Studies exploring the history of the German-Jewish male identity from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, across a myriad of societal occupations.Stereotyped as delicate and feeble intellectuals, Jewish men in German-speaking lands in fact developed a rich and complex spectrum of male norms, models, and behaviors. Jewish Masculinities explores conceptions and experiences of masculinity among Jews in Germany from the sixteenth through the late twentieth ce...

Germans into Jews turns to an often overlooked and misunderstood period of German and Jewish history—the years between the world wars. It has been assumed that the Jewish community in Germany was in decline during the Weimar Republic. But, Sharon Gillerman demonstrates that Weimar Jews sought to rejuvenate and reconfigure their community as a means both of strengthening the German nation and of creating a more expansive and autonomous Jewish entity within the German state. These a...

This true story of a revolt at a Nazi death camp, newly updated, is “a memorable and moving saga, full of anger and anguish, a reminder never to forget” (San Francisco Chronicle). On October 14, 1943, six hundred Jews imprisoned in Sobibor, a secret Nazi death camp in eastern Poland, revolted. They killed a dozen SS officers and guards, trampled the barbed wire fences, and raced across an open field filled with anti-tank mines. Against all odds, more than three hundred made it safely into ...

A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe.In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE $60,000 HILARY WESTON WRITERS TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTIONWhat the hell kind of great escape is this? No one escapes!”-L.B. Mayer, on the 1963 filmHe had fifty-seven seconds of screen time in the most lavish POW film Hollywood ever produced. He was blond. A Gestapo agent. Sauntering down the aisles of a speeding train, he speaks in terse German to Richard Attenborough, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum. The film is The Great Escap...

On a winter's day in 1943, 21-year-old Latvian Mischka Danos chanced on a terrible sight - a pit filled with the bodies of Jews killed by the occupying Germans. In order to escape conscription to the Waffen-SS - the authors of such atrocities - Mischka volunteered to go on a student exchange to Germany. He did not then know that he was part Jewish. Whilst in Germany, he narrowly escaped death in the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden. Surviving Hitler's Reich, he became a displaced person in o...

A discussion of pop culture messages about masculinity, their impact on boys, and the benefits of introducing more gender balance to boys lives.When most people think about gender stereotypes and children, they envision princesses, dolls, and pink clothing. Few consider the warriors, muscle-bound action figures, and T-shirts covered in graffiti and skulls that are assumed to signify masculinity.The pop culture environment that surrounds boys introduces them...

In this first Azrieli Foundation anthology, twenty-five women reflect on their experiences of survival – from the heart-stopping fears of hiding to the extreme risks of “passing” as non-Jews, and from the terrors of the Nazi camps to the treacheries of the Soviet Union. This powerful collection, woven together by the common thread of resistance, features a wide variety of narrative styles, including prose, poetry and diary excerpts.

This book describes the clandestine missions that were defining moments in the evolution of the Mossad, including its pursuit of the Black September terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games, its acquisition on the high seas of yellowcake uranium for Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons program, and its role in bringing to justice Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The agency's more questionable deeds are also covered, among them the assassination of civilian scienti...

ARE the narratives of Genesis history or legend? For the modern historian this is no longer an open question; nevertheless it is important to get a clear notion of the bases of this modern position. Contents: I. The Significance And Scope Of The Legends. Criteria For Legend And History. Different Spheres Of Interest. Eye-Witness And Reporter. The Criterion Of Incredibility. Waning Anthropomorphism. Legend Is Poetry. II. The Varieties Of Legends In Genesis. Some Legends Are Faded Myths. Mon...

“Family History of Fear has been in me for years. Along with this secret. From the instant I found out I was not who I thought I was.”Every family has its own history. Many families carry a tragic past. Like the author’s mother, many Poles did not tell their children a complete story of their wartime exploits—of the underground Home Army, the tragedy of the Warsaw Uprising, the civil war against the Communists. Years had to pass before the stories of suffe...

**From an eminent scholar of Yiddish literature and of Jewish history, a bold reconceptualization of the Jewish relationship to power and powerlessness“[A] brilliant analysis. . . certainly a book for our times—courageous, honest, and cogent.” —Jewish Book CouncilPart of the Jewish Encounter series**Taking in everything from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Ruth Wisse offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power. Traditi...