Jewish History

How did it happen? Why did we allow it to happen? Could it happen again? These are the three questions most often asked about the Holocaust, the whirlwind of murder during which the Nazi-led government of the Third Reich systematically slaughtered 6 million Jews, along with millions of victims from other targeted populations Gypsies, Slavs, the mentally retarded, the insane, homosexuals, and the physically deformed. In The Holocaust: An End to Innocence, Rossel examines the Nazi rise to power, the role of prejudice and propaganda in the Holocaust, and echoes of the Holocaust that plagued ...

We are told Joseph became a slave and rose to become King of Egypt to save the country, but most don't know he was the Brother-in-Law of the great Job that Moses wrote about and many don't know how Job became Moses' father making Moses Joseph's nephew. Many scriptures have been ignored until now as we find out how Joseph saved Egypt well after the famed famine and his famous nephew. The capabilities and actions of Joseph, Job, and Moses come together in a special way that is generally hidden so we don't understand what actually happened. This united and intertwined group secured the history...

This book is an account of Rasputin as a healer, equal rights activist and man of God, and why he was so vilified by the aristocracy that their libelous and slanderous rumors became accepted as history. For nearly a century, Grigory Rasputin, spiritual advisor to Russia's last Tsar and Tsarina, has been unjustly maligned simply because history is written by the politically powerful and not by the common man. A wealth of evidence shows that Rasputin was discredited by a fanatically anti-Semitic Russian society, for advocating equal rights for the severely oppressed Jewish population, as well...

Available and annotated for the first time in English, Aron Simanovitch’s memoirs offer an intimate view of Rasputin through the eyes of his dear friend and secretary. Simanovitch reveals Rasputin’s progressive ideas for social and economic reform that outraged the nobility. In the process, he paints a Peyton Place image of early twentieth century Petersburg society, with its gossip, plots and intrigue. But more importantly, his revelations about Rasputin’s humanitarianism lend a three-dimensional view to this controversial figure of Russian history.

Guiding us through a rich tapestry of new discoveries and ancient scriptures, The Jewish Gospels makes the powerful case that our conventional understandings of Jesus and of the origins of Christianity are wrong. In Boyarin's scrupulously detailed account, the coming of the messiah was fully imagined in the ancient Jewish texts. Jesus, moreover, was embraced by many Jews as this person, and his core teachings were not at all a break from Jewish beliefs and teachings. Jesus and his followers, Boyarin reveals, were simply Jewish.

Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish influenced Hollywood? These and other questions are explored in this stunning and rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture, edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert. It starts with the arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants to NYC's Lower East Side and follows Yiddish as it moves into Hollywood.

Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899-1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A brilliant engineer with a ferocious will and combative personality, he oversaw the invention of the world’s first practical nuclear power reactor. In this exciting biography, historian Marc Wortman explores the constant conflict Rickover faced and provoked, tracing how he revolutionized the navy and Cold War strategy.

Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940) was a man of huge paradoxes and contradictions and has been the most misunderstood of all Zionist politicians—a first-rate novelist, a celebrated Russian journalist, and the founder of the branch of Zionism now headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. This biography, the first in English in nearly two decades, undertakes to answer central questions about Jabotinsky as a writer, a political thinker, and a leader. Hillel Halkin sets aside the stereotypes to which Jabotinsky has been reduced by his would-be followers and detractors alike.

A gorgeously told novel in verse written with intimacy and power, Audacity is inspired by the real-life story of Clara Lemlich, a spirited young woman who emigrated from Russia to New York at the turn of the 20th century and fought tenaciously for equal rights. Bucking the norms of both her traditional Jewish family and societal conventions, Clara refuses to accept substandard working conditions in the factories on Manhattan's Lower East Side. For years, Clara devotes herself to the labor fight, speaking up for those who suffer in silence.

Part activist memoir, part crash course in Jewish and Palestinian history, Genocide Bad dismantles Zionist propaganda and maps a course towards collective liberation in ten unapologetic essays.

Nicole Krauss' first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and her short fiction has been collected in Best American Short Stories. Now The History of Love proves Krauss is among our finest and freshest literary voices.

The Apostle Paul famously wrote that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then the Christian faith is in vain. In this volume, Dr. Jeffrey Morrow examines the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection. Dr. Morrow's thorough investigation examines the arguments and weighs the evidence, demonstrating that the Christian confession of Jesus' resurrection best explains the known historical facts. The main narrative is accessible to a wide lay audience. The book includes detailed endnotes and bibliography for the interested scholar. “Dr. Jeffrey Morrow is a brilliant theologian whose work on ...

In 1929, the Soviet government set aside a sparsely populated area in the Soviet Far East for settlement by Jews. The place was called Birobidzhan. The idea of an autonomous Jewish region was championed by Jewish Communists, Yiddishists, and intellectuals, who envisioned a haven of post-oppression Jewish culture. By the mid-1930s tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, as well as about a thousand Jews from abroad, had moved there.

One was a tough junkman's son, the other a cosseted mama's boy, but they dreamed the same mighty dream: that the right movies could make a profit and change both the culture and individual lives. Sharing a religion and an evangelical zeal for film, Louis B. Mayer (1884-1957) and Irving Thalberg (1899-1936) were unlikely partners in one of the most significant collaborations in movie history. Over the course of their decade-long relationship, as key players at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and major players in Hollywood, they joined forces in redefining and mastering the template for the film industry.

Duvid and Chaya Davidovitz are a proud Jerusalemite couple, raising their large brood in the traditions of old. Now their oldest daughter, Malka’la, is of marriageable age, and they don’t have any means of providing for her – not a wedding, not a trousseau, not a dirah. Both Duvid and Chaya want the coveted shidduch to happen, even if it means going out on unfamiliar paths in a quest to provide for her. But how far can they stretch themselves for Malka’la before tragedy strikes their home? And where can they turn for help when their entire world seems to be disintegrating around ...

In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.

Even though he escaped the gas chambers, he was never truly free. In occupied Poland, there are whispers of a terrifying darkness in the northern forests. When a young Lodzi Ashstein learns the horrifying truth about the Treblinka extermination camp, he is kidnapped and tormented by a senior SS officer, Janich Heiss. After a prisoner uprising, Heiss disappears into the woods and Lodzi is left with nothing but his nightmares and the eternal scars of a survivor. More than 70 years later, Heiss has been mysteriously murdered, and Lodzi is accused of a crime of revenge. When attorney Thaddeus ...

Laurence Rees has spent 25 years meeting the survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. In this sweeping history, he combines this testimony with the latest academic research to investigate how history's greatest crime was possible. Rees argues that while hatred of the Jews was at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, we cannot fully understand the Holocaust without considering Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well.

This short, informative and elegant introduction depicts for you the sweeping development of Judaism from Biblical times to the present day. This wonderful book helps seekers and students of all ages and all faiths to better understand all of the diverse components and contributions of Judaism throughout the ages.

Ethiopia, circa 960 A.D. Judith, the queen of a small Hebrew mountain kingdom, sets out on a mission to destroy the Aksumite Empire. For centuries, descendants of Israelite tribes have peacefully existed in their isolated holdfasts in the Ethiopian Highlands. But when a poisonous arrow kills her beloved father, King Gideon, the young Queen Judith declares war. There are only two possible outcomes for her people: victory or destruction. To strengthen her position, Judith promises to marry Sahama, an ambitious exiled prince. Can she trust this handsome but dangerous stranger? Or should she ...