Search results

This memoir consists of actual incidents that Singer remembers from his childhood in Warsaw, where his father was a rabbi in a poor quarter of the city. Through their rooms at 10 Krochmalna Street (the father's rabbinical court) passed a variety of types who came to see the elder Singer for rulings on points of Jewish law and for personal advice and comfort. From his earliest boyhood days, the narrator heard things in his father's house that astonished, amused, perplexed and impressed him. These...

The last two centuries have witnessed a radical transformation of Jewish life. Marked by such profound events as the emancipation from the ghettoes of Europe, the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, Judaism's long journey through the modern age has been a complex and tumultuous one, leading many Jews to ask themselves not only where they have been and where they are going, but what it means to be a Jew in today's world.Tracing the dramatic changes in Jewish religion, culture,...

This examination of the Holocaust in Hungary synthesizes the results of a wide range of investigations and evaluates the historical lessons of the Holocaust in one country. The first part contains historical overviews and introductions; the second part discusses historical antecedents in nine studies on historical, political-ideological, cultural, socioeconomic and psychological factors that led to the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. The third part of the book, covering the Holocaust era itself,...

Jews and French Quebecers recounts a saga of intense interest for the whole of Canada, let alone societies elsewhere. This work, now translated into English, represents the viewpoints of two friends from differing cultural and religious traditions. One is a French Quebecer and a Christian; the other is Jewish and also calls Quebec his home. Both men are bilingual. Jacques Langlais and David Rome examine the merging - through alterations of close co-operation and socio-political clashes - o...

In the uneasily shared history of Jews and blacks in America, the struggle for civil rights in the South may be the least understood episode. Fight against Fear is the first book to focus on Jews and African Americans in that remarkable place and time. Mindful of both communities' precarious and contradictory standings in the South, Clive Webb tells a complex story of resistance and complicity, conviction and apathy. Webb begins by ranging over the experiences of southern Jews up to the eve of t...

In this study, I.Michael Aronson examines, and refutes, the belief that the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia in 1881 were the result of a conspiracy supported by the tsarist government or circles close to it. He offers a re-interpretation of Russian anti-Semitism and Tsarist nationalities policy. Searching for the forces that caused the flood of anti-Jewish violence - social, economic, political - Dr Aronson analyzes the evidence available in Russian, Yiddish, German, English and Hebrew and investi...

The Bible has always been vital to Jewish religious life, and it has been expounded in diverse ways. Perhaps the most influential body of Jewish biblical interpretation is the Midrash that was produced by expositors during the first five centuries CE. Many such teachings are collected in the Babylonian Talmud, the monumental compendium of Jewish law and lore that was accepted as the definitive statement of Jewish oral tradition for subsequent generations. However, many of the Talmud's interpreta...

In the first in-depth exploration of the relationship between Jews and magnates in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, M. J. Rosman shows the influence of the Jews on economic, social, and political life in the Polish, Ukrainian, and Belorussian territories, and offers new perspectives on their relations with magnates. Rosman focuses on two major questions: What were the principal spheres of interaction between the Jews and the nobility? What was the significance of this interaction for both par...

The book analyzes the place of religious difference in late modernity through a study of the role played by Jews and Muslims in the construction of contemporary Spanish national identity. The focus is on the transition from an exclusive, homogeneous sense of collective Self toward a more pluralistic, open and tolerant one in an European context. This process is approached from different dimensions. At the national level, it follows the changes in nationalist historiography, the education system...

A publishing sensation in Germany (where they have sold over 100,000 copies at 45), the publication of Victor Klemperer's diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. The son of a rabbi, Klemperer was by 1933 a professor of languages in Dresden. Over the next decade he, like other German Jews, lost his job, his house and many of his friends, even his cat, as Jews were not allowed to own pets. Throughout, he, like so many other German Jews, remained loyal...