Yentl

Yentl

Author: Leah Napolin

Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9780573618420

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Tells the story of an Ashkenazi Jewish girl in Poland who decides to dress and live like a boy so that she can receive an education in Talmudic law after her father dies.


With Rake in Hand

With Rake in Hand

Author: Joseph Rolnik

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 081565393X

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Joseph Rolnik is widely considered one of the most prominent of the New York Yiddish poets associated with Di Yunge, an avant-garde literary group that formed in the early twentieth century. In his moving and evocative memoir, Rolnik recalls his childhood growing up in a small town in Belarus and his exhilarating yet arduous experiences as an impoverished Yiddish poet living in New York. Working in garment factories by day and writing poetry by night, he became one of the most published and influential writers of the Yiddish literary scene. Unfolding in a series of brief sketches, poems, and vignettes rather than consistent narrative, Rolnik’s memoir is imbued with the poet’s rich, sensuous language, which vividly describes the sounds and images of his life. Marcus’s elegant translation, along with his introduction situating Rolnik’s poetry in its literary historical context, gives readers a fascinating account of this under-appreciated literary treasure.


Young Men in Israeli Haredi Yeshiva Education

Young Men in Israeli Haredi Yeshiva Education

Author: Yohai Hakak

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2012-09-28

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9004234691

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The internal tensions and conflicts central to Haredi Lithuanian yeshivas in contemporary Israel are described with a focus on the rabinical authorities' attempts to respond to these difficulties and the changes the Haredi community is experiencing as a result


The Debba

The Debba

Author: Avner Mandelman

Publisher: Other Press, LLC

Published: 2010-07-13

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 1590513754

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Winner of the 2011 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel In Middle East lore the Debba is a mythical Arab hyena that can turn into a man who lures Jewish children away from their families to teach them the language of the beasts. To the Arabs he is a heroic national symbol; to the Jews he is a terrorist. To David Starkman, “The Debba” is a controversial play, written by his father the war hero, and performed only once, in Haifa in 1946, causing a massive riot. By 1977, David is living in Canada, having renounced his Israeli citizenship and withdrawn from his family, haunted by persistent nightmares about his catastrophic turn as a military assassin for Israel. Upon learning of his father’s gruesome murder, he returns to his homeland for what he hopes will be the final time. Back in Israel, David discovers that his father's will demands he stage the play within forty-five days of his death, and though he is reluctant to comply, the authorities’ evident relief at his refusal convinces him he must persevere. With his father’s legacy on the line, David is forced to reimmerse himself in a life he thought he’d escaped for good.The heart-stopping climax shows that nothing in Israel is as it appears, and not only are the sins of the fathers revisited upon the sons, but so are their virtues—and the latter are more terrible still. Disguised as a breathtaking thriller, Avner Mandelman’s novel reveals Israel’s double soul, its inherent paradoxes, and its taste for both art and violence. The riddle of the Debba—the myth, the play, and the novel— is nothing less than the tangled riddle of Israel itself.


With My Own Eyes

With My Own Eyes

Author: Jacob Katz

Publisher: UPNE

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9780874516395

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In this lovely and moving memoir, the world's most distinguished scholar of Jewish social history recalls a life that in many ways encapsulates the arduous path of the remnant of East European Jewry through the cataclysmic events of this century. After a childhood in the crumbling Hapsburg Empire, Jacob Katz left his native Hungary to attend the famous Yeshiva of Pressburg. He later entered the University of Frankfurt, where in 1934 he received the last doctorate granted to a Jew in Nazi Germany. Heeding ominous undercurrents, Katz immigrated to Palestine-Israel in 1936. There he witnessed the birth of the new state and the growth of the prestigious Hebrew University. With My Own Eyes, guided by the hand and eye of the consummate historian, poignantly recreates the atmosphere of the period in which the author has lived.


Words On Fire

Words On Fire

Author: Vanessa L Ochs

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-05

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0429982593

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When Vanessa Ochs begins to suspect her various physical ailments are due to her leading an ?unsanctified life,? she decides to travel to Jerusalem with her family to explore the sacred books of Judaism. Armed with a list of institutions and the names of women who specialize in teaching these sacred texts, Ochs sets out on a journey of discovery. She forges a personal relationship with her mentors, women who are determined to disprove the claim of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus: ?The words of the Torah should be burnt rather than taught to women.? As her year in Jerusalem draws to a close, Ochs begins to find a way to reconcile her feminist views with her quest to live a life according to laws shaped by the ?sexist? views of traditional Judaism.Part scholarly investigation, part anecdotal memoir, Words on Fire is an accessible portrait of a remote world and a fascinating, firsthand account of the clash between feminism and Judaism.


I Am Forbidden

I Am Forbidden

Author: Anouk Markovits

Publisher: Bond Street Books

Published: 2012-05-08

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0385676743

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The extraordinary story of a sister who believes and a sister who rebels, set inside the most insular Hasidic sect, the Satmar. Spanning four generations, from pre-World War II Transylvania, to 1960s Paris, to contemporary New York, Markovits' masterful novel shows what happens when unwavering love and unyielding law clash--a rabbi will save himself while his followers perish; a Gentile maid will be commanded to give up the boy she rescued because he is not of her faith; two devoted sisters will be forced apart when one begins to question their religion's ancient doctrine. One sister embraces and finds comfort in the constraints of the world she's always known, while the other knows she will suffocate in a life without intellectual freedom. Separated by the rules of their community, the two sisters are brought together again when a family secret threatens to make pariahs of them all. Dark, powerful, and utterly compelling, I Am Forbidden takes us deep inside the minds of those who leave their restrictive environments, and deep into the souls of those who struggle to stay.


Pioneers

Pioneers

Author: S. An-sky

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2017-05-11

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0815654049

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When young Zalmen Itzkowitz steps off the train on a dark, dreary day at the close of the nineteenth century, the residents of Miloslavka have no idea what’s in store for them. Zalmen is a freethinker who has come to the rural town to earn his living as a tutor. Yet, rather than teach Hebrew, he plans to teach his students the Russian language and other secular subjects. Residents of the town quickly become divided, with some regarding Itzkowitz as the devil’s messenger and others supportive of his progressive ideas. Set during the time of the Haskalah, the great Jewish Enlightenment that was sweeping through Europe, Pioneers is a charming tale of one ambivalent young man’s attempt to join the movement and a compassionate portrait of one shtetl on the brink of transformation.


In the Beginning

In the Beginning

Author: Chaim Potok

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 1997-09-10

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 044900113X

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“Powerful . . . It successfully recreates a time and place and the journey of a soul.”—The New York Times All beginnings are hard—that is the lesson David Lurie learns early and painfully in his life. As a boy in the depression-shadowed Bronx, he must begin to hold his own against neighborhood bullies and the treacherous frailties of his own health. As a young man in a world menaced by a distant, horrifying war, he must begin once more—this time to define a resolute path of personal belief that departs boldly from the tradition of his teachers and his own father, a courageous defender of their people. Learning how to remember his past as he nourishes the future, David struggles to complete his first long journey into ancient beginnings. “A major work in every sense.”—Pittsburgh Press


The Rebbe's Army

The Rebbe's Army

Author: Sue Fishkoff

Publisher: Schocken

Published: 2009-04-22

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0307566145

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“Excuse me, are you Jewish?” With these words, the relentlessly cheerful, ideologically driven emissaries of Chabad-Lubavitch approach perfect strangers on street corners throughout the world in their ongoing efforts to persuade their fellow Jews to live religiously observant lives. In The Rebbe’s Army, award-winning journalist Sue Fishkoff gives us the first behind-the-scenes look at this small Brooklyn-based group of Hasidim and the extraordinary lengths to which they take their mission of outreach. They seem to be everywhere—in big cities, small towns, and suburbs throughout the United States, and in sixty-one countries around the world. They light giant Chanukah menorahs in public squares, run “Chabad houses” on college campuses from Berkeley to Cambridge, give weekly bible classes in the Capitol basement in Washington, D.C., run a nonsectarian drug treatment center in Los Angeles, sponsor the world’s biggest Passover Seder in Nepal, establish synagogues, Hebrew schools, and day-care centers in places that are often indifferent and occasionally hostile to their outreach efforts. They have built a billion-dollar international empire, with their own news service, publishing house, and hundreds of Websites. Who are these people? How successful are they in making Jews more observant? What influence does their late Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (who some thought was the Messiah), continue to have on his followers? Fishkoff spent a year interviewing Lubavitch emissaries from Anchorage to Miami and has written an engaging and fair-minded account of a Hasidic group whose motives and methodology continue to be the subject of speculation and controversy.