Jewish History

This book describes the life of one of the most mysterious heroes of the Bible. Job was closely related to Moses, lived during the time of Moses, and helped Moses save the Jews. At the same time job was related to a Scythian Prince who would be very important to the survival of the Jews in Egypt. So much of Job's story is missing from the Bible, it makes no sense. This book fills in the details from dozens of ancient texts which confirm everything you didn't know about this important man in the history of mankind. Loved by God, he was tested beyond almost anyone's breaking point and he ...

The Jewish rebellion against Rome was a significant turning point in Jewish history. Although Josephus is known for his divided loyalties in the rebellion, his account is the most detailed record available of the Jewish life and revolt under Roman rule. Born in Jerusalem to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry, Josephus was a first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, hagiographer, and historian.

At the height of World War II, with the Third Reich's final solution in full operation, a small group of Jews who had barely escaped the Nazis did the unthinkable: They went back. Spies now, these men took on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. They Dared Return is their story - a tale of adventure, espionage, love, and revenge.

Despite Israel's determined staying power in a hostile environment, its military might, and the innovation it fosters in businesses globally, the country is more divided than ever. The old guard—socialist secular elites and idealists—are a dying breed, and the state’s democratic foundations are being challenged. A dynamic and exuberant country of nine million, Israel is now largely comprised of native-born Hebrew speakers, and yet any permanent sense of security and normalcy is elusive.

In 1937, the Shwartz family lived a calm life in their small village in Poland. Fifteen-year-old Rachel liked to sing and go out dancing at a local night club, while her older brother David was busy running a farm and raising a family with his wife Hinda. But all that changed when the war reached Butla. First, the Russians came and kicked them out of their house. Then, the Nazis came to cart them off. But the Shwartz family resisted. David decided that no matter what, his family would not be taken captive. Instead, he snuck his family out of their village and into Hungary.

This Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical ideas and political theories belonging to one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Arendt's life informed her work exploring the meaning and construction of power, evil, totalitarianism, and direct democracy. Dana Villa explains how Arendt gained world-wide fame with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism, and went on to have a distinguished career as a political theorist and public intellectual.

Imagine having the entire Jewish people over for dinner—and hosting a raucous, creative, riveting debate about their collective future. Jewish Priorities offers, for the first time, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and genuinely "pan-Jewish" conversation. Encompassing more than sixty top authors from around the Jewish world—Israelis and Diaspora writers; younger influencers and veteran opinion leaders; rabbinic and communal leaders, journalists and scholars, and literary and cultural figures, ranging from secular to ultra-Orthodox—each contributor offers a different priority for the Jewish people.

Based on the acclaimed multi-volume series, City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, Jewish New York reveals the multifaceted world of one of the city's most important ethnic and religious groups. Spanning three centuries, Jewish New York traces the earliest arrival of Jews in New Amsterdam to the recent immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union.

Against enormous odds and in the face of fierce pushback, the Palestine solidarity movement has succeeded in transforming the landscape of American politics. In this book, two key leaders and former staff of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) focus on the important role of anti-Zionist Jewish organizing within the broader Palestine solidarity movement, reflecting on their decade of leadership of JVP and drawing lessons especially relevant to those organizing from a position of solidarity.

The stunning story of the breathtaking journey of nine extraordinary men from Budapest to the New World, what they experienced along their dangerous route, and how they changed America and the world. In a style both personal and historically groundbreaking, acclaimed author Kati Marton (born in Budapest) tells the tale of their youth in Budapest's Golden Age of the early 20th century, their flight, and their lives of extraordinary accomplishment, danger, glamour, and poignancy.

Moses Ben Maimon, frequently called Maimonides, was a medieval philosopher who revolutionized thinking about ethics, reason, and the Jewish Torah through his emphasis on reason and evidence. His works were broadly accepted by the Sephardi Jewish community and spread across the medieval world, reaching the Jewish populations as far as Yemen, and though he lived in the 12th century, Maimonides continues to be one of the most studied scholars of Jewish law, philosophy, and theology.

Alexander Rosenberg was a smart and curious teenager who spoke many languages, and lived a pampered life with his parents in a tranquil Czechoslovakian town. The rise of fascism and Nazi Germany causes his protected existence to collapse, alongside the illusion of secular Jewish assimilation in 1930s Europe. Using their last reserves of wealth and influence to escape extermination, the Rosenbergs go underground to avoid the Gestapo. Eventually exposed, captured, and taken to Buchenwald, the largest concentration camp in Germany, Alexander and his father collaborate to survive one day at a time

In this stirring tale of the last days of the Temple at Jerusalem, robber bands and political infighting set the stage for the Roman destruction of the city in 70 A.D. In the face of overwhelming odds, John of Gamala does his best to save God's Temple, harassing Roman work parties, burning Roman camps, defending Jerusalem during the Roman siege, and even fighting Titus himself in hand-to-hand combat, forging a relationship with the Roman leader that lasts until after the war.

Jason Sommer's father, Jay, is ninety-eight years old and losing his memory. More than seventy years after arriving in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the lives of millions of Jews who were affected by Nazi terror. Observing this loss, Jason vividly recalls the trip to Eastern Europe the two took together in 2001.

In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews-pillars of an embattled community-invested their fortunes in France's cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country's army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. In this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siecle.

Marianne Szegedy-Maszák’s parents, Hanna and Aladár, met and fell in love in Budapest in 1940. He was a rising star in the foreign ministry - a vocal anti-Fascist who was in talks with the Allies when he was arrested and sent to Dachau. She was the granddaughter of Manfred Weiss, the industrialist patriarch of an aristocratic Jewish family that owned factories. Though many in the family had converted to Catholicism decades earlier, when the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944, they were forced into hiding.

The Romans, through sheer military strength, turned Judea into a client state. They forced the Jews to submit to Roman law, Roman taxation, and to countenance Roman religion. The Jews of Judea exhibited unbelievable strength in resisting assimilation into Roman Hellenistic culture. Their history of dealing with foreign overlords inspired the Jews to hold out and revolt against the Romans.

The Jewish sect which ascribed Jesus the title of Messiah was eventually transformed into a non-Jewish movement wholly separated from its Jewish context. The transformation was not instantaneous, and there were deviating or at the least parallel streams of Jesus supporters early on. A critical mistake which has been made, in my opinion, is the assumption that the Jesus movement was uniform even among its early Jewish followers. Analyzing the original movement(s) in the first centuries of the Common Era can reveal how the schism between Judaism and Christianity evolved.

The Land of Eighteen Dreams is an episodic novel made up of chronologically-connected stories, each of which is self-contained. All are in the form of a narrative by Lily Siegel, who uses each incident to describe her relationship with her grandfather, Benjamin Kagan. Benjamin describes his life and, in doing so, simultaneously offers the wider story of American Jews over the last century, and distills the inherited folk wisdom of Eastern European Jews.

Relli, a Jewish girl in Poland, was denied a normal childhood. When Relli was just a baby, the Nazis occupied Poland and she, together with her parents, were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, a way station before death. Her parents correctly assessed the new situation and decided to act heroically in order to save their only child. They succeeded in smuggling her out of the Ghetto and entrusted her to a Gentile Polish couple who agreed to hide her for the duration of the war under a false identity.