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"A memoir written by the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. The author describes her childhood, adolescence, and adulthood in often funny, sympathetic, and compelling stories of growing up in a suburban Chicago household with a father who wanted to live every day as though it were his last and a mother who wanted more than anything to recapture what she lost."--Back cover.
When a respected scholar with a career at three major American universities moves to a position as principal of an important institution in UK, there is likely to be considerable interest in what he has to say not only to his students, but to many others as well. The two most important formats for such communication were the sermon and the academic lecture. Historically, the sermon has been an extremely important form of communication, first as verbal communication to a specific group of listeners, and then as a written text made available to many more readers. Marc Saperstein was a member of Beth Shalom Reform Congregation in Cambridge, where religious services were directed and sermons delivered not by the rabbi of the synagogue – which never had a rabbi – but by members of the congregation. During the five years from 2006-2011, Marc Saperstein delivered 29 sermons in Beth Shalom. He also was asked to deliver sermons at 15 other congregations. The texts of these sermons are now accessible in the book.
Who Rules the Synagogue? explores how American Jewry in the nineteenth century transformed from a lay dominated community to one whose leading religious authorities were rabbis. Zev Eleff weaves together the significant episodes and debates that shaped American Judaism during this formative period, and places this story into the larger context of American religious history and modern Jewish history.
A formidable collection of studies on religious conversion and converts in Jewish history Theodor Dunkelgrün and Pawel Maciejko observe that the term "conversion" is profoundly polysemous. It can refer to Jews who turn to religions other than Judaism and non-Jews who tie their fates to that of Jewish people. It can be used to talk about Christians becoming Muslim (or vice versa), Christians "born again," or premodern efforts to Christianize (or Islamize) indigenous populations of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It can even describe how modern, secular people discover spiritual creeds and join religious communities. Viewing Jewish history from the perspective of conversion across a broad chr...
"The first book-length account of one of the most fascinating figures in modern Jewish history. With invigorating prose, The Maiden of Ludmir makes the world of 19th-century Europe come alive. Deutsch is a fascinating, sophisticated, and rare combination of social historian and cultural critic. "—Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Lieberman Professor of Jewish Mysticism and Philosophy, New York University. "A beautifully written and moving study of a woman who stood alone as a spiritual leader, breaking the bounds of women’s spirituality and gender roles to assume the position of a male zaddik, Hasidic leader. Deutsch’s own journey to Ludmir lends a unique and charming voice to this compelling story."—David Biale, author of Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History.
Jewish and Christian studies scholars as well as historians of Eastern Europe will benefit from the analysis of Holy Dissent.
In the early modern period, the religious fervor of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, social unrest, and millenarianism all seemed to foster greater anti-Judaism in Christian Europe, yet the increased intolerance was also accompanied by more intimate and complex forms of interaction between Christians and Jews. Printing, trade, and travel combined to bring those from both sides of the religious divide into closer contact than ever before, while growing interest in magic and the Kabbalah encouraged Christians to study Hebrew in addition to Latin and Greek. In Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, noted scholars trace how these early mode...
Over one hundred private schools for Jewish girls thrived in the areas of Jewish settlement in the Russian empire between 1831 and 1881. Through archival research, the author examines the schools' curriculum, teachers, financing, students, and educational innovation and demonstrates how each of these aspects evolved over time. The first section of this volume follows the emergence and development of the new private schools for Jewish girls in the mid-1800s, beginning with the historical circumstances that enabled their creation. In the second section, the author looks at the interactions between these new educational institutions and their communities, including how the schools responded to changes taking place around them and how they in turn influenced their environment.
The book, based on memories of a native son and the research of a scholar, is an amalgam of descriptions and discussions, peppered with conversations, personal observations and an acute observer’s reflections, focused on the fabric of life in the city of Lodz and its vicinity. The author describes the “court” of the Hasidic Rabbis of Aleksander, with which his family was affiliated, the rival camps of Hasidim and Zionists, industrialists and laborers, struggles with the Polish authorities, and more. Detailed chapters are dedicated to a description of studies at a modern Jewish-Zionist high school (Gymnasium) – its exhilarating goals, directors and teachers, to the Lodz poet Yitzhak K...
Jewish literatures and cultures : context and intertext / Anita Norich -- From continuity to contiguity : thoughts on the theory of Jewish literature / Dan Miron -- Beyond influence : toward a new historiographic paradigm / Michael L. Satlow -- Hellenistic Judaism : myth or reality? / Gabriele Boccaccini -- "He was renowned to the ends of the earth" (1 Maccabees 3:9) : Judaism and Hellenism in 1 Maccabees / Martha Himmelfarb -- Roman statues, rabbis, and Greco-Roman culture / Yaron Z. Eliav -- The ghetto and Jewish cultural formation in early modern Europe : towards a new interpretation / David Ruderman -- Hybrid with what? : the variable contexts of Polish Jewish culture : their implication...