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Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack
by Judah M. CohenThis study of synagogue music in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century “sets a high standard for historical musicology” (Musica Judaica).In Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack, Judah M. Cohen demonstrates that Jews constructed a robust religious musical conversation in the United States during the mid- to late-nineteenth century. While previous studies of American Jewish music history have looked to Europe as a source of innovation during this time, Cohen’s careful analysis of primary archival sources tells a different story. Far from seeing a fallow musical landscape, Cohen finds that Central European Jews in the United States spearheaded a major revision of the sounds and traditions of synagogue music during this period of rapid liturgical change.Focusing on the influences of both individuals and texts, Cohen demonstrates how American Jewish musicians sought to balance artistry and group singing, rather than “progressing” from solo chant to choir and organ. Congregations shifted between musical genres and practices during this period in response to such factors as finances, personnel, and communal cohesiveness. Cohen concludes that the “soundtrack” of nineteenth-century Jewish American music heavily shapes how we look at Jewish American music and life in the first part of the twenty-first century, arguing that how we see, and especially hear, history plays a key role in our understanding of the contemporary world around us. Supplemented with an interactive website that includes the primary source materials, recordings of the music discussed, and a map that highlights the movement of key individuals, Cohen’s research defines more clearly the sound of nineteenth-century American Jewry.
A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World #37)
by Mark D. MeyersonThis book significantly revises the conventional view that the Jewish experience in medieval Spain--over the century before the expulsion of 1492--was one of despair, persecution, and decline. Focusing on the town of Morvedre in the kingdom of Valencia, Mark Meyerson shows how and why Morvedre's Jewish community revived and flourished in the wake of the horrible violence of 1391. Drawing on a wide array of archival documentation, including Spanish Inquisition records, he argues that Morvedre saw a Jewish "renaissance." Meyerson shows how the favorable policies of kings and of town government yielded the Jewish community's demographic expansion and prosperity. Of crucial importance were new measures that ceased the oppressive taxation of the Jews and minimized their role as moneylenders. The results included a reversal of the credit relationship between Jews and Christians, a marked amelioration of Christian attitudes toward Jews, and greater economic diversification on the part of Jews. Representing a major contribution to debates over the Inquisition's origins and the expulsion of the Jews, the book also offers the first extended analysis of Jewish-converso relations at the local level, showing that Morvedre's Jews expressed their piety by assisting Valencia's conversos. Comparing Valencia with other regions of Spain and with the city-states of Renaissance Italy, it makes clear why this kingdom and the town of Morvedre were so ripe for a Jewish revival in the fifteenth century.
Jewish Representation in British Literature 1780–1840
by Michael ScrivenerDescribing Jewish representation bothby Jews and Gentiles in the British Romantic era, Scrivener integrates popular culture with belletristic writing to explore the wildly varying treatments of stereotypical figures: the pedlar, the moneylender, the Jew's daughter, "la belle juive," the convert, the prophet, the alchemist, and the criminal. "
Jewish Resistance to "Romanianization," 1940–44 (Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide)
by Stefan Cristian IonescuIonescu examines the process of economic Romanianization of Bucharest during the Antonescu regime that targeted the property, jobs, and businesses of local Jews and Roma/Gypsies and their legal resistance strategies to such an unjust policy.
The Jewish Revolt AD 66-74
by Peter Dennis Si SheppardThe narrow strip of land now occupied by the modern state of Israel is where all paths from Europe, Asia, and Arabia must come together before they flow into Africa and has been the world's most hotly contested piece of territory for millennia. Occupied by Pompey the Great from 63 BC the region became the Roman province of Iudaea in AD 6. In AD 66 a local disturbance in Caesarea caused by Greeks sacrificing birds in front of a local synagogue exploded into a pan-Jewish revolt against their Roman overlords. Gaining momentum, the rebels successfully occupied Jerusalem and drove off an attack by the Roman legate of Syria, Cestus Gallius, who was defeated at the battle of Beth Horon.The emperor Nero dispatched the Roman general Vespasian along with reinforcements and, having crushed the revolt in Galilee he became embroiled in the events of the Year of the Four Emperors that would lead to his assumption of the Imperial throne. His son Titus was left to carry on the war which culminated in the dramatic siege of Jerusalem in AD 70. Remorselessly, the legions strangled the life out of the defense street by street, leaving nothing but rubble and ashes in their wake. The apotheosis of the conflict was the final stand of the last holdouts in the Temple precinct itself, and the utter annihilation of this, the physical manifestation of Judaism itself.The last remnants held out in the mountain fortress of Masada until AD 73 when with the Romans breaking down the walls the defenders committed mass suicide bringing the revolt to an end.
The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power (The Modern Jewish Experience))
by Andrew SloinJewish life was changed fundamentally as Jews joined the Bolshevik movement and populated the front lines of the revolutionary struggle. Andrew Sloin’s story follows the arc of Bolshevik history but shows how the broader movement was enacted in factories and workshops, workers’ clubs and union meetings, and on the Jewish streets of White Russia. The protagonists here are shoemakers, speculators, glassmakers, peddlers, leatherworkers, needleworkers, soldiers, students, and local party operatives who were swept up, willingly or otherwise, into the Bolshevik project. Sloin stresses the fundamental relationship between economy and identity formation as party officials grappled with the Jewish Question in the wake of the revolution.
Jewish Rights, National Rites: Nationalism and Autonomy in Late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia
by Simon RabinovitchIn its full-color poster for elections to the All-Russian Jewish Congress in 1917, the Jewish People's Party depicted a variety of Jews in seeking to enlist the support of the broadest possible segment of Russia's Jewish population. It forsook neither traditional religious and economic life like the Jewish socialist parties, nor life in Europe like the Zionists. It embraced Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian as fulfilling different roles in Jewish life. It sought the democratization of Jewish communal self-government and the creation of new Russian Jewish national-cultural and governmental institutions. Most importantly, the self-named "folkists" believed that Jewish national aspirations could be fulfilled through Jewish autonomy in Russia and Eastern Europe more broadly. Ideologically and organizationally, this party's leadership would profoundly influence the course of Russian Jewish politics. Jewish Rights, National Rights provides a completely new interpretation of the origins of Jewish nationalism in Russia. It argues that Jewish nationalism, and Jewish politics generally, developed in a changing legal environment where the idea that nations had rights was beginning to take hold, and centered on the demand for Jewish autonomy in Eastern Europe. Drawing on numerous archives and libraries in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Israel, Simon Rabinovitch carefully reconstructs the political movement for Jewish autonomy, its personalities, institutions, and cultural projects. He explains how Jewish autonomy was realized following the February Revolution of 1917, and for the first time assesses voting patterns in November 1917 to determine the extent of public support for Jewish nationalism at the height of the Russian revolutionary period.
Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford Studies In Jewish History And Culture Ser.)
by Devin NaarTouted as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," the Mediterranean port city of Salonica (Thessaloniki) was once home to the largest Sephardic Jewish community in the world. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the city's incorporation into Greece in 1912 provoked a major upheaval that compelled Salonica's Jews to reimagine their community and status as citizens of a nation-state. Jewish Salonica is the first book to tell the story of this tumultuous transition through the voices and perspectives of Salonican Jews as they forged a new place for themselves in Greek society. Devin E. Naar traveled the globe, from New York to Salonica, Jerusalem, and Moscow, to excavate archives once confiscated by the Nazis. Written in Ladino, Greek, French, and Hebrew, these archives, combined with local newspapers, reveal how Salonica's Jews fashioned a new hybrid identity as Hellenic Jews during a period marked by rising nationalism and economic crisis as well as unprecedented Jewish cultural and political vibrancy. Salonica's Jews--Zionists, assimilationists, and socialists--reinvigorated their connection to the city and claimed it as their own until the Holocaust. Through the case of Salonica's Jews, Naar recovers the diverse experiences of a lost religious, linguistic, and national minority at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East.
Jewish San Francisco (Images of America)
by Edward Zerin Dr Marc DollingerIn San Francisco, the "instant city" of the gold rush days, Jews were pioneers among pioneers. Some came as immigrants directly from Europe, others as resettled adventurers from the East Coast, and still others as scions of southern Sephardic families. Out of this mixed multitude emerged a community with synagogues and institutions to care for the needy and the sick, along with a dignified social fabric. New immigrants following the Russian pogroms of 1883 were absorbed, and the ashen ruins from the 1906 earthquake were rebuilt. The city's cultural treasures and social needs were enriched, and the city's Jews were nurtured by civic commitments. Today's 70,000 San Francisco Jews, standing upon the shoulders of pioneering giants, continue to build and rebuild.
Jewish Self-Defense in South America: Facing Anti-Semitism with a Club in Hand (Routledge Studies in Modern History)
by Raanan ReinJewish Self-Defense in South America charts the ways in which Jewish youth in Argentina and Uruguay organized self-defense groups in the wake of an anti-Semitic wave that swept the Southern Cone in the 1960s. The kidnapping of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960 and his trial and execution in Israel in 1962, as well as the assassination of the Latvian war criminal Herberts Cukurs in Montevideo in 1965, provoked violent attacks by right-wing nationalist organizations against Jewish lives and property. Thousands of Jews decided to teach the anti-Semitic bullies a lesson and make it very clear that shedding Jewish blood would not go unpunished, that Jews were no longer passive victims. The central role that the State of Israel and its envoys played in organizing, instructing, and training self-defense activists highlights the special ties between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora. Based on more than 120 interviews with former activists of self-defense, ex-Mossad officers and veteran Israeli diplomats, as well as on archival research, this is a pioneering study on ethnicity and diaspora in a time of growing political violence in South America. This book is a valuable study for scholars and students researching Jewish history and Latin American history.
Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs
by Jonathan GraubartJewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism examines the liberal Zionist and Jewish anti-Zionist perspectives that developed in the decades following Israeli statehood. In his timely book, Jonathan Graubart. advances a non-statist vision of Jewish self-determination to be realized in a binational political arrangement that rejects Apartheid practices and features a just and collaborative coexistence of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The book’s vision advances a distinct Jewish self-determination committed to cultural enrichment and emancipation, internationalism, and the fostering of new political, social, and economic channels for attaining genuine reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism also engages a Humanist Zionist vision to confront the Zionist movement’s foundational sins and demands a full reckoning with the Palestinians. Graubart focuses on two of Humanist Zionism’s most insightful thinkers, Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt, putting them “in conversation” with each other, and synthesizing their collective insights and critical Jewish perspectives alongside the ideas of Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Ella Shohat, Edward Said, and other philosophers and academics. Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism concludes that an updated, binational program is the best path forward.
Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army
by Adam D. MendelsohnOffers an engaging account of the experiences of Jewish soldiers in the Union Army during the Civil WarWhat was it like to be a Jew in Lincoln’s armies? The Union army was as diverse as the embattled nation it sought to preserve, a unique mixture of ethnicities, religions, and identities. Almost one Union soldier in four was born abroad, and natives and newcomers fought side-by-side, sometimes uneasily. Yet though scholars have parsed the trials and triumphs of Irish, Germans, African Americans, and others in the Union ranks, they have remained largely silent on the everyday experiences of the largest non-Christian minority to have served.In ways visible and invisible to their fellow recruits and conscripts, the experience of Jews was distinct from that of other soldiers who served in Lincoln’s armies. Adam D. Mendelsohn draws for the first time upon the vast database of verified listings of Jewish soldiers serving in the Civil War collected by The Shapell Roster, as well as letters, diaries, and newspapers, to examine the collective experience of Jewish soldiers and to recover their voices and stories. The volume examines when and why they decided to enlist, explores their encounters with fellow soldiers, and describes their efforts to create community within the ranks. This monumental undertaking rewrites much of what we think we know about Jewish soldiers during the Civil War.
Jewish Soul (Tango of Death #3)
by Rita KarnoppMayla Sucuri’s world is falling apart . . . no Gypsy is safe in Hitler’s Germany. Her twin sister, Vanya, has just run off with her love and joined the partisans. Now Mayla is being forced to leave her papa and younger sister, Zilka, with the kumpania. Heading to Switzerland with her mother, to the safety of her Grandmother’s chalet in Switzerland, Mayla fears she’ll never see any of them again. Her grandmother is connected to every high official in the SS. But not everything is as it appears. Because of her drive to be a doctor, Mayla finds herself invited to Dachau and Auschwitz. She quickly finds herself in the company of Doctor Josef Mengele and Doctor Sigmund Rascher, who are only too willing to share the results of their medical experiments on Jews and Gypsies. At great personal risk, Mayla refuses to turn down the opportunity to take notes and bear witness to the atrocities happening at the concentration camps. Mayla is drawn to Auschwitz where the distinctions between good and evil become blurred in a world turned upside down. Will it get her killed or will her unwavering resolve give her the strength and courage to rescue her sisters from the gas chambers?
Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds: Jewish Bureaucracy and Policymaking in Late Imperial Russia, 1850-1917
by Vassili SchedrinJewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds examines the phenomenon of Jewish bureaucracy in the Russian empire—its institutions, personnel, and policies—from 1850 to 1917. In particular, it focuses on the institution of expert Jews, mid-level Jewish bureaucrats who served the Russian state both in the Pale of Settlement and in the central offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in St. Petersburg. The main contribution of expert Jews was in the sphere of policymaking and implementation. Unlike the traditional intercession of shtadlanim (Jewish lobbyists) in the high courts of power, expert Jews employed highly routinized bureaucratic procedures, including daily communications with both provincial and central bureaucracies. Vassili Schedrin illustrates how, at the local level, expert Jews advised the state, negotiated power, influenced decisionmaking, and shaped Russian state policy toward the Jews. Schedrin sheds light on the complex interactions between the Russian state, modern Jewish elites, and Jewish communities. Based on extensive new archival data from the former Soviet archives, this book opens a window into the secluded world of Russian bureaucracy where Jews shared policymaking and administrative tasks with their Russian colleagues. The new sources show these Russian Jewish bureaucrats to be full and competent participants in official Russian politics. This book builds upon the work of the original Russian Jewish historians and recent historiographical developments, and seeks to expose and analyze the broader motivations behind official Jewish policy, which were based on the political vision and policymaking contributions of Russian Jewish bureaucrats. Scholars and advanced students of Russian and Jewish history will find Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds to be an important tool in their research.
Jewish South Jersey (Images of America)
by Allen Meyers Leonard F. VernonInitial Jewish settlements in South Jersey emerged in the mid-19th century and offered a safe haven for people to re-create strong families and practice religion freely, without fear of government-sponsored violence. Looking for work, German Jews first migrated from their community in Philadelphia to Trenton, and then spread south to Wildwood. Although Jewish settlers were mainly known as merchants and shop owners, many towns also boast the development of the Jewish farmer. While agriculture would eventually be abandoned in favor of manufacturing, there were many extremely successful and historically significant Jewish farms that flourished in the south. Now, of course, people of the Hebrew faith are productive players in every walk of life. Jewish South Jersey touches on the many contributions made by Jewish people in the southern part of the Garden State.
Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland
by Erica T. Lehrer Michael MengIn a time of national introspection regarding the country's involvement in the persecution of Jews, Poland has begun to reimagine spaces of and for Jewishness in the Polish landscape, not as a form of nostalgia but as a way to encourage the pluralization of contemporary society. The essays in this book explore issues of the restoration, restitution, memorializing, and tourism that have brought present inhabitants into contact with initiatives to revive Jewish sites. They reveal that an emergent Jewish presence in both urban and rural landscapes exists in conflict and collaboration with other remembered minorities, engaging in complex negotiations with local, regional, national, and international groups and interests. With its emphasis on spaces and built environments, this volume illuminates the role of the material world in the complex encounter with the Jewish past in contemporary Poland.
Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories
by Mike RothschildWith the current rise of antisemitism, this important book looks at how one Jewish family —the Rothschilds—became a lightning rod for the conspiracy theories of the last two centuries, and how those theories are still very much alive today. In 2018 Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took to social media to share her suspicions that the California wildfires were started by &‘space solar generators&’ which were funded by powerful, mysterious backers. Instantly, thousands of people rallied around her, blaming the fires on &“Jewish space lasers&” and, ultimately, the Rothschild family. For more than 200 years, the name "Rothschild" has been synonymous with two things: great wealth, and conspiracy theories about what they're "really doing" with it. Almost from the moment Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his sons emerged from the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt to revolutionize the banking world, the Rothschild family has been the target of myths, hoaxes, bizarre accusations, and constant, virulent antisemitism. Over the years, they have been blamed for everything from the sinking of the Titanic, to causing the Great Depression, and even creating the COVID-19 pandemic. Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories is a deeply researched dive into the history of the conspiracy industry around the Rothschild family - from the "pamphlet wars" of Paris in the 1840s to the dankest pits of the internet today. Journalist and conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild, who isn't related to the family, sorts out myth from reality to find the truth about these conspiracy theories and their spreaders. Who were the Rothschilds? Who are they today? Do they really own $500 trillion and every central bank, in addition to &“controlling the British money supply?&” Is any of this actually true? And why, even as their wealth and influence have waned, do they continue to drive conspiracies and hoaxes?
Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory
by Tabea Alexa LinhardWhat is meant by "Jewish Spain"? The term itself encompasses a series of historical contradictions. No single part of Spain has ever been entirely Jewish. Yet discourses about Jews informed debates on Spanish identity formation long after their 1492 expulsion. The Mediterranean world witnessed a renewed interest in Spanish-speaking Jews in the twentieth century, and it has grappled with shifting attitudes on what it meant to be Jewish and Spanish throughout the century. At the heart of this book are explorations of the contradictions that appear in different forms of cultural memory: literary texts, memoirs, oral histories, biographies, films, and heritage tourism packages. Tabea Alexa Linhard identifies depictions of the difficulties Jews faced in Spain and Northern Morocco in years past as integral to the survival strategies of Spanish Jews, who used them to make sense of the confusing and harrowing circumstances of the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist repression, and World War Two. Jewish Spain takes its place among other works on Muslims, Christians, and Jews by providing a comprehensive analysis of Jewish culture and presence in twentieth-century Spain, reminding us that it is impossible to understand and articulate what Spain was, is, and will be without taking into account both "Muslim Spain" and "Jewish Spain."
The Jewish State (Jewish, Judaism Ser.)
by Theodor HerzlTheodor Herzl's passionate advocacy of the founding of a Jewish state grew out of his conviction that Jews would never be assimilated into the populations in which they lived. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1860, Herzl encountered anti-Semitism when he attended a scientific secondary school. Later, as a newspaper correspondent in Paris, he was shocked and dismayed by the anti-Semitic prejudice surrounding the notorious Dreyfus affair (Herzl said in later years that it was the Dreyfus affair that had made a Zionist out of him). Herzl concluded that the only solution for the majority of Jews would be organized emigration to a state of their own.He discussed the political and historic rationale for such a homeland in this extraordinary and influential book, first published as a pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, in Vienna in 1896. The Jewish question, he wrote, was not a social or religious question but a national question that could be solved only by making it "a political world question to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council." In 1897, at a world congress of Zionism, he declared, "We want to lay the foundation stone for the house which will become the refuge of the Jewish nation. Zionism is the return to Judaism even before the return to the land of Israel."The present volume is a complete and unabridged republication of The Jewish State, reproduced from the edition published by the American Zionist Emergency Council, New York, 1946. Translated by Sylvie D'Avigdor, it includes an introduction by Louis Lipsky, and a biography of Herzl based on the work of Alex Bein. For Jews, scholars, historians, anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th century, The Jewish State is indispensable reading. This edition makes it widely available in an inexpensive high-quality format.
The Jewish State: The Historic Essay that Led to the Creation of the State of Israel
by Theodor HerzlOriginally published in 1896 as Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State has taken its place among the likes of The Communist Manifesto and Common Sense as polemic writings which have changed modern history. Theodor Herzl&’s advocacy for a separate, independent Jewish state as a remedy for centuries of hostility and persecution served as the basis for modern Zionism. And though his vision would not be realized in his lifetime, it did set the course for the creation of the Israel we know today.This edition, based on the original translation to English by Sylvie D&’Avigdor, includes a foreword by Alan Dershowitz, who is among Israel&’s most prominent and most vocal scholars defenders. The Harvard law professor, who has been calledIsrael&’s lead lawyer in the court of public opinion, discusses The Jewish State&’s place in history and its impact today.
Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition (Jewish Culture and Contexts)
by Ra‘anan S. Boustan Oren Kosansky Marina RustowOver the past several decades, the field of Jewish studies has expanded to encompass an unprecedented range of research topics, historical periods, geographic regions, and analytical approaches. Yet there have been few systematic efforts to trace these developments, to consider their implications, and to generate new concepts appropriate to a more inclusive view of Jewish culture and society. Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History brings together scholars in anthropology, history, religious studies, comparative literature, and other fields to chart new directions in Jewish studies across the disciplines.This groundbreaking volume explores forms of Jewish experience that span the period from antiquity to the present and encompass a wide range of textual, ritual, spatial, and visual materials. The essays give full consideration to non-written expressions of ritual performance, artistic production, spoken narrative, and social experience through which Jewish life emerges. More than simply contributing to an appreciation of Jewish diversity, the contributors devote their attention to three key concepts—authority, diaspora, and tradition—that have long been central to the study of Jews and Judaism. Moving beyond inherited approaches and conventional academic boundaries, the volume reconsiders these core concepts, reorienting our understanding of the dynamic relationships between text and practice, and continuity and change in Jewish contexts. More broadly, this volume furthers conversation across the disciplines by using Judaic studies to provoke inquiry into theoretical problems in a range of other areas.
Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (North American Religions #22)
by Laura YaresCharts how changes to Jewish education in the nineteenth century served as a site for the wholescale reimagining of Judaism itselfThe earliest Jewish Sunday schools were female-led, growing from one school in Philadelphia established by Rebecca Gratz in 1838 to an entire system that educated vast numbers of Jewish youth across the country. These schools were modeled on Christian approaches to religious education and aimed to protect Jewish children from Protestant missionaries. But debates soon swirled around the so-called sorry state of “feminized” American Jewish supplemental learning, and the schools were taken over by men within one generation of their creation. It is commonly assumed that the critiques were accurate and that the early Jewish Sunday school was too feminized, saccharine, and dependent on Christian paradigms. Tracing the development of these schools from their inception through the first decade of the twentieth century, this book shows this was not the reality. Jewish Sunday Schools argues that the work of the women who shepherded Jewish education in the early Jewish Sunday school had ramifications far outside the classroom. Indeed, we cannot understand the nineteenth-century American Jewish experience, and how American Judaism sought to sustain itself in an overwhelmingly Protestant context, without looking closely at the development of these precursors to Hebrew School. Jewish Sunday Schools provides an in-depth portrait of a massively understudied movement that acted as a vital means by which American Jews explored and reconciled their religious and national identities.
The Jewish Temple: A Non-Biblical Sourcebook
by Robert HaywardRobert Hayward offers a careful analysis of surviving accounts of the Temple and its service. All the central texts are provided in translation, with a detailed commentary. While descriptions of the Temple and its service are available, discussions of the meaning of these things are less easily found. This study clearly illustrates how the Temple was seen as a meeting point between heaven and earth, its service being an earthly representation of heavenly reality. Jews regarded the Temple service therefore as having significance for the whole created world. The Jewish Temple offers a valuable collection of materials both for those looking for an introduction to the topic and for the scholar interested in grasping the meanings beyond those texts.
Jewish Terrorism in Israel (Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare)
by Ami Pedahzur Arie PerligerAmi Pedahzur and Arie Perliger, world experts on the study of terror and security, propose a theory of violence that contextualizes not only recent acts of terror but also instances of terrorism that stretch back centuries. Beginning with ancient Palestine and its encounters with Jewish terrorism, the authors analyze the social, political, and cultural factors that sponsor extreme violence, proving religious terrorism is not the fault of one faith, but flourishes within any counterculture that adheres to a totalistic ideology.When a totalistic community perceives an external threat, the connectivity of the group and the rhetoric of its leaders bolster the collective mindset of members, who respond with violence. In ancient times, the Jewish sicarii of Judea carried out stealth assassinations against their Roman occupiers. In the mid-twentieth century, to facilitate their independence, Jewish groups committed acts of terror against British soldiers and the Arab population in Palestine. More recently, Yigal Amir, a member of a Jewish terrorist cell, assassinated Yitzhak Rabin to express his opposition to the Oslo Peace Accords. Conducting interviews with former Jewish terrorists, political and spiritual leaders, and law-enforcement officials, and culling information from rare documents and surveys of terrorist networks, Pedahzur and Perliger construct an extensive portrait of terrorist aggression, while also describing the conditions behind the modern rise of zealotry.
Jewish-Transjordanian Relations 1921-1948: Alliance of Bars Sinister
by Yoav GelberYoav Gelber traces the relation between the stae of Israel and the Hashemite dynasty of Transjordan by focusing on the connection between the two regions from as early as 1921 when Abdullah first appeared on the scene, and by using Jewish sources as well as British records.