Shofar back issues from September 2008:
Performances of Jewish identity: Spartacus.(Critical essay)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Produced at the height of the cold war, the gladiator film Spartacus (1960) is recognized as an answer to HUAC's redbaiting members of the Hollywood film community. Unexplored, however, has been the hypothesis that the film is a production expressing cultural aspects of Jewish identity and ...
"Show me the Shoah!": generic experience and spectatorship in popular representations of the Holocaust.(Critical essay)
Sep 22, 2008; ... This essay explores the relationship between the textual features of popular cultural artifacts pertaining to the Holocaust and the circumstances of their reception. Comparative cultural studies methods are deployed in analyzing a film, Life is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni, 1997); a ...
The memory of the Holocaust in Primo Levi's if this is a man.(Critical essay)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Primo Levi's If This Is a Man is a central work in understanding the way in which the subjective memory of a Holocaust survival receives a general meaning. This requires a context in which the duty to prevent the repetition of the tragic events endured by European Jews becomes a universal ...
Mary Antin's Progressive science: eugenics, evolution, and the environment.(Critical essay)
Sep 22, 2008; ... While Mary Antin's best-selling autobiography The Promised Land (1912) often has been considered an immigrant success story that celebrates assimilation, Antin's texts reveal criticism of the America she observed and a desire to reshape rather than merely assimilate into it. This essay ...
Beyond "Everyday Poetry": The Life and Works of Mascha Kaleko.('Mein Lied geht weiter: Hundert Gedichte', 'Mascha Kaleko: Biografie')(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Mein Lied geht weiter: Hundert Gedichte, by Mascha Kaleko, edited by Gisela Zoch-Westphal. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007. 159 pp.[euro]6.00. Mascha Kaleko: Biografie, by Jutta Rosenkranz. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag,2007. 300pp.[euro]14.50. ...
Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History, edited by Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 2006. 368 pp. $29.95. In Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg introduce ...
Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and the American Dream.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and the American Dream, by Judith S. Goldstein. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. 205 pp. $24.95. In this popular history, Judith Goldstein traces the development of Great Neck, New York, through an intimate look at the ...
At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York's Lower East Side, 1880-1920.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York's Lower East Side, 1880-1920, by Lawrence J. Epstein. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007. 299 pp. $40.00. Lawrence J. Epstein's At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York's Lower East Side ...
Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History, by Deborah R. Weiner. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. 234 pp. $25.00. In 2005 Lee Shai Weissbach published his magnum opus on Jews in what he called "triple-digit" communities (Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A ...
A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman, by Sharon Rudahl. New York: The New Press, 2007. 128 pp. $17.95. Underground comic artist and radical activist Sharon Rudahl undertakes an ambitious project--to recount the incredible story one of America's most ...
Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945-2006.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945-2006, by Marianne R. Sanua. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 2007. 495 pp. $60.00. Marianne Sanua's Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945-2006 follows the American ...
Inventing Jewish Ritual.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Inventing Jewish Ritual, by Vanessa Ochs. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2007. 276 pp. $25.00. Commentators of contemporary Jewish life often fall into two categories. Some anxiously describe the Jewish world as dying, teetering on the brink of an assimilation crisis ....
ReThinking Synagogues: A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... ReThinking Synagogues: A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life, by Lawrence A. Hoffman. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2006. 225 pp. $19.99. At the beginning of the 21st century, congregational life has changed. Yet synagogue boards complain that they are having the ...
The Unfolding Tradition: Jewish Law After Sinai.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Unfolding Tradition: Jewish Law After Sinai, by Elliot N. Dorff. New York: Aviv Press, 2005. 566 pp. $19.95. To some extent, those of us who bear no particular relationship to Conservative Judaism might feel vaguely misled by the promise of the title. It promises an ...
Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism, edited by Geoffrey Cantor and Marc Swetlitz. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. 260 pp. $24.00. This book is a collection of papers written by scholars in a variety of disciplines. It provides a survey of ...
Jewish Frontiers: Essays on Bodies, Histories, and Identities.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Jewish Frontiers: Essays on Bodies, Histories, and Identities, by Sander L. Gilman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; paper 2004. 243 pp. $24.95. In this collection of loosely related essays, Gilman, the important cultural critic who gave us Jewish Self-Hatred (1986) and The ...
From Abraham to America: A History of Jewish Circumcision.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... From Abraham to America: A History of Jewish Circumcision, by Eric Kline Silverman. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006. 302 pp. $88.00 (c); $37.95 (p). From Abraham to America is a remarkable, stimulating, and wide-ranging study of Jewish circumcision. Its ...
Moses and the Journey to Leadership: Timeless Lessons of Effective Management from the Bible and Today's Leaders.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Moses and the Journey to Leadership: Timeless Lessons of Effective Management from the Bible and Today's Leaders, by Norman J. Cohen. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2007. 212 pp. $21.99. In this book, Norman Cohen explores what he judges to be the enduring lessons of ...
How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, by James L. Kugel. New York: Free Press, 2007. 819 pp. $35.00. At times it seems as if James L. Kugel wishes that scholars and interpreters would simply leave the Bible alone, and yet he also wants the reader to be aware ...
How to Read the Bible.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... How to Read the Bible, by Marc Zvi Brettler. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2005. 384 pp. $35.00. Marc Zvi Brettler is one of the editors of The Jewish Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), which should be on the shelves of all students of the Bible, ...
Song of Songs: A Commentary.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Song of Songs: A Commentary, by J. Cheryl Exum. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005. 263 pp. $39.95. The Song of Songs expresses the various emotions associated with love in subtle poetry with vivid and often provocative metaphors. A proper interpretation of the book for an ...
Illuminating Leviticus: A Study of Its Laws and Institutions in the Light of Biblical Narratives.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Illuminating Leviticus: A Study of Its Laws and Institutions in the Light of Biblical Narratives, by Calum Carmichael. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 212 pp. $55.00. For a biblical scholar to claim that he is able to explain "how every law in the Pentateuch ...
When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David, by Susan Ackerman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 353 pp. $47.50. Jonathan "loved [David] as himself" (1 Samuel 18:1), and the "Davidic Succession Narrative" (1 Samuel 18-2 Samuel 5) ...
Opening the Sealed Book: Interpretations of the Book of Isaiah in Late Antiquity.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Opening the Sealed Book: Interpretations of the Book of Isaiah in Late Antiquity, by Joseph Blenkinsopp. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006. 315 pp. $25.00. In recent years, as debate has shifted from the question "What did the author mean?" to "How have readers understood what ...
The Land of the Body: Studies in Philo's Representation of Egypt.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Land of the Body: Studies in Philo's Representation of Egypt, by Sarah J. K. Pearce. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 208. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007. 365 pp. $100.00. Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE-c. 50 CE) has left us an extensive oeuvre that has ...
Israel and the Persian Gulf: Retrospect and Prospect.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Israel and the Persian Gulf: Retrospect and Prospect, by Gawdat Bahgat. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. 188 pp. $59.95. On the face of it, a book-length survey of the relations between Israel and the countries of the Persian Gulf would seem a bit out of place ....
Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviet Nuclear Gamble in the Six Day War.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviet Nuclear Gamble in the Six Day War, by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. 287 pp. $26.00. The authors argue that the USSR deliberately instigated the crisis and war of 1967; that it did so in the ...
The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of the Yom Kippur War and Its Sources.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of the Yom Kippur War and Its Sources, by Uri Bar-Joseph. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 306 pp. $27.95. The great nineteenth-century British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay once commented that the English Civil War ...
Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, by Eyal Weizman. London: Verso, 2007. 318 pp. $34.95. Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation examines how "the different forms of Israeli rule" over the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 "inscribed themselves ...
The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right, by George Michael. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. 397 pp. $34.95. George Michael has written a very important book in The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant ...
Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, by Robert Satloff. New York: Public Affairs, 2006. 251 pp. $26.00. The goal motivating historian Robert Satloff, Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, in writing ...
Holocaust Odysseys: The Jews of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and Their Flight through France and Italy.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Holocaust Odysseys: The Jews of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and Their Flight through France and Italy, by Susan Zuccotti. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. 288 pp. $28.00. Susan Zuccotti's new book is a sort of collective memoir of nine Jewish refugee families who fled first ...
Churches and the Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans and Reconciliation.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Churches and the Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans and Reconciliation, by Mordecai Paldiel. Jersey City, NJ: KTAV, 2006. 443 pp. $39.50. Mordecai Paldiel is arguably the foremost authority on the history of Righteous Persons during the Shoah. This volume brings that ...
Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust, edited by Kevin P. Spicer. Bloomington and Indianapolis:Indiana University Press, 2007. 329 pp. $29.95. Shortly after his election as Reichkanzler in 1933, Hitler spoke to a group of Methodist women meeting in Obersalzburg ...
Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas, edited by Judith M. Gerson and Diane L. Wolf. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 407 pp. $24.95. Holocaust studies is a vibrant area of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry in the social ...
Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland, by Diane Wolf. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. 391 pp. $21.95. The Holocaust units I created for my middle school students always included stories of survivors. From time to time we were ...
Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema, by Lawrence Baron, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 320 pp. $29.95. Lawrence Baron concludes his study of Holocaust-related cinema by stating, "We should cease posing the ...
Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation, by Naomi Seidman. Afterlives of the Bible Series. University of Chicago Press, 2006. 333 pp. $22.00. In the six meticulously researched chapters of Naomi Seidman's Faithful Renderings, published by ...
Approaches to Teaching Wiesel's Night.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Approaches to Teaching Wiesel's Night, edited by Alan Rosen. New York: MLA, 2007. 169 pp. $37.50 (c); $19.75 (p). In 2004 the MLA published Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust (ed. Marianne Hirsch and Irene Kacandes). It featured many excellent essays about Holocaust ...
French Writers and the Politics of Complicity: Crisis of Democracy in the 1940s and 1990s.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... French Writers and the Politics of Complicity: Crisis of Democracy in the 1940s and 1990s, by Richard J. Golsan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 198 pp. $55.00. Richard Golsan's book presents an intriguing contribution to the ongoing debates on the past and the ...
Irene Nemirovsky: Her Life and Works.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Irene Nemirovsky: Her Life and Works, by Jonathan Weiss. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. 200 pp. $24.95. "Irene Nemirovsky was virtually unknown in the English-speaking world until the spring of 2006, when her posthumous novel Suite francaise appeared in an ...
A Tranquil Star (Unpublished Stories).(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... A Tranquil Star (Unpublished Stories), by Primo Levi, translated by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 167 pp. $21.95. Twenty years ago, the Italian chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi fell to his death from the stairwell of his ...
Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert, by Ranen Omer-Sherman. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006. 210 pp. $35.00. Beginning with Maurice Blanchot's commentary on Franz Kafka's "strange attraction and repulsion towards Zionism: 'his wandering does not consist ...
In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination, by Gil Z. Hochberg. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. 192 pp. $35.00. Ostensibly, Gil Z. Hochberg's richly comparative study of Hebrew and Arabic writers bears a certain resemblance to ...
Midnight Convoy and Other Stories.(Preliminaries, by S. Yizhar, translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange, with an introduction by Dan Miron. New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2007. 305 pp. $24.95.)(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Midnight Convoy and Other Stories, by S. Yizhar, with an introduction by Dan Miron. New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2007. 283 pp. $14.95. Preliminaries, by S. Yizhar, translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange, with an introduction by Dan Miron. New Milford, CT: Toby Press, ...
Es begann damals in Afrika.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Es begann damals in Afrika [It began then in Africa], by Stefanie Zweig. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2006. 336 pp. [euro]8.95. Readers familiar with Stefanie Zweig's previous bestselling novel Nowhere in Africa, or Caroline Link's Academy Award winning film ...
Propheten des Vergangenen: Judische Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Propheten des Vergangenen: Judische Geschichtsschreibung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, by Michael Brenner. Munich: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2006. 400 pp. [euro]29.50. The history of Jewish historiography has only recently begun to receive scholarly attention, and Michael Brenner points ...
The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community, by Stefanie B. Siegmund. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 624 pp. $70.00. In September 1570 the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de' Medici, gave the slightly more than ...
Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power and Community.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power and Community, by Dean Phillip Bell. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2007. 188 pp. $100.00 It may be unusual to begin a review with a quote from the book's conclusion, but when the work is about memory, as Dean Bell's new book, ...
Beyond the Border: The German-Jewish Legacy Abroad.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Beyond the Border: The German-Jewish Legacy Abroad, by Steven E. Aschheim. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2007. 208 pp. $27.95. Steven Aschheim begins his study on German Jewish intellectuals with Hannah Arendt's observation that the German-speaking Jews were an ...
The Death of Sigmund Freud: Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Death of Sigmund Freud: Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism, by Mark Edmundson. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. 276 pp. [pounds sterling]18.99. Mark Edmundson's book chronicles the final two years of Sigmund Freud's life, from January 1938, when his cancerous ...
Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry XVIII: Jewish Women in Eastern Europe.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry XVIII: Jewish Women in Eastern Europe, edited by Chaeran Freeze, Paula Hyman, and Antony Polonsky. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005. 470 pp. $29.95. In recent years there has been a fair amount of research and publication on ...
The Shtetl: New Evaluations.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Shtetl: New Evaluations, edited by Stephen T. Katz. New York: New York University Press, 2007. 328 pp. $40.00. The Shtetl: New Evaluations is a scholarly anthology that, as Samuel Kassow asserts in his introduction, sets out to redress the "gross generalizations and ...
Converging Alternatives: The Bund and the Zionist Labor Movement, 1897-1985.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Converging Alternatives: The Bund and the Zionist Labor Movement, 1897-1985, by Yosef Gorny. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. 309 pp. $27.95. As a prolific and esteemed scholar of Jewish politics in general and Labor Zionism in particular, Yosef Gorny is one of ...
Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig's Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig's Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters, by Ephraim Meir. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Studies in Judaism Vol. 2. 200 pp. $69.95. When Derrida was asked which question he would wish to ask Heidegger if Heidegger were still ...
The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions, by Christian Wiese, translated by Jeffrey Grossman and Christian Wiese. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2007. 260 pp. $50.00. In Germany, during the early decades of the twentieth century, there was one of the greatest ...
Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972, by Edward K. Kaplan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. 530 pp. $40.00. Spiritual Radical is the sequel to Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness (1998), co-written with Samuel H. Dresner, Heschel's first ...
On Jewish Music: Past and Present.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... On Jewish Music: Past and Present, by Joachim Braun. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006. 433 pp., illustrations, maps, tables. $76.95. Compilations of articles comprising a retrospective of one authors' work are a welcome addition to the library shelf. Such is the present book ...
Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive, by Ruth Rubin, edited by Chana Mlotek and Mark Slobin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, in cooperation with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2007. CD included. 288 pp. $34.95. Ruth Rubin (1906-1999) is one of the most ...
The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk.(Book review)
Sep 22, 2008; ... The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk, by Steven Lee Beeber, Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006. 272 pp. $24.95. Over the last few years there has been an increasing amount of sophisticated, critical scholarship on the Jewish-American relationship with ...
Book Notes.(Recommended readings)
Sep 22, 2008 ... American Jewish Life An American Jewish Odyssey: American Religious Freedom and the Nathan Barnert Memorial Temple, by Cipora O. Schwartz. Jersey City: KTAV, 2007. 188 pp. $40.00. ISBN 0-88125-950-0. This volume describes the growing freedom afforded to Jewish and ...