"A probing look at one of the most incendiary subjects of our time--the relationship between the United States and Israel. There has been more than half a century of raging conflict between Jews and Arabs--a violent, costly struggle that has had catastrophic repercussions in a critical region of the world. In Genesis, John B. Judis argues that, while Israelis and Palestinians must shoulder much of the blame, the United States has been the principal power outside the region since the end of World War II and as such must account for its repeated failed efforts to resolve this enduring strife. The fatal flaw in American policy, Judis shows, can be traced back to the Truman years. What happened between 1945 and 1949 sealed the fate of the Middle East for the remainder of the century. As a result, understanding that period holds the key to explaining almost everything that follows--right down to George W. Bush's unsuccessful and ill-conceived effort to win peace through holding elections among the Palestinians, and Barack Obama's failed attempt to bring both parties to the negotiating table. A provocative narrative history animated by a strong analytical and moral perspective, and peopled by colorful and outsized personalities, Genesis offers a fresh look at these critical postwar years, arguing that if we can understand how this stalemate originated, we will be better positioned to help end it"--

"The extraordinary untold story of how Irish and Jewish immigrants worked together to secure legitimacy in America. Popular belief holds that the various ethnic groups that emigrated to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century regarded one another with open hostility, fiercely competing for limited resources and even coming to blows in the crowded neighborhoods of major cities. One of the most enduring stereotypes is that of rabidly anti-Semitic Irish Catholics, like Father Charles Coughlin of Boston and the sensationalized Gangs of New York trope of Irish street thugs attacking defenseless Jewish immigrants. In Opening Doors, Hasia Diner, one of the world's preeminent historians of immigration, tells a very different story; far from confrontational, the prevailing relationships between Jewish and Irish Americans were overwhelmingly cooperative, and the two groups were dependent upon one another to secure stable and upwardly mobile lives in their new home. The Irish had emigrated to American cities en masse a generation before the first major wave of Jewish immigrants arrived, and had already entrenched themselves in positions of influence in urban governments, public education, and the labor movement. Jewish newcomers recognized the value of aligning themselves with another group of religious outsiders who were able to stand up and demand rights and respect despite widespread discrimination from the Protestant establishment, and the Irish realized that they could protect their political influence by mentoring their new neighbors in the intricacies of American life. Opening Doors draws from a deep well of historical sources to show how Irish and Jewish Americans became steadfast allies in classrooms, picket lines, and political machines, and ultimately helped one another become key power players in shaping America's future. In the wake of rising anti-Semitism and xenophobia today, this informative and accessible work offers an inspiring look at a time when two very different groups were able to find common ground and work together to overcome bigotry, gain representation, and move the country in a more inclusive direction"--

"Explores how American Jews leveraged the Black Power movement to strengthen American Jewish religious, ethnic, and cultural life"--Provided by the publisher.

Black Jews in Africa and the Americas tells the fascinating story of how the Ashanti, Tutsi, Igbo, Zulu, Beta Israel, Maasai, and many other African peoples came to think of themselves as descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel. Pursuing medieval and modern European race narratives over a millennium in which not only were Jews cast as black but black Africans were cast as Jews, Tudor Parfitt reveals a complex history of the interaction between religious and racial labels and their political uses. For centuries, colonialists, travelers, and missionaries, in an attempt to explain and understand the strange people they encountered on the colonial frontier, labeled an astonishing array of African tribes, languages, and cultures as Hebrew, Jewish, or Israelite. Africans themselves came to adopt these identities as their own, invoking their shared histories of oppression, imagined blood-lines, and common traditional practices as proof of a racial relationship to Jews. Beginning in the post-slavery era, contacts between black Jews in America and their counterparts in Africa created powerful and ever-growing networks of black Jews who struggled against racism and colonialism. A community whose claims are denied by many, black Jews have developed a strong sense of who they are as a unique people. In Parfitt’s telling, forces of prejudice and the desire for new racial, redemptive identities converge, illuminating Jewish and black history alike in novel and unexplored ways.

A reading of African American and Jewish American writers from Henry Roth and Ralph Ellison to Philip Roth and David Bradley. Reading the work of such writers alongside and through one another, Newton's book offers an original way of juxtaposing two major traditions in modern American literature, and rethinking the sometimes vexed relationship between two constituencies ordinarily confined to sociopolitical or media commentary alone. Newton combines Emmanuel Levinas's ethical philosophy and Walter Benjamin's theory of allegory in shaping an innovative kind of ethical-political criticism. Through artful, dialogical readings of Saul Bellow and Chester Himes, David Mamet and Anna Deavere Smith, and others, Newton seeks to represent American Blacks and Jews outside the distorting mirror of 'Black-Jewish Relations', and restrictive literary histories alike. A final chapter addresses the Black/Jewish dimension of the O. J. Simpson trial.