From stories of biblical patriarchs and matriarchs and their children, through the Gospel’s Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and to modern Jewish families in fiction, film, and everyday life, the family has been considered key to transmitting Jewish identity. Current discussions about the Jewish family’s supposed traditional character and its alleged contemporary crisis tend to assume that the dynamics of Jewish family life have remained constant from the days of Abraham and Sarah to those of Tevye and Golde in Fiddler on the Roof and on to Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint . Jonathan Boyarin explores a wide range of scholarship in Jewish studies to argue instead that Jewish family forms and ideologies have varied greatly throughout the times and places where Jewish families have found themselves. He considers a range of family configurations from biblical times to the twenty-first century, including strictly Orthodox communities and new forms of family, including same-sex parents. The book shows the vast canvas of history and culture as well as the social pressures and strategies that have helped shape Jewish families, and suggests productive ways to think about possible futures for Jewish family forms.

Everywhere you turn, people are wondering about the future and the end of the world as we know it. While conversations of doom and gloom are pervasive, what Christians have to offer is a message of a future and a hope. Future Hope by David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus, is written in an easy to understand format and offers insights into the Bible prophecies. The book also includes helpful charts and appendices. Great for both Christians interested in a Jewish perspective on end time prophecy and Jewish people that are curious about what Christians have to say about the end of history.

Excerpt from The American Jewish Year Book, 5676: September 9, 1915 to September 27, 1916 This year of course all thoughts are directed to the Euro pean War, which is affecting so disastrously the fate of Israel in Old Poland divided among three of the combating nations, and in Palestine, which has been dragged willy-nilly into the fray. It would therefore have been appropriate to have an account of the European War so far as it affected Jewish interests for the chief subject of the year book for 5676. But it was felt that any account of the Jewish part in this titanic struggle would have been so incomplete and inaccurate that it was finally decided to defer this bum ing topic for a subsequent issue, when, it may be hoped, the war shall have passed into history. One result of the war will undoubtedly be to settle the fate of Palestine for a long time to come, and it seems therefore appropriate to devote the chief article of the present issue of the american jewish year book to an account of the recent progress in Palestine as it has affected the Jewish inhabitants of the Holy Land. It has been written by Miss Henrietta Szold, and gives for the first time in English, at such length, an account of the upbuilding of the Jewish population of Palestine within recent years. Quite apart from its bearing upon future problems, the position of the Jews in the land of their fathers has an intrinsic interest of its own to every Jew, which Miss Szold's article cannot fail to satisfy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is one of the most difficult problems in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although it is a present-day bone of contention, its roots go back into the distant past. Israelites, Christians, and Muslims had fought over this holy site, and built on it a succession of shrines. The book leads the reader into the intricate history, geography, and politics of this unique site. It relates the roots of its holiness, describes the succession of temples built on it, and explains how in the twentieth century its sanctity become interwined with the national aspirations of both Jews and Arabs. It explains why the Temple Mount is considered the holiest site for the Jews, and how it became holy also to the Muslims. The book also explores the role of evangelical Christians, who, alongside a segment of the Jewish population, see the Temple Mount as the center of messianic aspirations, fed by the myriad of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legends and myths which evolved around it. The book is richly illustrated with photographs, sketches, maps, and plans.

More than just a guide to centers of Jewish populations throughout the world, this comprehensive work provides facts about the demography and history of these important communities, as well as a listing and description of community organizations, religious life, local Jewish culture, and educational facilities. Introductory sections include information on the founding of Israel, population statistics, and thoughts on topics ranging from the Diaspora to the founding of the Jewish state.

For two millennia Christianity has stated that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah prophesized about in Jewish scripture. But how have Christians justified these claims? And from what sources do they draw their evidence that Jesus was in fact the Messiah? Biblical scholar, Alfred Edersheim, in an extremely thorough study of Jewish scripture examines how Jesus Christ fulfilled the Messianic hopes of many Old Testament prophecies. Through the course of twelve lectures Edersheim provides brilliant insight into the Old Testament and how the texts within it provide clear evidence of prophecy for the coming of Jesus Christ. Yet, Edersheim does not stop at studying the Old Testament alone but also uses the Pentateuch, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha to provide further examples that Jesus was indeed prophesized about by Jewish texts many centuries before he was born. This book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand more fully how Jesus' life was intertwined with old Jewish texts and for those who are looking for a scholarly, yet accessible, account of this fascinating topic. Alfred Edersheim (1825-89) was a Vienna-born biblical scholar who converted from Judaism to Christianity. A veteran minister and missionary to the Jews of Romania, Edersheim left an enduring and priceless legacy to followers of Christ. Among his most widely read works are The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, The Temple: Its Ministry and Services, and Bible History Old Testament.

Art and Judaism During the Greco-Roman Period explores the Jewish experience with art during the Greco-Roman period-from the Hellenistic period through the rise of Islam. It starts from with the premise that Jewish art in antiquity was a "minority" or "ethnic" art and surveys ways that Jews fully participated in, transformed, and at times rejected the art of their general environment. Art and Judaism focuses upon the politics of identity during the Greco-Roman period, even as it discusses ways that modern identity issues have sometimes distorted and at other times refined scholarly discussion of ancient Jewish material culture. Art and Judaism, the first historical monograph on ancient Jewish art in forty years, evaluates earlier scholarship even as it sets out in new directions. Placing literary sources in careful dialogue with archaeological discoveries, this "New Jewish Archaeology" is an important contribution to Judaic Studies, Religious Studies, Art History, and Classics. The Revised Edition includes a new introduction, additional images, and color plates.

Stephen Haliczer has mined rich documentary sources to produce the most comprehensive and enlightening picture yet of the Inquisition in Spain. The kingdom of Valencia occupies a uniquely important place in the history of the Spanish Inquisition because of its large Muslim and Jewish populations and because it was a Catalan kingdom, more or less "occupied" by the despised Castilians who introduced the Inquisition. Haliczer underscores the intensely regional nature of the Valencian tribunal. He shows how the prosecution of religious deviants, the recruitment and professional activity of Inquisitors and officials, and the relations between the Inquisition and the majority Old Christian population all clearly reflect the place and the society. A great series of pogroms swept over Spain during the summer of 1391. Jewish communities were attacked and the Jews either massacred or forced to convert. More than ninety percent of the victims of the Valencian Inquisition a century later were descendants of those who chose conversion, the conversos. Haliczer argues convincingly against those who see all the conversos as "secret Jews." He finds, on the contrary, that a wide range of religious beliefs and practices existed among them and that some were even able to assimilate into Old Christian society by becoming familiares of the Inquisition itself. Nevertheless, it was controversy over the sincerity of the converted which spawned the first proposals for the establishment of a Spanish national Inquisition. That very same controversy, persisting in the writings of history, may be resolved by Haliczer's stimulating discoveries. Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia is a major contribution to the lively field of Inquisition studies, combining institutional history of the tribunal with socioreligious history of the kingdom. The many case histories included in the narrative give both Valencian society and the Inquisition very human faces. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

"Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from his shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington, D.C. A poor, Yiddish-speaking newcomer navigating a racially segregated and antisemitic America, young Jolson dreamed of becoming a star, and he did. Thanks to his immense talent and his knack for assimilating into new environments, by the time he reached his twenties he was the most famous and highly paid entertainer in America, making almost $5,000 a week at a time when the average American made $800 a year. Jolson's public adoration and widespread acceptance as a star marked the beginning of an enriching cultural transformation, a moment when the American mind opened up to ethnic and racial differences, widening the gap of acceptability. And yet Jolson himself, despite being ferociously ambitious and gigantically talented, was crippled by insecurity, often nervous to the point of collapse, prisoner to his many vices. Through Jolson, Bernstein simultaneously breaks open the history and legacy of the cultural sensation The Jazz Singer. Not only was The Jazz Singer the first feature length film with synchronized music and dialogue, but it was also taboo smashing in its content: The Jazz Singer is all about Jews, Orthodox and otherwise. Bernstein expounds on the making of The Jazz Singer, what the film meant then and now, introducing the many individuals involved in its production, including Samson Raphaelson, a young Jewish writer whose short story was the basis for the movie; the four Warner brothers who made a fortune off it; and George Jessel, Jolson's rival and the star of Raphaelson's stage adaptation of his short story. In the background emerges a picture of old Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties: cutthroat and greedy yet visionary and progressive. And while The Jazz Singer represented the future in many ways, it also dredged up the worst of the past, including Jolson's use of blackface, common at the time. At once a tale of the Judaizing of American culture and an acknowledgment of the challenges to come, Only in America is a glistening examination of a man at the center of a watershed moment in the arts"--

This book presents important topics regarding the more mystical trend of Kabbalah - the ecstatic Kabbalah. It includes the mystical union, the world of imagination, and concentration as a spiritual technique. The emphasis in the text is on the interaction between the "original" Spanish stage of Kabbalah and Muslim mysticism in the East, mainly in the Galilee. The influence of the Kabbalistic-Sufic synthesis on the later developments of Jewish mysticism is traced, thereby providing a more precise understanding of the history of Kabbalah as an interplay between the theosophical and ecstatic mystical experiences.

"Moacyr Scliar was the preeminent literary voice of the Jewish immigrant experience in modern Brazil. Now his most ambitiously satirical and irreverent novel is at last translated into English, offering not just a significant contribution to Latin American and Jewish literature but to world literature as well. In a past-life therapy session, a mysterious woman makes a remarkable breakthrough when she discovers that in a previous life she was one of King Solomon's seven hundred wives. In language that hilariously mixes modern jargon and biblical diction, she sets out to tell the story of her earlier incarnation three thousand years in the past, revealing how she went from a provincial nobody to a queen. Yet being royalty isn't all it's cracked up to be. As the least desirable of King Solomon's wives and concubines, she is unceremoniously discarded and forgotten in his harem. But as luck would have it, she possesses a unique gift: she is a woman who knows how to read and write. Once her talent is discovered, King Solomon charges her with writing what will become one of the most important texts in human history. Along the way our nameless narrator leverages her newfound status as royal scribe to bring about her own secret agenda. A brilliant feminist critique skewering the absurdities of patriarchy, The Woman Who Wrote the Bible is a comic masterpiece of truly biblical proportions"-- Provided by publisher.

The common view held by the community of historians is that there are no, and cannot be, lessons of history; however, up to this day, serious writers continue to seek lessons of the Holocaust. Examines historical and philosophical literature on the Holocaust, and shows that throughout the post-1945 period a broad spectrum of lessons that can be derived from the Holocaust has been proposed by historians, philosophers, writers, journalists, etc. For example, while for Hannah Arendt the lesson is condemnation of bureaucracy and conformism, for Emil Fackenheim it is the imperative to keep fidelity to the Jewish nationhood. There have been Jewish and even Israeli lessons of the Holocaust - e.g. that the Jewish diaspora is doomed and that the Jews need to be strong and to have a state of their own; and there have been universalist lessons - the condemnation of totalitarianism and of "modernity", the imperative of tolerance, of historical memory, etc. Maintains that there are no objective lessons of the Holocaust. The knowledge of past atrocities cannot prevent atrocities in the future.

The Vienna Paradox is Marjorie Perloff's memoir of growing up in pre-World War II Vienna, her escape to America in 1938 with her upper-middle-class, highly cultured, and largely assimilated Jewish family, and her self-transformation from the German-speaking Gabriele Mintz to the English-speaking Marjorie--who also happened to be the granddaughter of Richard Schüller, the Austrian foreign minister under Chancellor Dollfuss and a special delegate to the League of Nations. Compelling as the story is, this is hardly a conventional memoir. Rather, it interweaves biographical anecdote and family history with speculations on the historical development of early 20th-century Vienna as it was experienced by her parents' generation, and how the loss of their "high" culture affected the lives of these cultivated refugees in a democratic United States that was, and remains, deeply suspicious of perceived "elitism." This is, in other words, an intellectual memoir, both elegant and heartfelt, by one of America's leading critics, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal.

"German, Jew, Muslim, Gay offers an astonishing perspective on the history of modern Germany through the vantage point of a man with multiple identities who devoted his life to religious utopias, fought for homosexual rights, wrote gay fiction, converted from Judaism to Islam (one of the few of any faith to do so), and considered himself part of a spiritual elite that held the key to Germany's salvation. Born in Posen in 1880, the son of a Jewish industrialist, Hugo Marcus converted to Islam and chose the name Hamid; he became the most important convert in Germany while retaining his membership in the Jewish community. He was renamed Israel by the Nazis and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1938, where he was in the unique position of Muslim witness to the Holocaust. The imam of his mosque gained his release and he escaped to Switzerland, where he wrote gay fiction under the pen name Hans Alienus. He died in Basel in 1966. The book challenges deeply ingrained perceptions of Muslim-Jewish relations during World War II and illuminates their interconnected histories in modern Europe. It also tells the unknown story of Marcus' orientalized Islam that, in echoing Goethe's, revitalized an essential strand of Germany's spiritual heritage"--

Why would American Jews-not just materially successful in this country but, perhaps for the first time in the entire 2000-year Jewish Diaspora, truly socially accepted and at home-choose to leave the material comforts, safety, and peace of the United States for the uncertainty and violence of Israel? In his search to understand the phenomenon of aliya, Leibovitz focuses on the stories of three sets of immigrants: Marlin and Betty Levin, who came to Palestine before Israel was even created, and were present through its violent birth; Mike Ginsberg, who was overcome with awe at the heroic Jews who fought for their country and was involved in much of Israel's tumultuous history, including the Yom Kippur War; and Danny and Sharon Kalker, who actually made aliya in 2001, during the most recent unsettled phase of Israel's existence. With a keen writer's eye and unfeigned passion for his subject, Leibovitz explores the fears, hopes, and dreams of the Israeli immigrants, and the journey they undertook, a journey that lies at the very heart of what it means to be a Jew. Book jacket.

I think that if persons concerned about the problems of Jews and Zionism could have but one book on the subject on their shelf, it should be this one.-- Socialism and Democracy The Zionist movement has had an unprecedented impact on global politics. The quest for a Jewish nation-state has caused turmoil and despair for the Palestinian people and has redefined what it means to be Jewish. Prominent American activist and intellectual Joel Kovel has written a critical exploration of the history of Zionism, arguing that a one-state solution is the only viable option for peace. Kovel recounts the extraordinary genesis of the Zionist movement and the explicit goals of its founders to create a Jewish-only state in Palestine. He examines how the pursuit of this path has changed the nature of Jewry, the fate of the Palestinian people, and the relationship between the Western and the Muslim world. Kovel's passionate concern for social justice makes him unable to accept the two-state solution for Palestine and Israel as a path to peace, and incapable of reconciling his Jewish identity with the goals of Zionism.

This book deals with the large variety of contacts that constitute intercultural relations. These studies suggest the different areas - literature, history, society - research can take to discover the interaction of ideas and peoples. It furthermore illustrates how widely disparate cultures can communicate over time and space as well as the different means that are employed in cultural adjustment. Contents include: Jewish Communities in China: A Brief Overview --- Kaifeng Jews: Sinification and the Persistence of Identity and History --- Destination Shanghai, Permits, and Transit Visas, 1938-1941 --- Translating the Ancestors: SIJ Schereschewsky's 1875 Chinese Version of Genesis --- Notes on the Early Reception of the Old Testament --- Several Psalms in Chinese Translation --- Translation Literature in Modern China: The Yiddish Author and his Tale --- Martin Buber and Daoism

Reimagining the Bible collects a dozen essays by Howard Schwartz. Together the essays present a coherent theory of the way in which each successive phase of Jewish literature has drawn upon and reimagined the previous ones. The book is organized into four sections: The Ancient Models; The Folk Tradition; Mythic Echoes; Modern Jewish Literature and the Ancient Models. Within these divisions, each of the essays focuses on a specific genre, ranging from Torah and Aggadah to Kabbalah, fairy tales, and the modern Yiddish stories of S.Y. Agnon and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Arguing the important thesis that there is a continuity in Jewish literature which extends from the Biblical era to our own times, over a period of more than 3,000 years, this collection also serves as a guide to the history of that literature, and to the genres it comprises.

Jews were emancipated at a time when high culture was becoming an integral part of German citizenship. German Jews felt a powerful urge to integrate, to find their Jewish substance in German culture and craft an identity as both Germans and Jews. In this reprint edition, based on the 1983 Efroymson Memorial Lectures given at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, George Mosse argues that they did this by adopting the concept of Bildung-the idea of intellectual and moral self-cultivation-and combining it with key Enlightenment ideas such as optimism about human potential, individualism and autonomy, and a connection between knowledge and morality through aesthetics. Personal friendships could be devoted to common pursuit of Bildung and become a means of overcoming differences, becoming a means for integration into German society. Mosse traces how Jewish artists, writers, and thinkers actively sought to participate in German culture and communicate these ideals through popular culture, scholarship, and political activity. From the historical biographies, novels, and short stories of Stefan Zweig and Emil Ludwig; to the psychoanalysis of Freud, which sought to subject irrationality to reason; to the revolutionary thought of Walter Benjamin-Jews sought to influence a mass political culture that was fast drifting into irrationality. As individualism was subsumed into nationalism, and eventually the German political right's racist version of nationalism, German-Jewish dialogue became more difficult. Jews remained idealistic as German society became less rational, their ideas corresponded less and less to the realities of German life, and they drifted out of the mainstream into an intellectual isolation. Yet out of this German-Jewish dialogue, what had once been part of German culture became a central Jewish heritage. The ideal of cultivating a personal identity beyond religion and nationality, the liberal outlook on society and politics, and the desire to transcend history by stressing what united rather than divided individuals and nations infiltrated Jewish life became an inspiration for many men and women searching to humanize their society and their own lives. Mosse's lectures trace the emergence of a form of Jewishness which resisted cultural ghettoization in favor of the pursuit of that which is universally human.

Erich Mühsam (187S-1934), poet, bohemian, revolutionary, remains one of Germany's most renowned and influential anarchists. Born into a middle-class Jewish family, he challenged the conventions of bourgeois society at the turn of the century, engaged in heated debates on the rights of women and homosexuals, and traveled Europe in search of radical communes and artist colonies. He was a primary instigator of the ill-fated Bavarian Council Republic in 1919, and held the libertarian banner high during a Weimar Republic that came under increasing threat by right-wing forces. In 1933, four weeks after HitlerÆs ascension to power, Mühsam was arrested in his Berlin home. He spent the last sixteen months of his life in detention and died in the Oranienburg Concentration Camp in July 1934. Mühsam wrote poetry, plays, essays, articles, and diaries. His work unites a burning desire for individual liberation with anarcho-communist convictions, and bohemian strains with syndicalist tendencies. The body of his writings is immense, yet hardly any English translations have existed. This collection presents not only Liberating Society from the State: What is Communist Anarchism? MühsamÆs main political pamphlet and one of the key texts in the history of German anarchism, but also letters, unbending defenses of political prisoners, passionate calls for solidarity with the lumpenproletariat, recollections of the utopian community of Monte Verita, debates on the rights of homosexuals and women, excerpts from his journals, and essays contemplating German politics and anarchist theory as well as Jewish identity and the role of intellectuals in the class struggle. An appendix documents the fate of Zenzl Mühsam, who, after her husband's death, escaped to the Soviet Union where she spent twenty years in Gulag camps. Book jacket.