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Threatened by the love of would-be friends as well as the hatred of long-established enemies, the Jewish people face a number of critical questions about the future. What matters more: the number of Jewish people, or the qualities of the Jewish soul? Does asking, "Is it good for the Jews?" diminish the more profound question, "Is it good?" Should the Torah be seen as the unchanging anchor of faith or as a starting place for continual reinvention? Does Judaism hold within it a universal and inclu...

Joseph B. Soloveitchik's philosophy plays a significant role in twentieth century Jewish thought. This book focuses on the first stages of Soloveitchik's philosophy, through a systematic and detailed discussion of his essay Halakhic Man. Schwartz analyzes this essay at three main levels: first, he considers its complex writing style and relates it to Soloveitchik's aims in the writing of this work. Second, the author compares Halakhic Man to other contemporary writings of Soloveitchik. Third, he...

This inventory provides a survey of the extant Yiddish sources in Dutch archives and collections outside of Amsterdam. Until now, an overview and quantitative summary of the available Yiddish sources in The Netherlands was lacking. The compilation represents only a modest beginning, for the amount of material that has survived is enormous. An inventory relating to the Jewish community of Amsterdam requires a separate volume. The present inventory aims to stimulate new research-projects on the h...

This new illustrated edition of Evelyn Rose's classic book has been completely revised and updated by Evelyn's daughter Judi, ensuring it continues to be the culinary bible of Jewish cuisine. Packed with mouth-watering ideas for both family meals and those special occasions when you want to impress without spending hours in the kitchen, the book contains over 1000 fail-safe recipes for which the author is justly celebrated. Ideal for novices and experienced cooks alike, the easy-to-follow recipe...

Volume 18 of The Jewish Law Annual contains six comprehensive articles on various aspects of Jewish law. Three articles address family law. One addresses the painful issue of the plight of the wife whose husband withholds conjugal relations. In a marriage where relations are withheld, the wife may seek a divorce, while her husband may withhold divorce. Prolonged withholding of divorce renders the wife an agunah, that is, a wife chained to a dead marriage and unable to start anew and rebuild her...

Moroccan Jewry has a long tradition, harking back to the area’s earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and associations with the historic peoples of the region. In Jews and Muslims of Morocco historians, anthropologists, musicologists, Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists examine the complex and hybrid history of intercultural exchange between Moroccan Jewry and the Arab and Berber cultures through analyses of the Jews’ use of Morocco’s multiple languages and dialects, charac...

Coming to Terms with America examines how Jews have long “straddled two civilizations,” endeavoring to be both Jewish and American at once, from the American Revolution to today. In fifteen engaging essays, Jonathan D. Sarna investigates the many facets of the Jewish-American encounter—what Jews have borrowed from their surroundings, what they have resisted, what they have synthesized, and what they have subverted. Part I surveys how Jews first worked to reconcile Judaism with the country’s ne...

It's been a church, a mosque and a synagogue. Jesus is said to have dined there. James, his brother, is believed to have been interred there. King David may be buried beneath the floor. The subject of intense speculation by both scholars and the faithful, the Cenacle on Mount Zion-also known as the Upper Room of the New Testament gospels and as the Tomb of David-has remained a mystery for centuries. Claimed by Jews, Christians and Muslims, the sacred structure continues to evoke passionate cont...

This book features a CD of rarely performed music, including a specially commissioned rap by Erik Weiner of Walter Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History." Theodor W. Adorno was the prototypical German Jewish non-Jew, Walter Benjamin vacillated between German Jew and Jewish German, Gershom Scholem was a committed Zionist, and Arnold Schonberg converted to Protestantism for professional reasons but later returned to Judaism. Carl Djerassi, himself a refugee from Hitler's Austria, dramati...

This book deals with the intricate, and often uneasy relationship which developed between Jews and Venetians, as they struggled to cope with the changing realities of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean world. The fruit of many years of research in the Venetian archives, this volume explores undiscovered aspects of Mediterranean history regarding the involvement of Venetians and Jews in the international maritime trade, Venetian attitudes towards Jews, the impact of Venetian-Ottoman contention o...

Memoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. Stepchildren of the Shtetl tells the story of these marginalized figures from the dawn of modernity to the eve of the Holocaust. Combining archival research with analysis of literary, cultural, and religious texts, Natan M. Meir recovers the lived experience of Jewish society's outcasts and reveals the central role that...

The Jew in Czech and Slovak Imagination,1938-89 is the first critical inquiry into the nature of anti-Jewish prejudices in both main parts of former Czechoslovakia. The authors identify anti-Jewish prejudices over almost fifty years of the twentieth century, focusing primarily on the post-Munich period and the Second World War (1938-45), the post-war reconstruction (1945-48), as well as the Communist rule with both its thaws and returns to hardline rule (1948-89). It is a provocative examination...

The book seeks, for the first time in any language, to combine Thackeray's many depictions of, and comments on, Jews and Judaism, from Old Testament times to his own present, into a coherent, chronologically ordered narrative. Texts and early versions that have not found their way into the collected editions are considered alongside well-known passages from Barry Lyndon, Vanity Fair, The Newcomes and Rebecca and Rowena. Since Thackeray illustrated many of his own works, graphic illustrations are...

These letters between two great German-speaking writers reflect the turmoil of 20th-century history. Celan and Sachs were united by their shared experience of persecution and exile.

Originally published in Spanish in 1994, this is a humorous yet moving exploration of a Jewish family's history, as seen through the eyes of three generations of women.

Enjoy the most comprehensive and hilariously entertaining lexicon of the colorful and deeply expressive language of Yiddish. With the recent renaissance of interest in Yiddish, and in keeping with a language that embodies the variety and vibrancy of life itself, The New Joys of Yiddish brings Leo Rosten’s masterful work up to date. Revised for the first time by Lawrence Bush, in close consultation with Rosten’s daughters, it retains the spirit of the original—with its wonderful jokes, tidbits of...