Expanding the frontiers of civil rights: Michigan, 1948-1968

Although historians have devoted a great deal of attention to the development of federal government policy regarding civil rights in the quarter century following World War II, little attention has been paid to the equally important developments at the state level. Few states underwent a more dramatic transformation with regard to civil rights than Michigan did. In 1948, the Michigan Committee on Civil Rights characterized the state of civil rights in Michigan as presenting "an ugly picture." Tw…

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…