Beyond the walls of their synagogues, Jewish adults are creating religious meaning in new and diverse ways in a range of unconventional sites. In Back to School, authors Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor argue that the Jewish day school serves as one such site by bringing adults and children together for education, meeting, study, and worship-like ceremonies. Pomson and Schnoor suggest that day school functions as a locus of Jewish identity akin to the Jewish streets or neighborhoods that existed in many major North American cities in the first half of the twentieth century.
Back to...
Beyond the walls of their synagogues, Jewish adults are creating religious meaning in new and diverse ways in a range of unconventional sites. In B...
David G. Roskies, a renowned scholar, looks back on his life and the life of his mother, tracing the Yiddish experience through major historical events of the last century.
David G. Roskies, a renowned scholar, looks back on his life and the life of his mother, tracing the Yiddish experience through major historical event...
Historians have typically characterized nineteenth-century French Jewry as largely eager to assimilate, or, at the very least, passively accommodating to assimilation, with only the most traditional Jews rejecting the trappings of French culture. Through the lens of Jewish primary and rabbinical education, author Jeffrey Haus shows that even integrated French Jews sought to set limits on assimilation and struggled to preserve a sense of Jewish distinctiveness in France. Challenges of Equality argues that Jewish leaders couched their views in terms that the government could understand and...
Historians have typically characterized nineteenth-century French Jewry as largely eager to assimilate, or, at the very least, passively accommodat...
By the spring of 1947, less than two years after Nazi Germany's defeat, some 250,000 Jewish refugees remained in the displaced persons camps of Germany, Italy, and Austria. Yet many Jews did not know whether to return to their home countries or move on to someplace else. As a result, these stateless displaced persons (DPs) created a unique space for political, cultural, and social rebirth that was tempered by the complications of overcoming recent trauma. In "We Are Here," editors Avinoam J. Patt and Michael Berkowitz present current research on DPs between the end of the war and the...
By the spring of 1947, less than two years after Nazi Germany's defeat, some 250,000 Jewish refugees remained in the displaced persons camps of Ger...
With the rise of Fascism in Europe, and particularly the ascent of Germany's Nazi Party, Jews in Germany and eastern and western Europe were forced to cope with an eroding civil and social status, increasing daily limitations, and a dark future on the horizon. This reality looked very different from the recent past of emancipation, in which Jewish citizens had enjoyed civic equality and the advance of social integration. In The Waning of Emancipation: Jewish History, Memory, and the Rise of Fascism in Germany, France, and Hungary, author Guy Miron examines how Jewish spokespeople from...
With the rise of Fascism in Europe, and particularly the ascent of Germany's Nazi Party, Jews in Germany and eastern and western Europe were forced...
Despite the canonical status of the written word in forging the Zionist-Israeli national narrative and its subversive derivatives, the emergence of gay consciousness in the mid-1970s relied more on cinematic representations than those found in literature, journalism, or popular music. Film's global distribution reached wide overseas audiences and emphasized gay men and lesbians' roles in representing "liberal" Israel to the world. In Soldiers, Rebels, and Drifters: Gay Representation in Israeli Cinema author Nir Cohen studies the role of cinema in portraying gay identities, environments,...
Despite the canonical status of the written word in forging the Zionist-Israeli national narrative and its subversive derivatives, the emergence of...
After his expulsion from Spain in 1492, Jacob ibn Habib created the En Yaaqov, a collection of Talmudic aggadah (non-legal material), by removing the majority of the Talmud's legal portions but preserving the chapter order of the remaining material and adding his own introduction and running commentary. In The En Yaaqov: Jacob ibn Habib's Search for Faith in the Talmudic Corpus author Marjorie Lehman argues that the En Yaaqov's anthologizer, Jacob ibn Habib, purposely sought to create a Talmud "look-alike" in order to prove that Judaism's foundational legal tract could also be seen as a...
After his expulsion from Spain in 1492, Jacob ibn Habib created the En Yaaqov, a collection of Talmudic aggadah (non-legal material), by removing t...
When Congregation Bene Israel hired him to come to Cincinnati in 1854, Rabbi Max Lilienthal (1814-82) seized the opportunity to work with his friend Isaac M. Wise. Together, Lilienthal and Wise forged the institutional foundations for the American Reform movement: the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and Hebrew Union College. In Max Lilienthal: The Making of the American Rabbinate, author Bruce L. Ruben investigates the central role Lilienthal played in creating new institutions and leadership models to bring his immigrant community into the mainstream of American society. Ruben's...
When Congregation Bene Israel hired him to come to Cincinnati in 1854, Rabbi Max Lilienthal (1814-82) seized the opportunity to work with his frien...
The religious communities of early modern Eastern Europe-particularly those with a mystical bent-are typically studied in isolation. Yet the heavy Slavic imprint on Jewish popular mysticism and pervasive Judaizing tendencies among Christian dissenters call into question the presumed binary quality of Jewish-Christian interactions. In Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe, editor Glenn Dynner presents twelve essays that chart contacts, parallels, and mutual influences between Jewish and Christian mystics. With cutting-edge research on folk healers, messianists,...
The religious communities of early modern Eastern Europe-particularly those with a mystical bent-are typically studied in isolation. Yet the heavy ...
Dura-Europos, founded by the Greeks in 300 BCE, became a remote outpost of the Roman Empire in western Asia until it was finally destroyed by a Persian army in the third century CE. It lay buried until it was rediscovered by British troops in the aftermath of World War I, at which time its intact religious sites, military equipment, tombs, and wall decorations were all excavated. In My Dura-Europos: The Letters of Susan M. Hopkins, 1927-1935, authors Bernard M. Goldman and Norma W. Goldman collect and contextualize the correspondence of Susan Hopkins, who accompanied her husband, Clark...
Dura-Europos, founded by the Greeks in 300 BCE, became a remote outpost of the Roman Empire in western Asia until it was finally destroyed by a Per...
