This book explores the life and thought of one of the most important but least known figures in early Zionism, Nathan Birnbaum. Now remembered mainly for his coinage of the word "Zionism," Birnbaum was a towering figure in early Jewish nationalism. Because of his unusual intellectual trajectory, however, he has been written out of Jewish history. In the middle of his life, in the depth of World War I, Birnbaum left his venerable position as a secular Jewish nationalist for religious Orthod...

Czernowitz at 100 represents a collection based on the proceedings of a 2008 international conference convened at York University in Toronto. Each chapter looks back at a portion over a long century, one marked with the mass migration of Ashkenazi Jews across the globe, two world wars, the Holocaust, the birth of Israel, and the rise and fall of the Soviet bloc. They assess the achievements and fate of those who participated in the 1908 Yiddish Language Conference that was held at...

1930s Warsaw was a thoroughly cosmopolitan, even swinging city. Larger than Chicago, it was host to a rich Jewish cultural life. It seemed inconceivable that all this was about to be swept away, but then came the dark events of September 1939. As the Nazi invasion of Poland began, a ragtag army calling itself the Jewish Resistance Force fell into shape around the handsome, quick-witted Isaac Zuckerman.Impossibly daring, the JRF held out until the end of the war, by which time fewer...

The New World's earliest Jewish immigrants and their unique, little-known history: A New York Times bestseller from the author of Life at the Dakota.In 1654, twenty-three Jewish families arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) aboard a French privateer. They were the Sephardim, members of a proud orthodox sect that had served as royal advisors and honored professionals under Moorish rule in Spain and Portugal but were then exiled from their homelan...

From the ashes of former Yugoslavia an independent Croatian state has arisen, the fulfillment, in the words of President Franjo Tudjman, of the Croats' "thousand-year-old dream of independence." Yet few countries in Europe have been born amid such bitter controversy and bloodshed: the savage war between pro-independence forces and the Yugoslav army left about one-third of the country in ruins and resulted in the flight of a quarter of a million of the country's Serbian minority.I...

The Life of Flavius Josephus is a compact yet richly strategic autobiography, less a private confession than a public defense of conduct, reputation, and authority. Written as an appendix to his Antiquities of the Jews, it recounts Josephus's priestly lineage, education among Jewish sects, and controversial command in Galilee during the Jewish revolt against Rome. Its style is forensic, self-conscious, and politically alert, blending memoir, apologetic rhetoric, and historiographical corre...

It seems at first commonplace: a group photograph of peasants at harvest time, after hard work well done, resting contentedly with their tools behind the fruits of their labor. But when one finally notices the "crops" scattered in front of the group, what seemed innocent on first view become horrific skulls and bones. Where are we? Who are the people in the photograph, and what are they doing? The starting pointof Jan Tomasz and Irena Grudzinska Gross's Golden Harvest, this haunti...

A POWERFUL, DEEPLY MOVING NARRATIVE OF HOPE REBORNIN THE SHADOW OF DESPAIRFifty years after it was bombed to rubble, Berlin is once again a city in which Jews gather for the Passover seder. Paris and Antwerp have recently emerged as important new centers of Jewish culture. Small but proud Jewish communities are revitalizing the ancient centers of Budapest, Prague, and Amsterdam. These brave, determined Jewish men and women have chosen to settle–or remain–in ...

Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History by Helen Epstein (106,000 words)A sequel to the groundbreaking Children of the Holocaust, Where She Came From is a daughter’s memoir of her mother’s family. Drawing on her journalistic training, Helen Epstein demonstrates how documentary research can unearth family history and bridge the historical chasm of the Shoah. This book is at once a memoir, a family history and a social history of Ce...

A life of one of Israel's greatest heroes, as seen through his daughter's eyesMoshe Dayan was one of the greatest military leaders in Israel's short history. A child of the first kibbutz movement in British Palestine, he went on to lead Israel to victory in the 1948 War of Independence and to liberate Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. Dayan was not only a soldier but a politician, an archaeologist, and a larger-than-life figure who helped shape the state of Israel....

Romance and terror, light and shadow, replicas and originals, hover side by side, seeking reconciliation, while within me there is a sense of awe and a silent refrain: I am here, at last I am here; and it is far more beautiful than I had imagined. And far more devastating. Yet, somehow, never have I felt so much at peace.In the twenty-five years since it was published, Jewels and Ashes has become a classic, a book that has stood the test of time.Compelled ...

Jerusalem is a sweeping, epic graphic novel that follows a single family—three generations and fifteen very different people—as they are swept up in chaos, war, and nation-making from 1940-1948. Faith, family, and politics are the heady mix that fuel this ambitious, cinematic graphic novel.With Jerusalem, author-filmmaker Boaz Yakin turns his finely-honed storytelling skills to a topic near to his heart: Yakin's family lived in Palestine during this period and was...