Jewish Studies

In The Formation of the Hebrew Bible David Carr rethinks both the methods and historical orientation points for research into the growth of the Hebrew Bible into its present form. Building on his prior work, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart (Oxford,...

In the second volume of his classic exploration of the Spanish-Jewish community, Baer covers such major historical events as the Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. This work examines the effect of church policy on the Jewish...

The words 'hasid' and 'hasidism' have become so familiar to people interested in the Jewish world that little thought is given to understanding exactly what hasidism is or considering its spiritual and social consequences. What, for example, are...

As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict escalates, a dangerous illusion persists that the American Jewish community speaks with a single voice, expressing universal, uncritical support for the policies of the Sharon government. This appearance of unanimity...

First published in 1938, Jacob Rader Marcus's The Jews in The Medieval World has remained an indispensable resource for its comprehensive view of Jewish historical experience from late antiquity through the early modern period, viewed through primary...

Not in the Heavens traces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries...

The first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern worldFor all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the...

In The Jewish Bible: A Material History, David Stern explores the Jewish Bible as a material object-the Bibles that Jews have actually held in their hands-from its beginnings in the Ancient Near Eastern world through to the Middle Ages to the present...

Every religious community has been affected by the "sexual revolution". The conflict between contemporary attitudes and traditional practices has led to major divisions and controversies, particularly when focused on issues such as homosexuality. This...

Reaching from biblical times to the present day, Esther Benbassa's prize-winning exploration of Jewish identity is both epic and comprehensive. She shows how in the Jewish world, the representation and ritualization of suffering have shaped the history...

This innovative collection of essays on the upsurge of antisemitism across Europe in the decades around 1900 shifts the focus away from intellectuals and well-known incidents to less-familiar events, actors, and locations, including smaller towns and...

In medieval Europe, the much larger Christian population regarded Jews as their inferiors, but how did both Christians and Jews feel about those who were marginalised within the Ashkenazi Jewish community? In On the Margins of a Minority: Leprosy,...

To gain an accurate view of medieval Judaism, one must look through the eyes of Jews and their contemporaries. First published in 1938, Jacob Rader Marcus's classic source book on medieval Judaism provides the documents and historical narratives which...

In this, his sequel to the best-selling The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning (over 350,000 copies sold), Rabbi Lamm helps mourners not just get through their grief, but also grow through it. He gently steers mourners on the path that allows their sorrow...

Superman is the original superhero, an American icon, and arguably the most famous character in the world--and he's Jewish! Introduced in June 1938, the Man of Steel was created by two Jewish teens, Jerry Siegel, the son of immigrants from Eastern...

Jews in America are in a period of unprecedented status and impact, but for many their identity as Jews--religiously, historically, culturally--is increasingly complicated. Many are becoming Jews without Judaism. It appears success and acceptance will...

Ben-Zion Gold's memoir brings to life the world of a million Jews in pre-World War II Poland who were later destroyed by the Nazis. Warmly recalling the relationships, rituals, observances, and celebrations, Gold evokes the sense of family and faith that...

The diagnosis of Jewish self-hatred has become almost a commonplace in contemporary cultural and political debates, but the concept's origins are not widely appreciated. In its modern form, it received its earliest and fullest expression in Theodor...

In the late seventeenth century, France prided itself for its rationality and scientific achievements. Yet it was then that Raphael Levy, a French Jew, was convicted, tortured, and executed for an act he did not commit, a fiction deriving from medieval...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781956381016Author Shalom PollackFormat PaperbackPage Count 216Imprint Mazo PublishersPublisher Mazo PublishersWeight(grams) 308gDimensions(mm) 234mm *...

The ancient Israelites believed things that the writers of the Bible wanted them to forget: myths and legends from a pre-biblical world that the new monotheist order needed to bury, hide, or reinterpret. Ancient Israel was rich in such literary...

How Judaism and food are intertwined Judaism is a religion that is enthusiastic about food. Jewish holidays are inevitably celebrated through eating particular foods, or around fasting and then eating particular foods. Through fasting, feasting,...

There is a Moroccan saying: A market without Jews is like bread without salt. Once a thriving community, by the late 1980s, 240,000 Jews had emigrated from Morocco. Today, fewer than 4,000 Jews remain. Despite a centuries-long presence, the Jewish...

Remembering the Holocaust explains why the Holocaust has come to be considered the central event of the 20th century, and what this means. Presenting Jeffrey Alexander's controversial essay that, in the words of Geoffrey Hartman, has already become a...

No longer confined to traditional institutions devoted to Talmudic studies, havruta work, or the practice of students studying materials in pairs, has become a relatively widespread phenomenon across denominational and educational settings of Jewish...

In a work of scholarship both erudite and funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organising his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy...

In this unforgettable and "essential feminist memoir of women's lives" (Sarah Wildman, author of Paper Love) the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection unearths her mother's hidden past in in Nazi-occupied Austria.To Julie Metz, her...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780983182016Author STEPHEN HELLMANNFormat PaperbackPage Count 374Imprint LEXICON BOOKSPublisher LEXICON BOOKSWeight(grams) 500g

The renewed and growing interest in ethical wills today speaks to the attraction they have to people who want to reflect on the deeper meaning of their own lives and share what they have learned with those they love. These very personal documents, with...

Reveals the forgotten history of Baghdadi Jews' journey into India through the stories of four generations of Jewish women. An invaluable cultural document shaped from personal experience, Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames explores the fascinating social...

Most scholars since World War Two have assumed that composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) maintained a strong attachment to Judaism throughout his lifetime. As these commentators have rightly noted, Mendelssohn was born Jewish and did not...

Sa'adyah Gaon was an outstanding tenth-century Jewish thinker-a prominent rabbi, philosopher, and exegete. He was a pioneer in the fields in which he toiled, and was an inspiration and basis for later Jewish writing in all these areas. The last major...

Via a participant-observer approach, Synagogue Life analyzes the three essential dimensions of synagogue life: the houses of prayer, study, and assembly. In each Heilman documents the rich detail of the synagogue experience while articulating the social...

2023 Reference Book of the Year from the Academy of Parish Clergy Throughout our history, Jews have traditionally responded to our trials with hope, psychologist David Arnow says, because we have had ready access to Judaism's abundant reservoir of hope. ...

Autobiographical texts are rare in the Sephardi world. Gabriel Arie's writings provide a special perspective on the political, economic, and cultural changes undergone by the Eastern Sephardi community in the decades before its dissolution, in regions...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781580232531Author Ron WolfsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 384Imprint Jewish Lights PublishingPublisher Jewish Lights PublishingWeight(grams) 1g

Eliezer Gruenbaum (1908-1948) was a Polish Jew denounced for serving as a Kapo while interned at Auschwitz. He was the communist son of Itzhak Gruenbaum, the most prominent secular leader of interwar Polish Jewry who later became the chairman of the...

The 19th century neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen has provided significant underpinnings for understanding Judaism as a religion with a rational and universal character, as a religion of hope for the future. The eight essays selected for Reason...

The vast majority of intellectual, religious, and national developments in modern Judaism revolve around the central idea of 'Jewish culture'. This book is the first synoptic view of these developments that organises and relates them from this vantage...

David didn't defeat Goliath with a tennis racket.In The Wrong Jew, author Hesh Kestin doesn't bother with the why of anti-Semitism but instead offers a battle plan for how to defeat those who would destroy the Jews. At a time when Jews are under attack...