Jewish History

The fighting between the Romans and Jews in the first century CE, brought about some of the most important events in Jewish history. The Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, a disaster that would eventually prove both permanent and catastrophic since it was never rebuilt.

Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how two rival families participated in an economic boom that opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil at their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.

A compelling account of the four-thousand-year history of a people that spans the globe and transcends the ages. From the ancient and simple faith of a small tribe to a global religion with adherents in every nation, the path of the Jews is traced through countless expulsions and migrations, the great tragedy of the Holocaust, and the joy of founding a homeland in Israel. Putting the struggle of a persecuted people into perspective, Max Dimont asks whether the tragic sufferings of the Jews have actually been the key to their survival, as other nations and races vanished into obscurity.

Growing up, Tony Bernard knew that his father, Henry, had been in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. He was familiar with the tattoo bearing his Auschwitz number-B1224-and the scar resulting from a suicide attempt while in a camp in Blizyn. As an Australian boy growing up on Sydney's Northern Beaches where Henry was a well-respected doctor, Tony simply accepted these facts. Only as a young man, on a trip to Poland with his father, did he begin to uncover the secrets that filled Henry with regret, anguish, and guilt.

“Among the most lucid, authoritative accounts of Jewish culture in the English language. A work of impressive breadth, great intelligence and clarity.” —Steven J. Zipperstein, Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History, Stanford University "Jess Olson guides his readers through four thousand years of Jewish experience, his eye set firmly on the life of the Jewish people today. An “incisive insider” and master teacher, Olson’s A Quick Immersion in Jewish Culture? is a delightful entry point to all things Jewish." —Steven Fine, Churgin Professor of Jewish History...

Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington, D.C. A poor, Yiddish-speaking newcomer navigating a racially segregated and antisemitic America, young Jolson dreamed of becoming a star, and he did. Through Jolson, Bernstein simultaneously breaks open the history and legacy of the cultural sensation The Jazz Singer. Not only was The Jazz Singer the first feature-length film with synchronized music and dialogue, but it was also taboo smashing in its content.

On the cusp of sixty, after a lifetime of supporting the aspirations of others, would-be artist Tina Gabler is feeling a sense of urgency to take her own ambitions seriously and put her creative talents to the test. Temporarily unattached, Tina takes a position with former prime-time news anchor, Peter Bright at his home in the Thousand Islands. Aging and frail, Peter is trying to finish a book about the decline of objectivity in photojournalism—a meticulously documented exposé of iconic but staged photographs that defined “reality” for an increasingly lazy and credulous public that,...

Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a slave labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman, so she went underground.

A young Jewish pianist at Auschwitz, desperate to save her family, is chosen to play at the camp commandant's house. How could she know she would fall in love with the wrong boy?

The long-hidden diary of a young Polish woman's life during the Holocaust, translated for the first time into English. Renia Spiegel was born in 1924 to an upper-middle class Jewish family living in Southeastern Poland, near what was at that time the border with Romania. At the start of 1939, Renia began a diary. By the fall of 1939, Renia and her younger sister, Elizabeth (née Ariana), were staying with their grandparents in Przemysl just as the German and Soviet armies invaded Poland. Cut off from their mother, who was in Warsaw, Renia and her family were plunged into war.

Traditionally, American Jews have been broadly liberal in their political outlook; indeed African-Americans are the only ethnic group more likely to vote Democratic in US elections. Over the past half century, however, attitudes on one topic have stood in sharp contrast to this group's generally progressive stance: support for Israel. Despite Israel's record of militarism, illegal settlements, and human rights violations, American Jews have, stretching back to the 1960s, remained largely steadfast supporters of the Jewish 'homeland'.

El estudio de los evangelios apócrifos - relatos de la vida o dichos de Jesús que no entraron al Nuevo Testamento - es una disciplina popular entre los académicos que llena ya varios estantes de cualquier biblioteca respetable.

This Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical ideas and political theories belonging to one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Arendt's life informed her work exploring the meaning and construction of power, evil, totalitarianism, and direct democracy. Dana Villa explains how Arendt gained world-wide fame with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism, and went on to have a distinguished career as a political theorist and public intellectual.

The Romans, through sheer military strength, turned Judea into a client state. They forced the Jews to submit to Roman law, Roman taxation, and to countenance Roman religion. The Jews of Judea exhibited unbelievable strength in resisting assimilation into Roman Hellenistic culture. Their history of dealing with foreign overlords inspired the Jews to hold out and revolt against the Romans.

Judah Maccabee is no longer a youth, but a great warrior and the unchallenged leader of the Jewish People. He leads his people to victory after victory on the fields of battle and diplomacy, shocking the leaders of the mighty Seleucid Empire. Relentlessly, the armies of the empire are sent to crush the rebellion in Judea. They will do anything to eliminate the Maccabee army and suppress the Jewish faith. But although the Maccabees are massively outnumbered, they have no choice but to overcome their foes. They know that their defeat would be the end of the Jewish People.

In 1925, earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under more than 30 feet of water, so that its residents began to call it the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance. Among them are 14-year-old Molly McHugh.

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus's cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting "Death to Judas!" In this book, Maurice Samuels gives listeners new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus's early life in Paris, his promising career as a French officer, the false accusation leading to his imprisonment on Devil's Island, the fight to prove his innocence that divided the French nation, and his life of quiet obscurity after World War I.

Poland, 1940. Moshe and his family flee their hometown of Warsaw in a desperate bid for survival as Nazi forces advance on the city. Hiding under false identities, they hope to wait out the end of the war, which must surely be near. But nowhere is truly safe for Poland’s Jews, and soon Moshe and his brother find themselves en route to Auschwitz, from where no one returns. Separated from the rest of their family, they hold on to each other with everything they have.

As a young adult in wartime Vienna, Georg Rauch helped his mother hide dozens of Jews from the Nazis behind false walls in their top-floor apartment and arrange for their safe transport out of the country. His family was among the few who worked underground to resist Nazi rule. Then came the day he was shipped out to fight on the eastern front as part of the German infantry—in spite of his having confessed his own Jewish ancestry.

He's been called "America's greatest living tailor" and "the most interesting man in the world." Now, for the first time, Holocaust survivor Martin Greenfield tells his whole, incredible life story. Taken from his Czechoslovakian home at age 15 and transported to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz with his family, Greenfield came face-to-face with "Angel of Death" Dr. Joseph Mengele and was divided forever from his parents, sisters, and baby brother. In haunting, powerful prose, Greenfield remembers his desperation and fear as a teenager alone in the death camp.