Examines the meaning of Jewish politics in Israel In one of the first books to ask head-on what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state, Yaacov Yadgar delves into what the designation "Jewish" amounts to in the context of the sovereign nation-state, and what it means for the politics of the state to be identified as Jewish. The volume ......
A vivid look at the wartime experiences of a Jewish woman in the Confederate South Emma Mordecai lived an unusual life. She was Jewish when Jews comprised less than 1 percent of the population of the Old South, and unmarried in a culture that offered women few options other than marriage. She was American born when most American Jews were ......
A surprising history of how the pig has influenced Jewish identity Jews do not eat pig. This (not always true) observation has been made by both Jews and non-Jews for more than three thousand years and is rooted in biblical law. Though the Torah prohibits eating pig meat, it is not singled out more than other food prohibitions. Horses, rabbits, ......
The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll, America's First Jewish Woman Stand-
Before Hacks and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there was the comedienne who started it all First Lady of Laughs tells the story of Jean Carroll, the first Jewish woman to become a star in the field we now call stand-up comedy. Though rarely mentioned among the pantheon of early stand-up comics such as Henny Youngman and Lenny Bruce, Jean Carroll ......
Following the Holocaust, American literature experienced a resurgence of Jewish themes, characters, and contributions. This book focuses on the genres of science fiction and fantasy of the post-Holocaust period and argues that while the era was colored by grief, it also offered a renaissance of Jewish creative expression. The author provides an ......
Yiddish Literature Under Surveillance: The Case of Soviet Ukraine gives a broad view on Soviet Jewish literary life, and on the repression suffered by Yiddish writers under Stalinist rule. It moves from the paradigm of writing almost exclusively about the most prominent authors, whose execution in Moscow on August 12, 1952 is tragically known as ......
While conversions to Judaism are generally understudied in France, conversions of Black persons go unnoticed. The past three decades witnessed an increasing number of claims to Jewishness in Africa and conversions in the African diaspora and Israel. Their diverse life stories reflect deep spiritual quests. Scripturalizing Jewishness through ......
A Jewish Heart: A Struggle for Status and Identity in Asia is at once the saga of a modest charitable grant in 1903, an unimagined windfall ninety years later, and a history of Progressive Judaism in Asia. Enriched with profiles of key players, the author rootsthe narratives in the entrepreneurial and philanthropic activities of two legendary ......
Exploring American Jewish History through 50 Historic Treasures offers students and general readers new perspectives on the rich complexity of Jewish experiences in America. As one of America's most fascinating and enduring minorities, American Jews have played key roles in every era of American history and every region of the country. The 50 ......
Explores the long history of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist American Jews Throughout the twentieth century, American Jewish communal leaders projected a unified position of unconditional support for Israel, cementing it as a cornerstone of American Jewish identity. This unwavering position served to marginalize and label dissenters as antisemitic, ......
A Family of Israeli Holocaust Testimonies from the Cracow Ghetto Resista
Testimonial Montage: A Family of Israeli Holocaust Testimonies from the Cracow Ghetto Resistance explores interconnected testimonies of four Holocaust survivors who were members of the Akiva youth group in Cracow, Poland, who participated in the ghetto resistance. Drawing on literary and photographic discourse, Jelen extracts the contours of ......
How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews
Reveals the mass mobilization tactics that helped free Soviet Jews and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan-Bush years What do these things have in common? Ingrid Bergman, Passover matzoh, Banana Republic (R), the fitness craze, the Philadelphia Flyers, B-grade spy movies, and ten thousand Bar and Bat ......
Errant Destinations is a collection of nine literary chronicles in which contemporary Chilean- Jewish author Andrea Jeftanovic reflects on travel in its multiple variations, with reference to diverse fields of study, including references to cinema, literature, and the visual arts. This The interdisciplinary approach enhances the contemplation of ......
Conflict, Conversion, and Consolidation in Early Judaism and Christianit
Covering the period from 200 BCE to 600 CE, this book describes important aspects of identity formation processes within early Judaism and Christianity, and shows how negotiations involving issues of ethnicity, stereotyping, purity, commensality, and institution building contributed to the forming of group identities. Over time, some of these ......
Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s, Revised Edition
Highlights Jewish participation in the civil rights movement Black Power, Jewish Politics charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power-inspired ethnic nationalism. It shows how, in a period best known for the rise of ......
Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s, Revised Edition
Highlights Jewish participation in the civil rights movement Black Power, Jewish Politics charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power-inspired ethnic nationalism. It shows how, in a period best known for the rise of ......
A Black-Jewish dialogue lifts a veil on these groups unspoken history, shedding light on the challenges and promises facing American democracy from its inception to the present.
This book focuses on the first Supreme Court case to grant Jewish Americans race-based civil rights and highlights the complexity of White-perceived Jewish racialization in the United States. In 1982, vandals defaced Shaare Tefila Congregation in Silver Spring, Maryland, with Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi images and slogans. Because no religion-based ......
Reshaping Jewish Orthodoxy Through the Arts in the Digital Age
A compelling look at the lives of ultra-Orthodox and formerly ultra-Orthodox Jewish women and their use of media technologies to create a new market for music and film Mainstream portrayals of ultra-Orthodox religious women often frame their faith as oppressive: they are empowered only when they leave their community. This book flips this notion ......
Reflections on Space and Time of a Vanished Community in Manchuria
Echoes of Harbin: Reflections on Space and Time of a Vanished Community in Manchuria deals with Harbin, a Chinese city that was established by Russians in 1898 and was a home for 38 different national ethnic communities for more than 60 years. Among the communities, and second in size, was the Jewish community. This book exposes several areas that ......
Jewish American Queer Strangers: Ashkenazi Jewish American Women and Non-Binary Queer Figuresin Contemporary Popular Culture by Amy Tziporah Karp explores LGBTQIA+ Jewish American identity in the United States and the queer Jewish stranger figures who live in between incorporation and estrangement. She establishes that despite the near-ubiquitous ......
In this compelling book, Lithuanian author Ruta Vanagaite holds an extended conversation with noted historian Christoph Dieckmann. His exploration of the causes and consequences of the
Holocaust in Lithuania provides the first overview for general readers that considers the perspectives of all the central groups involved—Jews, ......
Many Western societies have seen the age of marriage rising in late modern times. While conservative religious denominations often decry gender egalitarianism and liberal society's sexual norms for contributing to this development, many individuals belonging to such denominations are still part of this trend. This book focuses on one such group, ......
A collection of essays and studies of diverse texts and topics in medieval and early modern Jewish literature, using contemporary critical approaches and textual analysis to explore larger ideas and themes in rabbinic Judaism.
Jews and Muslims of Morocco collects accounts of the intersecting worlds and emergent shared customs and culture, suggesting that the unique atmosphere in Morocco allowed for Rabbinic empowerment and a more practical approach to halakhah.
This collection of mostly unpublished first-person accounts documents the flight and exile of German Jews from Nazi Germany to the USA. The thematic and biographical introductions by the editors, clear geographic framework, and well-defined time frame make this volume helpful ...
This book explores the influence of the Day of Atonement on the Gospels. Hans M. Moscicke investigates how the gospel writers utilized the Yom Kippur traditions of the Second Temple period to craft Christological goat typologies and examines how scapegoat and Azazel traditions in first-century Judaism shaped the theology of the Gospels.
Several world cities are held in reverence by some or all three monotheistic faiths, but no world region has allure to all three on a level matched by Galilee in northern Israel. The region where Jesus came of age, Galilee is where Christianity came into being as a communal faith; it is where Judaism reinvented itself in rabbinic, Talmudic form ......
This book explores a unique crypto-Jewish manuscript written by Loggie Carrasco of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The essays examine central themes in Loggie's manuscript and use them to reflect crypto-Judaism both as a historic and a vital living culture.
Sacred Body analyzes exemplary Jewish texts, narratives, and cultural practices that show how these artifacts unhinge the "sacred" from the divine and focus instead on the "everyday sacred," earthly existence in order to celebrate life-affirming decisions, actions, and relationships, and avoid abstraction, metaphysics, and apocalypticism.
The Life and Times of an American Jewish Woman Writer
This book is about Zelda Popkin who lived and wrote through all the great changes of American Jewish women's lives in the 20th century: the reaction against religious tradition, women's emancipation, struggles against antisemitism, the impact of the Holocaust and the creation of Israel, and the upsurge of Jewish identity in the 1960s.
Pragmatic-Psychoanalytic Interpretations of Amos Oz's Writings: Words Significantly Uttered presents intermediate links between three intellectual domains: the literary works of Amos Oz, American Pragmatism, and object-relations psychoanalysis.
This book offers an entangled narrative of Converso and Morisco history and examines how the groups' notions of honor and hispanidad shaped their socio-cultural identities during the time of the Alpujarras Rebellion.
Trauma, Atrocity, and Representation in Literature and Culture
In this book, scholars with expertise in various national literatures and cultures explore how the Holocaust has been represented in novels, memoirs, film, television, and architecture. This book provides a unique vantage point for the scholar and student to compare how national context impacts representations of the Holocaust.
