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This groundbreaking history connects Nazi Germany’s Arabic language propaganda during World War II to anti-Semitism in the Middle East in the decades since.

In this important book an internationally acclaimed Holocaust historian weaves historical narrative with individual testimonies to recount the destruction of the shtetls, small Jewish towns in Poland and Russia, at the hands of the Nazis in 1941-1942.

This book is the culmination of more than three decades of meticulous historiographic research on Nazi Germany by one of the period’s most distinguished historians. The volume brings together the most important and influential aspects of Ian Kershaw’s research on the Holocaust for the first time. The writings are arranged in three sections—Hitler an...

Was Franco sympathetic to Nazi Germany? Why didn't Spain enter World War II? In what ways did Spain collaborate with the Third Reich? How much did Spain assist Jewish refugees? This is the first book in any language to answer these intriguing questions. Stanley Payne, a leading historian of modern Spain, explores the full range of Franco’s relationship with Hit...

In this close study of Nuremberg, a city heavily burdened by its association with Nazism, Neil Gregor explores how Germans have struggled since the Second World War to remember and acknowledge the Holocaust, make sense of their own suffering, and find ways of living with the painful past.

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new ...

In this chilling book, Susan Zuccotti recounts the stories of nine Jewish families facing ever-escalating persecution in France and Italy during the Holocaust years. The odyssey of these unwanted refugees took them from hostile Vichy France to St. Martin Vésubie in the Alps to Italy, where families were split apart and nightmarish choices had to be made.

This book reconstructs the lost world of the Warsaw Ghetto and describes the everyday experiences of its victims in unprecedented detail. With new research on the community, cultural, and political life of Jews confined there, the book breaks stereotypes of the Holocaust experience and provides the definitive account of the ghetto’s tragic history.

This disturbing book consists of a series of interviews with Jewish survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau who had been forced by the Germans to facilitate the mass extermination of other prisoners. These Sonderkommando not only describe the unimaginable horror of their own experiences but also provide direct testimony of the boundless cruelty and deceit of the Nazis.

In this deeply moving book, Alexandra Garbarini studies an array of diaries written by ordinary Jewish men and women witnessing the Holocaust. Garbarini analyzes the variety of Jewish experiences throughout German-occupied Europe, offering insights into the role of diary writing for victims and the unexpected range of their perspectives.

This powerful and suspenseful memoir by one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising tells the moving story of the preparations for defense of the Ghetto, the battle with the Germans, the rescue of the few Jews still alive in the Ghetto after it was destroyed, and the organization's support of the surviving Jews in Warsaw. This book will help demolish the image of Jews as submissive victims in...

Janusz Korczak (1879–1942) is one of the legendary figures to emerge from the Holocaust. Like so many other Jews, Korczak was sent into the Warsaw Ghetto after the Nazi occupation of Poland. He immediately set up an orphanage for more than two hundred children.When the Nazis ordered the children to board a train that was to carry them to the Treblinka death camp, Korczak went with them,...

For five horrifying years in Vilna, the Vilna ghetto, and concentration camps in Estonia, Herman Kruk recorded his own experiences as well as the life and death of the Jewish community of the city known as “The Jerusalem of Lithuania.” The scattered pages of his diaries, here gathered and translated into English for the first time, vividly illuminate the tragedy of the Vilna Jews and t...

The fifteen never-before-published autobiographies included in this volume express the struggles, ambitions, and dreams of young Jews coming of age in 1930s Poland. Written for contests conducted by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, these personal stories now speak across the chasm of history, providing unique testimony on Jewish life in the final years before the Holocaust.

Over a period of several years, Polish journalist Kazimerz Sakowicz was an eyewitness to the Nazis’systematic murder of the Jews of Wilno (Vilnius), near Ponary. He chronicled events in a diary kept at great risk, and though he did not survive the War, much of Sakowicz’s hidden diary did. His chilling record is here published in English and extensively annotated for the first time.

The escape of ultra-orthodox Jewish leader Rebbe Schneersohn from Hitler’s Warsaw in 1939 has always been a subject of speculation. This book uncovers the true story of the rescue and the heroic role of the part-Jewish German soldier who led the operation. A harrowing story about identity and moral responsibility, it is also a riveting narrative of an extraordinary rescue mission.

Following the author’s landmark account of  Karl Kraus’s career up to the First World War, this volume explores the satirist’s response to post-war Germany and the Third Reich. Edward Timms places Kraus’s work in its cultural setting, highlighting the court cases he pursued and theatrical projects he undertook. Timms concludes with an assessment of Kraus’s lifelo...

A fascinating study of the life and work of Karl Kraus, the Austrian satirist whose critiques of the mass media, the military-industrial complex, and technology running out of control have earned him a following fifty years after his death. Drawing on unfamiliar sources, Edward Timms analyzes Kraus's involvement in fundamental ideological issues of his time, such as psychoanalysis, social morality...

This brilliant and innovatory book explores the previously unknown world of Nazi prisons and penal policy, its victims, and the officials who built and operated the institution. Harrowing stories of individual prison inmates bring to life the Third Reich’s system of brutal legal terror.

Examining data on Christian rescuers and nonrescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, Pearl Oliner illuminates questions of religion and altruism. She investigates, for example, whether religion encourages altruism on behalf of those who do not belong, and whether the very religious are more likely to be altruistic toward outsiders than those who are less religious.

This is a revised and expanded edition of Raul Hilberg’s classic account of how Germany annihilated the Jewish community of Europe from 1933 to 1945. This edition extends the scope of his study and includes much new material, particularly from recently opened archives in eastern Europe.

Tried secretly on false charges of treason and espionage, fifteen Soviet Jews were convicted and then executed in a Moscow prison basement on August 12, 1952. Today remembered as the “Night of the Murdered Poets,” this horrifying injustice reflected Stalin’s growing paranoia toward Jews. This book presents the long-suppressed transcript of the trial of members of the Jewish Anti-...

Why did Stalin refuse to believe that Hitler would strike the Soviet Union when all the evidence—including intelligence from his own agencies—said otherwise? This extensively researched book illuminates many of the enigmas that have surrounded the Nazi invasion, offering keen insights into Stalin’s thinking and the reasons for his catastrophic blunder.

This absorbing book, a thought-provoking investigation of how American abstract artists and architects have negotiated Holocaust memory, arrives at new conclusions about abstraction and “Holocaust art.”

This book tells the dramatic story of 28,000 Jews of Warsaw who either escaped from the infamous Warsaw Ghetto during World War II or hid and never entered the Ghetto. Gunnar S. Paulsson challenges assumptions and offers new perspectives on the roles of Poles, Germans, and Jews; the Polish and Jewish undergrounds; the attitudes of Jewish leaders toward escape; and Jewish honor during the Holocaust...

In this riveting and poignant book Nechama Tec offers groundbreaking insights into the differences between the experiences of Jewish women and men during the Holocaust. Drawing on the personal stories of numerous survivors and rescuers, Tec reveals how the coping strategies and ultimate fate of men and women differed and how mutual cooperation and compassion operated across gender lines.

This pioneering book examines the role of women in Nazi Germany’s core policies: to segregate Germans and non-Germans, to Germanize occupied Poland, and to persecute Poles and Jews. Emphasizing the distinctive nature of female complicity in Germany’s system of racist domination, the book offers a new perspective on Nazi occupation policies.

This comprehensive, single-volume encyclopedia encompasses all the important events, sites, individuals, and issues of the Holocaust. An accessible and up-to-date account of one of history’s most enormous tragedies, The Holocaust Encyclopedia offers hundreds of short entries, substantial essays by an internationally diverse group of Holocaust scholars, and more than 250 photogr...

This is a stirring collection of diaries written by young people, ages 12 to 22, during the Holocaust. Some of the writers were refugees, others were hiding or passing as non-Jews, some were imprisoned in ghettos, and nearly all perished before liberation. Through these accounts of their daily lives and their frequently unexpected thoughts, ideas, and feelings, these young victims bequeath to us a...

With the publication of this paperback edition of Piotr Rawicz’s prizewinning Blood from the Sky, a classic of Holocaust literature emerges from many years out of print. A novel of richness and deep originality, it tells the story of Boris D., a Jewish resident of Lvov who poses as a non-Jew to evade the Nazis. Boris survives imprisonment in a death camp and moves to Paris following t...

Tackling one of the world’s most perplexing and divisive issues, renowned historian Benny Morris considers the legacy of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, previous proposed solutions to the conflict between Palestinians and Israel, and the viability of various options for the future. His conclusions inspire hope for a just solution in a region where it is most sorely ...

This groundbreaking account of the first Israeli-Arab war is history at its best: meticulously accurate, objective, and told with drama and flair. Benny Morris demolishes misconceptions and brings to light the political and military facts of the war that led to the birth of the state of Israel and the shattering of Palestinian Arab society.

One of Jordan’s top diplomats provides an insider’s perspective on the promise and perils of taking the “middle road” toward peace in the Middle East. Marwan Muasher recounts the details of diplomatic efforts over the past two decades and discusses what must be done to encourage the development of moderate, pragmatic Arab voices.

In today’s world of conflict and threatened nuclear violence, few books, if any, could be more important than this one. Middle East expert Trita Parsi untangles the complex and often duplicitous relations among Israel, Iran, and the United States from 1948 to the present and spells out how American policies can avert catastrophe and lead the region toward peace...

This groundbreaking history shatters many assumptions about the Six-Day War of 1967. New research in Soviet archives and testimonies from participants in the Israeli/Egyptian conflict reveal the extent of the Kremlin’s involvement, plans for the use of nuclear weapons in the Mid-East, and willingness to precipitate a global crisis.

This book is the first to explore fully the role that Zionism played in the political thought of Winston Churchill. Tracing the development of Churchill’s positions toward Zionism and the Jewish people throughout his long career, Michael Makovsky offers a fresh and balanced insight into one of the twentieth century’s greatest figures.

In this timely book, Bernard Wasserstein traces the history of diplomatic struggles over Jerusalem from the Crusades to the present day. Since its founding, the Holy City has been conquered at least thirty-seven times—by Jews, Muslims, Christians, and an array of foreign nations. Wasserstein illuminates the complicated origins of the current diplomatic impasse, details the negotiations of th...

In this startling new interpretation of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Bernard Wasserstein focuses on largely neglected forces—demographic, economic, and social—that have shaped the politics of the region but have also made the two societies so interdependent that they may have to forge better relationships in order to survive.

Counter-terrorist expert Matthew Levitt  provides the first complete, fully-documented portrait of Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that Palestinian voters brought to power in the stunning election of January 2006. Levitt draws aside the veil of legitimacy behind which Hamas hides and reveals the alarming extent of the organization’s commitment to terror.

 

Many millions of Americans believe that God requires unconditional support for Israel and that the coming battle of Armageddon is His will. This timely book explores Christian Zionism, its 400-year history, and the impact of the movement on American foreign policy in the Middle East and on deteriorating relationships with European allies.

Through the camera lens, contemporary Israeli and non-Israeli artists view Israel today from a broad range of perspectives. Their photographs and videos, all created since 2000, represent the life and culture of a nation where political realities influence every aspect of creative culture and where individual identities evolve in complex ways.

 

What are the real reasons for 9/11? What kind of thinking enables terrorists to justify unprovoked destruction and the murder of innocent people? This penetrating book is the first to explain the inner logic of al-Qaida and like-minded extremist groups. Mary Habeck examines the new movement known as jihadism and suggests how it can be defeated.

Efraim Karsh, a widely respected expert in Middle Eastern affairs, challenges the way we understand Middle Eastern history and politics in this provocative book. September 11 and other Islamic acts of aggression have little to do with U.S. behavior or policy, Karsh argues. Rather, such attacks express Islam's ancient, powerful, and continuing imperial tradition.

In this substantially revised and expanded version of Nikki Keddie’s classic work Roots of Revolution, the author brings the story of modern Iran to the present day. She explores the political, cultural, and social changes of the past quarter century, in particular the effects of the Iran-Iraq war, the Persian Gulf War, and Iran’s strategic relationship with the U.S. after 9/11....

The popularity of Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical movement at least 900 years old, has grown astonishingly in recent decades. In this original piece of scholarship a noted expert on Kabbalah provides for the first time a broad overview of the major trends in the “kabbalistic Renaissance” of recent decades together with in-depth discussions of major figures an...

From the prize-winning author of Wartime Lies, an anatomy of the infamous prosecution of a Jewish officer attached to the French army’s General Staff, with profound implications for our own time.

A bold and original examination of the international Jewish trade in ostrich feathers, which flourished on three continents from the 1880s until the great "feather bust" of the First World War.

This charming book recounts the remarkable journey of the bagel from the tables of seventeenth-century Poland to the freezers of middle America today. The story is one of surprising connections between an unassuming ring-shaped roll and centuries of Polish, Jewish, and American history.

Featuring traditional and avant-garde artworks by 40 international artists, this guidebook to the most current trends in Jewish art and design explores the complex relationship between contemporary practice and traditional culture.

The distinguished scholar David Gelernter presents a highly original guide to Judaism as a way of life and the fundamentals of Jewish belief.

This fascinating book examines the connection between Man Ray’s working-class origins as an American Jewish immigrant and his multi-faceted career as New York Dadaist, Parisian Surrealist, international portraitist, and fashion photographer.

This book is the first full-scale appraisal of the life and work of Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth-century.

This unprecedented reference work systematically represents the history and culture of Eastern European Jews from their first settlement in the region to the present day. More than 1,800 alphabetical entries encompass a vast range of topics, including religion, folklore, politics, art, music, theater, language and literature, places, organizations, intellectual movem...

In this engaging book, a geneticist uses everyday language to explain the science of genetic history and what it can tell us about Jewish history. Who are the Jews? Where did they come from? What are the connections between ancient Jews and modern Israelis? David Goldstein shows how genetic research yields rich new insights into history, identity, and what makes a pe...

In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition.

This groundbreaking book examines how five writers and poets of Jewish descent contributed to the development of a Ukrainian-Jewish literary tradition from the 1880s through the 1990s. The author challenges assumptions about modern Jewish acculturation, Ukrainian-Jewish relations, post-colonial culture, and more.

This book tells the rich history of New York City’s magnificent Eldridge Street Synagogue, the first synagogue in America founded by East European Jews. Built in 1887 in response to an enormous wave of immigrants, the synagogue has served as a place of worship as well as a singularly important center in the development of American Judaism.

This groundbreaking book takes a new approach to the study of cross-cultural trade, blending archival research with historical narrative and economic analysis. The author focuses on the early modern Jewish diasporic community of Livorno, Tuscany, and its extensive business ties with Jews and non-Jews across the Mediterranean and Europe.

This lavishly illustrated book explores medieval Castilian culture and the Arabic, Hebrew, and Christian strands that are inextricably woven into its fabric. The authors paint a vivid portrait of the culture through its arts, architecture, poetry and prose, all enriched by dynamic interaction with disparate cultures and peoples.

Drawing on a huge Nazi archive created to identify Jewish converts to Christianity as far back as the seventeenth century, this compelling book explores the lives of Jews in Berlin from 1645 to 1833. The book considers the Jewish experience in German society and provides a nuanced view of the various motivations behind the decision to convert.

Two highly respected religious scholars, one a Christian and the other a Jew, explore the origins of the belief in resurrection. They clarify what is surprising to many—that the Jews believed in resurrection long before the emergence of Christianity—and they discuss deep and meaningful connections between their two faiths.

In this powerful sequel to Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, Edward Kaplan tells the story of Heschel’s life and work in America, after his escape from Nazism. A tireless challenger to spiritual and religious complacency, Heschel not only influenced Jewish debate but also wider religious and cultural debates in the postwar decades.

This book tells the story of a generation of leading Polish literary intellectuals who came of age after the First World War. Using newly available archival material, Marci Shore explores why these writers came to embrace Marxism and what the implications of that choice were: a tragic, half-century-long journey of intellectual idealism and disillusionment.

Michael Walzer is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading political theorists. His broad-ranging work has covered some of the most crucial political ideas of our time, from democracy to social justice, nationalism, multiculturalism, and terrorism. This collection brings together some of his most important work and includes a substantial introduction by Da...

This is volume one of the first biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the outstanding Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. It traces Heschel's life from his birth in Warsaw in 1907 to his emigration to the United States in 1940, describing his roots in Hasidic culture, his Polish and German experiences, and his relations with Martin Buber. A second volume will tell the story of Heschel'...

Alfred Kazin, the son of barely literate Jewish immigrants, rose from near poverty to become a dominant figure in literary criticism and one of America’s last great men of letters. This book provides the first complete portrait of Kazin, his troubled personal life, his relationships with such figures as Lionel Trilling and Hannah Arendt, and his prodigious cont...

Malcolm’s first book in more than five years, this remarkable work of literary biography and investigative journalism, turns on the mysterious survival of Stein and Toklas, as Jewish lesbians in Occupied France. Also a fascinating illumination of the world of Stein scholarship, and a stunningly perceptive work of criticism.  

Malcolm’s first book in more than five years, this remarkable work of literary biography and investigative journalism, turns on the mysterious survival of Stein and Toklas, as Jewish lesbians in Occupied France. Also a fascinating illumination of the world of Stein scholarship, and a stunningly perceptive work of criticism.  

Featuring previously unpublished original documents, this book paints a vivid portrait of the Moscow Yiddish Theater, an avant-garde hub of innovation during the 1920s.

This book examines the great burst of artistic experimentation that transformed the modest Russian town of Vitebsk into an influential center of the avant-garde soon after the October Revolution. Marc Chagall, El Lissitsky, Kazimir Malevich and other luminaries flourished there, inspiring one another and changing the course of modern art history.

In this book, the world’s foremost scholar of Kabbalah explores the understanding of erotic love in Jewish mystical thought. Encompassing a wide range of works ranging from late antiquity to Polish Hasisim, Moseh Idel highlights the diversity of Kabbalistic views on eros and distinguishes between the major forms of eroticism. 

 

In this major new interpretation of Jewish mysticism, Moshe Idel emphasizes the need for a comparative and phenomenological approach to Kabbalah and its position in the history of religion. Idel provides fresh insights into the origins of Jewish mysticism, the relation between mystical and historical experience, and the impact of Jewish mysticism on western civilization.

This book is the first biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the outstanding Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. It traces Heschel's life from his birth in Warsaw in 1907 to his emigration to the United States in 1940, describing his roots in Hasidic culture, his Polish and German experiences, and his relations with Martin Buber. A second volume will tell the story of Heschel's years i...

In this comprehensive history of the synagogue from the Hellenistic period through late antiquity, Lee Levine traces the development of a dynamic and revolutionary institution. Examining synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora, he describes their physical features, role in the community, leadership, liturgy, and art as well as their success in integrating social and religious behavior from surroundi...

This masterful translation of the second book of The Code of Maimonides deals primarily with laws concerning the worship of God. The first translation based on the manuscript approved by Maimonides himself, it is accompanied by annotations and an introduction.

This provocative volume explores the origins of the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Contrary to the widely accepted modern view, the ancient rabbis were keenly committed to the belief that at the end of time, God would restore the deserving dead to life, argues eminent theologian Jon D. Levenson.

The near-sacrifice and miraculous restoration of a beloved son is a central but largely overlooked theme in both Judaism and Christianity, celebrated in biblical texts on Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph, and Jesus. In this highly original book, Jon D. Levenson explores how this notion of child sacrifice constitutes an overlooked bond between the two religions. 

In this lovely illustrated gift book, literary critic Harold Bloom considers the meaning of angels, and particularly fallen angels. Exploring representations of angels in world literature from the Bible to Milton’s Paradise Lost to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Bloom offers a wise and personal meditation on a perennially fascinating subj...

In this insightful book, an eclectic and distinguished group of writers explore the Jewish experience in the Americas and celebrate the legacy of Salo Wittmayer Baron (1895–1989), a preeminent scholar who revolutionized the study of Jewish history during his lengthy tenure at Columbia University.

Hannah Arendt’s prize-winning biographer presents a concise guide to the great political philosopher’s major works and thought. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl shows how the ideas Arendt developed in the post-World War II years are just as relevant today, illuminating such vitally important topics as totalitarianism, terrorism, globalization, war, and “radical evil.”

This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book’s 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject’s life and achievem...

This book is the first to explore fully the role that Zionism played in the political thought of Winston Churchill. Tracing the development of Churchill’s positions toward Zionism and the Jewish people throughout his long career, Michael Makovsky offers a fresh and balanced insight into one of the twentieth century’s greatest figures.

This book is the first to explore fully the role that Zionism played in the political thought of Winston Churchill. Tracing the development of Churchill’s positions toward Zionism and the Jewish people throughout his long career, Michael Makovsky offers a fresh and balanced insight into one of the twentieth century’s greatest figures.

This thought-provoking second volume of The Jewish Political Tradition is concerned with the theme of membership. The book brings together the most important texts on membership topics from 3,000 years of Jewish history, many newly translated or translated for the first time. Commentaries from modern religious and secular scholars, representing a range of viewpoints on the right and the lef...

This book launches a landmark four-volume collaborative work exploring the political thought of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present. The texts and commentaries in Volume 1 address the basic question of who ought to rule the community. The contributors—eminent philosophers, lawyers, political theorists, and other scholars working in different fields of Jewish studies—di...

Here Steven B. Smith offers a new reading of Spinoza’s Ethics. He asserts that it is a celebration of human freedom and its attendant joys and responsibilities and that it belongs among the great founding documents of the Enlightenment.

This book of stunning photographs by two pioneering photojournalists documents key moments in the experiences of the Jewish people from 1933 to the present. The images tell the story of Jewish life in prewar Berlin, of Jewish communities from Iran to Morocco to Spain, and of the creation and evolution of Israel.

This is the first complete account of the intellectual development of Leo Strauss, one of the most important political theorists of the 20th century and one whose legacy continues to be hotly contested. The volume clarifies Strauss’s ideas and explores the heart of his work: God and politics.

From their debut in Berlin in the 1780s to their emergence in 1930s California, Jewish women’s salons served as welcoming havens where all classes and creeds could openly debate art, music, literature, and politics. This fascinating book is the first to explore the history of these salons where remarkable women of intellect resolved that neither gender nor religion would impede their ability...

The Jewish Museum’s collection of 1,022 Hanukkah lamps and menorahs is the most extensive in the world and reveals the beauty and diversity of these beloved traditional objects. This beautiful book showcases the Museum’s entire collection, presenting lamps crafted over the last five centuries from a variety of cultures and continents.

In this powerful book, the story of KGB surveillance and intimidation of Nobel prize laureate Andrei Sakharov from 1968 to his death in 1989 comes to light for the first time. Disturbing archival documents show how deeply the KGB feared this great figure of Soviet science, and how profoundly it misunderstood his role in the human rights movement.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-77)—often recognized as the first modern Jewish thinker—was also a founder of modern liberal political philosophy. This book is the first to connect systematically these two aspects of Spinoza's legacy. Smith shows that Spinoza was a politically engaged theorist who both advocated and embodied a new conception of the emancipated individual, a thinker who decisively...

In recent years, large numbers of young Americans and Israelis raised in non-observant Jewish families have chosen to become practicing Orthodox Jews. In this comprehensive study, sociologist M. Herbert Danzger reports extensive research that reveals how these men and women were recruited into Orthodoxy, how they were socialized into their new commitment, and what sort of life they entered, with w...

In this fascinating book, Timothy Snyder traces the emergence of Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian nationhood over four centuries. In the process he discusses various atrocities and ethnic cleansings and examines Poland’s recent successful negotiations with its newly independent Eastern neighbors as it has channeled national interest toward peace.

This remarkable book provides fascinating new insights into Freud's intentions in writing Moses and Monotheism—his only work specifically devoted to a Jewish theme. Yerushalmi presents the work as Freud's psychoanalytic history of the Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish psyche—his attempt, under the shadow of Nazism, to discover what has made the Jews what they are. In the process, Ye...

A renowned historian here presents a new view of the notorious Spanish Inquisition, arguing that there was less terror, bigotry, and persecution associated with it than has been previously believed. Based on thirty years of research, the book will revolutionize further study in the field.

This book, the first ever based on unrestricted access to General Motors’ internal records, documents the giant American corporation’s dealings with the Third Reich. Henry Ashby Turner first tells the fascinating story of how GM conducted business in Germany under the Nazi regime and then assesses the legality and morality of the company’s policies. 

This book is the first to tell the full story of Jewish agricultural colonies that were established in the Soviet Union in 1924 in an attempt to answer “the Jewish Question.” The book offers new documentation of the remarkable international support for the program, the ideological conflicts that ensued, and the tragic slaughter of colonists in 1941.

This volume demonstrates the intricate literary structure and high poetic quality of the book of Nahum and represents a significant break-through in the study of Hebrew prosody with important implications for understanding the formation of the canon of the Hebrew Bible.

In this eagerly anticipated fourth volume in the Marginal Jew Series, John P. Meier corrects misconceptions about Mosaic Law in Jesus’ time and addresses the teachings of Jesus on major legal topics like divorce, oaths, the Sabbath, purity rules, and the various love commandments in the Gospels.

In this definitive book on the real, historical Jesus, one of our foremost biblical scholars meticulously sifts the evidence of 2,000 years to portray neither a rural magician nor a figure of obvious power, but a marginal Jew.

This book is the second volume in John Meier's masterful trilogy on the life of Jesus. In it he continues his quest for the answer to the greatest  puzzle of modern religious scholarship: Who was  Jesus?  Meier brings to life the story of a man, Jesus,  who by his life and teaching gradually made himself  ma...

No man is an island, not even Jesus, as John Meier writes in Companions and Competitors, the third installment of his four-part series, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Here, Meier explains his conviction that "No human being is adequately understood if he or she is considered in isolation from other human beings." His findings, particul...

This pathbreaking book explores in plentiful detail the symbolic meanings of the serpent from 40,000 BCE to the present, and from diverse regions in the world. In doing so it emphasizes the utter creativity of the biblical authors’ use of symbols and argues that we must, today, reexamine our own archetypal conceptions with comparable creativity.

Canonical scriptures were created over many centuries by disparate authors working in a variety of genres. Even so, they are unified by an overarching concern for the divine covenants and what they mean for God’s people, shows Scott Hahn in this deeply researched volume.

This original and captivating book offers important insights into the development of angelology, the origins of Christology, and popular western spirituality. In doing so, it provokes stimulating theological reflection on key existential questions.

This pioneering study is the first to show how Jews have been seen through modern Ukrainian literature and challenges the established view that the relationship of the Jewish and Ukrainian communities was dominated by antagonism.

This book, by an internationally acclaimed biblical scholar, examines the many and varied ways that the biblical story of Joseph, which ranks alongside The Odyssey and other ancient legends as a canonical test, has been interpreted in early modern Europe.

One of the great European novels of the twentieth century, written by the legendary Yiddish writer David Bergelson, is finally available in a superb translation that will bring it the wide English-speaking audience it deserves.

The prodigiously gifted Isaac Rosenfeld, Saul Bellow’s closest friend and most brilliant rival, died abruptly at 38, leaving his early promise unfulfilled. This book is the first to explore the genius of this unjustly forgotten writer, his place in Jewish letters, and the cost of choosing a writer’s life.

This beautifully written biography of the internationally renowned Palestinian poet Taha offers a compelling portrait of the man as well as a nuanced, deeply human view of the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Taha’s story, like his poetry, is at once profoundly local and utterly universal.

Malcolm’s first book in more than five years, this remarkable work of literary biography and investigative journalism, turns on the mysterious survival of Stein and Toklas, as Jewish lesbians in Occupied France. Also a fascinating illumination of the world of Stein scholarship, and a stunningly perceptive work of criticism.  

Offering a unique glimpse of pre-Holocaust Jewish life in Poland, Perle’s novel Everyday Jews is now considered his consummate achievement. Written in Yiddish and published in 1935, the book has never before been translated into English. The story is told by 12-year-old Mendl, in whose unsettled world most people yearn to be somewhere else—or someo...

Yudl Rosenberg’s volume of golem stories, an immediate bestseller when published in 1909, transformed the ancient legend of the creature made of clay and created a new role for him: Golem as protector of the Jewish people. This translation of Rosenberg’s influential folktales brings the Hebrew work to English-language readers for the first time.

This book is the first critical edition of the life and work of Yiddish author Lamed Shapiro, whose groundbreaking short stories, novellas, and essays are crucial to an understanding of Yiddish modernism. Despite his own deeply troubled life, Shapiro’s writings are innovative and rich with insights into Jewish history and culture.

 

 

Jacob Gordin’s Jewish King Lear, first performed in New York in 1892, was an immediate and continuing success. This book presents the original play in English for the first time and explains the significance of Gordin’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play for his audience of new Jewish immigrants making their way in America.

In this timely book, Claude Hagège, a renowned linguist and leading French public intellectual, ranges over all continents and language families to uncover not only how languages die, but also how they can be revitalized.

A monumental work, Max Weinreich’s History of the Yiddish Language is the definitive account of the Yiddish language from its origin to the present. This two-volume set translates Weinreich’s full text as well as his copious footnotes and references into English for the first time.

Alexander Harkavy (1863–1939) is credited with almost single-handedly creating an intellectual environment conducive to Yiddish, and his trilingual dictionary is an indispensable tool for research in Yiddish language and literature. This dictionary has been a classic since it originally appeared in New York in 1925.

Learn to Write the Hebrew Script presents a new and innovative approach to learning the Hebrew script. Drawing on the common ancestry of European and Hebrew alphabets and the natural inclinations of the writing hand, Orr-Stav shows how the Hebrew script may be understood and acquired almost intuitively through a three-step transformation of ordinary Roman-script cursive.

In this book, Lee Shai Weissbach offers the first comprehensive portrait of small-town Jewish life in America. Exploring the history of communities of 100 to 1000 Jews, the book focuses on the years from the mid-nineteenth century to World War II. Weissbach examines the dynamics of 490 communities across the United States and reveals that smaller Jewish centers were not simply miniature versions o...

This collection of letters by a lively and articulate Jewish woman in colonial New York City is accompanied by an introduction that provides a portrait of the city, describes typical colonial family life, and discusses the Jewish immigrant experience in New York. 

This fascinating book explores questions of American Jewish identity and how Jews fit today into larger discourses of race, ethnicity, and religion. Featuring ten photographic and video projects by emerging and mid-career artists, all commissioned by The Jewish Museum, the book presents a range of provocative discussions of the nature of Jewish identity in 21st-century America.

This magisterial work chronicles the 350-year history of the Jewish religion in America. Tracing American Judaism from its origins in the colonial era through the present day, Jonathan Sarna explores how Judaism adapted in this new context, how American culture affected Jewish religion and culture, and how American Jews shaped their own communities and faith in the new world.

Published on the 350th anniversary of the first Jews to arrive in America, this comprehensive history of the Jews of Boston is now available in a revised and updated paperback edition. The stunning work combines illuminating essays by distinguished Jewish historians with 110 rare photographs to trace the community from its tentative beginnings in colonial Boston through its emergence in the twenti...

Translated into seventeen languages since its first publication in 1936, E. H. Gombrich’s bestselling history of the world is at last available in English. Gombrich tells the story of mankind from the Stone Age to the atomic bomb, focusing not on small detail but on the sweep of human experience, the extent of human achievement, and the depth of its frailty.

This reader-friendly quotation book is unique in its focus on modern and American quotations.  It is also the first to use state-of-the-art research methods to capture famous quotations and to trace sources of quotations to their true origins.  It contains more than 12,000 entries not only from literary and historical sources but also from popular culture, sports, computers, po...