Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Jewish Studies

Israel is smaller than New Jersey, with 0.11% of the world's population, yet captures a lion's share of headlines. It looks like one country on CNN, a very different one on al-Jazeera. The BBC has their version, The New York Times theirs. But how does Israel look to Israelis? The answers are varied, and...

In this first volume of a trilogy, Daniel J. Elazar addresses political uses of the idea of covenant, the tradition that has adhered to that idea, and the political arrangements that flow from it,

Among the topics covered are covenant as a political concept, the Bible as a political commentary, the post-biblical tradition, medieval covenant theory, and Jewish political culture.

This fascinating case study describes the work of the people responsible for creating festive lore and its system of ceremonies and festivities-an inseparable part of every culture. In the case of the new modern Hebrew culture of Eretz Israel (modern Jewish Palestine)-a society of immigrants that left behind most of their traditional folkways-the creation of festival lore was a conscious and organized process guided by a national ideology and aesthetic values. This creative effort in a secular national society served as an alternative to the traditional religious system, adapted the...

For many contemporary Jews, Israel no longer serves as the Promised Land, the center of the Jewish universe and the place of final destination. In New Jews, Caryn Aviv and David Shneer provocatively argue that there is a new generation of Jews who don't consider themselves to be eternally wandering, forever outsiders within their communities and seeking to one day find their homeland. Instead, these New Jews are at home, whether it be in Buenos Aires, San Francisco or Berlin, and are rooted within communities of their own choosing. Aviv and Shneer argue that Jews have come to the end of...

From the ardently religious young woman who longs for the life of a male scholar to the young rebel who visits a strip club, smokes pot, and agonizes over her loss of faith to the proud Lubavitcher with a desire for a high-powered career, Stephanie Wellen Levine provides a rare glimpse into the inner worlds and daily lives of these Hasidic girls.

Lubavitcher Hasidim are famous for their efforts to inspire secular Jews to become more observant and for their messianic fervor. Strict followers of Orthodox Judaism, they maintain sharp gender-role distinctions.

Levine spent a year...

Many of us belong to communities that have been scarred by terrible calamities. And many of us come from families that have suffered grievous losses. How we reflect on these legacies of loss and the ways they inform each other are the questions Laura Levitt takes up in this provocative and passionate book.

An American Jew whose family was not directly affected by the Holocaust, Levitt grapples with the challenges of contending with ordinary Jewish loss. She suggests that although the memory of the Holocaust may seem to overshadow all other kinds of loss for American Jews, it can also...