Told as a series of reflections, this study traces links between cultures as diverse as pre-Vedic India and late 19th-century France. An array of unrelated artists are all in fact linked by the Kabbalah and the correlation between art and this mystic...

The Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 plunged the world into its second global conflict. The Third Reich's attack, mounted without consulting its Italian ally, had other reverberations as well. Chief among them was Mussolini's decision to conduct a "pa...

While most gender-based analyses of rabbinic Judaism concentrate on the status of women in the halakhah (the rabbinic legal tradition), Judith R. Baskin turns her attention to the construction of women in the aggadic midrash, a collection of expansio...

This is a fascinating journey into the world of women in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Jerusalem toward the end of Ottoman rule in the Holy Land. Until now, the story of life in the Land of Israel in this period has been told exclusively fro...

ChaeRan Freeze explores the impact of various forces on marriage and divorce among Jews in 19th-century Russia. Challenging romantic views of the Jewish family in the shtetl, she shows that divorce rates among Russian Jews in the first half of the ce...

In drama and in musical comedy, in popular song and in symphonic music, in movies and in literature, Jews have contributed to American culture in the 20th century to a degree out of all proportion to their numbers. But does this vast creative output...

"Two Jews were traveling on a train..". Many Eastern European jokes – and several of the charming and often hilarious conversations in this book – begin this way. From all regions of the world and from all walks of life, the characters are young and...

The term Niddah means separation. During her menstrual flow and for several days thereafter, a Jewish woman is considered Niddah – separate from her husband and unable to practice the sacred rituals of Judaism. Purification in a miqveh (a ritual bath...

This readable, insightful, and thought-provoking collection of essays, presents an original and innovative ideology that stirringly affirms the unity of the Jewish people. Rawidowicz's rich themes include the relationship between the State of Israel...

This brilliant analysis of American Judaism in the last half of the 20th century won the 1993-94 National Jewish Book Award for the best book on contemporary Jewry and also was named an Outstanding Book of 1993 by Choice. Jack Wertheimer examines how...