Visiting Israel in 1972, Gilbert discussed Winston Churchill’s influence on the evolution of the Zionist ideal with the Israeli leader, David Ben-Gurion, at whose last meeting with Churchill in 1960, Churchill declared: “You are a wise leader of a brave people.” Born into a British class and society that was far from well-disposed towards Jews, Churchill rejected anti-Semitic attitudes. In the early 1920s, as a senior member of the British government, Churchill took a lead in securing for the Jews a National Home in Palestine that would be open to Jewish immigration from all over the world. In 1948, Churchill urged immediate recognition of the State of Israel, and, in 1951, strongly supported Israel’s right — denied by Egypt — of free passage through the Suez Canal. The book also details acts of rescue initiated by Churchill on behalf of European Jewry during the Second World War. When Churchill was asked to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz, his response was immediate: “Get anything out of the air force you can.” Gilbert follows this story to its unexpected conclusion, and the saving of more than 100,000 Jewish lives. Many times during fifty years of public life, Churchill was called upon by the Jews of Britain to intervene on their behalf both nationally and internationally. His responses made it clear to them that he was, as he once expressed it, “their friend.”

Beginning in the ancient world, this colourful, fast-paced saga enriches our understanding of the Jews and their impact on the world. With drama no fiction can match, master storyteller Howard Fast traces the evolution of a tradition powerful enough to give lasting identity to a scattered, wandering people. Bringing to life the extraordinary men and women who have shaped history-Moses, Hillel, Jesus (and many more) -- this compelling book explores the customs and philosophies that have endured persecution, emigration, and the Holocaust. Fast also probes the towering achievements of this unique and fascinating people, illustrating their important role in the origins of Western culture, Christianity and modern Europe. "The Jews" is comprehensive, enlightening and utterly readable.

"Jewish History For Dummies provides unbiased, factual history of Jewish life, culture, and history. You'll take a look at the roots of Jewish history, beginning in 2000 B.C.E. with Abraham and his descendants. Chapter by chapter, you'll trace the evolution of the Jewish people through the biblical record and other sources, learning how King David united Israel, how the Jews were exiled under Babylonian rule, and how Jewish people have adapted to life in the diaspora, from ancient times all the way up to today. Whatever era of Jewish history you're interested in, you'll find comprehensive coverage in this Dummies guide."--

"In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929-1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust. Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne's life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary--its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today's world. Writing alongside Anne rather than over her, Franklin explores the day-to-day perils of the Holocaust in the Netherlands as well as Anne's ultimate fate, restoring her humanity and agency in all their messiness, heroism, and complexity. With antisemitism once again in the news, The Many Lives of Anne Frank takes a fresh and timely look at the debates around Anne's life and work, including the controversial adaptations of the diary, Anne's evolution as a fictional character, and the ways her story and image have been politically exploited. Franklin reveals how Anne has been understood and misunderstood, both as a person and as an idea, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today's hyperpolarized world."--

In the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel embraced Yasser Arafat as its "peace partner." It then installed him in Gaza and the West Bank as head of a nascent Palestinian government, allowed him to bring with him some 7,000 of his loyalist gunmen, and provided the gunmen with weapons, even as Arafat continued to support terrorist attacks on Israelis and to assure Palestinians and other Arabs his goal remained Israel's destruction.Why did Israel pursue the path of Oslo? Why did it persist on that path when, in the wake of the initial Oslo agreements, the Palestinians unleashed an unprecedented wave of anti-Israel terror? Palestinian leaders also routinely called for holy war against Israel and compared Oslo to the Treaty of Hudaibiya, which Mohammed had signed in 628 and abandoned when his forces became strong enough to overwhelm his adversaries. Arafat and his subordinates told Arab audiences that Oslo was a step in the PLO's 1974 "plan of phases," a strategy of acquiring whatever land could be won by negotiations and using that territory as a base for pursuing Israel's annihilation. Yet Israel responded with additional concessions. What psychological, historical and communal forces spawned policies that undermined Israel's security and even threatened its survival? Dr. Levin's original and powerfully persuasive analysis relates Israeli diplomacy of the nineteen-nineties to psychological responses common among chronically besieged populations, whether minorities subjected to defamation, discrimination and assault or small nations under chronic attack by their neighbors. More particularly, he demonstrates links between the evolution of Oslo and the long history of Diaspora Jews being subjected to persistent abuse. The reaction of many enduring such abuse was to seek to improve their predicament by endorsing elements of the surrounding societies' bigoted indictments and embracing delusions of salvation through self-effacement and concessions. This case study in the psychology of a community under chronic attack takes on broader significance at a time when even traditionally safe and secure societies such as the United States are confronting the psychological challenges posed by terrorist assaults.

Based on years of research conducted mostly in Arabic sources, Meir Litvak and Ester Webman track the evolution of post-World War II perceptions of the Holocaust and their parallel emergence in the wake of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, Arab attitudes toward the Holocaust became entangled with broader anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sentiments. Litvak and Webman track this discourse through the work of leading intellectuals and turn to representations of the Holocaust in the media and culture of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and among the Palestinian people. Their chronological history, which spans sixty years, provides a remarkable perspective on the origins, development, and tenaciousness of anti-Holocaust belief. From Empathy to Denial is the first comprehensive investigation of Holocaust denial in the Arab world, and is based on years of painstaking historical research of mostly Arabic language sources. The authors explore how Holocaust denial emerged after the Second World War, how it paralleled the wider Arab-Israeli conflict after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and how it subsequently became entangled with broader anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sentiment. In particular Litvak and Webman look at the role of leading intellectuals, the media and other cultural forms in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and among the Palestinians and how their representation of the Holocaust has evolved in the last sixty years.

2006 National Jewish Book Award, Modern Jewish Thought Long the object of curiosity, admiration, and gossip, rabbis' wives have rarely been viewed seriously as American Jewish religious and communal leaders. We know a great deal about the important role played by rabbis in building American Jewish life in this country, but not much about the role that their wives played. The Rabbi’s Wife redresses that imbalance by highlighting the unique contributions of rebbetzins to the development of American Jewry. Tracing the careers of rebbetzins from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present, Shuly Rubin Schwartz chronicles the evolution of the role from a few individual rabbis' wives who emerged as leaders to a cohort who worked together on behalf of American Judaism. The Rabbi’s Wife reveals the ways these women succeeded in both building crucial leadership roles for themselves and becoming an important force in shaping Jewish life in America.

"This book brings together Vilém Flusser and intellectual Jewish history of the second half of the twentieth century. Flusser is viewed today by many scholars as the most original theoretician of media and photography in the second half of the twentieth century, and yet this is the first monograph about him in English. Combining elements of Flusser's biography with a rigorous study of his writing, this book shows that concepts of 'virtuality', 'medium', and 'embodiment' underpin not only Flusser's understanding of technological media, such as photography, but also his understanding of evolution and of real or imaginary biological organisms. This book argues that Flusser contended with Nazism in his writings on these biological and ecological themes. Two threads - and their relationship - are explored: the first bears on Nazism as undergirded by a biological perspective - an attempt to eradicate a population taken to be parasitic; in the second, Nazism is simply viewed as 'stupid'. Such a line of inquiry necessarily leads to and includes our dealing with the 'Nazi fantasy', because fantasy was fused into Nazism's own vision. This book will not only be an ideal resource for students and scholars of intellectual Jewish history but will interest anyone seeking an introduction to Flusser and the philosophy of science within the context of Nazism"--

Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated--an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.