"This innovative, soundly researched work . . . has filled a long-standing need for the story of Greek Jewry to be told fully." — Jewish Book WorldK. E. Fleming's Greece—a Jewish History is the first comprehensive English-language history of Greek Jews, and the only history that includes material on their diaspora in Israel and the United States. The book tells the story of a people who for the most part no longer exist and whose identity is a para...

A vivid and eminently readable story of Jewish history covering 4,000 years, and including extensive illustrations and historical photographsHoward Fast, the bestselling author of Spartacus, tells the sweeping story of the Jewish people and Judaism over four millennia, from their nomadic beginnings and the rise of Moses, to the kings David and Solomon, through the Diaspora and the unthinkable horror of the Holocaust, culminating in the founding of the stat...

“This is by far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, and also the best at explaining its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development.”―Antony Beevor, bestselling author of StalingradLaurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Now, he combines their never-before-seen eyewitness testimony with the latest academic research to create a uniquely accessible and aut...

A magisterial history, ranging from antiquity to the present, that reveals anti-Judaism to be a mode of thought deeply embedded in the Western tradition.There is a widespread tendency to regard anti-Judaism – whether expressed in a casual remark or implemented through pogrom or extermination campaign – as somehow exceptional: an unfortunate indicator of personal prejudice or the shocking outcome of an extremist ideology married to power.But, as David Nirenberg argues in thi...

The "remarkable" story of the grass-roots movement that freed millions of Jews from the Soviet Union ( The Plain Dealer).At the end of World War II, nearly three million Jews were trapped inside the USSR. They lived a paradox—unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone is the astonishing and inspiring story of their rescue.Journalist Gal Beckerman draws on newly released Soviet gov...

At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as...

This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people. Probing more than eight centuries of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, Seth Schwartz reaches some startling conclusions--foremost among them that the Christianization of the Roman Empire generated the most fundamental features of medieval and modern Jewish life.Schwartz begins by arguing that the distinctiveness of Ju...

'I am Josephus...I myself fought against the Romans' In August of AD 70 the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by Roman forces after a six-month siege. This was the disastrous outcome of a Jewish revolt against Roman domination which began in AD 66 with some early success, but soon became mired in factional conflict. The war ended in the destruction of the famous Jewish Temple (rebuilt by Herod the Great a century before). The remarkable story of the war is narrated by an eye-witnes...

Covering topical issues concerning the nature of the Israeli state, this engaging work presents essays that combine a variety of comparative schemes, both internal to Jewish civilization and extending throughout the world, such as:modern Jewish society, politics and culturehistorical consciousness in the twentieth centurycolonialism, anti-colonialism and postcolonial state-building.With its open-ended, co...

The menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum, has traversed millennia as a living symbol of Judaism and the Jewish people. Naturally, it did not pass through the ages unaltered. The Menorah explores the cultural and intellectual history of the Western world’s oldest continuously used religious symbol. This meticulously researched yet deeply personal history explains how the menorah illuminates the great changes and continuities in Jewish culture, from biblical times to modern Israe...

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has attracted the interest of politicians and academicians, and generated extensive research, since the tract first appeared in the early twentieth century. Despite having repeatedly been discredited as a historical document, and in spite of the fact that it served as an inspiration for Hitler’s antisemitism and the Holocaust, it continues, even in our time, to be influential.Exploring the Protocols’ successful dissemination and impact around the...

The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia (OPE) was a philanthropic organization, the oldest Jewish organization in Russia. Founded by a few wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg who wanted to improve opportunities for Jewish people in Russia by increasing their access to education and modern values, OPE was secular and nonprofit. The group emphasized the importance of the unity of Jewish culture to help Jews integrate themselves into Russian society by opening, supp...