The Best Jewish History Books 2025

1. Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - This lively chronicle of the years 1847--1947--the century when the Jewish people changed how we see the world--is a] thrilling and tragic history...especially good on the ironies and chain-reaction intimacies that make a people and a past (The Wall Street Journal). In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the world. Many of them are well known--Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich, no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus, no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin, genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber, there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth. What do these visionaries have in common? They all had Jewish origins. They all had a gift for thinking in wholly original, even earth-shattering ways. In 1847, the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world's population, and yet they saw what others could not. How? Why? Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent, beautifully designed volume is an urgent and moving history (The Spectator, UK) and a celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.

Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

2. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices, Used [Paperback]

Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices brings together for the first time a selection of trailblazing essays by Ella Shohat, an internationally renowned theorist of postcolonial and cultural studies of Iraqi-Jewish background. Written over the past two decades, these twelve essays--some classic, some less known, some new--trace a powerful intellectual trajectory as Shohat rigorously teases out the consequences of a deep critique of Eurocentric epistemology, whether to rethink feminism through race, nationalism through ethnicity, or colonialism through sexuality. Shohat's critical method boldly transcends disciplinary and geographical boundaries. She explores such issues as the relations between ethnic studies and area studies, the paradoxical repercussions for audio-visual media of the "graven images" taboo, the allegorization of race through the refiguring of Cleopatra, the allure of imperial popular culture, and the gender politics of medical technologies. She also examines the resistant poetics of exile and displacement; the staging of historical memory through the commemorations of the two 1492s, the anomalies of the "national" in Zionist discourse, the implications of the hyphen in the concept "Arab-Jew," and the translation of the debates on orientalism and postcolonialism across geographies. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices not only illuminates many of the concerns that have animated the study of cultural politics over the past two decades; it also points toward new scholarly possibilities.

Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices, Used [Paperback]

3. The Temple Bombing [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. From the author of the National Book Award-nominated Praying for Sheetrock comes an important and compelling work of modern nonfiction--the story of the bombing of the Temple, Atlanta's oldest and richest synagogue. Winner of the 1996 Southern Book Award. of photos.

The Temple Bombing, Used [Paperback]

4. The Redemption of the Unwanted: From the Liberation of the Death Camps to the Founding of Israel [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. The Redemption of the Unwanted: From the Liberation of the Death Camps to the Founding of Israel by Abram L. Sachar

The Redemption of the Unwanted: From the Liberation of the Death Camps to the Founding of Israel, Used [Hardcover]

5. Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, Used [Paperback]

Rue Ordener, Rue Labat is a moving memoir by the distinguished French philosopher Sarah Kofman. It opens with the horrifying moment in July 1942 when the author's father, the rabbi of a small synagogue, was dragged by police from the family home on Rue Ordener in Paris, then transported to Auschwitz--"the place," writes Kofman, "where no eternal rest would or could ever be granted." It ends in the mid-1950s, when Kofman enrolled at the Sorbonne. The book is as eloquent as it is forthright. Kofman recalls her father and family in the years before the war, then turns to the terrors and confusions of her own childhood in Paris during the German occupation. Not long after her father's disappearance, Kofman and her mother took refuge in the apartment of a Christian woman on Rue Labat, where they remained until the Liberation. This bold woman, whom Kofman called M m , undoubtedly saved the young girl and her mother from the death camps. But Kofman's close attachment to M m also resulted in a rupture between mother and child that was never to be fully healed. This slender volume is distinguished by the author's clear prose, the carefully recounted horrors of her childhood, and the uncommon poise that came to her only with the passage of many years.

Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, Used [Paperback]

6. Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. From the author ofIn Search of Zarathustra an illuminating chronicle of Yiddish civilization from its roots in the Diaspora to the present. Paul Kriwaczek begins his search when Jewish culture first spreads to Europe during the Roman Empire after the end of ancient Jerusalem and the destruction of its Temple at the hands of the Romans in the year 70. We see the burgeoning exile population disperse, moving outward and northward throughout the following centuries, making their mark in more far flung cities under Roman rule. We see these communities settle and coalesce until in 1264 the Statute of Kalisz lays down a general charter of Jewish Liberties, establishing the legal foundation of a separate, self-governing Yiddish world. It is now the treks that begin from the Rhineland and Bavaria to Western Russia and the Ukraine. By its late-medieval heyday, this economically successful, intellectually adventurous, and largely self-ruling Yiddish society stretches from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Providing a rich portrait of Yiddish civilization, Kriwaczek reflects upon the development of Yiddish language, occupations, social life, art, music, and literature, and introduces us to notable diplomats, artists, and thinkers: from the "Court Jews" of 17th- century Europe to Glikl of Hamelins, who wrote the first great Yiddish autobiography, to Moses Mendelssohn, the 18th-century philosopher and musician, to the great writers of the late 19th and 20th centuries, Sholem Aleichem and I.B. Singer among them. He chronicles the slow decline of Yiddish culture in Europe and Russia, beginning in the 17th century with the Chmielnicki Massacres in the Ukraine and culminating in the Holocaust, but looks further to fresh offshoots in the New World. Combining intimate family anecdote, travelogue, historical research, and interviews with scholars, Kriwaczek retraces the history of this nearly extinguished civilization to give us a celebration of what remains of Yiddish culture in our own time.

Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation [Hardcover - Used]

7. The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Can a theological case be made from Scripture that Israel still has a claim to the Promised Land? Christian Zionism is often seen as the offspring of premillennial dispensationalism. But the historical roots of Christian Zionism came long before the rise of the Plymouth Brethren and John Nelson Darby. In fact, the authors of The New Christian Zionism contend that the biblical and theological connections between covenant and land are nearly as close in the New Testament as in the Old. Written with academic rigor by experts in the field, this book proposes that Zionism can be defended historically, theologically, politically and morally. While this does not sanctify every policy and practice of the current Israeli government, the authors include recommendations for how twenty-first-century Christian theology should rethink its understanding of both ancient and contemporary Israel, the Bible and Christian theology more broadly. This provocative volume proposes a place for Christian Zionism in an integrated biblical vision.

The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land, Used [Paperback]

8. Ghetto : The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, Used [Paperback]

A New York Times Notable Book of 2016 W inner of the Z calo Public Square Book Prize On March 29, 1516, the city council of Venice issued a decree forcing Jews to live in il geto --a closed quarter named for the copper foundry that once occupied the area. The term stuck. In this sweeping and original account, Mitchell Duneier traces the idea of the ghetto from its beginnings in the sixteenth century and its revival by the Nazis to the present. As Duneier shows, we cannot comprehend the entanglements of race, poverty, and place in America today without recalling the ghettos of Europe, as well as earlier efforts to understand the problems of the American city. Ghetto is the story of the scholars and activists who tried to achieve that understanding. As Duneier shows, their efforts to wrestle with race and poverty cannot be divorced from their individual biographies, which often included direct encounters with prejudice and discrimination in the academy and elsewhere. Using new and forgotten sources, Duneier introduces us to Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake, graduate students whose conception of the South Side of Chicago established a new paradigm for thinking about Northern racism and poverty in the 1940s. We learn how the psychologist Kenneth Clark subsequently linked Harlem's slum conditions with the persistence of black powerlessness, and we follow the controversy over Daniel Patrick Moynihan's report on the black family. We see how the sociologist William Julius Wilson redefined the debate about urban America as middle-class African Americans increasingly escaped the ghetto and the country retreated from racially specific remedies. And we trace the education reformer Geoffrey Canada's efforts to transform the lives of inner-city children with ambitious interventions, even as other reformers sought to help families escape their neighborhoods altogether. Duneier offers a clear-eyed assessment of the thinkers and doers who have shaped American ideas about urban poverty--and the ghetto. The result is a valuable new estimation of an age-old concept.

Ghetto : The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea, Used [Paperback]

9. Pre-Owned The Jews' Secret Fleet: Untold Story of North American Volunteers Who Smashed the British Blockade (Hardcover) 9652290238 9789652290236

Good Condition: Minimal damage to the cover, dust jacket may not be included, minimal wear to binding, most of the pages undamaged(e.g., minimal creases or tears), highlighting / underlining acceptable on books as long as the text is readable and markings are not excessive, no missing pages. May be a former library book, with usual treatments(e.g., mylar covers, call stickers, stamps, card pockets, barcodes, or remainder marks). Extra components, such as CDs, DVDs, figurines, or access codes are not included. ISBN: 9789652290236 ISBN10: 9652290238 Contributors: Gilbert, Martin, Greenfield, Murray S., Hochstein, Joseph M.,

Title: The Jews' Secret Fleet: Untold Story of North American Volunteers Who Smashed the British Blockade ISBN10: 9652290238 EAN: 9789652290236 Genre: HISTORY / Jewish Author: Murray S. Greenfield; Joseph Hochstein CONDITION - GOOD - Pre-Owned - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.

10. The Story of the Jews: A 4,000 Year Adventure [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. A sophisticated cartoon history of the Jews takes readers on an illustrated journey across four thousand years of history, capturing both its traumas and its triumphs.

The Story of the Jews: A 4,000 Year Adventure, Used [Hardcover]