Fundamentally different from other more prominent, Jewish traditions and experiences, the Sephardic tradition has long served to bind together the various Jewish communities of the Mediterranean basin. In "The Sephardic Legacy", Henry Toledano immers...

During their ascendency and subsequent occupation of much of Europe, the Nazis plundered the documents and cultural treasures of Jewish organizations as well as other groups and individuals they deemed to be enemies of the Reich. When the Nazis were...

The thirst for exotic ornament among fashionable women in the metropoles of Europe and America prompted a bustling global trade in ostrich feathers that flourished from the 1880s until the First World War. When feathers fell out of fashion with consu...

In "The Choice", Arnine Cumsky Weiss and Carol Weiss Rubel present the stories of forty-five converts to Judaism. These reflective narratives demonstrate that no two converts' experiences are alike, yet most share some common characteristics: a spiri...

Who are the Quakers, what do they believe, and what do they practise? At the heart of their faith lies the conviction that everyone can have a direct experience of God without the mediation of priests or religious leaders. They express this in a uniq...

In this first examination of Lenin's genealogical and political connections to East European Jews, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern reveals the broad cultural meanings of indisputable evidence that Lenin's maternal grandfather was a Jew. He examines why and...

Producing flavorful and appealing kosher desserts has been a challenge in Jewish households throughout the ages. Without access to butter, cream, milk, cheese, yogurt, or other dairy products, creating a tasty and memorable dessert for family and fri...

The rootless Jew, wandering disconnected from history, homeland, and nature, was often the target of early twentieth-century nationalist rhetoric aimed against modern culture. But following World War II, a number of prominent French philosophers reca...

How do we articulate a religious vision that embraces evolution and human authorship of Scripture? Drawing on the Jewish mystical traditions of Kabbalah and Hasidism, path-breaking Jewish scholar Arthur Green argues that a neomystical perspective can...

In modern western history, the cultural and social developments of modernism have long been associated with Jews. For conservative groups this has been a negative association: the perceived breakdown of traditional norms was blamed on Jewish influenc...