In nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, the Jewish-run tavern was often the center of leisure, hospitality, business, and even religious festivities. This unusual situation came about because the nobles who owned taverns throughout the formerly Polish lands believed that only Jews were sober enough to run taverns profitably, a belief so ingrained as to endure even the rise of Hasidisms robust drinking culture. As liquor became the regions boom industry, Jewish tavernkeepers became integral to both local economies and local social life, presiding over Christian celebrations and dispensing advice, medical remedies and loans. Nevertheless, reformers and government officials, blaming Jewish tavernkeepers for epidemic peasant drunkenness, sought to drive Jews out of the liquor trade. Their efforts were particularly intense and sustained in the Kingdom of Poland, a semi-autonomous province of the Russian empire that was often treated as a laboratory for social and political change. Historians have assumed that this spelled the end of the Polish Jewish liquor trade. However, newly discovered archival sources demonstrate that many nobles helped their Jewish tavernkeepers evade fees, bans and expulsions by installing Christians as fronts for their taverns. The resulta vast underground Jewish liquor tradereflects an impressive level of local Polish-Jewish co-existence that contrasts with the more familiar story of anti-Semitism and violence. By tapping into sources that reveal the lives of everyday Jews and Christians in the Kingdom of Poland, Yankels Tavern transforms our understanding of the region during the tumultuous period of Polish uprisings and Jewish mystical revival.

The authors offer translations of significant passages from the most important works of Jewish ethical literature. accompanying these selections are essays explaining the relevance of the concepts presented in this literature.

No detailed description available for "Early American Jews".

Berlin! Berlin! is a satirical selection from the "man with the acid pen and the perfect pitch for hypocrisy," as New York author and Tucholsky-expert Peter Wortsman writes. This book os a complete collection of Tucholsky's news stories, features, satirical pieces, and poems about his hometown Berlin. It depicts Weimar Berlin, its cabarets, its policies, its follies, its ticks, and its celebrities, such as Pola Negri, Gussy Holl, Bert Brecht, Max Reinhardt, or Heinrich Zille. The book contains some of Tucholsky's most famous pieces, among them Berlin! Berlin!, a feature of the stereotypical Berliner on the phone, on vacation or doing "bizness", more than one satirical biography of the author himself, and some of his most famed stories such as where the holes in the cheese come from, or about the lion who escaped the Berlin zoo. Herr Wendriner, the chatty Berlin businessman makes an appearance, as well as Lottchen, the flapper, modelled after one of Tucholsky's real-life gilrfriends. Also Tucholsky's long-term friends Karlchen and Jakopp are part of this book. In Weimar Germany, Tucholsky was big, the most brilliant, prolific and witty cultural journalist of his time. He poured scorn on the reactionary institutions of the old regime, the follies of the Weimar Republic, and the peculiarities of the German character. - William Grimes, The New York Times Imagine a writer with the acid voice of Christopher Hitchens and the satirical whimsy of Jon Stewart. That's Tucholsky in a nutshell. - Anne Nelson, author of "The Red Orchestra" and "The Guys" Kurt Tucholsky was one of the most brilliant German-Jewish writers of his time. Today's Berliners adore him as one of their greatest sons. The world has yet to discover his genius. -Peter Schneider, author of "The Wall Jumper" and "Eduard's Homecoming" A selection from the man with the acid pen and the perfect pitch for hypocrisy, who was as much the voice of 1920s Berlin as Georg Grosz was its face. - Peter Wortsman, author of "Ghost Dance in Berlin" . . . a small, fat Berliner, who wanted to stop a catastrophe with his typewriter. -Erich Kästner, author of "Emil and the Detectives"

Verslag van de zoektocht van de auteur naar sporen van zijn mysterieuze grootvader Heshel Melamed, rabbijn in een Litouws dorp.

Alexandra "Al" Silber seems to have everything a teenager could want: brilliance, beauty, and talent in spades. But when her beloved father dies after a decade-long battle with cancer when she is just a teenager, it feels like the end of everything. Lost in grief, Al and her mother hardly know where to begin with the rest of their lives. Into this grieving house burst Al's three friends from theater camp, determined to help out as only drama students know how--and they're moving in for the duration. Over the course of that winter, the now five-strong household will do battle with everything Death can throw at them--meddling relatives, merciless bureaucracy, soul-sapping sadness, the endless Tupperware. They will learn (almost) everything about love and will eventually return to the world, altered in different ways by their time in a home by a river. Told with raw passion, candor, and wit, White Hot Grief Parade is an ode to the restorative power of family and friendship--and the unbreakable bond, even in death, between father and daughter.

During the course of the twelfth century, increasing numbers of Jews migrated into western Christendom from Islamic lands. But western Christendom was both appealing and threatening to the Jewish immigrants. Indeed, western Christendom was entering a phase of intense missionizing activity, some of which was directed at the long-term Jewish residents of Europe and the Jewish newcomers. The writings of twelfth- and thirteenth-century leaders from southern France and northern Spain constitute the first evidence of Jewish anti-Christian polemics from within western Christendom. These leaders were fully cognizant of the core Christian thrusts, described them in detail for their co-religionists, and rebutted them carefully. This study recreates some of the clarification and rebuttal, and examines the techniques of persuasion adopted by the Jewish polemicists in order to reassure their Jewish readers of the truth of Judaism and the error of Christianity.

A group of distinguished historians makes the first systematic attempt to compare the experiences of French and German Jews in the modern era. The cases of France and Germany have often been depicted as the dominant paradigms for understanding the processes of Jewish emancipation and acculturation in Western and Central Europe. In the French case, emancipation was achieved during the French Revolution, and it remained in place until 1940, when the Vichy regime came to power. In Germany, emancipation was a far more gradual and piecemeal process, and even after it was achieved in 1871, popular and governmental antisemitism persisted. The essays in this volume, while buttressing many traditional assumptions regarding these two paths of emancipation, simultaneously challenge many others, and thus force us to reconsider the larger processes of Jewish integration and acculturation.

Examines the intellectual life of Sephardic Jewry from the Spanish expulsion in 1492 through the first half of the 20th century. Discusses the background to the expulsion from Spain, the Jews' tribulations, and their reactions - the effort to understand the meaning of their suffering. Deals with the Converso phenomenon and the problems they encountered. Describes rationalist and anti-rationalist thought following the expulsion, and the messianic movements which arose. Pp. 144-149 discuss the blood libels in Damascus and Rhodes in 1840 and the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara in 1858, and the Jewish organizations which were established to aid persecuted Jews (e.g. B'nai B'rith, Alliance Israélite Universelle).

Representing the spectrum of subfields within Jewish Studies, the contributing scholars to this volume use beginnings as a hermeneutic stance to analyze texts in their area. While each essay is a significant contribution to its own subfield - Bible, Talmud, Kabbalah, Modern Jewish Thought, Feminist and Cultural Studies - the essays taken as a whole present new possibilities for exploring the space that is Jewish Studies and beginning an inquiry into what might constitute a definable hermeneutics of Jewish texts.

This fiftieth anniversary edition of W. Gunther Plaut's classic volume on the beginnings of the Jewish Reform Movement is updated with a new introduction by Howard A. Berman. The Rise of Reform Judaism covers the first one hundred years of the movement, from the time of the eighteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment leader Moses Mendelssohn to the conclusion of the Augsburg synod in 1871.In these pages the founders who established liberal Judaism speak for themselves through their journals and pamphlets, books and sermons, petitions and resolutions, and public arguments and disputations. Each selection includes Plaut's brief introduction and sketch of the reformer. Important topics within Judaism are addressed in these writings: philosophy and theology, religious practice, synagogue services, and personal life, as well as controversies on the permissibility of organ music, the introduction of the sermon, the nature of circumcision, the observance of the Sabbath, the rights of women, and the authenticity of the Bible.

Maimonides' vision of Judaism was deeply elitist, but at the same time profoundly universalistic. He was highly critical of the regnant Jewish culture of his day, which he perceived as so heavily influenced by ancient Jewish mysticism as to be debased. While focusing on that critique, Kellner skilfully and accessibly demonstrates how Maimonides used philosophy in order to purify a corrupted and paganized religion and to present distinctions fundamental to Judaism as institutional, sociological, and historical, rather than ontological. In Maimonides' hands, metaphysical distinctions are translated into moral challenges.

"In 1926, Harvard athletic director Bill Bingham chose former Crimson All-American Arnold Horween as coach of the university's moribund football team. The pair instilled a fresh culture, one based on merit rather than social status, and in the virtues of honor and courage over mere winning. Yet their success challenged entrenched ideas about who belonged at Harvard and, by extension, who deserved to lay claim to the American dream. Zev Eleff tells the story of two immigrants' sons shaped by a vision of an America that rewarded any person of virtue. As a player, the Chicago-born Horween had led Harvard to its 1920 Rose Bowl victory. As a coach, he faced intractable opposition from powerful East Coast alumni because of his values and midwestern, Jewish background. Eleff traces Bingham and Horween's careers as student-athletes and their campaign to wrest control of the football program from alumni. He also looks at how Horween undermined stereotypes of Jewish masculinity and dealt with the resurgent antisemitism of the 1920s"--

"Anyone who wants to understand the connection between anti-Semitism, Islamic terrorism, the role of propaganda and appeasement must read this book." -Natan Sharansky, author, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror "I admire the courage of this vision and the power of the writing." -Rabbi Lord Dr. Jonathan Sacks "Passionate and beautifully written.... This book will make you weep. It will also make you angry and frightened." -Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School; author, The Case for Israel "Absolutely amazing...An indispensable guide to the apocalyptic sandstorms our world now faces." -Erica Jong, poet and novelist, Fear of Flying A dangerous worldwide coalition of Islamic terrorists, well-intentioned but misinformed students, right-wing fascists, left-wing ideologues, academics, feminists, European politicians, journalists, and international human rights organizations have joined together to again scapegoat the Jews and the Jewish state for crimes they did not commit and for whatever ails the world. In this intensely passionate and compelling book, the best-selling and prize-winning Jewish feminist author Dr. Phyllis Chesler demonstrates how old-fashioned anti-Semitism - now often seen in the form of anti-Zionism - has become fashionable and even politically correct, and how this plague threatens the Jews of the world, Israel, America, and Western civilization.

This seven volume collection is the definitive anthology of the writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane, selected from the columns in the Jewish Press and other publications. Spanning a period of thirty years, it contains a wealth of topics: Judaism, Zionism, Israel, the Holocaust, assimilation, territorial concessions, violence and peace.Rabbi Meir Kahane was a master of the both the deed and the word. These writings will inspire, teach, and chastise, as they did when they first appeared. It is impossible to remain indifferent to the fiery words of this modern-day Jewish prophet.Generations of former Soviet Jews will forever thank Rabbi Kahane for helping them obtain freedom. Future generations of Israelis, for their part, may well be grateful for his inspired vision that can enable peaceful Jewish life in the Land of Israel.This collection is published in the hope that it will serve as a guide to every thinking person for whom the destiny of the Jewish people is important. Beyond Words will surely take its place in the library of outstanding Jewish literature.

"Roth examined the concept of Jewish identity years before the onset of National Socialism and looked ahead with apprehension to Germany's future. Emotionally ravaged by the whirlwind events of Weimar Germany, he dared to write about the historical schism between Eastern and Western Jews, warning of the false comforts of materialism and assimilation and urging his fellow Jews to embrace their heritage and the land of Palestine as a nascent Jewish homeland. As one of Berlin's most eminent journalists, he traveled throughout Europe and composed these essays with both an exigency and restrained contemplation that have earned him comparisons to his more celebrated contemporaries, Thomas Mann and Isaac Babel. By the mid-1930s, as anti-Semitism crested and Roth fled Germany for what he thought were safer climes in Paris, he became increasingly desperate and hobbled by alcoholism. He had tremendous difficulties securing a German publisher, and his powerful 1937 preface, written for what he hoped would be the second edition of The Wandering Jews and included here, was never published in his lifetime."-- Jacket.

Description of many of the more interesting aspects of the Hassidic sect of the Jewish religion.

This interpretive study aruges that a trialogue between the three forms of monotheism must be something deeper than merely a meeting of Jewish, Christian and Muslim intellectuals, and that cooperation among them is essential to defend the West against Asian religious nihilism.