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Showing 101 - 120 of 1995 items
By Itzhak Benyamini. 2023
In this fascinating and ground-breaking book, Itzhak Benyamini uses discourse analysis to lay out the way Lacan constructed his own…
intellectual discourse informed by Judeo-Christianity. Offering an understanding of Lacan’s emergence and intellectual struggles with significant contemporary intellectuals, the author builds a panoramic view of the entire psychoanalytic discourse at the time of the foundational post-Freudian generation. By engaging in close reading of texts and seminars given by Lacan between the 1930s and 50s, Benyamini uncovers the coming-into-being of Lacan's key concepts: The Mirror Stage, the Imaginary, the Real, the Symbolic, the Name-of-the-Father, the Other, jouissance, and das Ding. The author argues that Lacan wished to regulate this process of conceptualization by connecting the concepts of the "Father" and the "Other" with themes from the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially the Biblical one, to create a clinical ethic, that does not reflect a worldview or ideology and is guided solely by the analyzand’s unconscious desire.A thrilling mystery woven into a beautifully constructed family memoir: Meryl Frank&’s journey to seek the truth about a beloved and revolutionary…
cousin, a celebrated actress in Vilna before World War II, and to answer the question of how the next generation should honor the memory of the Holocaust. As a child, Meryl Frank was the chosen inheritor of family remembrance. Her aunt Mollie, a formidable and cultured woman, insisted that Meryl never forget who they were, where they came from, and the hate that nearly destroyed them. Over long afternoons, Mollie told her about the city, the theater, and, above all else, Meryl&’s cousin, the radiant Franya Winter. Franya was the leading light of Vilna&’s Yiddish theater, a remarkable and precocious woman who cast off the restrictions of her Hasidic family and community to play roles as prostitutes and bellhops, lovers and nuns. Yet there was one thing her aunt Mollie would never tell Meryl: how Franya died. Before Mollie passed away, she gave Meryl a Yiddish book containing the terrible answer, but forbade her to read it. And for years, Meryl obeyed. Unearthed is the story of Meryl&’s search for Franya and a timely history of hatred and resistance. Through archives across four continents, by way of chance encounters and miraculous discoveries, and eventually, guided by the shocking truth recorded in the pages of the forbidden book, Meryl conjures the rogue spirit of her cousin—her beauty and her tragedy. Meryl&’s search reveals a lost world destroyed by hatred, illuminating the cultural haven of Vilna and its resistance during World War II. As she seeks to find her lost family legacy, Meryl looks for answers to the questions that have defined her life: what is our duty to the past? How do we honor such memories while keeping them from consuming us? And what do we teach our children about tragedy?By Albert Slomovitz. 1998
Reveals the significant and sometimes heroic roles rabbis have played in our nation's defenseRabbi Elkan Voorsanger received the Purple Heart…
for his actions during the Battle of Argonne. Chaplain Edgar Siskin, serving with the Marines on Pelilu Island, conducted Yom Kippur services in the midst of a barrage of artillery fire. Rabbi Alexander Goode and three fellow chaplains gave their own lifejackets to panicked soldiers aboard a sinking transport torpedoed by a German submarine, and then went down with the ship. American Jews are not usually associated with warfare. Nor, for that matter, are their rabbis. And yet, Jewish chaplains have played a significant and sometimes heroic role in our nation's defense.The Fighting Rabbis presents the compelling history of Jewish military chaplains from their first service during the Civil War to the first female Jewish chaplain and the rabbinic role in Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm. Rabbi Slomovitz, himself a Navy chaplain, opens a window onto the fieldwork, religious services, counseling, and dramatic battlefield experiences of Jewish military chaplains throughout our nation's history. From George Washington's early support for a religiously tolerant military to a Seder held in the desert sands of Kuwait, these rabbis have had a profound impact on Jewish life in America. Also striking are original documents which chronicle the ongoing care and concern by the Jewish community over the last 140 years for their follow Jews, including many new immigrants who entered the armed forces. Slomovitz refutes the common belief that the U.S. military itself has been a hostile place for Jews, in the process providing a unique perspective on American religious history.By Joseph Shatzmiller. 1996
Jews were excluded from most professions in medieval, predominantly Christian Europe. Bigotry was widespread, yet Jews were accepted as doctors…
and surgeons, administering not only to other Jews but to Christians as well. Why did medieval Christians suspend their fear and suspicion of the Jews, allowing them to inspect their bodies, and even, at times, to determine their survival? What was the nature of the doctor-patient relationship? Did the law protect Jewish doctors in disputes over care and treatment?Joseph Shatzmiller explores these and other intriguing questions in the first full social history of the medieval Jewish doctor. Based on extensive archival research in Provence, Spain, and Italy, and a deep reading of the widely scattered literature, Shatzmiller examines the social and economic forces that allowed Jewish medical professionals to survive and thrive in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe. His insights will prove fascinating to scholars and students of Judaica, medieval history, and the history of medicine.Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi's sweeping study of modern Jewish writing is in many ways a long meditation on the thematics of…
geography in Jewish culture, what she calls the "poetics of exile and return."Until the late nineteenth century, Jews were identified in their own religious and poetic imagination as wanderers and exiles, their sacred center–Jerusalem, Zion–fatefully out of reach. Opening the book with "Jewish Journeys," Ezrahi begins by examining the work of medieval Hebrew poet Yehuda Halevi to chart a journey whose end was envisioned as the sublime realignment of the people with their original center. When the Holy Land became the site of a political drama of return in the nineteenth century, Jewish writing reflected the shift, traced here in the travel fictions of S.Y. Abramovitsh, S.Y. Agnon, and Sholem Aleichem.In "Jewish Geographies" Ezrahi explores aspects of reterritorialization through memory in the post-Holocaust writing of Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Aharon Appelfeld, I.B. Singer and Philip Roth. Europe, where Jews had dreamed of return, has become the new ruined shrine: The literary pilgrimages of these writers recall familiar patterns of grieving and representation and a tentative reinvention of the diasporic imagination–in America, of course, but, paradoxically, even in Zion.The major essays of Dan Diner, who is widely read and quoted in Germany and Israel, are finally collected in…
an English edition. They reflect the author’s belief that the Holocaust transcends traditional patterns of historical understanding and requires an epistemologically distinct approach. One can no longer assume that actors as well as historians are operating in the same conceptual universe, sharing the same criteria of rational discourse. This is particularly true of victims and perpetrators, whose memories shape the distortions of historical narrative in ways often diametrically opposed.The essays are divided into three groups. The first group talks about anti-Semitism in the context of the 1930s and the ideologies that drove the Nazi regime. The second group concentrates on the almost unbelievably different perceptions of the "Final Solution," with particularly illuminating discussions of the Judenrat, or Jewish council. The third group considers the Holocaust as the subject of narrative and historical memory. Diner focuses above all on perspectives: the very notions of rationality and irrationality are seen to be changeable, depending on who is applying them. And because neither rational nor irrational motives can be universally assigned to participants in the Holocaust, Diner proposes, from the perspective of the victims, the idea of the counterrational. His work is directed toward developing a theory of Holocaust historiography and offers, clearly and coherently, the highest level of reflection on these problems.By Vivian Mann. 1989
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out…
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices RevivedBy Roman Vishniac. 1999
Between 1935 and 1938 the celebrated photographer Roman Vishniac explored the cities and villages of Eastern Europe, capturing life in…
the Jewish shtetlekh of Poland, Romania, Russia, and Hungary, communities that even then seemed threatened—not by destruction and extermination, which no one foresaw, but by change. Using a hidden camera and under difficult circumstances, Vishniac was able to take over sixteen thousand photographs; most were left with his father in a village in France for the duration of the war. With the publication of Children of a Vanished World, seventy of those photographs are available, thirty-six for the first time. The book is devoted to a subject Vishniac especially loved, and one whose mystery and spontaneity he captured with particular poignancy: children.Selected and edited by the photographer's daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, and translator and coeditor Miriam Hartman Flacks, these images show children playing, children studying, children in the midst of a world that was about to disappear. They capture the daily life of their subjects, at once ordinary and extraordinary. The photographs are accompanied by a selection of nursery rhymes, songs, poems, and chants for children's games in both Yiddish and English translation. Thanks to Vishniac's visual artistry and the editors' choice of traditional Yiddish verses, a part of this wonderful culture can be preserved for future generations.Earlier books of Roman Vishniac's photographs include To Give Them Light: The Legacy of Roman Vishniac (1995), A Vanished World (1983), and Polish Jews (1947).A major exhibition titled "Children of a Vanished World: Photographs byRoman Vishniac" is scheduled at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. The show will open to the public on March 7 and run through June 4, 2000.By Idith Zertal. 1999
In a book certain to generate controversy and debate, Idith Zertal boldly interprets a much revered chapter in contemporary Jewish…
and Zionist history: the clandestine immigration to Palestine of Jewish refugees, most of them Holocaust survivors, that was organized by Palestinian Zionists just after World War II. Events that captured the attention of the world, such as the Exodus affair in the summer 1947, are seen here in a strikingly new light.At the center of Zertal's book is the Mossad, a small, unorthodox Zionist organization whose mission beginning in 1938 was to bring Jews to Palestine in order to subvert the British quotas on Jewish immigration. From Catastrophe to Power scrutinizes the Mossad's mode of operation, its ideology and politics, its structure and history, and its collective human profile as never before.Zertal's moving story sweeps across four continents and encompasses a range of political cultures and international forces. But underneath this story another darker and more complex plot unfolds: the special encounter between the Zionist revolutionary collective and the mass of Jewish remnant after the Holocaust. According to Zertal, this psychologically painful yet politically powerful encounter was the Zionists' most effective weapon in their struggle for a sovereign Jewish state. Drawing on primary archival documents and new readings of canonical texts of the period, she analyzes this encounter from all angles—political, social, cultural, and psychological. The outcome is a gripping and troubling human story of a crucial period in Jewish and Israeli history, one that also provides a key to understanding the fundamental tensions between Israel and the Jewish communities and Israel and the world today.By Meron Benvenisti. 1996
As Israelis and Palestinians negotiate separation and division of their land, Meron Benvenisti, former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, maintains that…
any expectations for "peaceful partition" are doomed. In his brave and controversial new book, he raises the possibility of a confederation of Israel/Palestine, the only solution that he feels will bring lasting peace.The seven million people in the territory between Jordan and the Mediterranean are mutually dependent regarding employment, water, land use, ecology, transportation, and all other spheres of human activity. Each side, Benvenisti says, must accept the reality that two national entities are living within one geopolitical entity—their conflict is intercommunal and will not be resolved by population transfers or land partition.A geographer and historian by training, a man passionately rooted in his homeland, Benvenisti skillfully conveys the perspective of both Israeli and Palestinian communities. He recognizes the great political and ideological resistance to a confederation, but argues that there are Israeli Jews and Palestinians who can envision an undivided land, where attachment to a common homeland is stronger than militant tribalism and segregation in national ghettos. Acknowledging that equal coexistence between Israeli and Palestinian may yet be an impossible dream, he insists that such a dream deserves a place in the current negotiations."Meron Benvenisti is the Middle East expert to whom Middle East experts go for advice . . . the most oft-quoted and oft-damned analyst in Israel."—from the Foreword by Thomas L. FriedmanBy Robert Chazan. 1994
In late July 1263 a public disputation was convened by King James I of Aragon, pitting Friar Paul Christian against…
the distinguished rabbi of Gerona, Moses ben Nahman. Organized by leading figures in the Dominican Order to give Friar Paul an opportunity to test his innovative missionizing argumentation against a worthy opponent, the spectacle in Barcelona was colorful, impressive, surely somewhat frightening to the Jews, and ultimately indecisive. Both sides claimed victory, and their documented claims have given rise to substantial disagreement among historians over the tone and outcome of this important event.Robert Chazan's masterly analysis reconstructs the Barcelona disputation from the conflicting Christian and Jewish sources and sets it in its broad historical context, with particular attention to the post-disputation maneuvers on both sides. His richly detailed account focuses on Rabbi ben Nahman's eloquent efforts to reassure his fellow Jews in the face of new missionizing pressures.By Alan Dershowitz. 2023
In War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism, Alan Dershowitz—#1 New York Times bestselling author and one of America&’s most respected…
legal scholars—explains why the horrific attack of Oct 7 and Israel&’s just response changes everything. It has changed the relationship between Israel and the United States, especially with regard to the possibility of direct American intervention. It has required Israel to consider its nuclear option as a last resort to assure its survival. It has revealed dangerous attitudes among America&’s future leaders on today&’s college campuses toward Israel&’s possible destruction. It has exposed media biases that have been exacerbated with Israel&’s vulnerabilities. It has united Israelis and Jews around the world as never before, despite the deep divisions among them politically, religiously, and ideologically. Nothing will ever be the same. It has clouded the future of peace between Israel and its Arab and Muslim neighbors and has diminished the proposals for a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It has made predictions about the future of the region nearly impossible, except that imposing instability is inevitable. In this short book, Dershowitz analyzes these transforming events and suggests how to move forward.By Federico Dal Bo. 2023
In this book, Federico Dal Bo analyzes the question of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism from a deconstructive point of view, appealing not…
only to philosophy but also to psychoanalysis, gender studies, and critical studies. Deconstruction famously discourages simplistic oppositions whilst encouraging a more careful analysis of cultural and philosophical complexities of a semantic field. In the present case, a deconstructive analysis of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism rejects both a stern condemnation of his oeuvre and a simplistic acquittal from this infamous accusation. It rather suggests that the question of his anti-Semitism shall be examined from the broader perspective—from the end of metaphysics.By Dagobert Runes. 1956
An in-depth introduction to the ancient work of Jewish law and theology. One of the world&’s supreme works of religious…
literature, the Talmud has been unjustly neglected by a civilization that is rightly proud of its Judeo-Christian heritage. In The Talmud of Jerusalem, Dagobert D. Runes offers a fascinating and scholarly overview of its evolution and the rabbis who taught and contributed to it. The Talmud came into being in the centuries after Jerusalem fell to the Roman Empire, when the people of Palestine were scattered to the four corners of the earth. To preserve their faith amid the strange customs of Pagan lands, the wandering Israelites turned to their teachers for a fresh interpretation of the Torah, the ancient book of Moses. The Oral Laws formulated by the sages were eventually codified in the Talmud.Interiority and Law presents a groundbreaking reassessment of a medieval Jewish classic, Baḥya ibn Paquda's Guide to the Duties of…
the Hearts. Michaelis reads this work anew as a revolutionary intervention in Jewish law, or halakha. Overturning perceptions of Baḥya as the shaper of an ethical-religious form of life that exceeds halakha, Michaelis offers a pioneering historical and conceptual analysis of the category of "inner commandments" developed by Baḥya. Interiority and Law reveals that Baḥya's main effort revolved around establishing a new legal formation—namely, the "duties of the hearts"—which would deal entirely with human interiority. Michaelis takes up the implications of Baḥya's radical innovation, examining his unique mystical model of proximity to God, which he based on an increasingly growing fulfillment of the inner commandments. With an integrative approach that puts Baḥya in dialogue with other medieval Muslim and Jewish religious thinkers, this work offers a fresh perspective on our understanding of the interconnectedness of the dynamic, neighboring religious traditions of Judaism and Islam. Contributing to conversations in the history of religion, Jewish studies, and medieval studies on interiority and mysticism, this book reveals Baḥya as a revolutionary and demanding thinker of Jewish law.By Eric Konigsberg. 2005
A New Yorker writer investigates the life and career of his hit-man great-uncle and the impact on his family.Growing up…
in a household as generic as Midwestern Jews get, author Eric Konigsberg always wished there was something different about his family, something exotic and mysterious, even shocking. When he was sent off to boarding school, he learned from an ex-cop security guard that there was: His great-uncle Harold, in prison in upstate New York, was a legendary Mafia enforcer, suspected by the FBI of upwards of twenty murders.Konigsberg had uncovered a shameful, long-hidden family secret. His grandfather, a Jewish Horatio Alger story who had become a respected merchant through honesty and hard work, never spoke of his baby brother. When other relatives could be coaxed into talking about him, he wasn't "Kayo" Konigsberg, the "smartest hit man" and "toughest Jew" described by cops and associates; he was Uncle Heshy, the loudmouth nogoodnik and smalltime con, long since written off as dead. Intrigued, Konigsberg ignored his family's protests and arranged a meeting, which inspired the acclaimed New Yorker piece this book is based on.In Blood Relation, Konigsberg portrays Harold as a fascinating, paradoxical character: both brutal and winning, a cold-blooded killer and a larger-than-life charmer who taught himself to read as an adult and served as his own lawyer in two major trials, to riotous effect. Functioning by turns as Kayo's pursuer, jailhouse scribe, pawn, and antagonist, Konigsberg traces his great-uncle's checkered and outlandish life and investigates his impact on his family and others who crossed his path, weaving together strands of family, Jewish identity, justice, and post-war American history.By Alan Eisenstock, Mark Borovitz. 2004
Mark Borovitz was a mobster, gangster, con man, gambler, thief, and a drunk. He's seen it all. In this inspiring…
memoir, he takes you on a journey from the streets to discovering his soul in a prison cell.When Mark was fourteen, his father died and his world came crashing down. He stole, gambled, and drank, beginning a twenty-year life of crime, all the while trying to be the good son, the good brother, the good boy, but his life only spun more out of control until the mob put a hit out on him.After his release from prison, the drinking and thieving continued until, at the edge of oblivion, he experienced a moment of true divine intervention, a startling revelation that saved his life.Mark Borovitz proved that you can change your life -- profoundly. He is now the rabbi at Beit T'Shuvah in Los Angeles, the House of Return, a rehabilitation facility for addicts of all kinds.The Holy Thief is the remarkable memoir of an amazing man. It is a true-life gangster story, a passionate love story, and a case of study in redemption. Regardless of your faith, you will find his story tragic, funny, uplifting, and inspirational.Bringing the family together every Friday night for the Shabbat meal has helped many families connect with each other, even…
as children grow into their teens and beyond. Having experienced the joys of Shabbat and witnessed how it has brought her family together, Meredith L. Jacobs now brings us THE MODERN MOM'S GUIDE TO SHABBAT. Written in conversational style from one modern Jewish mom to another, THE MJM'S GUIDE will be funny and warm, brightly colored and easy to read, filled with delicious, easy recipes and family art projects, while also challenging readers with summaries of the weekly Torah portion and suggested family discussion topics, compelling readers to include discussion in their dinner as a vehicle for connecting with their children–both teaching and learning from them. It will be informative and accessible throughout. Shabbat is a wonderful way to ensure that in this day of ridiculous schedules and pressures, that we have at least one meal per week together as a family. Shabbat is the time we turn the outside world away and connect with each other. Unlike other holidays, Shabbat is not once a year, it's once a week, giving us fifty–two chances a year to connect with our children. Whether you are reform, conservative, or modern orthodox, newly converted or non–Jewish in an inter–faith marriage, THE MODERN JEWISH MOM'S GUIDE TO SHABBAT will teach us about traditions, making new ones, and most importantly, how to connect with our children.By Benyamin Cohen. 2008
One day a Georgia-born son of an Orthodox rabbi discovers that his enthusiasm for Judaism is flagging. He observes the…
Sabbath, he goes to synagogue, and he even flies to New York on weekends for a series of "speed dates" with nice, eligible Jewish girls. But, something is missing. Looking out of his window and across the street at one of the hundreds of churches in Atlanta, he asks, "What would it be like to be a Christian?"So begins Benyamin Cohen's hilarious journey that is My Jesus Year—part memoir, part spiritual quest, and part anthropologist's mission. Among Cohen's many adventures (and misadventures), he finds himself in some rather unlikely places: jumping into the mosh-pit at a Christian rock concert, seeing his face projected on the giant JumboTron of an African-American megachurch, visiting a potential convert with two young Mormon missionaries, attending a Christian "professional wrestling" match, and waking up early for a sunrise Easter service on top of Stone Mountain—a Confederate memorial and former base of operations for the KKK.During his year-long exploration, Cohen sees the best and the worst of Christianity— #8212;from megachurches to storefront churches; from crass commercialization of religion to the simple, moving faith of the humble believer; from the profound to the profane to the just plain laughable. Throughout, he keeps an open heart and mind, a good sense of humor, and takes what he learns from Christianity to reflect on his own faith and relationship to God. By year's end, to Cohen's surprise, his search for universal answers and truths in the Bible Belt actually make him a better Jew.By Julie Galambush. 2005