An authoritative guide to Jewish studies, reflecting the latest research in a diverse and flourishing fieldJewish studies is a dynamic, interdisciplinary field that draws on the methods of the modern academy—historical research, anthropology, literary studies, philosophy, religious studies, sociology, feminism, and the study of the arts and culture, among others—to illuminate the past and present of Jewish life, thought, and expression. This book provides an entry ...

How people have reimagined the story of the ten plagues of Egypt, from antiquity to our own era of relentless catastrophePeople have been telling and retelling stories about disasters for as long as they have been telling stories. One of the oldest of such stories is the ten plagues in the book of Exodus, the series of disasters that forced the Egyptians to liberate the Israelites. These plagues packed enough catastrophe to fill a series of summer blockbusters—rive...

This accessibly written volume examines the major periods of Jewish history around the world, from the Jews' distant origins in antiquity through the beginnings of the modern period and the emergence of secular culture.Although Jews are a small minority, they have settled in almost every part of the world, developing many different subcultures. They have had an outsized impact on global religion even as they have faced prejudice and persecution, and their history makes for a fascin...

How Yiddish changed to express and memorialize the trauma of the HolocaustThe Holocaust radically altered the way many East European Jews spoke Yiddish. Finding prewar language incapable of describing the imprisonment, death, and dehumanization of the Shoah, prisoners added or reinvented thousands of Yiddish words and phrases to describe their new reality. These crass, witty, and sometimes beautiful Yiddish words – Khurbn Yiddish, or “Yiddish of the Holocaust” – pu...

How Yiddish changed to express and memorialize the trauma of the HolocaustThe Holocaust radically altered the way many East European Jews spoke Yiddish. Finding prewar language incapable of describing the imprisonment, death, and dehumanization of the Shoah, prisoners added or reinvented thousands of Yiddish words and phrases to describe their new reality. These crass, witty, and sometimes beautiful Yiddish words – Khurbn Yiddish, or “Yiddish of the Holocaust” – pu...

The first major history of the scholarly quest to answer the question of Jewish originsThe Jews have one of the longest continuously recorded histories of any people in the world, but what do we actually know about their origins? While many think the answer to this question can be found in the Bible, others look to archaeology or genetics. Some skeptics have even sought to debunk the very idea that the Jews have a common origin. In this book, Steven Weitzman takes ...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has had a long and tortuous relationship with religion over almost the entirety of its existence. As early as 1917, the Bureau began to target religious communities and groups it believed were hotbeds of anti-American politics. Whether these religious communities were pacifist groups that opposed American wars, or religious groups that advocated for white supremacy or direct conflict with the FBI, the Bureau has infiltrated and surveilled religious commu...

Over the centuries, the messianic tradition has provided the language through which modern Jewish philosophers, socialists, and Zionists envisioned a utopian future. Michael L. Morgan, Steven Weitzman, and an international group of leading scholars ask new questions and provide new ways of thinking about this enduring Jewish idea. Using the writings of Gershom Scholem, which ranged over the history of messianic belief and its conflicted role in the Jewish imagination, these essays put asid...

The Jews: A History is a comprehensive and accessible text that explores the religious, cultural, social, and economic diversity of the Jewish people and their faith.Placing Jewish history within its wider cultural context, the book covers a broad time span, stretching from ancient Israel to the modern day. It examines Jewish history across a range of settings, including the ancient Near East, the age of Greek and Roman rule, the medieval realms of Christianity and Islam, ...

Historically, Jews have thought of themselves in terms of the biblical phrase, 'The people that dwells alone.' In the current global environment, this is dangerous. It leads to the isolation of Jews, Judaism and Israel. Too much contemporary Jewish writing is self-referential: Jews talking to Jews, preaching to the converted. Yet Jews cannot cure anti-Semitism alone. We need to persuade Jews and non-Jews alike that Jews, Judaism and Israel have something unique to contribute to the future....

WITH MORE THAN 100 BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUTWho are “the Jews”? Scattered over much of the world throughout most of their three-thousand-year-old history, are they one people or many? How do they resemble and how do they differ from Jews in other places and times? What have their relationships been to the cultures of their neighbors?To address these and similar questions, twenty-three of the finest scholars of our day—archaeologists, cultural historians, lite...