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Seventy years after the creation of the State of Israel, Palestine to Israel: Mandate to State, 1945-1948 offers the definitive narrative of the achievement of Jewish sovereignty in the beleaguered Promised Land. Professor Monty Noam Penkower explores developments in Palestine and in the Arab states, including how the Palestine quagmire became a pawn in inter-Arab feuds; British and American responses both official and public; the role of Holocaust survivors; the context of the Cold War; and the saga as it unfolded in the corridors of the United Nations. Joining extensive archival research to a lucid prose, the two volumes offer a riveting conclusion to his Palestine in Turmoil and Decision on Palestine Deferred.
Perspectives of Psychological Operations (PSYOP) in Contemporary Conflicts: Essays in Winning Hearts and Minds
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This collection of essays provides analysis and commentary on: psychological warfare in the battle against terrorism, PSYOP techniques adopted by different Palestinian groups against Israel and actions that promote the Palestinian cause in the West, Israeli strategies for combating radical Islam, and Jewish perspectives on propaganda in the context of Israel's international image problems. PSYOP -- designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, groups and foreign governments -- is still considered confidential by many defence organisations, hence the lack of publications that deal with the topic in a scientific, factual approach. Perspectives of PSYOP is a follow-on volume to the author's Psychological Warfare in the Intifada, adopted in the US Intelligence College as a textbook, and widely reviewed to critical acclaim.
Philo was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who left behind one of the richest bodies of work from antiquity, yet his personality and intellectual development have remained a riddle. Maren Niehoff presents the first biography of Philo, arguing that his trip to Rome in 38 CE was a turning point in his life. There he was exposed not only to new political circumstances but also to a new cultural and philosophical environment. Following the pogrom in Alexandria, Philo became active as the head of the Jewish embassy to Emperor Gaius and as an intellectual in the capital of the empire, responding to the challenges of his time and creatively reconstructing his identity, though always maintaining pride in the Jewish tradition. Philo's trajectory from Alexandria to Rome and his enthusiastic adoption of new modes of thought made him a key figure in the complex negotiation between East and West.
The Rarest Blue tells the incredible story of tekhelet, the elusive sky-blue color mentioned throughout the Bible. Minoans discovered it; Phoenicians stole it; Roman emperors revered it; and Jews--obeying a commandment to affix a thread of it to their garments--risked their lives for it. But as the Roman Empire dissolved, the color vanished. Then, in the nineteenth century, a marine biologist marveled as yellow snail guts smeared on a fisherman's shirt turned blue. But what had caused this incredible transformation? Meanwhile, a Hasidic master obsessed with the ancient technique posited that the source of the dye was no snail but a squid. Bitter controversy divided European Jews until a brilliant rabbi proved one side wrong. But had an unscrupulous chemist deceived them? In this richly illustrated book, Baruch Sterman brilliantly recounts the amazing story of this sacred dye that changed the color of history.
An international best seller and winner of the German Book Prize, The Blindness of the Heart is a dark marvel of a novel by one of Europe's freshest young voices--a family story spanning two world wars and several generations in a German family. In the devastating opening scene, a woman named Helene stands with her seven-year-old son in a provincial German railway station in 1945, amid the chaos of civilians fleeing west. Having survived with him through the horror and deprivation of the war years, she abandons him on the station platform and never returns. The story quickly circles back to rural Germany and Helene's childhood, which came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the First World War. Her father is sent to the eastern front, and her Jewish mother withdraws from the hostility of her surroundings into a state of mental confusion. As we follow Helene into adulthood, we watch riveted as the costs of survival and ill-fated love turn her into a woman capable of the unforgiveable.
"Engaging . . . Yehoshua is a master in his visual sketches of scenes." --New York Times Book Review
"[A] finely etched new novel . . . A marvel of a book." -- Haaretz? "Four and a half decades after his first book's publication, his twentieth shows Yehoshua's writing chops are undiminished and his content fearlessly topical." -- New York Journal of Books Noga, forty-two and divorced, is a harpist with an orchestra in the Netherlands. Upon the sudden death of her father, she is summoned home to Jerusalem by her brother to help make decisions in urgent family and personal matters. Returning also means facing a former husband who left her when she refused him children, but whose passion for her remains even though he is remarried and the father of two. For her imposed three-month residence in Israel, her brother finds her work as an extra in movies, television, and opera. These new identities undermine the firm boundaries of behavior heretofore protected by the music she plays, and Noga, always an extra in someone else's story, takes charge of the plot. The Extra is Yehoshua at his liveliest storytelling best--a bravura performance. "Rich in reflection and personal truth . . . Masterful." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Award-winning Israeli novelist Yehoshua gives moral force, even grandeur, to the inevitable push-pull of one family's life." -- Library Journal, starred review
This novel is based on an actual invitation from the Saudi Arabian government to the author to serve as a surgeon in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Dr. Rob Savarin, a Board-Certified surgeon, is completing his residency in colo-rectal surgery when such an invitation arrives unexpectedly. The problem is that Dr. Savarin is not only Jewish but also Orthodox and a devout Zionist. The offer is quite enticing, as in his "Walter Mitty" personality he fantasizes about acting as an agent for the Israeli Mossad. After Rob accepts the post, the Saudi Defense Minister, and number one in line for the Saudi throne, ruptures his colon, and Dr. Savarin becomes not only his surgeon but also friend and adviser. Through a series of exciting events, the Prince is blackmailed by the Mossad. The ensuing negotiations yield a partnership between Israel and the Sunni nations in a battle against nuclear Iran. As the newly united nations prepare to launch a stealth attack against Iran, despite resistance from the U.S. and UN, Rob wages his own war in the treacherous areas of love and long-lost family.
The eighth of Aharon Appelfeld's brilliantly original novels to be published in English, The Healer is a remarkable story about faith and faithlessness among European Jews on the eve of World War II. Felix Katz is a Viennese businessman whose life is choked by suppressed rage and intolerance for those who have faith. When conventional methods fail to cure his daughter's emotional illness, Felix in desperation agrees to travel with his family to the Carpathian Mountains in search of a famous healer. Months later, after being snowbound in a rural Jewish village that sustains itself on faith, Felix returns to a Vienna plagued by the disease of anti-Semitism. The Healer wonderfully combines elements of fable with the complex sensibility of a great modernist writer sensitive to the overbearing moral issues of our time.
The eighth of Aharon Appelfeld's brilliantly original novels to be published in English, The Healer is a remarkable story about faith and faithlessness among European Jews on the eve of World War II. Felix Katz is a Viennese businessman whose life is choked by suppressed rage and intolerance for those who have faith. When conventional methods fail to cure his daughter's emotional illness, Felix in desperation agrees to travel with his family to the Carpathian Mountains in search of a famous healer. Months later, after being snowbound in a rural Jewish village that sustains itself on faith, Felix returns to a Vienna plagued by the disease of anti-Semitism. The Healer wonderfully combines elements of fable with the complex sensibility of a great modernist writer sensitive to the overbearing moral issues of our time.
The untold story of the founding father's likely Jewish birth and upbringing--and its revolutionary consequences for understanding him and the nation he fought to create
In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption and revolutionizes our understanding of an American icon. This radical reassessment of Hamilton's religious upbringing gives us a fresh perspective on both his adult years and the country he helped forge. Although he didn't identify as a Jew in America, Hamilton cultivated a relationship with the Jewish community that made him unique among the founders. As a lawyer, he advocated for Jewish citizens in court. As a financial visionary, he invigorated sectors of the economy that gave Jews their greatest opportunities. As an alumnus of Columbia, he made his alma mater more welcoming to Jewish people. And his efforts are all the more striking given the pernicious antisemitism of the era. In a new nation torn between democratic promises and discriminatory practices, Hamilton fought for a republic in which Jew and Gentile would stand as equals. By setting Hamilton in the context of his Jewish world for the first time, this fascinating book challenges us to rethink the life and legend of America's most enigmatic founder.
A groundbreaking historical reexamination of one of the most infamous episodes in the history of anti-Semitism
Joseph Süss Oppenheimer--"Jew Süss"--is one of the most iconic figures in the history of anti-Semitism. In 1733, Oppenheimer became the "court Jew" of Carl Alexander, the duke of the small German state of Württemberg. When Carl Alexander died unexpectedly, the Württemberg authorities arrested Oppenheimer, put him on trial, and condemned him to death for unspecified "misdeeds." On February 4, 1738, Oppenheimer was hanged in front of a large crowd just outside Stuttgart. He is most often remembered today through several works of fiction, chief among them a vicious Nazi propaganda movie made in 1940 at the behest of Joseph Goebbels. The Many Deaths of Jew Süss is a compelling new account of Oppenheimer's notorious trial. Drawing on a wealth of rare archival evidence, Yair Mintzker investigates conflicting versions of Oppenheimer's life and death as told by four contemporaries: the leading inquisitor in the criminal investigation, the most important eyewitness to Oppenheimer's final days, a fellow court Jew who was permitted to visit Oppenheimer on the eve of his execution, and one of Oppenheimer's earliest biographers. What emerges is a lurid tale of greed, sex, violence, and disgrace--but are these narrators to be trusted? Meticulously reconstructing the social world in which they lived, and taking nothing they say at face value, Mintzker conjures an unforgettable picture of "Jew Süss" in his final days that is at once moving, disturbing, and profound. The Many Deaths of Jew Süss is a masterfully innovative work of history, and an illuminating parable about Jewish life in the fraught transition to modernity.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Compared by critics to Kafka, Joyce, and Musil, H. G. Adler is becoming recognized as one of the towering figures of twentieth-century fiction. Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti wrote that Adler has restored hope to modern literature, and the first two novels rediscovered after his death, Panorama and The Journey, were acclaimed as modernist masterpieces by The New Yorker. Now his magnum opus, The Wall, the final installment of Adler s Shoah trilogy and his crowning achievement as a novelist, is available for the first time in English.
Drawing upon Adler s own experiences in the Holocaust and his postwar life, The Wall, like the other works in the trilogy, nonetheless avoids detailed historical specifics. The novel tells the story of Arthur Landau, survivor of a wartime atrocity, a man struggling with his nightmares and his memories of the past as he strives to forge a new life for himself. Haunted by the death of his wife, Franziska, he returns to the city of his youth and receives confirmation of his parents fates, then crosses the border and leaves his homeland for good.
Embarking on a life of exile, he continues searching for his place within the world. He attempts to publish his study of the victims of the war, yet he is treated with curiosity, competitiveness, and contempt by fellow intellectuals who escaped the conflict unscathed. Afflicted with survivor s guilt, Arthur tries to leave behind the horrors of the past and find a foothold in the present. Ultimately, it is the love of his second wife, Johanna, and his two children that allows him to reaffirm his humanity while remembering all he s left behind.
The Wall is a magnificent epic of survival and redemption, powerfully told through stream of consciousness and suffused with daydream, fantasy, memory, nightmare, and pure imagination. More than a portrait of a Holocaust survivor s journey, it is a universal novel about recovering from the traumas of the past and finding a way to live again.
Praise for The Wall
[A] majestic novel . . . Adler s prose is tidal, surge after narrative surge rushing forward and then enigmatically receding, the moment displaced by memory, and memory by introspective soliloquy. Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review
A towering meditation on the self and spirit. . . The writing is sonorous and so entirely devastating that the reader is compelled to pore over every word. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Masterful and utterly unique. The Jerusalem Post
Haunting and utterly heart-wrenching . . . a literary masterpiece. Historical Novels Review
An epic novel . . . an unforgettable portrait. The Jewish Week
[A] pensive portrait of a man struggling to find a place in the world after enduring transformative calamity . . . an eloquent record of suffering and perhaps of redemption as well. Kirkus Reviews
Praise for H. G. Adler s novels The Journey and Panorama, translated by Peter Filkins
Modernist masterpieces worthy of comparison to those of Kafka or Musil. The New Yorker
Haunting . . . as remarkable for its literary experimentation as for its historical testimony. San Francisco Chronicle, on Panorama"
Compared by critics to Kafka, Joyce, and Musil, H. G. Adler is becoming recognized as one of the towering figures of twentieth-century fiction. Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti wrote that Adler has restored hope to modern literature, and the first two novels rediscovered after his death, Panorama and The Journey, were acclaimed as modernist masterpieces by The New Yorker. Now his magnum opus, The Wall, the final installment of Adler s Shoah trilogy and his crowning achievement as a novelist, is available for the first time in English.
Drawing upon Adler s own experiences in the Holocaust and his postwar life, The Wall, like the other works in the trilogy, nonetheless avoids detailed historical specifics. The novel tells the story of Arthur Landau, survivor of a wartime atrocity, a man struggling with his nightmares and his memories of the past as he strives to forge a new life for himself. Haunted by the death of his wife, Franziska, he returns to the city of his youth and receives confirmation of his parents fates, then crosses the border and leaves his homeland for good.
Embarking on a life of exile, he continues searching for his place within the world. He attempts to publish his study of the victims of the war, yet he is treated with curiosity, competitiveness, and contempt by fellow intellectuals who escaped the conflict unscathed. Afflicted with survivor s guilt, Arthur tries to leave behind the horrors of the past and find a foothold in the present. Ultimately, it is the love of his second wife, Johanna, and his two children that allows him to reaffirm his humanity while remembering all he s left behind.
The Wall is a magnificent epic of survival and redemption, powerfully told through stream of consciousness and suffused with daydream, fantasy, memory, nightmare, and pure imagination. More than a portrait of a Holocaust survivor s journey, it is a universal novel about recovering from the traumas of the past and finding a way to live again.
Praise for The Wall
[A] majestic novel . . . Adler s prose is tidal, surge after narrative surge rushing forward and then enigmatically receding, the moment displaced by memory, and memory by introspective soliloquy. Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review
A towering meditation on the self and spirit. . . The writing is sonorous and so entirely devastating that the reader is compelled to pore over every word. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Masterful and utterly unique. The Jerusalem Post
Haunting and utterly heart-wrenching . . . a literary masterpiece. Historical Novels Review
An epic novel . . . an unforgettable portrait. The Jewish Week
[A] pensive portrait of a man struggling to find a place in the world after enduring transformative calamity . . . an eloquent record of suffering and perhaps of redemption as well. Kirkus Reviews
Praise for H. G. Adler s novels The Journey and Panorama, translated by Peter Filkins
Modernist masterpieces worthy of comparison to those of Kafka or Musil. The New Yorker
Haunting . . . as remarkable for its literary experimentation as for its historical testimony. San Francisco Chronicle, on Panorama"
Insights on Parshat Hashavua from conversations between a Bat Mitzvah girl and her father over the course of a year. Techelet Baumol took upon herself the innovative idea to write her own interpretations of Torah based on studying with Rabbi Avi Baumol. Rabbi Baumol also included his interpretations for each parsha.
A classic of Holocaust literature, the eloquent, acclaimed memoir of childhood by a Pulitzer-winning historian, now reissued with a new introduction by Claire Messud
Four months before Hitler came to power, Saul Friedländer was born in Prague to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1939, seven-year-old Saul and his family were forced to flee to France, where they lived through the German Occupation, until his parents' ill-fated attempt to flee to Switzerland. They were able to hide their son in a Roman Catholic seminary before being sent to Auschwitz where they were killed. After an imposed religious conversion, young Saul began training for priesthood. The birth of Israel prompted his discovery of his Jewish past and his true identity. Friedländer brings his story movingly to life, shifting between his Israeli present and his European past with grace and restraint. His keen eye spares nothing, not even himself, as he explores the ways in which the loss of his parents, his conversion to Catholicism, and his deep-seated Jewish roots combined to shape him into the man he is today. Friedländer's retrospective view of his journey of grief and self-discovery provides readers with a rare experience: a memoir of feeling with intellectual backbone, in equal measure tender and insightful.
Four months before Hitler came to power, Saul Friedländer was born in Prague to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1939, seven-year-old Saul and his family were forced to flee to France, where they lived through the German Occupation, until his parents' ill-fated attempt to flee to Switzerland. They were able to hide their son in a Roman Catholic seminary before being sent to Auschwitz where they were killed. After an imposed religious conversion, young Saul began training for priesthood. The birth of Israel prompted his discovery of his Jewish past and his true identity. Friedländer brings his story movingly to life, shifting between his Israeli present and his European past with grace and restraint. His keen eye spares nothing, not even himself, as he explores the ways in which the loss of his parents, his conversion to Catholicism, and his deep-seated Jewish roots combined to shape him into the man he is today. Friedländer's retrospective view of his journey of grief and self-discovery provides readers with a rare experience: a memoir of feeling with intellectual backbone, in equal measure tender and insightful.
Wine & Wisdom - A Halachic Overview of Fine Wines and Their Brachos Hardcover
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Torah study offers eternal bliss in both this world and the Next. The Midrash teaches that the pleasure experienced from studying Torah is comparable to that of drinking fine wine.
How are we to understand the correlation between these two pleasures?
Wine is called the "King of beverages"'; it is the most regal of all drinks. In line with its royal status, the halachos of the brachos associated with wine are among the most intricate and complex, especially those of the brachah of Hatov v'hametiv.
Wine and Wisdom gives readers a sampling of these halachos, as they are applied to the world's finest wines.
Wine connoisseurs can detect the subtle distinctions between one fine wine and another. Wine and Wisdom combines the depth of halachah with the invigorating taste of superior wines, reframing the entire drinking experience.
Anyone who appreciates fine 'wine will find that Wine and Wisdom helps him bring together these two noble pleasures.
Writing as Freedom, Writing as Testimony
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In Writing as Freedom, Writing as Testimony, Sergio Parussa explores the relationship between Judaism and writing in the works of four twentieth-century Italian writers: Umberto Saba, Natalia Ginzburg, Giorgio Bassani, and Primo Levi. Parussa examines the different ways in which each author's work responds to Judaism and the notion of Jewish identity. With great detail, he shows how their writings reflect a change in attitude toward Judaism that occurred in Italian society between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, from a perception of Jewish identity as a constraint to one's freedom to an understanding of it as a tool of intellectual freedom that can contribute to one's sense of identity. For these authors, the recovery of Judaism consists not only of telling stories with Jewish subject matter but also of the repeated act of remembering, a process by which, as Parussa puts it, the past is salvaged from oblivion by means of its reactualization in the present. Through memory, one becomes free to affirm difference and to make Jewish traditions an integral part of Italian culture.
