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An eyewitness account of the prisoner revolt at a Nazi extermination camp, and the life of a teenaged boy who survived to tell the story. A Promise at Sobibor is the story of Fiszel Bialowitz, a teenaged Polish Jew who escaped the Nazi gas chambers. Between April 1942 and October 1943, about 250,000 Jews from European countries and the Soviet Union were sent to the Nazi death camp at Sobibor in occupied Poland. Sobibor was not a transit camp or work camp: its sole purpose was efficient mass murd...

We tend to think of citizenship as something that is either offered or denied by a state. Modern history teaches otherwise. Reimagining citizenship as a legal spectrum along which individuals can travel, Extraterritorial Dreams explores the history of Ottoman Jews who sought, acquired, were denied or stripped of citizenship in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-as the Ottoman Empire retracted and new states were born-in order to ask larger questions about the nature of c...

Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer (1795-1874) was one of the first Orthodox rabbis to advocate direct political action in order to radically transform Jewish life. Kalischer lived in a time when Jewish tradition was increasingly challenged by rational thought and social integration. Applying his knowledge of rabbinic literature to the unusual historical events unfolding around him, he became convinced that behind the rise of individual Jews to great power was a divine plan to prepare the way for messianic...

The Nazi-sponsored mayor of the Warsaw Ghetto illuminates his dealings with German authorities and testifies to the agonies suffered by the Ghetto's half-million Jews.

Israel's Wars, 1947-1993 is a fascinating overview of Israel's wars with the Palestinians and the Arabs. From the 1947-8 Jewish-Palestinian struggle for the possession and mastery of the land of Palestine to the Intifada between 1987-1993, this book also examines Israel's conflicts with its Arab neighbours, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the PLO in Lebanon. Israel's Wars analyzes the effect of the wars on the people of Israel. In 1947 with the Holocaust very fresh in their memories, the Israelis demon...

Focusing on the interaction between dominant and minority cultures, this text examines how 19th century Jewish university students reconciled their German and Jewish heritages, and how adjusting social relationships to accommodate both worlds became the norm, not the exception.

When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, Britain was home to only 30,000 Jews and they did not yet have full political rights. By the end of the century their numbers had increased about sevenfold, and practising Jews had taken their places in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Victoria's reign therefore saw a tremendous change in the profile of Jews within British society. The Victorian period was also one of economic transition for British Jews. While initially in a narr...

This text traces the evolution of Communism in post-war Hungary. It identifies the distinctive features of the Jewish community and describes the relationship of the Communist authorities and the Jewish leadership, pinpointing the difficulties of Jewish students in all walks of life. The second part of the book contains the recollections of 17 people, all Holocaust survivors, who faced the threat of Communism in Hungary. These contributors managed to preserve freedom of speech and action, as wel...

Das Buch bringt religioese Konflikte in der galizischen Literatur zur Darstellung. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf der Analyse von literarischen Werken, die zwischen 1848 und 1914 entstanden, als Galizien noch "oesterreichisch" und durch eine grosse ethnisch-konfessionelle Vielfalt gepragt war. Zugleich stellt die Studie den Versuch dar, die literarische Deutung konfessioneller Beziehungen zwischen der roemisch-katholischen, griechisch-katholischen und judischen Bevoelkerung in Galizien unter Be...

There are around 14 million Jews in the world today, less than 0.2 per cent of the global population, yet this remarkable people has always provoked a curiosity, stimulated an admiration, goaded an antipathy and exerted an influence out of all proportion to its numbers. Tracing its origins back to the Biblical patriarch Abraham approximately 3,500 years ago, redeemed from Egyptian slavery by Moses and bound to the One God at Mt Sinai around 1250 BC, the religion of the Jews - Judaism - gave birt...

The Jewish people's spirit and place in world history since 1776. Chronicles the Jewish experience in the American and French revolutions through the birth of Zionism and the devastation of the Holocaust and into today's world. Also includes the struggle for Israeli independence as Eban lived it.

A Convenient Hatred chronicles a very particular hatred through powerful stories that allow readers to see themselves in the tarnished mirror of history. It raises important questions about the consequences of our assumptions and beliefs and the ways we, as individuals and as members of a society, make distinctions between "us" and "them," right and wrong, good and evil. These questions are both universal and particular.

Called by Choice "the most comprehensive survey of a magnificent era," The Jews of Moslem Spain takes the reader on a journey through history, from 711 C.E. on the slopes of Gibraltar (when the Moslems conquered the Iberian peninsula) through the centuries of the flowering of Jewish culture, "The Golden Age of Spanish Jewry" and closes with the 11th century re-conquest of Spain. The books (Volume 1 and the combined Volumes 2 and 3) are peopled with soldiers and rabbinic scholars, viziers in th...