History

Product Description

Day after day. Week after week. Year after year. Neshamah after neshamah -- Rabbi Meir Schuster was at the Kosel, the Central Bus Station, the Hebrew University campus, searching for people who were searching for meaning -- and bringing them to places where they would find it.

 

He was the most unlikely of outreach professionals. He was shy, tongue-tied, inarticulate and decidedly “uncool.” And yet, more than almost anyone, he brought Jews -- thousands, perhaps tens of thousands -- back to their Torah heritage.

 

A Tap on the Shoulder brings us the stories (so many stories!) of the young men and women who traded their backpacks for Torah. It brings to life a magical moment, the decades when searching youth found meaning and a “baal teshuvah movement” was born.

 

A Tap on the Shoulder shows us how one man -- with absolute dedication, boundless caring, and almost unbelievable siyata d’Shmaya -- can change the world. One neshamah at a time.

Rudy Brook had just passed the German bar exam and married his childhood sweetheart. Hitler's coming to power put an end to Rudy's law career, and his wife, Eva, dashed his Zionist dream, insisting they emigrate to America instead of Palestine. Their arrival in 1938 on Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) spared them that calamity and the even graver one to follow. But that's only half the story. Eva's connections to the upscale refugee colony in Los Angeles led Rudy to become a gardener to stars such as Judy Garland, and Eva to become a masseuse to other celebrities, actor Alexander Granach among them. Granach was a big name in pre-Nazi Germany and featured in Ninotchka with Greta Garbo. His affair with Eva would wreak havoc on the budding Brook family and leave Eva with a life-altering decision about herself and the author's older brother. Harrowing yet uplifting, All About Eva combines elements of the memoir and the historical novel to tell a compelling tale of three remarkable individuals and the tumultuous times in which they lived.

"All About Eva is a madcap, yet also tragically serious, genre-defying story of a Jewish couple's flight from Nazi Germany to Los Angeles. Sumptuously illustrated, it is a saga of betrayal, intra-Jewish tension, imprisonment, eroticism, and salty , delicious gossip. It ultimately provides a painful yet also rollicking picture of old worlds destroyed and new ones in the making. "
Steven E. Aschheim
author of Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923"What makes this Holocaust survivor tale so fascinating is its focus on a love triangle among three Jewish émigrés: the author's German parents, Rudy and Eva, and Polish actor Alexander Granach. Along the way, we encounter a remarkable array of their friends and clients in Los Angeles: Fritz Lang, Salka Viertel, Lion Feuchtwanger, Peter Lorre, Robert Ryan, Judy Garland, and George and Ira Gershwin. It's a story too amazing to be true, but it is! "
Steven J. Ross
author of Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America"Vincent Brook's considerable film knowledge takes a personal turn in this candid and affecting memoir of his parents, whose tale of escape from Nazified Berlin to Los Angeles illustrates the challenges faced by Hollywood's German-speaking émigré community in the late 1930s and beyond."
Donna Rifkind
author of The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler's Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood

There have been many amazing heroes down through the ages. The achievements of American heroes like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln certainly resonate, but how many heroes of Jewish heritage come to mind? Each of the eleven Jewish heroes presented in this volume, some famous and others less so, overcame tremendous challenges to achieve greatness, persevering through their faith in God and belief in freedom and human dignity. Queen Esther maintained her traditions in the house of Ahasuerus for nine years while also hiding her true origins, and then orchestrated the salvation of the Jewish Persians at great personal risk. When urgent funding was needed for the Continental Army in 1781, General George Washington turned to none other than a financial genius named Haym Salomon. Felix Zandman survived World War II as a teenager by living with three others in a pit for seventeen months, and then went on to graduate from the Sorbonne and found a company that was innovational in the world of electronics and communication. Our heroes many feats and great accomplishments, and their dedication to freedom and its ideals, are truly amazing, and their stories stand the test of time.

In 1948, when the newly founded nation of Israel came under siege from a coalition of Arab states, a band of volunteer airmen from the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and South Africa arrived to help. They were a small group, fewer than 150. Many were World War II veterans; most of them knowingly violated their nations' embargoes on the shipment of arms and aircraft to Israel. The airmen risked everything--their careers, citizenship, and lives--to fight for Israel. The saga of the volunteer airmen in Israel's war of independence stands as one of the most stirring--and little-known--war stories of the past century.

New York is the greatest restaurant city the world has ever seen.

In "Appetite"" City," the former "New York Times "restaurant critic William Grimes leads us on a grand historical tour of New York's dining culture. Beginning with the era when simple chophouses and oyster bars dominated the culinary scene, he charts the city's transformation into the world restaurant capital it is today. "Appetite City "takes us on a unique and delectable journey, from the days when oysters and turtle were the most popular ingredients in New York cuisine, through the era of the fifty-cent French and Italian table d'hotes beloved of American "Bohemians," to the birth of Times Square--where food and entertainment formed a partnership that has survived to this day.

Enhancing his tale with more than one hundred photographs, rare menus, menu cards, and other curios and illustrations (many never before seen), Grimes vividly describes the dining styles, dishes, and restaurants succeeding one another in an unfolding historical panorama: the deluxe ice cream parlors of the 1850s, the boisterous beef-and-beans joints along Newspaper Row in the 1890s, the assembly-line experiment of the Automat, the daring international restaurants of the 1939 World's Fair, and the surging multicultural city of today. By encompassing renowned establishments such as Delmonico's and Le Pavillon as well as the Bowery restaurants where a meal cost a penny, he reveals the ways in which the restaurant scene mirrored the larger forces shaping New York, giving us a deliciously original account of the history of America's greatest city.

Rich with incident, anecdote, and unforgettable personalities, "Appetite City "offers the dedicated food lover or the casual diner an irresistible menu of the city's most savory moments."

The characters of the Bible are some of the best known in all of history, art and literature. Yet the heroes and heroines of the BibleAbraham, Jacob, Joseph, Eve, Sarah, Deborah and the othersremain elusive and enigmatic. Biblical Images, a collection of twenty-five portraits of biblical figures, explores what is hinted at in the biblical text to help us understand these characters from within, to analyze their motives, and to appreciate their spiritual experiences and aspirations. It is a subtle yet penetrating study of the men and women of the Bible, who personify profound truths about the human experience.

Although the figures of the Jewish Bible are some of the best known in all of history and literature, they remain among the most elusive and enigmatic. In Biblical Images, a collection of 25 portraits of Biblical characters, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz clarifies what is hinted at in the Biblical text in order to understand the Biblical figures from within, to analyze their motives, and to appreciate their spiritual experiences and aspirations.

"When you left his study, you didn’t just have a generous check: you had dignity, respect, and a new sense of pride in what you were doing."

"I’ve seen people for whom Margaret Thatcher showed respect, and I’ve seen people for whom Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky stood up. But I have known only one man for whom Rav Yaakov would express admiration, and toward whom heads of state would bow. "

It’s the story of a journey to spiritual greatness, to faith, humility, and extraordinary generosity, a story that takes us through construction sites and boardrooms as well as the hallowed halls of yeshivos and batei midrash.

Aristocratic in conduct and speech, Reb Moshe Reichmann treated other people in a way that left them feeling that they had brushed with royalty, elevating himself and those around him. The kindness and attention he invested in his family flowed outward to impact every corner of the Torah world, conveying respect and encouragement along with his donations.

The most respected financiers on earth were in awe of him, yet this same Mr. Reichmann would bow deferentially when speaking to Torah scholars. He was patron to institutions and individuals, giving not just money, but time, attention, and genuine concern. Yisroel Besser, author of many bestselling books, including the unforgettable Just Love Them, brings us a story that will make us newly sensitive to the potential to give that lies within us.

When Lily and Alex entered a packed gymnasium in Queens, New York in 1972, they barely recognized their son. The boy who escaped to America with them, who was bullied as he struggled to learn English and cope with family tragedy, was now a young man who had discovered and secretly honed his basketball talent on the outdoor courts of New York City. That young man was Ernie Grunfeld, who would go on to win an Olympic gold medal and reach previously unimaginable heights as an NBA player and executive.

In By the Grace of the Game, Dan Grunfeld, once a basketball standout himself at Stanford University, shares the remarkable story of his family, a delicately interwoven narrative that doesn't lack in heartbreak yet remains as deeply nourishing as his grandmother's Hungarian cooking, so lovingly described. The true improbability of the saga lies in the discovery of a game that unknowingly held the power to heal wounds, build bridges, and tie together a fractured Jewish family. If the magnitude of an American dream is measured by the intensity of the nightmare that came before and the heights of the triumph achieved after, then By the Grace of the Game recounts an American dream story of unprecedented scale.

From the grips of the Nazis to the top of the Olympic podium, from the cheap seats to center stage at Madison Square Garden, from yellow stars to silver spoons, this complex tale traverses the spectrum of the human experience to detail how perseverance, love, and legacy can survive through generations, carried on the shoulders of a simple and beautiful game.

The outrage sparked by the Danish cartoon affair - the publication of images of the Prophet Muhammad in the European press - was a sharp reminder of the potency of the cartoon in the modern media. It is one of the most popular and effective means of communication. By exaggerating and exasperating, cartoons by their very nature lack neutrality, and the cartoon is an important weapon in the Middle Eastern crisis. In response to the Danish cartoon affair, an Iranian newspaper announced a competition for cartoons about the Holocaust, even though it had nothing to do with Israel or the Jewish people. Antisemitic cartoons have long been rife in the Arab-Muslim media. The September 2001 Durban Conference against Racism, intended to denounce and combat racism in all its forms, also featured the distribution of antisemitic cartoons by an Arab organization, yet this elicited no reaction from Western NGOs at the conference. This event set the author on a trail that revealed thousands of such drawings. In the name of anti-Zionism, Jews are depicted as sadistic and bloodthirsty monsters, solely interested in money and power. This return to anti-Jewish hatred is of a new order, in line with current trends - an Arab-Muslim form unexpectedly metamorphosed from the antisemitism traditionally linked with the Christian West. By reproducing more than 400 of these cartoons, taken from both Arab and Western media, this book denounces the use of hatred in the media and hopes to raise the alarm.

Jewish History of over 5,000 years in a year by year format, with heavy cross-referencing and exhaustive index.

Easy reading - a browsers delight, with little snippets of fascinating facts.

Documents - in a scholarly manner - the ancestral history of Biblical and Talmudic eras, and provides meticulous and erudite bibliography-references.

For American Jewish historian Jeffrey S. Gurock, the sports metaphor highlights the challenges that Jewish life has faced in modern American society. Although athletics were once seen as the incursion of a foreign cultural phenomenon into Jewish life, attitudes have shifted in recent generations. What was once branded as an unproductive questionable activity has entered into the American Jewish experience, and has captured the allegiance of Jews on the track, gridiron, diamond, and court. Constant Challenge: Sports and American Judaism brings together nine intriguing essays that explore the different approaches to athletic activities within Jewish life. Together, this anthology identifies and discusses how Jewish communities cope with these challenges, navigating the delicate balance between religious identification and American sports culture.

World-renowned lawyer Alan Dershowitz recounts stories from his many years of defending the state of Israel.

Alan Dershowitz has spent years advocating for his most challenging client--the state of Israel--both publicly and in private meetings with high level international figures, including every US president and Israeli leader of the past 40 years. Replete with personal insights and unreported details, Defending Israel offers a comprehensive history of modern Israel from the perspective of one of the country's most important supporters. Readers are given a rare front row seat to the high profile controversies and debates that Dershowitz was involved in over the years, even as the political tides shifted and the liberal community became increasingly critical of Israeli policies.

Beyond documenting America's changing attitude toward the country, Defending Israel serves as an updated defense of the Jewish homeland on numerous points--though it also includes Dershowitz's criticisms of Israeli decisions and policies that he believes to be unwise. At a time when Jewish Americans as a whole are increasingly uncertain as to who supports Israel and who doesn't, there is no better book to turn to for answers--and a pragmatic look toward the future.