Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Jewish Studies

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz exposes and challenges the common assumptions about whom and what Jews are, by presenting in their own voices, Jews of color from the Iberian Peninsula, Asia, Africa, and India. Drawing from her earlier work on Jews and whiteness, Kaye/Kantrowitz delves into the largely uncharted territory of Jews of color and argues that Jews are an increasingly multiracial people-a fact that, if acknowledged and embraced, could foster cross-race solidarity to help combat racism. This engaging and eye-opening book examines the historical and contemporary views on Jews and whiteness...

The current revival of antisemitism in Europe and the demonization of Jews in parts of the Muslim world give special importance to the exposure of the myths and lies that for centuries led people to regard Jews as the dangerous "other" and that led to violence and persecution. This provocative anthology presents 90 documents that focus on the nature, evolution, and meaning of the principal myths that have made antisemitism such a lethal force in history: Jews as deicides, ritual murderers, agents of Satan, international conspirators, and conniving, unscrupulous Shylocks. Also included are...

"Haunted in the New World is a superb, insightful, and acutely intelligent piece of work. It makes a real contribution to the understanding of ethnicity in general and Jewish American culture in particular." Morris Dickstein

In 1916 Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish daily The Forward, warned his Yiddish-speaking readers of the potential psychic dangers associated with their New World situation. "You will not be able to erase the old home from your heart," he cautioned his immigrant readers, transplanted from the shtetls and cities of Eastern Europe to exhilarating, if bewildering,...

Providing a unique anthropological perspective on Jewish mysticism and magic, this book is a study of Jewish rites and rituals and how the analysis of early literature provides the roots for understanding religious practices. It includes analysis on the importance of sacrifice, amulets, and names, and their underlying cultural constructs and the persistence of their symbolic significance.

Providing valuable insights into an element of European nationalism and modernist culture, this book explores the development of the 'Zionist body' as opposed to the traditional stereotype of the physically weak, intellectual Jew. It charts the cultural and intellectual history showing how the 'Muscle Jew' developed as a political symbol of national regeneration.

The transformation of the human sciences into the social sciences in the third part of the 19^th century was closely related to attempts to develop and implement methods for dealing with social tensions and the rationalization of society. This book studies the connections between academic disciplines and notions of Jewish assimilation and integration and demonstrates that the quest for Jewish assimilation is linked to and built into the conceptual foundations of modern social science disciplines.

Focusing on two influential "assimilated" Jewish...

Using an interdisciplinary approach, Nathan Katz brings together methods and...

Moses Maimonides was the most significant Jewish thinker, jurist, and doctor of the Middle Ages. Author of a monumental code of Jewish law, and the most influential and controversial work of Jewish philosophy, Maimonides looms larger than any other figure in the Jewish Middle Ages.

The essays in this volume were written to mark the 800th anniversary of Maimonides' death in 1204. Written by the leading scholars in the field, they cover all aspects of Maimonides' work and infuence. From his work on Jewish law to his unique understanding of God; from his view of the soul to his...

Jacob Katz here presents a major reinterpretation of modern anti-Semitism, which blends history of ideas about the Jews gradually became transformed and then, around 1879, picked up so much social force as to result in the premeditated and systematic destruction of the Jewish people of Europe.

Mr. Katz revises the prevalent thesis that medieval and modern animosities against Jews were fundamentally different. He also rejects the scapegoat theory, according to which the Jews were merely a lightning rod for underlying economic and social tensions. On the contrary, he argues, there were...

What do Joyce Brothers and Sigmund Freud, Rabbi Harold Kushner and philosopher Martin Buber have in common? They belong to a group of pivotal and highly influential Jewish thinkers who altered the face of modern America in ways few people recognize.

So argues Andrew Heinze, who reveals in rich and unprecedented detail the extent to which Jewish values, often in tense interaction with an established Christian consensus, shaped the country's psychological and spiritual vocabulary.

Jews and the American Soul is the first book to recognize the central role...