Prayer & community: the havurah in American Judaism

Riv-Ellen Prell spent eighteen months of participant observation field research studying a countercultural havurah to determine why these groups emerged in the United States during the 1970s. In her book, she explores the central questions posed by the early havurot and their founders. She also examines the havurah as a development of American Judaism, continuing—rather than rejecting—many of the previous generations' ideas about religion. Combining history and ethnography, Prell uses current th…

Jewish Poland: legends of origin : ethnopoetics and legendary chronicles

The first appearance of Jews in Poland and their adventures during their early years of settlement in the country are concealed in undocumented shadows of history. What survived are legends of origin that early chroniclers, historians, writers, and folklore scholars transcribed, thus contributing to their preservation. According to the legendary chronicles Jews resided in Poland for a millennium and developed a vibrant community.

Without bounds: the life and death of Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana

Without Bounds illuminates the life of the mysterious Rabbi Ya'aqov Wazana, a Jewish healer who worked in the Western High Atlas region in southern Morocco and died there in the early 1950s. Impressed by his healing powers and shamanic virtuosity, Moroccan Jews are intrigued by his lifestyle and contacts with the Muslim and the demonic worlds that dangerously blurred his Jewish identity.

Based on interviews with Moroccan Jews conducted in the late 1980s, Without Bounds proposes multipl…

No haven for the oppressed: United States policy toward Jewish refugees, 1938-1945

No Haven for the Oppressed is the most thorough and the most comprehensive analysis to be written to date on the United States policy toward Jewish refugees during World War II. Friedman draws upon many sources for his history, significantly upon papers which have only recently been opened to public scrutiny. These include State Department Records at the National Archives and papers relating to the Jewish refugee question at the Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park. Such documents serve as the foun…

Anti-Semitic stereotypes without Jews: images of the Jews in England, 1290-1700

Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Without Jews offers an exploration of English history, 1290- 1700, tracing the growth and development of these attitudes. It demonstrates that it is possible for prejudice to thrive even in the absence of a scapegoat group.

Following the expulsion in the year 1290 until 1656, although there was no real Jewish community in England, the molders of public opinion kept a shadowy image of the Jew alive through sermons and religious tracts, travelogues, folklore, rel…

From East to West: the westward migration of Jews from Eastern Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Migration has been a major factor in the life of the Jewish people throughout the two and a half millennia of their dispersion. And yet, the history of the Jewish migratory movements has not been fully explored in Jewish history. While the Jewish migratory movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and especially immigration to the New World, have attracted the attention of scholars, earlier such movements did not. In the present book I propose to discuss such a movement of an earlier …

From new Zion to old Zion: American Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine, 1917-1939

American Aliyah (immigration to Palestine) began in the mid-nineteenth century fueled by the desire of American Jews to study Torah and by their wish to live and be buried in the Holy Land. His movement of people-men and women-increased between World War I and II, in direct contrast to European Jewry’s desire to immigrate to the United States. Why would American Jews want to leave America, and what characterized their resettlement? From New Zion to Old Zion analyzes the migration of American Jew…

The forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American diaspora

Between 1800 and 1880 approximately 6500 Dutch Jews immigrated to the United States to join the hundreds who had come during the colonial era. Although they numbered less than one-tenth of all Dutch immigrants and were a mere fraction of all Jews in America, the Dutch Jews helped build American Jewry and did so with a nationalistic flair. Like the other Dutch immigrant group, the Jews demonstrated the salience of national identity and the strong forces of ethnic, religious, and cultural instit…

The Israeli-American connection: its roots in the yishuv, 1914-1945

The Israeli-American Connection examines the ways in which the American experience influenced some of the major leaders of the yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine, during and between the world wars. In six biographical chapters, Michael Brown studies Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim Nahman Bialik, Berl Katznelson, Henrietta Szold, Golda Meir, and David Ben-Gurian, focusing on each leader's involvement with and image of America, as well as the impact of America on their lives and careers.

Ambiguous relations: the American Jewish community and Germany since 1945

The reemergence of a united Germany as a dominant power in Europe has increased even more it's importance as a major political ally and trade partner of the United States, despite the misgivings of some U.S. citizens. Ambiguous Relations addresses for the first time the complex relationships between American Jews and Germany over the fifty years following the end of World War II, and examines American Jewry's' ambiguous attitude toward Germany that continues despite sociological and generationa…

Marketing identities: the invention of Jewish ethnicity in Ost und West

Marketing Identities analyzes how Ost und West (East and West), the first Jewish magazine (1901-1923) published in Berlin by westernized Jews originally from Eastern Europe, promoted ethnic identity to Jewish audiences in Germany and throughout the world. Using sophisticated techniques of modern marketing, such as stereotyping, the editors of this highly successful journal attempted to forge a minority consciousness. Marketing Identities is thus about the beginnings of "ethnicity" as we k…