"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.

Two creative centres of Jewish life rose to prominence in the twentieth century, one in Israel and the other in the United States. Although Israeli and American Jews share kinship and history drawn from their Eastern European roots, they have developed divergent cultures from their common origins, often seeming more like distant cousins than close relatives. This book explores why this is so, examining how two communities that constitute eighty percent of the world's Jewish population have created separate identities and cultures. Using examples from literature, art, history, and politics, leading Israeli and American scholars focus on the political, social, and memory cultures of their two communities, considering in particular the American-Jewish challenge to diaspora consciousness and the Israeli struggle to forge a secular, national Jewish identity. At the same time, they seek to understand how a sense of mutual responsibility and fate animates American and Israeli Jews who reside in distant places, speak different languages, and live within different political and social worlds.

Text: English, Hebrew (translation)

"The struggle over Israel/Palestine is not just another contest by competing nationalisms or an instance of geopolitical competition. It is also about control of sacred territory that involves local Jews, Muslims, and Christians as well as worldwide faith communities, each with their own interests and stake in what transpires. This balanced introduction to a complex subject presents the multiple positions within the great monotheistic traditions. It demonstrates that the secular discourses in the public square concerning ownership privileges, historical precedence, political rights, and justice that have allegedly replaced religious claims actually coexist with, and often complement, the theological. It explores the century-long tangle of secular and theological debates about Israel's legitimacy. Whether readers support a Jewish state or are resolutely opposed, the serious and substantial scholarship of this well-reasoned and innovative book will contribute to a nuanced and better-informed understanding of this persistent issue that has entered its second century on the international agenda."--

"Across almost the entire expanse of Jewish history, Jews have had to adjust to being ruled by empires. In antiquity alone Jews lived under a succession of imperial powers - Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Seleucid - before having to deal with the Romans. Judaism (of course) was shaped by each successive encounter with an imperial power. But as Katell Berthelot argues in this book, Rome and Roman imperialism presented Jews with unique ideological challenges, and compelled Jews to rethink key aspects of their own self-definition. Long before Rome became Christian, Jews recognized pagan Romans as unprecedented rivals because of some striking similarities between the two peoples. Previously Jews were ruled by empires associated with kingdoms and kings. By contrast, "Rome" was first and foremost a city and a people - and Romans thought of their city and themselves as a people in ways uncomfortably close to the ways Jews defined themselves: as an Israelite people tied to a capital city, Jerusalem. Moreover both Romans and Jews conceived of themselves as a pious people with a divine calling; both thought they possessed the most perfect laws ever written; and both believed themselves to be entrusted with a universal mission that implied bringing peace to the world. This was too close for comfort. The disturbingly close parallels led some Jews to feel that Rome was in fact trying to take Israel's place in God's plan for the world. Revealingly, the ancient rabbis depicted this rivalry by turning to the famous biblical story of the sibling rivals Jacob and Esau, associating the Jews with the former and the Romans with the latter. The perceived rivalry led to a series of innovations in Jewish self-perceptions in late antiquity in several areas that Berthelot will discuss in a series of book chapters: innovations in Jewish understandings of power, citizenship (or membership in a people), and law. Berthelot argues that in some cases the Jewish sources imitate or mimic Roman representations (of, e.g. legal thinking and practice), and in other cases propose a countermodel"--

Poetry. Jewish Studies. "The ruins of Lifta, an archeological site of incalculable value outside Jerusalem is a nexus of 'irreconcilable stories.' To the stones of Lifta and their compelling mute testimony, Kaminsky has bent his poet's ear, transcribing for us their urgent, mournful, bitter and aggrieved voices that witness to the layers of memory and history here. As the poet was summoned to Lifta, this probing and timely book summons the reader with blunt, contentious dialogues, daring and tender monologues, striking allegories, and always, the piercing questions that, seemingly unanswerable, must continue to be asked in the pursuit of understanding and justice."--Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Despite the tragic reality of the continuing Israeli-Arab conflict, this book affirms the bonds between the two communities, showing that the literatures of both ethnic groups defy obstructive ideologies. Rachel Brenner argues that literary critics have ignored the variety and dissent in the novels of both Arab and Jewish writers in Israel, giving them interpretations that conform with Zionist ideology. She offers insightful new readings that compare fiction by Jewish writers Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, and others with fiction written in Hebrew by such Arab-Israeli writers as Atallah Mansour, Emile Habiby, and Anton Shammas. She highlights the moral and psychological dilemmas faced by both Jews and Arabs and suggests that the hope for release from the historical trauma lies in reaching an understanding with and of the adversary.