"What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self--a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience--she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo? Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us--and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror. Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger asks: What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now--and an intellectual adventure story for our times"--

Feldman, who at the age of twenty-three packed up her young son and their few possessions and walked away from her insular Hasidic roots in Brooklyn, explores the United States and Europe and, as a result of her travels, redefines her sense of identity as a non-Orthodox Jew committed to self-acceptance and healing.

Feldman, who at the age of twenty-three packed up her young son and their few possessions and walked away from her insular Hasidic roots in Brooklyn, explores the United States and Europe and, as a result of her travels, redefines her sense of identity as a non-Orthodox Jew committed to self-acceptance and healing.

Teen activist and trailblazer Jazz Jennings--named one of "The 25 most influential teens" of the year by Time--shares her very public transgender journey, as she inspires people to accept the differences in others while they embrace their own truths.

A POWERFUL, DEEPLY MOVING NARRATIVE OF HOPE REBORN IN THE SHADOW OF DESPAIR Fifty years after it was bombed to rubble, Berlin is once again a city in which Jews gather for the Passover seder. Paris and Antwerp have recently emerged as important new centers of Jewish culture. Small but proud Jewish communities are revitalizing the ancient centers of Budapest, Prague, and Amsterdam. These brave, determined Jewish men and women have chosen to settle–or remain–in Europe after the devastation of the Holocaust, but they have paid a price. Among the unexpected dangers, they have had to cope with an alarming resurgence of Nazism in Europe, the spread of Arab terrorism, and the impact of the Jewish state on European life. Delving into the intimate stories of European Jews from all walks of life, Kurlansky weaves together a vivid tapestry of individuals sustaining their traditions, and flourishing, in the shadow of history. An inspiring story of a tenacious people who have rebuilt their lives in the face of incomprehensible horror, A Chosen Few is a testament to cultural survival and a celebration of the deep bonds that endure between Jews and European civilization. “Consistently absorbing . . . A Chosen Few investigates the relatively uncharted territory of an encouraging phenomenon.” –Los Angeles Times “I can think of no book that portrays with such intelligence, historical understanding, and journalistic flair what life has been like for Jews determined to build lives in Europe.” –SUSAN MIRON Forward

Jonathan Freedland looks on as his eight-day-old son is about to be circumcised and admitted into the Covenant of Abraham'. So begins a search for the meaning of his son's inheritance and an epic journey into the nature of this, the world's oldest civilisation. What has Freedland done by enlisting his son into the Jewish people? What gift or burden has he given him? Freedland digs deep into his own family's past, telling the story of three remarkable people, each of whom came up with radically different answers to a quintessentially modern dilemma: how to live as a minority in the modern world. Rich in both human drama and reflection, Jacob's Gift is the story of this quest, and a delightful meditation on belonging.

Sixty-two of the most accomplished Jews in America speak intimately—most for the first time—about how they feel about being Jewish. In unusually candid interviews conducted by former 60 Minutes producer Abigail Pogrebin, celebrities ranging from Sarah Jessica Parker to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, from Larry King to Mike Nichols, reveal how resonant, crucial or incidental being Jewish is in their lives. The connections they have to their Jewish heritage range from hours in synagogue to bagels and lox; but every person speaks to the weight and pride of their Jewish history, the burdens and pleasures of observance, the moments they’ve felt most Jewish (or not). This book of vivid, personal conversations uncovers how being Jewish fits into a public life, and also how the author’s evolving religious identity was changed by what she heard.

"First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide--but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation. They need adults with the confidence to teach their importance. Ruth tried to take on that challenge as dangers to freedom mounted and shifted sides on the political spectrum. At the high point of her teaching at Harvard University, she witnessed the unraveling of standards of honesty and truth until the academy she left was no longer the one she had entered."--Book flap.

Modern-day Israel, and the Jewish community, are strongly influenced by the memory and horrors of Hitler and the Holocaust. Burg argues that the Jewish nation has been traumatized and has lost the ability to trust itself, its neighbors or the world around it. He shows that this is one of the causes for the growing nationalism and violence that are plaguing Israeli society and reverberating through Jewish communities worldwide. Burg uses his own family history--his parents were Holocaust survivors--to inform his innovative views on what the Jewish people need to do to move on and eventually live in peace with their Arab neighbors and feel comfortable in the world at large. Thought-provoking, compelling, and original, this book is bound to spark a heated debate around the world.

"Shlomo Sand was born in 1946, in a displaced person's camp in Austria, to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father; the family later migrated to Palestine. As a young man, Sand came to question his Jewish identity, even that of a "secular Jew." With this meditative and thoughtful mixture of essay and personal recollection, he articulates the problems at the center of modern Jewish identity. How I Stopped Being a Jew discusses the negative effects of the Israeli exploitation of the "chosen people" myth and its "holocaust industry." Sand criticizes the fact that, in the current context, what "Jewish" means is, above all, not being Arab and reflects on the possibility of a secular, non-exclusive Israeli identity, beyond the legends of Zionism"--

It has taken me a long time to piece all this together. Memories come not like heavy rain but the drops falling from leaves after it. There were elements missing. At last I knew I would not be whole until I found them... June Cohen was born on Human Street in 1929. Her street ran through the centre of Krugersdorp, a mining town near Johannesburg where June's father, Laurie, a doctor, and his wife of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, had decided to establish themselves thirty years on from the family's crossing to South Africa. June was named after the month she was born in. In the wake of his mother's death, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen embarks on a compassionate and sensitive portrait of the journeys made by both his maternal and paternal family, exploring the stories that have filtered through to him since childhood. Told through personal letters and collective memories, Cohen follows his family from Lithuania to South Africa, England, the United States and Israel. He illuminates the uneasy resonance of the racism his relatives witnessed living in apartheid-era South Africa and explores the pervasive sense of 'otherness' that originated from his Jewish heritage of persecution and from the repeated loss that accompanied his forebears' multiple migrations. And through this, he begins to understand better the manic depression that has permeated his family and that plagued his mother until her last moments. A sweeping family story spanning continents, families and great swathes of history, Roger Cohen's deeply personal examination of Jewish identity is a tale of displacement and remembrance, an account of suicide and resilience, a meditation on identity and belonging, a classic for our times.

Mia has a knack for putting into words the dilemmas, delights and dramas of women everywhere. With intrepid curisoity and a delicious sense of humour, Mia navigates her way throught the topics - great and small - of modern life.

"When her marriage suddenly ends, and a diary documenting her beloved grandfather's escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of 1942 is discovered, Naomi K. Lewis decides to retrace his journey to learn about her family history. Despite suffering from extreme disorientation and a lifetime of anxiety, she travels alone for the first time. Moving from Amsterdam to Lyon--relying on the marvels of GPS--she discovers family secrets and her own narrative as a second-generation Jewish Canadian. With vulnerability, humour, and wisdom, Lewis's memoir asks tough questions about her identity as a secular Jew, the accuracy of family stories, and the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. How do immigrants weave their sense of identity into their chosen countries? Must we be able to locate ourselves within family and cultural geography to belong?"--

From horned devils to greedy money lenders, images have been used as weapons against Jews for thousands of years. Even photojournalist social reformers of the early twentieth century reinforced derogatory stereotypes of Jews as wretched, immoral, and dirty. Little attention has focused, however, on the ways in which Jews themselves have attempted to counteract these views and to construct their own ethnic and political identities. In The Jewish Self-Image in the West , Michael Berkowitz examines dozens of visual renderings from the fin-de-siècle to the beginning of the Second World War to argue that Jews have exercised some control over representations of their own national communities and aspirations. In the decades before the Holocaust, organized segments of Jewry enthusiastically appropriated modern media in order to exert a greater influence over their public images. Presenting photographs and graphic images by Jews as attempts to disrupt or undermine prevailing perceptions, Berkowitz reconstructs the development of the Jewish self-image in the West over a crucial half-century.

A unique memoir that interweaves poetry, narrative, meditation, and social history, A Spiritual Life explores the complex facets of a Jewish woman's spiritual coming-of-age, capturing the emotional and spiritual reality of contemporary Jews as well as religious seekers of all types. From the experiences of early childhood, to the spiritual awakening of a secular adolescent encountering Jewish tradition, to the alternately funny and searing tales of new-found independence, early married life, young motherhood, and midlife, Feld comments with remarkable honesty and clarity on the many stages of spiritual and artistic exploration and growth. Overarching all these accounts is the picture of how the cycle of the Jewish calendar year comes to provide an ever-renewing source of sustenance for the author's deepening spiritual expression.

But who could describe my fright when, on the next morning, I awoke and found myself feeling as if completely changed into a woman. — Case 129, Autobiography, from Psychopathia Sexualis, a Medico-Forensic Study by Richard Von Krafft-Ebing At the time the passage above was written, people who felt trapped in the wrong gender automatically became case-studies. Today they become the men and women they always felt they were. Transsexuals test our notions of what it is to be male or female and, more provocatively, what it means to be one self as opposed to another. “Their stories,” says Jonathan Ames, “hold the appeal of an adventurer’s tale.” In Sexual Metamorphosis , Ames presents the personal narratives of seventeen gender pioneers. Here is Christine Jorgensen, the first celebrity transsexual, greeting thousands of well-wishers from the stage of Madison Square Garden. Here is Caroline Cossey, former model and Bond (as in James) girl, being outed in the tabloid press. Here is novelist and English professor Jennifer Finney Boylan discussing her impending transformation with her heartbroken spouse and supportive yet confused colleagues. The result is a fascinating and compulsively readable book, filled with anguish, introspection and courage.

This is an eloquent and deeply felt memoir exploring the author's complex relationship with his Jewish identity. "If I Am Not Myself" is a passionate, thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century. It traces the author's upbringing in 1960s Jewish-American suburbia, his anti-war and pro-Palestinian activism on the British Left, and life as a Jew among Muslims in Pakistan, Morocco, and Britain. Interwoven with this are the experiences of his grandfather's life in Jewish New York of the 1930s and '40s, his struggles with anti-Semitism and the twists and turns that led him from anti-Fascism to Militant Zionism. In the course of this deeply personal story, Marqusee refutes the claims of Israel and Zionism on Jewish loyalty and laments their impact on the Jewish Diaspora. Rather, he argues for a richer, more multi-dimensional understanding of Jewish history and identity, and reclaims vital political and personal space for those castigated as self-haters by the Jewish establishment.

In Journeys & Arrivals prize-winning author Lev Raphael explores for the first time in non-fiction the gay and Jewish identities that have dominated his highly acclaimed fiction for many years. Journeys & Arrivals reveals in a collection of autobiographical and critical essays the influence these often conflicting identities of being gay and Jewish have had in his life and his writing.