worked in Moroccan archives, remains important reading because it analyses so clearly the ways in which pastoral peoples, who had been in contact with states for a couple of millennia, maintained an ideology of total rejection of the Moroccan state, and a determination not to make anything of the kind themselves. Their practice was more often than not in accord with the ideology."--Http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/JDavisObit.html (Feb. 23, 2011.).

Peoplehood--everyone's talking about it. But what does it actually mean and why is it important to the future of Judaism? "Why is this conversation important? Why does it merit your attention? If you care about Jewish identity and community, then you know that we have no trouble identifying the problems that fragmentize us as a people but have far less success identifying that which unites us. Without a unifying, collective notion of Jewish identity that is meaningful and robust, it is virtually impossible to make a strong case for Jewish continuity." --from the Introduction This call to Jewish community explores the purpose, possibilities and limitations of peoplehood as a unifying concept of community for a people struggling profoundly with Jewish identity. It defines what peoplehood is--and is not--and explores both collective and personal Jewish identity and the nature of identity construction. Drawing on history, sacred texts and contemporary scholarship, The Case for Jewish Peoplehood identifies some of the obstacles that challenge a shared notion of peoplehood: personal choices, construct of membership and boundaries, growth of Jewish illiteracy, identity fragmentation between Israeli and Diaspora Jewry and the generational divide affecting traditionalists, baby boomers and generations X and Y. To help you join the conversation, the authors support a vision for the future and provide practical guidance and recommendations for getting there.

This is the first book to explore the effect of genetic research on the Lemba Judaising community of Southern Africa and the phenomenon of Israelite identity. The science of genetics as relayed by the media is perceived by laymen as being irreproachably objective 'hard science': its disinterested 'scientific' findings appear immensely impressive and may therefore act as a powerful catalyst for change. In this case, an oral tradition cherished by many of the Lemba that they are of Jewish origin appears to be supported by recent DNA testing, which has deeply affected the narrative and religious identity of the group and the way the tribe is perceived in the Western world. International in appeal, this topical text brings together cutting-edge research on the social, cultural and ethical implications of genetics and the study of Judaising movements across the world. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of Jewish history, genetic anthropology, race and ethnicity studies, and religious and cultural studies.

David Biespiel's long poetic lines crackle with rhythmic energy and a jazzy, bittersweet richness of language. Rolling out across the page like darkly luminous highways, his innovative, nine-line "American sonnets" promise adventure, offering a variant on the sonnet form that is both lyric and dramatic and bringing his masterful formal inventiveness to free verse. "I've come to imagine the nine-line sonnet to be like one of those classic Thunderbirds," says Biespiel, "something distinctly American: wide, roomy, and with a robust engine." The vastly varied voices within the poems are united by a wonderfully limber diction. Using with revelatory precision the vocabularies of history, science, art, sport, philosophy, religion, literature, government, and domestic life, Biespiel has crafted a hip, melodic, elastic language that travels the registers of expression: lush and coarse, gaudy and austere, pliant and rigidly tough. The civility of the poems is the form; the wildness is the bristling energy of the language. Passionate, resilient, rich with wit and word play, these poems affirm David Biespiel's increasing stature as a poet of remarkable accomplishment and promise. David Biespiel teaches English at Oregon State University and is Writer in Residence at The Attic in Portland, Oregon. His honors include a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. He is the author of Shattering Air. "Like microprocessors, the poems in Wild Civility deliver an almost incalculable amount of information instantaneously. As a result, they demonstrate the pure and powerful recombinant energy of language that is the essence of lyric poetry." - Michael Collier, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference "Wild in its imaginative thrust, civil in its formal command, this glowing new sequence represents David Biespiel's best poetry to date." - Stanley Plumly

This is an advance review copy not for sale or further distribution.Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope is Prof. Falk's first major publication since he completed his term as Special Rapporteur. In it, he gathers and presents the best of the essays on Palestine that he published on his personal blog in the years 2010-2014, with added commentary that provides a rich meta-narrative to the collection. Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope powerfully shows how in recent years the Palestinians' struggle for rights and equality has become transformed into a "legitimacy struggle" of the kind that resulted in victory for many (but not all) of the most important other anti-colonial movements of the past century. Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope follows eleven other path-breaking works on the intersection of law, rights, and society that Prof. Falk has authored. In Spring 2015, Just World Books will be publishing a companion volume that presents the essays he has written during this same tumultuous period about the rest of the Middle East, including Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Turkey.

A text which draws on traditional sources, mainly but not exclusively Jewish, to address contemporary issues, ranging from conservation of the environment, through to business and commercial ethics, to relations between State and religion.

In this stimulating study, the author explores how Conrad, T.S.Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, Huxley and others responded to the immediate challenges of their time, to the implications of Freudian psychology, molecular theory, relativist theory, and the general weakening of religious faith. Assuming that artists and writers, in coping with those problems, would develop techniques in many ways comparable, even where there was no direct contact, he positions Modernist literature within the context of contemporary painting, architecture and sculpture, thereby providing some fascinating insights into the nature of the literary works themselves.

These essays are mainly concerned with the development of some of Max Gluckman's ideas about African politics. He regarded frequent rebellions to replace incumbents of political offices (as against revolutions to alter the structure of offices) as inherent in these politics. Later he connected this situation with modes of husbandry, problems of the devolution of power, types of weapons and the law of treason. He advanced to a general theory of ritual, as well as to general propositions about the position of officials representing conflicting interests within a hierarchy, typified by the African chief under colonial rule. Originally published in 1963.

The American dream depends upon the idea that every American who works hard can support a family and get ahead. This book presents a measure of ideal against reality, calculating how much opportunity is available relative to the number of households reliant on it. This measure reveals that nearly a quarter of American families cannot find adequate work despite economic growth. Joh Schwartz demonstrates that neither global competition nor governmental interference are the culprits and he shows that the American dream might become reality.

In this political biography, Ilan Pappe traces the rise of the Husayni family of Jerusalem, who dominated Palestinian history from the early 1700s until the second half of the twentieth century.

Drawing heavily on the reminiscences of the Brownsville boys themselves, and skillfully integrating these with material from newspapers, books, and commentary of the time, Sorin creates an original and compelling picture of the communal and individual vitality that allowed an unusual and heartening social achievement.

David Biespiel's energetic language, so varied and musical and precise, is quite unmatched by that of other contemporary poets. The Book of Men and Women is his second collection in the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series, and as always he is the master of the long line, his words strung across its reach as tightly as beads. But new poems in this book explore the intimacies of the shorter line as well and display Biespiel's formal inventiveness and emotional range. The Book of Men and Women addresses our time and human condition in ways both domestic and global. The first section of the book is filled with the wonderful agitation of spell-making language. The poems are connected to the social and historical world, and yet at the same time, they prepare us for the mythic story about men and women that is promised in the book's title. The second section is more formally restrained and as such imbues the speaker with the distinction and melancholy gravitas that characterize the collection. We see this in the remarkable and fully imagined tour de force, "William Clark's Sonnets." The book concludes with a series of autobiographical poems that confront the frailties of love and desire with unflinching intimacy and gratitude. These last poems, composed during an intense three-month period of writing, as well as the other poems in this remarkable volume, showcase Biespiel at the very top of his form.

Arnold Beichman's comprehensive study of the writings of Herman Wouk, one of America's leading writers, shows how Wouk's plays and novels exemplify an extraordinary and often highly perceptive preoccupation with American society in war and in peace. Situating Wouk in the same literary tradition as Cervantes, Richardson, Balzac, and Dickens, Beichman demonstrates that Wouk's novels have strong plots, moralist outcomes, and active--essentially positive--characters. The new introduction serves to bring Wouk's work over the past two decades into the reckoning. Making extensive use of Wouk's personal papers and manuscripts as well as personal interviews with him, Beichman's focus is on the social and literary qualities of Wouk's work. In particular, he examines eight novels including War and Remembrance and The Winds of War; The Traitor, one of his three plays; and two moral tracts on Judaism. Wouk has written four more novels, including his latest, A Hole in Texas, his twelfth. Beichman portrays Wouk as one of the few living novelists concerned with virtue, and sees his work as against the mainstream of contemporary American novelists. These, he argues, have eschewed such elements of the traditional novel as invention, coincidences, surprises, suspense, and a moral perspective more presumed than examined.

" ... not a large book, but that makes all the more admirable the way the author succeeds in doing justice to so many of the most important subjects in folkloristics. This book is a key work, and should be made compulsory reading in every university in which folkloristics is studied." --Jon Hnefill Aoalsteinsson, Asian Folklore Studies "With this book Alan Dundes has once again demonstrated what a brilliant essayist he is: learned, thought-provoking and entertaining. He has much inspiration to give to anthropologists, and he is quite indispensable to folklore scholarship." --Bengt af Klintberg, Ethnos "If there were still a question whether Alan Dundes is America's leading folklorist, then the essays in this volume ... should dispel it once and for all. An internationally acclaimed scholar is at work here, for whom foUclore really matters in all of its varied aspects." --Wolfgang Mieder, University of Vennont "A maverick folklorist, Alan Dundes challenges his colleagues and readers with erudition and candor. His essays are insightful and entertaining, exploring folklore with an amazing breadth. " --Dan Ben-Amos, University of Pennsylvania "As always, a reader is dazzled by the range of Dundes erudition. He doesn't just cite things, he digests them."-Gary Alan Fine, University of Minnesota "For over two decades, he has been a major voice urging folklorists (and historians and literary critics, for that manner) to move beyond mere description to true interpretation of cultural texts in their contexts. These essays continue that message, and they do so with fresh power." --Jay Mechling, University of California, Davis "These recent essays from the pen of a passionate folklorist include two classics on the history of the field. The Fabrication of 'Fakelore' and The Anthropologist and the Comparative Method in Folklore' are required reading for anyone seriously interested in folklore as a discipline." --Barbara Kirshenblan-Gimblett, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Networks of Power in Modern Greece provides exciting new perspectives on Greek history and society. The collection presents pioneering work on the Greek merchant marine and the role of women in the Greek War of Independence. Local perspectives transform common assumptions regarding the function of miracle-working shrines and the place of religion in the early nineteenth century. Essays show how clientilistic networks linked the nationalist heroes of the Macedonian Struggle to the anticommunism of the Civil War, analyze the populist radicalism of Andreas Papandreou, a figure who dominated Greek politics in the final decades of the Cold War, and emphasize the ambiguities of a "modern Greece." Additional chapters by leading anthropologists, such as Renée Hirschon, Roger Just, and Juliet Du Boulay, apply an ethnographic approach toward the understanding of social institutions and practices, from divorce to sacred foodstuffs. Written in honor of the classical historian John Campbell, the multidisciplinary essays challenge conventional ideas of Greek nationalism and social development and touch upon broader issues, including the emergence of nation-states, the relationship between familial and ideological conflict, and the continued relevance of religion in modern life.