History

An image of the First Impressions book cover.

Joseph A. Skloot

Uncovers the history of creative adaptation and transformation through a close analysis of Sefer Hasidim.

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Book Cover for "Dynamic Repetition"

Gilad Sharvit

A new understanding of modern Jewish theories of messianism across the disciplines of history, theology, and philosophy.

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Book cover for "Transmitting Jewish History: In Conversation with Sylvie Anne Goldberg"

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and Sylvie Anne Goldberg, Foreword by Alexander Kaye and translation by Benjamin Ivry

Series of interviews that paint a revealing portrait of history and bring together exceptional material on Yerushalmi’s personal and intellectual journeys

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book cover for "Defender of the Faithful: The Life and Thought of Rabbi Levi Yitshak of Berdychiv"

Arthur Green

The life and thought of Levi Yitshak of Berdychiv (1740–1809), one of the most fascinating and colorful Hasidic leaders of his time. 

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Cover of "Inside the Antisemitic Mind: The Language of Jew-Hatred in Contemporary Germany"

Monika Schwarz-Friesel, Jehuda Reinharz

Exploring expressions of antisemitism in Germany today

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Cover of "Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siècle Vienna"

Elana Shapira

Explores the central role of Jewish patrons as shapers of Viennese modernism.

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Cover of "Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880–1918"

Robert Nemes and Daniel Unowsky, editors
Afterward by Hillel J. Kieval

Explores local incidents of antisemitism and antisemitic violence across Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Cover of "Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia: Select Documents, 1772–1914"

ChaeRan Y. Freeze and Jay M. Harris, editors

An astounding compilation of primary source documents dealing with all aspects of Jewish daily life in the Russian empire.

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Cover of "The Faith of Fallen Jews: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History"

David N. Myers and Alexander Kaye, editors

Brings together key writings by one of the most distinguished and renowned Jewish historians of our time.

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Cover of "eligion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941–1964"

Mordechai Altshuler

Unearths the roots of a national awakening among Soviet Jews during World War II and its aftermath.

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Cover of "Jews Welcome Coffee: Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Germany"

Robert Liberles

A lively look at how coffee affected Jewish life in early modern Germany.

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Cover of "Untold Tales of the Hasidim: Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidim"

David Assaf

Reveals the untold tale of shocking events and anomalous figures in the history of Hasidism.

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Cover of "Best of Times, Worst of Times: Memoirs of a Political Education"

Walter Laqueur

A memoir by a highly respected historian and political commentator

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Cover of "Glorious, Accursed Europe: An Essay on Jewish Ambivalence"

Jehuda Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit

An exhaustive study of how Jews imagined the idea of Europe and how it existed in their collective memory from the Enlightenment to the present.

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Cover of "Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky's Ethnographic Expeditions"

Eugene M. Avrutin, Valerii Dymshits, Alexander Lvov, Harriet Murav, Alla Sokolova, editors

From 1912 to 1914, S. An-sky and the photographer Solomon Iudovin gathered materials and took photographs of Jewish daily life in pre-Revolutionary Russia’s Pale of Settlement. Photographing the Jewish Nation offers English-language readers their first look at over 170 extraordinary, recently rediscovered photographs from their expeditions.

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Cover of "The Jews of Białystok during World War II and the Holocaust"

Sara Bender; Yaffa Murciano, translator

“Sara Bender’s book is an outstanding example of what a historian can do to illuminate the real, not the imagined, history of the Shoah. This thorough investigation of both German policies and, mainly, the Jewish reactions to the unexpected onslaught on Jewish lives, does away with preconceptions and historical errors. A most important addition to our knowledge.”—Prof. Yehuda Bauer, Academic Adviser of Yad Vashem

Cover of "Orientalism and the Jews"

Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek Penslar, editors

“The essays in this highly original work take the relationship of the Jews to Orientalism in unexpected directions, thus demanding a thoroughgoing revision of Orientalism itself.” — David Biale, University of California, Davis

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Cover of "Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an Eighteenth-Century Polish Community"

Thomas C. Hubka

“Through the meticulous analysis of a single wooden synagogue, he opens before us the nearly undocumented pre-Hasidic popular culture of Eastern European Jews.” —Michael Steinlauf, Gratz College

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Cover of "Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa"

Gideon Shimoni

The first thorough account of South African Jewish religious, political and educational institutions in relation to the apartheid regime.

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\Cover of "Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia"

ChaeRan Y. Freeze

“Fascinating and very well written, this outstanding book advances our understanding of the history of the Jewish family by a quantum leap.” —David Biale, University of California, Davis

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Cover of "Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany"

Walter Laqueur

“Laqueur has undertaken the daunting task of writing the collective biography of a generation unique in history: the children of the German-Jewish families who fled Germany in the 1930s . . . As someone who shared this experience, I can testify that Laqueur has succeeded admirably.” —Henry A. Kissinger

Cover of "Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi"

Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron and David M. Myers, editors

“This refreshing panorama of the diverse vistas of Jewish history and thought offers students and scholars of Jewish studies valuable new material and fresh insights across a time span from medieval to modern times.” —Shmuel Feiner, Bar Ilan University

Cover of "A House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-Century Central European Jewry"

Jacob Katz

An eminent social historian examines the rise and transformation of Jewish communal leadership in Central Europe. His story of fragmentation and polarization sheds light on the tensions within the Jewish community as it struggled to respond to modernization.

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Cover of "Encounter with the 'Holy Land': Place, Past and Future in American Jewish Culture"

Jeffery Shandler and Beth S. Wegner, editors

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Arthur A. Goren and the editors examine American tourism and travel to pre-state Israel, representations of the holy land in exhibitions and world fairs, and the symbols and public culture of American Zionism.

Cover of "From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism"

Ismar Schorsch

Essays examining the emergence of Jewish scholarship during the period 1818-1919, concentrating on the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement.

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Cover of "Confronting the Nation: Jewish and Western Nationalism"

George L. Mosse

“This collection showcases Mosse’s extraordinary talents as a European intellectual and cultural historian.” —Richard Breitman, American University

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Cover of "Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood"

Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal

Examines Polish and Jewish perceptions of the rapprochement culminating in Polish national insurrection against Czarist Russia in 1863.

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Cover of "The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars"

Yisrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Jehuda Reinharz and Chone Shmeruk, editors

Original essays by distinguished scholars on all aspects of Jewish life in Poland from 1918 to 1939.

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Cover of "Jews in British India: Identity in a Colonial Era"

Joan G. Roland

Focusing primarily on the Bene Israel and Baghdadis in the late 19th and 20th centuries, Joan Roland describes how identities begun under the Indian caste system changed with British colonial rule, and then how the struggle for Indian independence and the establishment of a Jewish homeland raised even further questions.

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Cover of "Living with Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses"

Jehuda Reinharz

“Essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the contemporary Jewish condition in a world still ridden with antisemitism.” —Jerusalem Post

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Cover of "The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner’s Anti-Semitism"

Jacob Katz

Richard Wagner’s antisemitism considered in the context of his time, place and aspirations rather than in relation to his later appropriation by the Nazis.

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Cover of "The Jewish Response to German Culture: From Enlightenment to the Second World War"

Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schatzberg, editors

“A valuable contribution to the continuing flow of studies of German Jews and their relations with the rest of German society in the last two centuries.”
—American Historical Review

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Cover of "The Jews in Modern France"

Frances Malino and Bernard Wasserstein, editors

“Specialists in both French and Jewish history will welcome this important collection… Most valuable is the essays’ integration of Jewish history within the larger sweep of French history.” —Library Journal

Cover of "The Road to September 1939: Polish Jews, Zionists, and the Yishuv on the Eve of World War II"

Jehuda Reinharz, Yaacov Shavit

How the Zionist movement and the Yishuv actively sought to help Polish and other European Jews in the 1930s

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