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The Jewish emigration from Russia after the Revolution of 1917 changed the face of Jewish culture in Western Europe. Russian Jews brought with them the visions of a national Jewish literature in Hebrew, Yiddish or Russian, and new concepts of secular Jewish music and art. Often they acted as intermediaries between Jewish centres in Europe, which resulted in the creation of a single sphere of Jewish culture common to all parts of the European diaspora. Although some stayed in Western Europe for o...

Focusing on the secular society of contemporary Israel, this collection of essays examines the way civil religion invents collective rites for turning points in community life, and personal definitional rites for ratification of identity change in the individual's life cycle.

German rabbi, scholar, and theologian Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) is recognized as the principal leader of the Reform movement in German Judaism. In his new work, Ken Koltun-Fromm argues that for Geiger personal meaning in religion-rather than rote ritual practice or acceptance of dogma-was the key to religion's moral authority. In five chapters, the book explores issues central to Geiger's work that speak to contemporary Jewish practice-historical memory, biblical interpretation, ritual and gend...

New York Public Intellectuals and Beyond gathers a variety of distinguished scholars, from Eugene Goodheart to Peter Novick to Nathan Glazer, from Morris Dickstein to Suzanne Klingenstein to Ilan Stavans, to revisit and rethink the legacy of the New York intellectuals. The authors show how a small New York group, predominantly Jewish, moved from communist and socialist roots to become a primary voice of liberal humanism and, in the case of a few, to launch a new conservative movement. Concentrat...

Die Geschichte des Judenhasses war lang, brutal und gipfelte in der Vernichtung von uber sechs Millionen Juden durch die Nationalsozialisten. Nach der Schoah war der Antisemitismus in Europa tabu, verschwand aber nicht aus den Denkmustern. Vielmehr zeigte er sich in seiner stereotypen Gestalt recht bald wieder. Das Buch behandelt in chronologischer Form die verschiedenen Auspragungen und Entwicklungen des Judenhasses in Europa. Sie reichen von Vertreibung, Gettoisierung, Pogromen und der Schoah...

In the years following the Holocaust, the Jewish community in Germany was tiny, decimated by the Nazis and shrinking fast as most survivors died or emigrated. But once the Berlin Wall fell, the German government invited Soviet-bloc Jews to come make a new life in prosperous and democratic Germany. Exodus to Berlin tells the story of that migration. Since 1989 more than 100,000 Jews have accepted Germany's invitation, filling Berlin and the rest of the country with a vibrant subculture. Germany n...

Today's antisemitism is difficult to recognize because it does not come dressed in a Nazi uniform and it does not openly proclaim its hatred or fear of Jews. This book looks at the kind of antisemitism which is tolerated or which goes unacknowledged in apparently democratic spaces: trade unions, churches, left-wing and liberal politics, social gatherings of the chattering classes and the seminars and journals of radical intellectuals. It analyses how criticism of Israel can mushroom into antisem...

Jerusalem, the holy city of three faiths, has been the focus of competing historical, religious, and political narratives from Biblical chronicles to today's headlines. With an aura that transcends the boundaries of time and place, the city itself embodies different levels of reality - indeed, different realities altogether - for both observers and inhabitants. There is the real Jerusalem, a place of ancient streets and monuments, temples and coffee-houses, religious discourse and political argu...

Stories of hope from the Holocaust. Memory is about choice. We can choose to remember the past in ways that provoke pain and stir our anger, or we can remember in ways that help us create the kind of world in which we most want to live.Nowhere is this choice more important than in connection to the Holocaust. And never has it been more important than now, because we are the first generation that will live without the presence of those who can tell us in their own words what they saw with their...

Making History/Making Blintzes is a chronicle of the political and personal lives of progressive activists Richard (Dick) and Miriam (Mickey) Flacks, two of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As active members of the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s, and leaders in today's social movements, their stories are a first-hand account of progressive American activism from the 1960s to the present. Throughout this memoir, the couple demonstra...

Distributed by University of Exeter Press. The history of Salonica and particularly the life of the Jewish Community are captured in picture postcards of the period 1897-1917. The illustrative material and accompanying texts are divided into eight sections: The People and their Costumes; Street Trades; Industry and Commerce; Homes and Neighbourhoods; Community Buildings and Institutions; Donme (Jews converted to Islam); Events and Prominent Figures; The Cemetery. English and Greek bilingual t...

The authors of this volume follow the tracks of the darker side of the Reformation and study the relationship with Judaism based on Lutheran theology and on a sense of "dignity of difference" (Jonathan Sacks).To the present day Luther's antisemitic polemics have proved to be a burden to the Lutheran Churches. In the media his writings have not been repelled but rather taken up. That is reason enough for members of the Protestant-Lutheran Churches to break with some of the basics of their own chu...