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).

Discusses Jewish identity in America as reflected in the culture of immigrants and descendants of immigrants. Self-hatred or, at least, ambivalence about oneself in the face of native American values is one theme. Ch. 5 (pp. 98-125), "To Make 'a Jew': Projecting Antisemitism in Post-War America", analyzes two novels - Arthur Miller's "Focus" and Saul Bellow's "The Victim" - that explore the psychosocial dimensions of postwar antisemitism. They raise the question whether possibilities of Jewish-Gentile relations might lead to personal and social renovation. In "Focus", a crypto-fascist antisemite who has internalized racist stereotypes finally identifies symbolically as a Jew. In "The Victim", both Jew and Gentile partially overcome their mutual stereotyping. The main Jewish protagonist also overcomes some negative aspects of his self-image.

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.

Documents the tension between the ultra-Orthodox and the secular Jews, discussing both the history, politics, and culture that continues to fuel the animosity between these two groups.

This book traces the global, national, and local origins of the conflict between Muslims and Jews in France, challenging the belief that rising anti-Semitism in France is rooted solely in the unfolding crisis in Israel and Palestine. Maud Mandel shows how the conflict in fact emerged from processes internal to French society itself even as it was shaped by affairs elsewhere, particularly in North Africa during the era of decolonization. Mandel examines moments in which conflicts between Muslims and Jews became a matter of concern to French police, the media, and an array of self-appointed spokesmen from both communities: Israel's War of Independence in 1948, France's decolonization of North Africa, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1968 student riots, and François Mitterrand's experiments with multiculturalism in the 1980s. She takes an in-depth, on-the-ground look at interethnic relations in Marseille, which is home to the country's largest Muslim and Jewish populations outside of Paris. She reveals how Muslims and Jews in France have related to each other in diverse ways throughout this history--as former residents of French North Africa, as immigrants competing for limited resources, as employers and employees, as victims of racist aggression, as religious minorities in a secularizing state, and as French citizens. In Muslims and Jews in France, Mandel traces the way these multiple, complex interactions have been overshadowed and obscured by a reductionist narrative of Muslim-Jewish polarization.

Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and Theology at Bard College and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard. He has published more than 900 books and unnumbered articles, both scholarly and academic and popular and journalistic, and is the most published humanities scholar in the world. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees, including seven US and European honorary doctorates. He received his AB from Harvard College in 1953, his PhD from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in 1961, and rabbinical ordination and the degree of Master of Hebrew Letters from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1960. Neusner is editor of the 'Encyclopedia of Judaism' (Brill, 1999. I-III) and its Supplements; Chair of the Editorial Board of 'The Review of Rabbinic Judaism, ' and Editor in Chief of 'The Brill Reference Library of Judaism', both published by E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands. He is editor of 'Studies in Judaism', University Press of America. Neusner resides with his wife in Rhinebeck, New York. They have a daughter, three sons and three daughters-in-law, six granddaughters and two grandsons.

How is it possible, after the Shoah, to declare one's faith in the God of Israel? Breaking the Tablets is David Weiss Halivni's eloquent and insightful response to this question. Halivni, Auschwitz survivor and one of the greatest Talmudic scholars of the past century, declares that at this time of God's near absence, Jews can still observe the words of the Torah and pray for God to come near again.--Product description

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.

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of the books in this series possible: Lloyd E. Cotsen; The Maurice Amado Foundation; National Endowment for the Humanities; and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Tales from Arab Lands presents tales from North Africa, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in the latest volume of the most important collection of Jewish folktales ever published. This is the third book in the multi-volume series in the tradition of Louis Ginzberg?s timeless classic, Legends of the Jews . The tales here and the others in this series have been selected from the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA), named in Honor of Dov Noy, at The University of Haifa, a treasure house of Jewish lore that has remained largely unavailable to the entire world until now. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the IFA has collected more than 20,000 tales from newly arrived immigrants, long-lost stories shared by their families from around the world. The tales come from the major ethno-linguistic communities of the Jewish world and are representative of a wide variety of subjects and motifs, especially rich in Jewish content and context. Each of the tales is accompanied by in-depth commentary that explains the tale's cultural, historical, and literary background and its similarity to other tales in the IFA collection, and extensive scholarly notes. There is also an introduction that describes the culture and its folk narrative tradition, a world map of the areas covered, illustrations, biographies of the collectors and narrators, tale type and motif indexes, a subject index, and a comprehensive bibliography. Until the establishment of the IFA, we had had only limited access to the wide range of Jewish folk narratives. Even in Israel, the gathering place of the most wide-ranging cross-section of world Jewry, these folktales have remained largely unknown. Many of the communities no longer exist as cohesive societies in their representative lands; the Holocaust, migration, and changes in living styles have made the continuation of these tales impossible. This series is a monument to a rich but vanishing oral tradition. This series is a monument to a rich but vanishing oral tradition.

A Past Without Shadow examines 50 years of German children's books in which the darkest horrors of the Third Reich have routinely remained hidden. The horrors of the Third Reich are systematically screened and filtered, allowing the darker, bleaker parts of history to escape illumination. Here Zohar Shavit explores 345 German books for children describing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and finds a shocking distortion of the past: a recurrent narrative which suggests that the Germans themselves had no hand in the suffering inflicted on the Jews. These books, Shavit argues, have created the false historical lesson that the real victims of Hitler's crimes were the German people themselves. First published to great acclaim in Hebrew and now available in English, this book is a wake-up call for anyone concerned about German children's literature and its responsibility to past and future.

"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.