Brandeis University Press: 83 books
Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present
History, Representation, and Memory
Language: English
Release Date: January 3, 2017
This book offers an extensive introduction and 13 diverse essays on how World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath affected Jewish families and Jewish communities, with an especially close look at the roles played by women, youth, and children. Focusing on Eastern and Central Europe, themes...
The Strangers We Became
Lessons in Exile from One of Iraq's Last Jews
Language: English
Release Date: October 6, 2015
This riveting and utterly unique memoir chronicles the coming of age of Cynthia Shamash, an Iraqi Jew born in Baghdad in 1963. When she was eight, her family tried to escape Iraq over the Iranian border, but they were captured and jailed for five weeks. Upon release, they were returned to their home...
by Peter Burke
Language: English
Release Date: March 7, 2017
Language: English
Release Date: March 7, 2017
In this wide-ranging consideration of intellectual diasporas, historian Peter Burke questions what distinctive contribution to knowledge exiles and expatriates have made. The answer may be summed up in one word: deprovincialization. Historically, the encounter between scholars from different cultures...
Israel, Jordan, and Palestine
The Two-State Imperative
Language: English
Release Date: December 13, 2011
Since 1921, the Zionist movement, the Hashemites, and Palestinian nationalists have been vying for regional control. In this book, Asher Susser analyzes the evolution of the one- and two-state options and explores why a two-state solution has failed to materialize. He provides an in-depth analysis...
Yehuda Amichai
The Making of Israel’s National Poet
Language: English
Release Date: March 15, 2009
Yehuda Amichai is one of the twentieth century’s (and Israel’s) leading poets. In this remarkable book, Nili Scharf Gold offers a profound reinterpretation of Amichai’s early works and reconstructs his poetic biography. Her close reading of his oeuvre, untapped notebooks, and a cache of unpublished...
Curtains?
The Future of the Arts in America
Language: English
Release Date: January 23, 2015
In this clear-minded but sobering book, Michael M. Kaiser assesses the current state of arts institutions—orchestras; opera, ballet, modern dance, and theater companies; and even museums. According to Kaiser, new developments in the twenty-first century, including the Internet explosion, the death...
A Jewish Ceremony for Newborn Girls
The Torah’s Covenant Affirmed
Language: English
Release Date: February 4, 2014
This engaging book offers the first in-depth analysis of the history, philosophy, and social trends that underpin modern welcoming ceremonies for newborn girls in the Jewish community. Sharon R. Siegel traces the arc of these ceremonies from their emergence in the 1970s until today. She also delves...
Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought
Writings on Identity, Politics, and Culture, 1893–1958
Language: English
Release Date: March 22, 2013
This volume opens the canon of modern Jewish thought to the all too often overlooked writings of Jews from the Arab East, from the close of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Whether they identified as Sephardim, Mizrahim, anticolonialists, or Zionists, these thinkers engaged the...
The Faith of Fallen Jews
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History
Language: English
Release Date: December 3, 2013
From his first book, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, to his well-known volume on Jewish memory, Zakhor, to his treatment of Sigmund Freud in Freud’s Moses, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932–2009) earned recognition as perhaps the greatest Jewish historian of his day, whose scholarship blended...
by Inbar Raveh
Language: English
Release Date: November 4, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: November 4, 2014
This book offers a fresh perspective on classical Jewish literature by providing a gender-based, feminist reading of rabbinical anecdotes and legends. Viewing rabbinical legends as sources that generate perceptions about women and gender, Inbar Raveh provides answers to questions such as how the Sages...
German City, Jewish Memory
The Story of Worms
Language: English
Release Date: December 14, 2010
German and Jewish ways of life have been interwoven in Worms, Germany, for over a thousand years. Despite radical changes brought about by expulsion of Jews, wartime devastation, social advancement, cultural and religious renewal, and the Jewish community’s destruction during the Holocaust, the...
The Rise of the Individual in 1950s Israel
A Challenge to Collectivism
Language: English
Release Date: December 13, 2011
In this sharply argued volume, Orit Rozin reveals the flaws in the conventional account of Israeli society in the 1950s, which portrayed the Israeli public as committed to a collectivist ideology. In fact, major sectors of Israeli society espoused individualism and rejected the state-imposed collectivist...
A Home for All Jews
Citizenship, Rights, and National Identity in the New Israeli State
Language: English
Release Date: July 5, 2016
Orit Rozin’s inspired scholarship focuses on the construction and negotiation of citizenship in Israel during the state’s first decade. Positioning itself both within and against much of the critical sociological literature on the period, this work reveals the dire historical circumstances, the...
Israeli Society in the Twenty-First Century
Immigration, Inequality, and Religious Conflict
Language: English
Release Date: May 22, 2015
This volume illuminates changes in Israeli society over the past generation. Goldscheider identifies three key social changes that have led to the transformation of Israeli society in the twenty-first century: the massive immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union, the economic shift to a high-tech...