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The Jews in America Trilogy: "Our Crowd," The Grandees, and "The Rest of Us"
By Stephen Birmingham. 1967
Three New York Times bestsellers chronicle the rise of America's most influential Jewish families as they transition from poor immigrants…
to household names. In his acclaimed trilogy, author Stephen Birmingham paints an engrossing portrait of Jewish American life from the colonial era through the twentieth century with fascinating narrative and meticulous research. The collection's best-known book, "Our Crowd" follows nineteenth-century German immigrants with recognizable names like Loeb, Sachs, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. Turning small family businesses into institutions of finance, banking, and philanthropy, they elevated themselves from Lower East Side tenements to Park Avenue mansions. Barred from New York's gentile elite because of their religion and humble backgrounds, they created their own exclusive group, as affluent and selective as the one that had refused them entry. The Grandees travels farther back in history to 1654, when twenty-three Sephardic Jews arrived in New York. Members of this small and insulated group--considered the first Jewish community in America--soon established themselves as wealthy businessmen and financiers. With descendants including poet Emma Lazarus, Barnard College founder Annie Nathan Meyer, and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, these families were--and still are--hugely influential in the nation's culture, politics, and economics. In "The Rest of Us," Birmingham documents the third major wave of Jewish immigration: Eastern Europeans who swept through Ellis Island between 1880 and 1924. These refugees from czarist Russia and Polish shtetls were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the "old country" to be accepted by the well-established German American Jews. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined. Their incredible rags to riches stories include those of the lives of Hollywood tycoon Samuel Goldwyn, Broadway composer Irving Berlin, makeup mogul Helena Rubenstein, and mobster Meyer Lansky. This unforgettable collection comprises a comprehensive account of the Jewish American upper class, their opulent world, and their lasting mark on American society.Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything
By Viktor E. Frankl. 2019
Find hope even in these dark times with this rediscovered masterpiece from the author of the international bestseller, Man's Search…
for Meaning.Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity. Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today--as the world faces a coronavirus pandemic, social isolation, and great economic uncertainty--as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim "Live as if you were living for the second time," and he unfolds his basic conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. Despite the unspeakable horrors of the camps, Frankl learned from the strength of his fellow inmates that it is always possible to "say yes to life"--a profound and timeless lesson for us all.The Making of a Reform Jewish Cantor: Musical Authority, Cultural Investment
By Judah M. Cohen. 2019
The Making of a Reform Jewish Cantor provides an unprecedented look into the meaning of attaining musical authority among American…
Reform Jews at the turn of the twenty-first century. How do aspiring cantors adapt traditional musical forms to the practices of contemporary American congregations? What is the cantor's role in American Jewish religious life today? Judah M. Cohen follows cantorial students at the School of Sacred Music, Hebrew Union College, over the course of their training, as they prepare to become modern Jewish musical leaders. Opening a window on the practical, social, and cultural aspects of aspiring to musical authority, this book provides unusual insights into issues of musical tradition, identity, gender, community, and high and low musical culture.Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers (Routledge Key Guides)
By Dan Cohn-Sherbok. 2007
Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers is a panoramic survey of over 2,000 years of Jewish thought, religious and secular, ancient and…
modern. Now in its second edition, this essential reference guide contains new introductions to the lives and works of such thinkers as: Hannah Arendt, Immanuel Levinas, Judith Plaskow, Sigmund Freud, and Walter Benjamin. Also including fully updated guides to further reading on figures from the middle ages through to the twenty-first century, historical maps and a chronology placing the thinkers in context, this is an essential and affordable one-volume reference to a rich and complex tradition.Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism
By Schneur Zalman Newfield. 2020
Those who exit a religion—particularly one they were born and raised in—often find themselves at sea in their efforts to…
transition to life beyond their community. In Degrees of Separation, Schneur Zalman Newfield, who went through this process himself, interviews seventy-four Lubavitch and Satmar ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews who left their communities.He presents their motivations for leaving as well as how they make sense of their experiences and their processes of exiting, detailing their attitudes and opinions regarding their religious upbringing. Newfield also examines how these exiters forge new ways of being that their upbringing had not prepared them for, while also considering what these particular individuals lose and retain in the exit process. Degrees of Separation presents a comprehensive portrait of the prolonged state of being “in-between” that characterizes transition out of a totalizing worldview. What Newfield discovers is that exiters experience both a sense of independence and a persistent connection; they are not completely dislocated from their roots once they “arrive” at their new destination. Moreover, Degrees of Separation shows that this process of transitioning identity has implications beyond religion.Israel's Messiah and the People of God: A Vision for Messianic Jewish Covenant Fidelity
By Jennifer Rosner, Mark Kinzer. 2011
Israel's Messiah and the People of God presents a rich and diverse selection of essays by theologian Mark Kinzer, whose…
work constitutes a pioneering step in Messianic Jewish theology. Including several pieces never before published, this collection illuminates Kinzer's thought on, topics such as Oral Torah, Jewish prayer, eschatology, soteriology, and Messianic Jewish-Catholic dialogue. This volume offers the reader numerous portals into the vision of Messianic Judaism offered in Kinzer's Postmissionary Messianic Judaism (2005). An introductory essay by editor Jennifer M. Rosner sets Kinzer's thought and writings in context.Economics of American Judaism (Routledge Frontiers Of Political Economy Ser.)
By Carmel Chiswick. 2008
This book collects in one readily-accessible volume the pioneering research of Carmel U. Chiswick on the Economics of American Judaism.…
Filling a major gap in the social-scientific literature, Chiswick‘s economic perspective complements that of other social scientists and historians. She demonstrates clearly that economic analysis can deepen our unHarvey Mitchell’s book argues that a reassessment of Voltaire’s treatment of traditional Judaism will sharpen discussion of the origins of,…
and responses to, the Enlightenment. His study shows how Voltaire’s nearly total antipathy to Judaism is best understood by stressing his self-regard as the author of an enlightened and rational universal history, which found Judaism’s memory of its past incoherent, and, in addition, failed to meet the criteria of objective history—a project in which he failed. Calling on an array of Jewish and non-Jewish figures to reveal how modern interpretations of Judaism may be traced to the core ideas of the Enlightenment, this book concludes that Voltaire paradoxically helped to foster the ambiguities and uncertainties of Judaism’s future.Jewish Mysticism and Magic: An Anthropological Perspective (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)
By Maureen Bloom. 2008
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.The transformation of the human sciences into the social sciences in the third part of the 19th 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 authors—anthropologist Franz Boas and sociologist Georg Simmel—this study shows that epistemological considerations underlie the authors’ respective evaluations of the Jews’ assimilation in German and American societies as a form of "group extinction" or as a form of "social identity." This conceptual model gives a new "key" to understanding pivotal issues in recent Jewish history and in the history of the social sciences.The New Reform Judaism: Challenges and Reflections
By Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan. 2013
This is the book that American Jews and particularly American Reform Jews have been waiting for: a clear and informed…
call for further reform in the Reform movement.In light of profound demographic, social, and technological developments, it has become increasingly clear that the Reform movement will need to make major changes to meet the needs of a quickly evolving American Jewish population. Younger Americans in particular differ from previous generations in how they relate to organized religion, often preferring to network through virtual groups or gather in informal settings of their own choosing.Dana Evan Kaplan, an American Reform Jew and pulpit rabbi, argues that rather than focusing on the importance of loyalty to community, Reform Judaism must determine how to engage the individual in a search for existential meaning. It should move us toward a critical scholarly understanding of the Hebrew Bible, that we may emerge with the perspectives required by a postmodern world. Such a Reform Judaism can at once help us understand how the ancient world molded our most cherished religious traditions and guide us in addressing the increasingly complex social problems of our day.German-Jewish Popular Culture before the Holocaust: Kafka's kitsch (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)
By David A. Brenner. 2009
David A. Brenner examines how Jews in Central Europe developed one of the first "ethnic" or "minority" cultures in modernity.…
Not exclusively "German" or "Jewish," the experiences of German-speaking Jewry in the decades prior to the Third Reich and the Holocaust were also negotiated in encounters with popular culture, particularly the novel, the drama and mass media. Despite recent scholarship, the misconception persists that Jewish Germans were bent on assimilation. Although subject to compulsion, they did not become solely "German," much less "European." Yet their behavior and values were by no means exclusively "Jewish," as the Nazis or other anti-Semites would have it. Rather, the German Jews achieved a peculiar synthesis between 1890 and 1933, developing a culture that was not only "middle-class" but also "ethnic." In particular, they reinvented Judaic traditions by way of a hybridized culture. Based on research in German, Israeli and American archives, German-Jewish Popular Culture before the Holocaust addresses many of the genres in which a specifically German-Jewish identity was performed, from the Yiddish theatre and Zionist humour all the way to sensationalist memoirs and Kafka’s own kitsch. This middle-class ethnic identity encompassed and went beyond religious confession and identity politics. In focusing principally on German-Jewish popular culture, this groundbreaking book introduces the beginnings of "ethnicity" as we know it and live it today.Jews and Judaism in Modern China (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)
By M. Avrum Ehrlich. 2009
Jews and Judaism in Modern China explores and compares the dynamics at work in two of the oldest, intact and…
starkly contrasting civilizations on earth; Jewish and Chinese. The book studies how they interact in modernity and how each civilization views the other, and analyses areas of cooperation between scholars, activists and politicians. Through evaluation of the respective talents, qualities and social assets that are fused and borrowed in the civilizational exchange, we gain an insight into the social processes underpinning two contrasting and long surviving civilizations. Identifying and analysing some of the emerging current issues, this book suggests Jewish-Chinese relations may become a growing discipline of import to the study of religion and comparative identity, and looks at how the significant contrasts in Jewish and Chinese national constructs may serve them well in the quest for a meaningful discourse. Chapters explore identity, integrity of the family unit; minority status; religious freedom; ethics and morality; tradition versus modernity; the environment, and other areas which are undergoing profound transformation. Identifying the intellectual and practical nexus and bifurcation between the two cultures, worldviews and identities, this work is indispensable for students of Chinese studies, sociology, religion and the Jewish diaspora, and provides useful reading for Western tourists to China.Jewish Blood: Reality and metaphor in history, religion and culture (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)
By Mitchell B. Hart. 2009
This book deals with the Jewish engagement with blood: animal and human, real and metaphorical. Concentrating on the meaning or…
significance of blood in Judaism, the book moves this highly controversial subject away from its traditional focus, exploring how Jews themselves engage with blood and its role in Jewish identity, ritual and culture. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book brings together a wide range of perspectives and covers communities in ancient Israel, Europe and America, as well as all major eras of Jewish history: biblical, Talmudic, medieval and modern. Providing historical, religious and cultural examples ranging from the "Blood Libel" through to the poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg, this volume explores the deep continuities in thought and practice related to blood. Moreover, it examines the continuities and discontinuities between Jewish and Christian ideas and practices related to blood, many of which extend into the modern, contemporary period. The chapters look at not only the Jewish and Christian interaction, but the interaction between Jews and the individual national communities to which they belong, including the complex appropriation and rejection of European ideas and images undertaken by some Zionists, and then by the State of Israel. This broad-ranging and multidisciplinary work will be of interest to students of Jewish Studies, History and Religion.Common discourse on Jewish identity in Israel is dominated by the view that Jewish Israelis can, and should, be either…
religious or secular. Moving away from this conventional framework, this book examines the role of secularism and religion in Jewish society and politics. With a focus on the ‘traditionists’ (masortim) who comprise over a third of the Jewish-Israeli population, the author examines issues of religion, tradition and secularism in Israel, giving a fresh approach to the widening theoretical discussion regarding the thesis of secularisation and modernity and exploring the wider implications of this identity. Yadgar’s conclusions have significant social, cultural and political implications, serving not only as a new contribution to the academic discourse on Jewish-Israeli identity, but as a platform upon which traditionist positions on central issues of Israeli politics can be heard. Offering a detailed investigation into a central and important Jewish-Israeli identity construct, the book is relevant not only to the study of Jewish identity in Israel but also within the wider social-theoretical issues of religion, tradition, modernity and secularization. The book will be of great interest to students of Israeli society and to anyone looking into the issues of Jewish identity, Israeli nationalism and ethnicity, religion and politics in Israel, and the sociology of religion.Jews and Judaism in World History (Themes in World History)
By Howard N. Lupovitch. 2010
This book is a survey of the history of the Jewish people from biblical antiquity to the present, spanning nearly…
2,500 years and traversing five continents. Opening with a broad introduction which addresses key questions of terminology and definition, the book’s ten chapters then go on to explore Jewish history in both its religious and non-religious dimensions. The book explores the social, political and cultural aspects of Jewish history, and examines the changes and continuities across the whole of the Jewish world throughout its long and varied history. Topics covered include: the emergence of Judaism as a religion and way of life the development during the Middle Ages of Judaism as an all-encompassing identity the effect on Jewish life and identity of major changes in Europe and the Islamic world from the mid sixteenth through the end of the nineteenth century the complexity of Jewish life in the twentieth century, the challenge of anti-semitism and the impact of the Holocaust, and the emergence of the current centres of World Jewry in the State of Israel and the New World.Einstein and the Rabbi: Searching for the Soul
By Naomi Levy. 2017
"It would be hard to find a more upbeat, moving, and loving narrative than this... Speaking with a slight Brooklyn…
accent, she tells listeners that she views life as a tremendous opportunity for love, healing, and insight."-AudioFile Magazine. This program is read by the author. A bestselling author and rabbi's profoundly affecting exploration of the meaning and purpose of the soul, inspired by the famous correspondence between Albert Einstein and a grieving rabbi. "A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness..." -Albert Einstein. When Rabbi Naomi Levy came across this poignant letter by Einstein it shook her to her core. His words perfectly captured what she has come to believe about the human condition: That we are intimately connected, and that we are blind to this truth. Levy wondered what had elicited such spiritual wisdom from a man of science? Thus began a three-year search into the mystery of Einstein's letter, and into the mystery of the human soul. What emerges is an inspiring, deeply affecting audiobook for people of all faiths filled with universal truths that will help us reclaim our own souls and glimpse the unity that has been evading us. We all long to see more expansively, to live up to our gifts, to understand why we are here. In Einstein and the Rabbi, Levy leads us on a breathtaking journey full of wisdom, empathy and humor, challenging us to wake up and heed the voice calling from within-a voice beckoning us to become who we were born be.The Passover Haggadah: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books #51)
By Vanessa L. Ochs. 2019
The life and times of a treasured book read by generations of Jewish families at the seder tableEvery year at…
Passover, Jews around the world gather for the seder, a festive meal where family and friends come together to sing, pray, and enjoy traditional food while retelling the biblical story of the Exodus. The Passover Haggadah provides the script for the meal and is a religious text unlike any other. It is the only sacred book available in so many varieties—from the Maxwell House edition of the 1930s to the countercultural Freedom Seder—and it is the rare liturgical work that allows people with limited knowledge to conduct a complex religious service. The Haggadah is also the only religious book given away for free at grocery stores as a promotion. Vanessa Ochs tells the story of this beloved book, from its emergence in antiquity as an oral practice to its vibrant proliferation today.Ochs provides a lively and incisive account of how the foundational Jewish narrative of liberation is remembered in the Haggadah. She discusses the book's origins in biblical and rabbinical literature, its flourishing in illuminated manuscripts in the medieval period, and its mass production with the advent of the printing press. She looks at Haggadot created on the kibbutz, those reflecting the Holocaust, feminist and LGBTQ-themed Haggadot, and even one featuring a popular television show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Ochs shows how this enduring work of liturgy that once served to transmit Jewish identity in Jewish settings continues to be reinterpreted and reimagined to share the message of freedom for all.Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls
By Edmund Wilson. 2011
The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of 972 documents discovered between 1946 and 1956, are of immeasurable religious and historical…
significance. They include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical-era documents. The manuscripts shed considerable light on forms of Judaism never known before. These forms contain hints of Christianity, or as put elsewhere, it was the Judaism amid which Christ and his first followers lived, thought, and wrote. Edmund Wilson's book is a record of this great scholarly find. Wilson was a prolific literary critic and social commentator, not an academic, and therefore Israel and the Dead Sea Scrolls reads like a journalist's reportage. This unique personal account weaves together threads of folklore, history, and intrigue. As Leon Edel writes in his foreword, -Reading him, it is not difficult to imagine the ardor with which Edmund Wilson pursued his complex subject; it was the kind of subject he had always liked best, involving as it did history, politics, ancient lore, and all his faculties for imaginative reconstruction and historical analysis. . . . No book quite like this has been written in our century.- The scrolls of the Essenes, and the history of this Jewish sect's possible antecedence to Christianity, led the author to Israel and to the revelations contained in the scrolls. This book contains his resulting account of the scrolls' history. Originally published in 1978, this edition of Wilson's classic is made contemporary with a new introduction by Raphael Israeli, which illustrates the ongoing academic controversy surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls.Los Lubavitch son la corriente ortodoxa de mayor crecimiento en losúltimos años. Con una mirada honesta y desprejuiciada, Alejandro Soiferrevela…
los objetivos y los métodos de este grupo, sus modernasestrategias de marketing y de cooptación de seguidores, sus vínculos conlos sectores más poderosos del país. «Te lavan el cerebro», «trafican drogas», «son una secta», «se hacenricos de la noche a la mañana», «seducen a los adolescentes con viajes aEstados Unidos». Por lo bajo, es mucho lo que se dice de los Lubavitch.Pero ¿quiénes son realmente estos judíos ortodoxos de sobretodo negro ybarbas largas, cada día más visibles en distintos ámbitos de todo elpaís?En apenas treinta años, Jabad Lubavitch vivió una expansión fenomenal:pasó a tener a lo largo de la Argentina 33 centros comunitarios, 16escuelas, instituciones educativas no formales, fundaciones deasistencia social, una editorial, 700 empleados y cientos devoluntarios. El movimiento llega hoy a unas 45 mil personas, un cuartode la población judía local. En una época en la que la prácticareligiosa tiene cada vez menos peso, los Lubavitch son la corrienteortodoxa de mayor crecimiento en los últimos años.Una crónica atrapante de cómo funciona por dentro un movimiento quedespierta fascinación y al que muchos consideran fanáticos, pero que díatras día atrae más jóvenes a sus filas.