Not satisfied by the established roles assigned to them, Jewish women have begun to uncover their history, religion and culture using tradition and memory to inspire and transform their lives.

A classic text on Zionism for the 21st Century. Since its initial publication in 1997, 'Ahad Ha-am: The Zionism of the Future' has become the definitive and standard study of one of Zionism's most towering and influential figures. The republication of this classic text as an e-book is a cause for celebration for students of history, academics and the public. No one knows Ahad Ha-am better or is better suited to deal with the life and thoughts of the...

A thief-turned-saint, killed by an insult. A rabbi burning down his world in order to save it. A man who lost his sanity while trying to fathom the origin of the universe. A beautiful woman battling her brother's and her husband's egos to preserve their family. Stories such as these enliven the pages of the Talmud, the great repository of ancient wisdom that is one of the sacred texts of the Jewish people. Comprised of the Mishnah, the oral law of...

Focusing on a diversely rich selection of writers, the pieces featured in Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative explore the community of Jewish American writers who published their first book after the mid-1980s. It is the first book-length collection of essays on this subject matter with contributions from the leading scholars in the field. The manuscript does not attempt to foreground any one critical...

The Downtown Jews focuses generally on the political culture of the Lower East Side around the turn of the century and more specifically on the thoughts, life, and writings of Abraham Cahan, the editor of the Jewish Daily Forward.

Kosher USA follows the fascinating and surprising journey of kosher food through the modern industrial food system. Drawing on episodes from the lives of the author's own family, it traces how iconic products such as Coca-Cola and Jell-O tried to become kosher; the contentious debates among rabbis over the incorporation of modern science into Jewish law; how Manischewitz wine became the first kosher product to win over non-Jewish consumers (principally...

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization founded and led by people who were themselves immigrants from Eastern Europe, developed an international network to see to the emigration and placement of tens of thousands of European Jews.

Symbolized by a three-hundred-year-old Seder plate, the religious life of Fred Behrend's family had centered largely around Passover and the tale of the Jewish people's exodus from tyranny. When the Nazis came to power, the wide-eyed boy and his family found themselves living a twentieth-century version of that exodus, escaping oppression and persecution in Germany for Cuba and ultimately a life of freedom and happiness in the United States. Behrend's...

World renowned architect Daniel Libeskind (Jewish Museums in Berlin, Copenhagen, San Francisco), prolific scholar James E. Young (The Texture of Memory, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust), museum designer Ralph Appelbaum (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Canadian Museum for Human Rights), visual artist Esther Shalev-Gerz (Hamburg-Harburg Monument Against Fascism) and many other knowledgeable artists, designers, and educators share their thoughts on...

RAVENSBRUCK CONCENTRATION CAMP 1939 - 1945. Seventy-six kilometers north of Berlin is a pastoral setting accessible by a road that winds through a woods of pine trees, with splashes of wild flowers leading down to a lake. There, one can recline on the sandy beach and look across to the medieval town of Furstenberg, or watch local fishermen working from their docks and small boats, old men smoking pipes as they calmly fish for a living, as they have...