In this first interpretive historical account of the American Orthodox Jewish experience, Jenna Weissman Joselit investigates the ways in which pious Jews reconciled the requirements of religious tradition with the freedoms of interwar America. Through its focus on representative American Jewish institutions such as the synagogue and the rabbinate and on the sacred ritual life of Orthodox women, New York's Jewish Jews reveals how a self-consciously modern, American, and decidedly middle class Orthodoxy evolved before 1945.

"An engaging introduction to the tortuous plight faced by exiled conversos in Amsterdam and their methods of response. Choicet; In this skillful and well-argued book Miriam Bodian explores the communal history of the Portuguese Jews... who settled in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century." --Sixteenth Century Journa

Drawing on family and communal records, diaries, memoirs, and literary works, among other sources, Miriam Bodian tells the moving story of how Portuguese "new Christian" immigrants in 17th-century Amsterdam fashioned a close and cohesive community that recreated a Jewish...

..". vital to understanding this period of East European Jewish history. As Hyman promises, the memoir... read s] like a novel." --Russian Review

In this striking autobiography Puah Rakovsky (1865-1955) tells of her experiences as a Jewish woman in late 19th- and early 20th-century Poland who broke with her traditional upbringing to become a professional educator, Zionist activist, and feminist leader. Her passionate account offers unprecedented entree into the life experience of East European Jewry in a period of massive social change. Published in the original Yiddish in 1954, the...

..". a welcome and unusual glimpse of the private side of one of East European Jewry's most influential public figures."--American Historical Review

..". an absorbing introduction to one of the truly original thinkers in modern Jewish history." --Heritage Southwest Jewish Press

"For a complete picture of the Polish/Russian world of the twentieth century, this book should be required reading."--AJL Newsletter

This is a memoir and biography by an extraordinary woman about her father, a pioneer in the field of Jewish history as well as a leading political activist among East...

"It is the best group portrait of German Jewry that we have." --Washington Post Book World

..". weaves a fascinating social tapestry of German Jewry from 1780 to 1945.... Richarz's introduction furnishes a probing analytic overview of German Jewish social history." --Library Journal

"Richarz's Jewish Life in Germany represents a major contribution to filling the void between broad generalization and actual human experience."--Contemporary Jewry

..". a most remarkable collection of documents... extremely well selected, very full... immensely useful to anyone wanting to...