These strikingly lucid and accessible essays, ranging over nearly a century of Jewish communal life, examine the ways in which immigrant Jews grappled with issues of group survival in an open and accepting American society. Ten case studies focus on Jewish strategies for maintaining a collective identity while participating fully in American society and public life. Readers will find that these essays provide a fresh, provocative, and compelling look at the fundamental question facing American Jewry at the end of the 20th century, as at its start: how to assure Jewish survival in the benign conditions of American freedom.

"Saying No to Hate grounds readers in the history of antisemitism in America, emphasizing the strategies Jews have used to address threats and thereby preparing us to recognize, understand, and confront hatred today"--

This book, a linguist's reassessment of early European Jewish history, will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered how the Jewish people, lacking their own territorial base and living as a minority among often hostile non-Jewish peoples over the four corners of the globe, succeeded in preserving a separate identity for close to two thousand years. The book makes a number of innovative and controversial claims about the relationship of the contemporary Jews to the Old Palestinian Jews.

International scholars and specialists in Jewish, German, British and European history offer this first comparative approach to the study of German and British Jewish history from the late 18th century to the 1930s. The volume's comparative dimension goes beyond a parallel exploration of the Jewish experience in the two societies by examining British and German Jewries in equal measure and discussing a broad spectrum of social, political, cultural and economic issues.

"In his captivating new book, based on new evidence and a series of interviews, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer offers a richly journalistic portrait of Russia's dwindling yet still vibrant and influential Jewish community. This is simultaneously an in-depth exploration of the texture of Jewish life in Putin's Russia and an emigre's moving elegy for Russia's Jews, which forty years ago constituted one of the world's largest Jewish populations and which presently numbers only about 180,000. Why do Jews continue to live in Russia after the antisemitism and persecution they had endured there? What are the prospects of Jewish life in Russia? What awaits the children born to Jews who have not left? "With or Without You" asks and seeks to answer some of the central questions of modern Jewish history and culture"--

A comprehensive history of the Jews in Hungary from the Roman period up to the present. Describes, inter alia, legal restrictions on the Jews in the 11th-14th centuries; the expulsion of the Jews from Hungary in 1360 under King Lajos I; the blood libel in Nagysombat in 1494; the massacre of Jews in Buda by the Hungarian and Brandenburg armies in 1686, after recapturing the city from the Turks. Ch. 31 (pp. 347-357), "Istoczy and Tiszaeszlar, " deals with the first blood libel case in Hungary in the 19th century. Chs. 36-39 (pp. 442-534) deal with intellectual and political antisemitism in Hungary in the early 20th century (before 1938), including the period of Horthy's White Terror and the numerus clausus in Hungarian universities. Chs. 40-44 (pp. 535-595) deal with the anti-Jewish laws of 1938-39 and the Holocaust in Hungary. Notes that antisemitism did not disappear in Hungary after 1945. Contends that antisemitism in Hungary in the 20th century not only almost destroyed the highly acculturated Jewish community, but also harmed Hungarian culture, to which many Jews contributed.

The first book-length study of contemporary British Jewry, 'Turbulent Times: The British Jewish Community Today' examines the changing nature of the British Jewish community and its leadership since 1990. Keith Kahn-Harris and Ben Gidley contend that there has been a shift within Jewish communal discourse from a strategy of security, which emphasized Anglo-Jewry's secure British belonging and citizenship, to a strategy of insecurity, which emphasizes the dangers and threats Jews face individually and communally. This shift is part of a process of renewal in the community that has led to something of a 'Jewish renaissance' in Britain. Addressing key questions on the transitions in the history of Anglo-Jewish community and leadership, and tackling the concept of the 'new antisemitism', this important and timely study addresses the question: how has UK Jewry adapted from a shift from monoculturalism to multiculturalism?

Richard Sennett has spent an intellectual lifetime exploring how humans live in cities. In this pair of essays he visits two of the world's greatest cities at crucial moments in their history to meditate on the condition of exile in both geographical and psychic space: the Jewish Ghetto of Renaissance Venice, where state-imposed outsiderdom was translated into a rich community identity; and nineteenth-century Paris, a magnet for political exiles, where the experience of displacement seeped into the city's culture at large.--Back cover

France is the only Western European nation home to substantial numbers of survivors of the World War I and World War II genocides. In the Aftermath of Genocide offers a unique comparison of the country’s Armenian and Jewish survivor communities. By demonstrating how—in spite of significant differences between these two populations—striking similarities emerge in the ways each responded to genocide, Maud S. Mandel illuminates the impact of the nation-state on ethnic and religious minorities in twentieth-century Europe and provides a valuable theoretical framework for considering issues of transnational identity. Investigating each community’s response to its violent past, Mandel reflects on how shifts in ethnic, religious, and national affiliations were influenced by that group’s recent history. The book examines these issues in the context of France’s long commitment to a politics of integration and homogenization—a politics geared toward the establishment of equal rights and legal status for all citizens, but not toward the accommodation of cultural diversity. In the Aftermath of Genocide reveals that Armenian and Jewish survivors rarely sought to shed the obvious symbols of their ethnic and religious identities. Mandel shows that following the 1915 genocide and the Holocaust, these communities, if anything, seemed increasingly willing to mobilize in their own self-defense and thereby call attention to their distinctiveness. Most Armenian and Jewish survivors were neither prepared to give up their minority status nor willing to migrate to their national homelands of Armenia and Israel. In the Aftermath of Genocide suggests that the consolidation of the nation-state system in twentieth-century Europe led survivors of genocide to fashion identities for themselves as ethnic minorities despite the dangers implicit in that status.

Rosenzweig's Bible examines the high stakes, both theological and political, of Franz Rosenzweig's attempt to revivify the Hebrew Bible and use it as the basis for a Jewish textual identity. Mara Benjamin's innovative reading of The Star of Redemption places Rosenzweig's best-known work at the beginning of an intellectual trajectory that culminated in a monumental translation of the Bible, thus overturning fundamental assumptions that have long guided the appraisal of this titan of modern Jewish thought. She argues that Rosenzweig's response to modernity was paradoxical: he challenged his readers to encounter the biblical text as revelation, reinventing scripture - both the Bible itself and the very notion of a scriptural text - in order to invigorate Jewish intellectual and social life, but did so in a distinctly modern key, ultimately reinforcing the foundations of German-Jewish post-Enlightenment liberal thought. Rosenzweig's Bible illuminates the complex interactions that arise when modern readers engage the sacred texts of ancient religious traditions.

"Blowing the Whistle on Genocide tells the story of a young Treasury Department lawyer who helped alert the world about the Holocaust and force U.S. government action to rescue Jews from the Nazis." "Risking his career and ignoring threats that were made against him, Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., relentlessly investigated and then exposed the State Department's suppression of news about the Holocaust and obstruction of rescue attempts." "His report, "The Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews," helped force President Roosevelt to belatedly establish the War Refugee Board. With DuBois as one of its leaders, the board played a key role in the rescue of more than 200,000 refugees during the final months of the war." "At every turn, DuBois was confronted by officials who tried to stop him - from the powerful Assistant Secretary of State who sabotaged rescue attempts, to the War Department official who blocked DuBois's proposal to bomb Auschwitz and worked to pardon Nazi war criminals after the war." "But DuBois persevered. He overcame the obstacles and saved lives. He was America's Schindler."--BOOK JACKET.

The reform era in Russia (1855-1881) witnessed the emancipation of the serfs, economic and social change, the reform of all imperial institutions, and the growth of national identity among Russians and the Empire's expanding Jewish population. Consequently, the 'Jewish Question' became one of most hotly debated topics in Russia. Attitudes toward the Jews which evolved during this period persisted up to the Revolution and beyond. This book, based on exhaustive archival research of materials published during the period, studies the interplay of public opinion and official policy. The author examines the attitudes of all sectors of Russian educated society towards the Jews. He also explores how a new group, the Russian Jewish intelligentsia, sought to define a modern Jewish identity in the midst of a multi-ethnic Empire.

Ch. 12 (pp. 162-174), "The Jews in Galicia, " surveys the status of the Jews in this Austrian province from 1772 to 1918. Describes restrictive legislation by Maria Theresia, Joseph II, and their successors. Although the Edict of Tolerance was decreed in 1789, serious discrimination against the Jewish population persisted. Deals, as well, with the process of emancipation of Galician Jewry and the abolition of discriminatory taxes in 1849. Ch. 16 (pp. 215-239), "The Relationship of the Polish Government to the Jewish Population between the Two World Wars, " states that although Poland signed the Small Versailles Peace Treaty which granted minority rights, the Treaty was not respected in practice. Surveys the attitudes of consecutive governments to the "Jewish question" and debates in the Sejm. Mentions pogroms in 1918-20 and in the 1930s. Notes worsening of the situation after Pilsudski's death and the growth of the influence of right-wing parties.

Since the end of Communism, Jews from around the world have visited Poland to tour Holocaust-related sites. A few venture further, seeking to learn about their own Polish roots and connect with contemporary Poles. For their part, a growing number of Poles are fascinated by all things Jewish. Erica T. Lehrer explores the intersection of Polish and Jewish memory projects in the historically Jewish neighborhood of Kazimierz in Krakow. Her own journey becomes part of the story as she demonstrates that Jews and Poles use spaces, institutions, interpersonal exchanges, and cultural representations

Over ten years ago, Benjamin Fain, a physicist now living in Tel Aviv, attempted to hold a conference on Jewish culture in Moscow, an effort that was foiled by the KGB. Many of the participants were eventually able to flee, most emigrating to Israel. In this book, these distinguished scholars and others from around the world present their personal and professional views of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. The book explores a wide range of topics, including underground literature, religious revival, and the rise of a national Jewish consciousness. Some writers claim that the refuseniks are not the leaders of the Soviet Jews but rather an isolated minority, with most Jews being assimilated, acculturated, and uninterested in fleeing. Other essayists look at the ambivalent role traditionally played by the Soviet Union in both allowing some forms of cultural expression and suppressing any efforts at individual religious practice. Others explore the revival of Jewish culture as instanced by underground teaching of Hebrew. A major debate involves the Nature of Jewish emigration, whether the Jews will go to Israel or to America.

Yemen was ruled in the 20th century by imams from the extremist Zaydi Muslim sect. The Jews suffered from legal restrictions and persecutions. In 1910 the victorious Imam Yahya reinstated the "sharia" as the legal code in place of the Turkish civil code, and promulgated the law which imposed on the Jews the status of dhimmi in its most rigid form. In 1922, the reintroduction of forced conversion of Jewish orphans to Islam initiated a Jewish campaign to smuggle many of them to Aden. In the same year, the Imam Yahya virtually banned Jewish emigration from Yemen. Popular hatred of Jews was intense. The UN decision on the partition of Palestine in 1947 engendered a blood libel in San'a and anti-Jewish riots (aggravated by a civil war in Yemen), as well as pogroms in neighboring Aden and Shaykh Othman in which ca. 100 Jews were murdered. In 1948-50 most of the Jews left Yemen.

Green Crescent over Nazareth is the story of the cultural and political struggle between Christians and Muslims, and of the rapid Islamization of Nazareth - the birthplace of Christianity - ironically, under the rule of the Jewish State of Israel. Until the creation of Israel in 1948, Christians formed the majority in the township of Nazareth. However, as Muslim refugees fled adjoining villages for the safety of the city during Israel's War of Independence, the demographic balance began to shift. The higher birthrate among the less educated and poorer Muslim population and the rapid exodus of outnumbered and frustrated Christians quickened the pace of change.By the year 2000, Christians had been reduced to a mere 30 per cent of the city's population of 60,000.

The Jews of Modern France explores the endlessly complex encounter of France and its Jews from just before the Revolution to the eve of the twenty-first century. In the late eighteenth century, some forty thousand Jews lived in scattered communities on the peripheries of the French state, not considered French by others or by themselves. Two hundred years later, in 1989, France celebrated the anniversary of the Revolution with the largest, most vital Jewish population in western and central Europe. Paula Hyman looks closely at the period that began when France's Jews were offered citizenship during the Revolution. She shows how they and succeeding generations embraced the opportunities of integration and acculturation, redefined their identities, adapted their Judaism to the pragmatic and ideological demands of the time, and participated fully in French culture and politics. Within this same period, Jews in France fell victim to a secular political antisemitism that mocked the gains of emancipation, culminating first in the Dreyfus Affair and later in the murder of one-fourth of them in the Holocaust. Yet up to the present day, through successive waves of immigration, Jews have asserted the compatibility of their French identity with various versions of Jewish particularity, including Zionism. This remarkable view in microcosm of the modern Jewish experience will interest general readers and scholars alike.

Ch. 2 (pp. 11-29), "The Status of Jews in Alsace, " discusses the Jews' economic role as intermediaries (e.g. moneylenders, peddlers) and the hostility it aroused, from the eve of the French Revolution until 1870. The Infamous Decree (1808-18), although not strictly enforced, restricted Jewish rights (e.g. commercial activities) in an effort to reorient the Jews to crafts and agriculture. The occupational resentment compounded with the legacy of Christian antisemitism and the peasant resentment of capitalistic inroads in agriculture, which was associated with the Jews, led to violent antisemitic incidents in 1819-20s, in the early 1830s, and especially during the 1848 revolution. Discrimination was expressed by local government authorities, the courts, the press, etc. By the 1850s-60s, antisemitism declined.