-->
  • Maurice Sugar: law, labor, and the left in Detroit, 1912-1950

    Maurice Sugar: law, labor, and the left in Detroit, 1912-1950

    It was Maurice Sugar, labor activist and lawyer for the United Auto Workers, who played a key role in guiding the newly-formed union through the treacherous legal terrain obstructing its development in the 1930s. He orchestrated the injunction hearings on the Dodge Main strike and defended the legality of the sit-down tactic. As the UAW's General Council, he wrote the union's constitution in 1939, a model of democratic thinking. Sugar worked with George Addes, UAW Secretary-Treasurer, to nurture…

  • In fitting memory: the art and politics of Holocaust memorials

    In fitting memory: the art and politics of Holocaust memorials

    In Fitting Memory, a critical survey of Holocaust memorials and monuments in Europe, Israel, and the United States, focuses on the archeological remains at the original sites of Nazi terror that constituted the first postwar memorials. The Holocaust is defined here as the collective designation for the Nazi mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped, and for the related persecution of Soviet prisoners of war and other ideological opponents. Featuring text and photographs, the book shows h…

  • Jewish Poland: legends of origin : ethnopoetics and legendary chronicles

    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.

    Haya Bar-Itzhak examines the legends of origin of the Jews of…

  • Harry Bertoia: sculptor

    Harry Bertoia: sculptor

    Harry Bertoia, Sculptor is devoted to the life and work of a twentieth-century Italian-born American artist whose important commissions are located in twenty-five American cities from New York to Seattle and from Minneapolis to Miami. It traces the development of Bertoia’s versatile career from his youth in Detroit, beginning with drawings, paintings, and monoprints, then jewelry and furniture designs, to his abstract sculptures in metals, many of architectural proportions.

    The book include…

  • Toast of the town: the life and times of Sunnie Wilson

    Toast of the town: the life and times of Sunnie Wilson

    As part of the great migration of southern blacks to the north, Sunnie Wilson came to Detroit from South Carolina after graduating from college, and soon became a pillar of the local music industry. He started out as a song and dance performer but found his niche as a local promoter of boxing, which allowed him to make friends and business connections quickly in the thriving industrial city of Detroit. Part oral history, memoir, and biography, Toast of the Town draws from hundreds of hours of ta…

  • Tradition and politics: the religious parties of Israel

    Tradition and politics: the religious parties of Israel

    Tradition and Politics is acomprehensive study of the religious parties of Israel. Gary S. Schiff traces the religious parties of the modern state of Israel from their origins in Europe early in the twentieth century to, in response and reaction to the rise of Zionism, their transplantation to Palestine, their adaptation to the new realities, their participation in the quazi-government of the Jewish community under the British mandate, and their unfolding roles after independence. Schiff examin…

  • For our soul: Ethiopian Jews in Israel

    For our soul: Ethiopian Jews in Israel

    Between 1977 and 1992, practically all Ethiopian Jews migrated to Israel. This mass move followed the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia and its ensuing economic and political upheavals, compounded by the brutality of the military regime and the willingness—after years of refusal—of the Israeli government to receive them as bona fide Jews entitled to immigrate to that country. As the sole Jewish community from sub-Sahara Africa in Israel, the Ethiopian Jews have met with unique difficulties. Based on f…

  • Seasons of grace: a history of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit

    Seasons of grace: a history of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit

    Seasons of Grace is a history of the Catholic Church and community in southern lower Michigan from the 1830s through the 1950s. More than a chronicle of clerical successions and institutional expansion, the book also examines those social and cultural influences that affected the development of the Catholic community.


    To document the course of institutional growth in the diocese, Tentler devotes a portion of the book to tracing the evolution of administrative structures at the Chancery a…

  • Nazism, the Jews, and American Zionism, 1933-1948

    Nazism, the Jews, and American Zionism, 1933-1948

    Aaron Berman takes a moderate and measured approach to one of the most emotional issues in American Jewish historiography, namely, the response of American Jews to Nazism and the extermination of European Jewry.In remarkably large numbers, American Jews joined the Zionist crusade to create a Jewish state that would finally end the problem of Jewish homelessness, which they believed was the basic cause not only of the Holocaust but of all anti-Semitism. Though American Zionists could justly claim…

  • Rabbinic Judaism in the making: a chapter in the history of the Halakhah from Ezra to Judah I

    Rabbinic Judaism in the making: a chapter in the history of the Halakhah from Ezra to Judah I

    Through the ages, theology in Judaism has played roles of varying importance. But the role of theology is minor compared with that of law and observance. This book is devoted to a study of the evolution of normative Judaism from the time of Ezra (ca. 400 B.C.) to Judah I, the Prince (ca. 200 A.D.). Its focus on law represents a realistic approach to the history of applied Judaism.

    Rabbinic Judaism in the Making is the first study in English to trace the evolution of Rabbinic Law and Rabbinic…

  • The shaping of Jewish identity in nineteenth-century France

    The shaping of Jewish identity in nineteenth-century France

    Nineteenth-century French Jewry was a community struggling to meet the challenges of emancipation and modernity. This struggle, with its origins in the founding of the French nation, constitutes the core of modern Jewish identity. With the Revolution of 1789 came the collapse of the social, political, and philosophical foundations of exclusiveness, forcing French society and the Jews to come to terms with the meaning of emancipation. Over time, the enormous challenge that emancipation posed for …

  • Witness through the imagination: Jewish American Holocaust literature

    Witness through the imagination: Jewish American Holocaust literature

    Criticism of Holocaust literature is an emerging field of inquiry, and as might be expected, the most innovative work has been concentrated on the vanguard of European and Israeli Holocaust literature. Now that American fiction has amassed an impressive and provocative Holocaust canon, the time is propitious for its evaluation. Witness Through the Imagination presents a critical reading of themes and stylistic strategies of major American Holocaust fiction to determine its capacity to render the…

  • The forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American diaspora

    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…

  • Going Greek: Jewish college fraternities in the United States, 1895-1945

    Going Greek: Jewish college fraternities in the United States, 1895-1945

    Going Greek offers an unprecedented look at the relationship between American Jewish students and fraternity life during its heyday in the first half of the twentieth century. More than secret social clubs, fraternities and sororities profoundly shaped the lives of members long after they left college—often dictating choices in marriage as well as business alliances. Widely viewed as a key to success, membership in these self-governing, sectarian organizations was desirable but not easily access…

  • On Jewish folklore

    On Jewish folklore

    On Jewish Folklore spans a half-century of scholarly inquiry by the noted anthropologist and biblical scholar Raphael Patai. He essays collected in this volume, some of which are presented for the first time in English translation, provide a rich harvest of Jewish customs and traditional beliefs, gathered from all over the world and from ancient to modern times.

    Among the subjects Dr. Patai investigated and recorded are the history and oral traditions of the now-vanished Marrano community of …

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

    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…

  • Twenty Israeli composers: voices of a culture

    Twenty Israeli composers: voices of a culture

    Israel’s contemporary art music reflects a modern society that is an intricate fabric of national and ethnic origins, languages and dialects, customs and traditions—a heterogeneous culture of cultures. It is a rich and distinctive environment—at once ancient and modern, spiritual and secular, traditional and progressive.

    Twenty Israeli Composers, the first published collection of interviews with Israeli composers, explores this developing and distinctive music culture. The featured composers …

  • The origin of the modern jewish woman writer: romance and reform in Victorian England

    The origin of the modern jewish woman writer: romance and reform in Victorian England

    Between 1830 and 1880, the Jewish community flourished in England. During this time, known as haskalah, or the Anglo-Jewish Enlightenment, Jewish women in England became the first Jewish women anywhere to publish novels, histories, periodicals, theological tracts, and conduct manuals. The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer analyzes this critical but forgotten period in the development of Jewish women's writing in relation to Victorian literary history, women's cultural history, and Jewish …

  • Prayer & community: the havurah in American Judaism

    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…

  • Uppermost Canada: the Western District and the Detroit frontier, 1800-1850

    Uppermost Canada: the Western District and the Detroit frontier, 1800-1850

    The publication of this volume in a freely accessible digital format has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation through their Humanities Open Book Program.