Your Search Results(showing 1135)

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      January 2025

      Out of the depths

      The first collection of Holocaust songs

      by Joseph Toltz, Anna Boucher

      Available for the first time in English translation, this collection of songs is a powerful memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. In June 1945, before the full devastation of the Holocaust had emerged, a team of researchers embarked on a remarkable project. While documenting the experiences of Jewish refugees, they began to collect songs composed and sung in the Nazi camps and ghettos. The resulting book, Mima'amakim (Out of the depths), was published in a short run of 500 copies. Today, only a handful survive. Out of the depths: The first collection of Holocaust songs presents the contents of this extraordinary document for a new generation of readers. Based on a copy of Mima'amakim discovered in 2013, it contains not only the songs' melodies and lyrics, the latter in a new translation by Joseph Toltz, but also short biographies of the composers, drawn from painstaking original research. Introductory essays provide historical and musicological background, deepening our knowledge of this terrible event and the creative means by which the Jewish people responded to and endured it. Described by the original editor, Yehuda Eismann, as a 'memorial stone for Polish Jewry', the songbook is a timeless document of a people's despair, hope and strength.

    • Trusted Partner
      November 2018

      Jewish Refugees in Shanghai 1933–1947

      A Selection of Documents

      by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      February 2025

      An unorthodox history

      British Jews since 1945

      by Gavin Schaffer

      A bold, new history of British Jewish life since the Second World War. Historian Gavin Schaffer wrestles Jewish history away from the question of what others have thought about Jews, focusing instead on the experiences of Jewish people themselves. Exploring the complexities of inclusion and exclusion, he shines a light on groups that have been marginalised within Jewish history and culture, such as queer Jews, Jews married to non-Jews, Israel-critical Jews and even Messianic Jews, while offering a fresh look at Jewish activism, Jewish religiosity and Zionism. Weaving these stories together, Schaffer argues that there are good reasons to consider Jewish Britons as a unitary whole, even as debates rage about who is entitled to call themselves a Jew. Challenging the idea that British Jewish life is in terminal decline. An unorthodox history demonstrates that Jewish Britain is thriving and that Jewishness is deeply embedded in the country's history and culture.

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      January 2013

      The Jews in western Europe, 1400–1600

      by John Edwards

      As European politics, society, economy and religion underwent epoch-making changes between 1400 and 1600, the treatment of Europe's Jews by the non-Jewish majority was, then as in later periods, a symptom of social problems and tensions in the Continent as a whole. Through a broad-ranging collection of documents, John Edwards sets out to present a vivid picture of the Jewish presence in European life during this vital and turbulent period. Subjects covered include the Jews' own economic presence and culture, social relations between Jews and Christians, the policies and actions of Christian authorities in Church and State. He also draws upon original source material to convey ordinary people's prejudices about Jews, including myths about Jewish 'devilishness', money-grabbing, and 'ritual murder' of Christian children. Full introductory and explanatory material makes accessible the historical context of the subject and highlights the insights offered by the documents as well as the pitfalls to be avoided in this area of historical enquiry. This volume aims to provide a coherent working collection of texts for lecturers, teachers and students who wish to understand the experience of Jewish Europeans in this period.

    • Trusted Partner
      December 2023

      Hatred of Jews

      A never-ending story?

      by Sebastian Voigt

      — An overall presentation of the history of anti-Semitism based on the latest research — A necessary book that helps to recognise (and combat) anti-Jewish attitudes and patterns of behaviour even in the present day The Hamas attack on Israel is further aggravating the situation in the Middle East, and will continue to intensify anti-Semitism. And this plague, combined with Israel’s denied right to exist; the attacks in Brussels and Paris; the aggressive violence against everything Jewish in the Islamic world – is as dangerous as ever. Hatred of the Jews is old, vast and strong. The anamnesis began 2500 years ago in the Middle Ages, and came to head in the 18th and 19th centuries. It culminated ideologically in the Wannsee Conference, and became murderous in Auschwitz. Historian Sebastian Voigt provides a dense history of the hatred of the Jews – and combines it with a passionate call for courageous resistance.

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      April 2024

      Tracking the Jews

      Ecumenical Protestants, conversion, and the Holocaust

      by Carolyn Sanzenbacher

      This book sheds light on an unprecedented Protestant conversion initiative for the global evangelisation of Jews. Founded in 1929, the International Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews (ICCAJ) aimed to bring Jewish people to their 'spiritual destiny', a task it saw as both benevolent and essential for a harmonious society. By the time of Hitler's rise to power it was active in thirty-two countries, educating Protestant churches on the right Christian attitude towards Jews and antisemitism. Reconstructing the activities of the ICCAJ in the years before, during and immediately after the Holocaust, Tracking the Jews reveals how ideas disseminated through the organisation's discourse - 'Jewish problem', 'Jewish influence', 'Judaising threat', 'eternal Jew' - were used to rationalise, justify, explain or advance a number of deeply troubling policies. They were, for vastly different reasons, consciously used elements of argumentation in both Protestant conversionary discourse and Nazi antisemitic ideology.

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      September 2024

      My Voice: Danny Herman

      by Danny Herman

      Danny Herman was born in 1935 in Königsberg in East Prussia. As the Nazis were rounding up Jews, Danny's father managed to escape to England in July 1939. He travelled to the Kitchener Camp in Kent, which helped refugees secure visas for safer places. Danny and his mother arrived in England just three days before war was declared in 1939, and his father was later sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man. Danny went on to become a successful runner, competing in many international athletics events and volunteering in many roles, including at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Danny's detailed memories of arriving in England, initially at the seaside in Kent and then moving to Manchester, create a vivid picture of life-changing events as experienced by a young child. Danny's book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

    • Trusted Partner
      Medieval history
      November 2011

      Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages

      A quiet revolution

      by Simha Goldin

      Goldin's study explores the relationships between men and women within Jewish society living in Germany, northern France and England among the Christian population over a period of some 350 years. Looking at original Hebrew sources to conduct a social analysis, he takes us from the middle of the tenth century until the middle of the second half of the fourteenth century, when the Christian population had expelled the Jews from almost all of the places they were living. Particularly fascinating are the attitudes towards women, as well as their changes in social status. By examining the factors involved in these issues, including views of the leadership, economic influences, internal power politics and gender struggles, Goldin's book provides a greater understanding of the functioning of these communities. This volume will be of great interest to historians of medieval Europe, gender and religion.

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      February 2023

      No masters but God

      Portraits of anarcho-Judaism

      by Hayyim Rothman

      The forgotten legacy of religious Jewish anarchism, and the adventures and ideas of its key figures, finally comes to light in this book. Set in the decades surrounding both world wars, No masters but God identifies a loosely connected group of rabbis and traditionalist thinkers who explicitly appealed to anarchist ideas in articulating the meaning of the Torah, traditional practice, Jewish life and the mission of modern Jewry. Full of archival discoveries and first translations from Yiddish and Hebrew, it explores anarcho-Judaism in its variety through the works of Yaakov Meir Zalkind, Yitshak Nahman Steinberg, Yehudah Leyb Don-Yahiya, Avraham Yehudah Heyn, Natan Hofshi, Shmuel Alexandrov, Yehudah Ashlag and Aaron Shmuel Tamaret. With this ground-breaking account, Hayyim Rothman traces a complicated story about the modern entanglement of religion and anarchism, pacifism and Zionism, prophetic anti-authoritarianism and mystical antinomianism.

    • Trusted Partner
      March 2025

      Leó Szilárd

      The man behind the bomb

      by Arne Molfenter

      Leó Szilárd is a brilliant physicist - although he originally began his studies in Berlin without even being enrolled. On long walks home from university, he discusses scientific issues of all kinds with his professor and neighbour Albert Einstein. Szilárd, who is of Jewish descent, flees to London in 1933. His goal is to prevent the Germans from being the first to have nuclear weapons. With Albert Einstein and other scientists, he puts himself at the service of the American government to advance the development of an atomic bomb for defence purposes. When he realises that the Manhattan Project is not about defence, but about an attack on Japan, he is horrified. Author and journalist Arne Molfenter traces the life of this brilliant man whose invention was used completely against his intentions. It is an exciting book about a scientist whose research influenced the course of history.

    • Trusted Partner
      The Arts
      February 2025

      Passage works

      Ruth Beckermann’s art

      by Patricia Allmer, John Sears

      Passage Works is the first book-length English language critical analysis of the transdisciplinary work of the Austrian film-maker, writer, and artist Ruth Beckermann (b. 1952, Vienna). Beckermann's works interrogate identity and geography as formations of the intersections between the past and the contemporary. Taking as her central topics Austria and its history and politics, her own identity as a Jewish woman, and the contemporary global geopolitics of migration and displacement, Beckermann develops wider meditations in film, art, and writing on the persistence of European memory, and the meanings of Europe itself; on borders, migrations, and identities; on memories, traumas, and traditions; on the image as marker of presence and absence, repository of the traces of historical violence; and on the passage as metaphor for a range of physical, psychological, and ideological movements defining the complexities of contemporary cosmopolitan identities.

    • Trusted Partner
      October 2020

      Stop the Hatred!

      A Pamphlet Against Antisemitism

      by Sigmund Gottlieb

      The increasing hostility that Jews experience can no longer be explained away with fine rhetoric. Antisemitism is taking hold in a menacing way at the heart of society. Sigmund Gottlieb addresses his wake-up call to the population at large: stand up – not only against right-wing extremist violence and radical Islamism, but also against hatred in the social media, against unfair criticism of the state of Israel, against anti-Jewish abusive language in the school playground, against trivializing reports in the media and day-to-day indifference. The resurgent talk of ‘packed suitcases’ in Jewish communities is a moral indictment. And it is intolerable.

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      August 2022

      Britain and its internal others, 1750–1800

      Under rule of law

      by Dana Rabin

      The rule of law, an ideology of equality and universality that justified Britain's eighteenth-century imperial claims, was the product not of abstract principles but imperial contact. As the Empire expanded, encompassing greater religious, ethnic and racial diversity, the law paradoxically contained and maintained these very differences. This book revisits six notorious incidents that occasioned vigorous debate in London's courtrooms, streets and presses: the Jewish Naturalization Act and the Elizabeth Canning case (1753-54); the Somerset Case (1771-72); the Gordon Riots (1780); the mutinies of 1797; and Union with Ireland (1800). Each of these cases adjudicated the presence of outsiders in London - from Jews and Gypsies to Africans and Catholics. The demands of these internal others to equality before the law drew them into the legal system, challenging longstanding notions of English identity and exposing contradictions in the rule of law.

    • Trusted Partner
      Literature & Literary Studies
      September 2025

      Love and anti-Judaism in medieval English romance

      Typologies of violence and desire

      by Hope Doherty-Harrison

      Love and anti-Judaism is a new examination of medieval romance for the questions it poses of the most significant events in Christian history. Providing new readings of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gowther and Sir Amadace, the book argues that romance explores depictions of love-and the sacrifices it may necessitate-in the Hebrew Bible, especially where they do not easily fit into interpretations asserting that this history must prefigure Christ and the crucifixion. An examination of anti-Judaism as a discourse of violence and desire that could be turned inwardly to expose the irresolution in Christianity, this book will provoke new investigations into the religious crises of medieval romance.

    • Trusted Partner
    • Trusted Partner
      Political oppression & persecution
      July 2014

      Co-memory and melancholia

      Israelis memorialising the Palestinian Nakba

      by Ronit Lentin

      The 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel also resulted in the destruction of Palestinian society when some 80 per cent of the Palestinians who lived in the major part of Palestine upon which Israel was established became refugees. Israelis call the 1948 war their 'War of Independence' and the Palestinians their 'Nakba', or catastrophe. After many years of Nakba denial, land appropriation, political discrimination against the Palestinians within Israel and the denial of rights to Palestinian refugees, in recent years the Nakba is beginning to penetrate Israeli public discourse. This book, available at last in paperback, explores the construction of collective memory in Israeli society, where the memory of the trauma of the Holocaust and of Israel's war dead competes with the memory claims of the dispossessed Palestinians. Against a background of the Israeli resistance movement, Lentin's central argument is that co-memorating the Nakba by Israeli Jews is motivated by an unresolved melancholia about the disappearance of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinians, a melancholia that shifts mourning from the lost object to the grieving subject. Lentin theorises Nakba co-memory as a politics of resistance, counterpoising co-memorative practices by internally displaced Israeli Palestinians with Israeli Jewish discourses of the Palestinian right of return, and questions whether return narratives by Israeli Jews, courageous as they may seem, are ultimately about Israeli Jewish self-healing rather than justice for Palestine.

    • Trusted Partner
      Fiction

      El baile de la abuela muerta (Dead grandma's dance)

      by Elina Malamud

      A hundred years of history from two branches of a Jewish family, set against the backdrop of Tsarist Russia, from the early 19th century to their migration to Argentina in the early 20th century. It's not just the tradition of the Jews from Eastern Europe, but a vivid portrayal of the characters that inhabited this complex and diverse society of declining nobility, gypsies, and Bolsheviks. Clandestine loves, uprisings, and persecutions are described with nostalgic detail, alongside an unexpected display of Hasidic humor and magic.

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      May 2025

      Statelessness after Arendt

      European refugees in China and the Pacific during the Second World War

      by Kolleen Guy, Jay Winter

      This book is a study of statelessness in the period of the Second World War. It breaks new ground by focusing not on Europe, but on the Asian and Pacific theatres of the conflict. This perspective enables us to go beyond Hannah Arendt's classic account of statelessness in her Origins of Totalitarianism. To her, statelessness was the product of a failed European nation-state system. We find a very different story when we examine the history of stateless people, many of them Jews, fleeing to Asia from Europe. In Asia, we see that being stateless was not a uniform experience, but a variety of possibilities reflecting the political structure of the states and cities in which refugees found shelter. We find too that stateless people managed to enter the political realm long before they reached the threshold of citizenship.

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