Our new Jewish Studies catalog includes a new exploration of the ancient story of Masada, an engaging firsthand portrait of American Judaism today, and a gripping revisionist history that shows how ordinary Italians played a central role in the genocide of Italian Jews during the Second World War.
If you’re attending the Association for Jewish Studies meeting in Boston this weekend, you can stop by Booth 206 to check out our Jewish studies titles!
Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children—the last holdouts of the revolt against Rome following the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple—reportedly took their own lives rather than surrender to the Roman army. This dramatic event, which took place on top of Masada, a barren and windswept mountain overlooking the Dead Sea, spawned a powerful story of Jewish resistance that came to symbolize the embattled modern State of Israel. In Masada, archaeologist Jodi Magness explains what happened there, how we know it, and how recent developments might change understandings of the story.
American Judaism has been buffeted by massive social upheavals in recent decades. Like other religions in the United States, it has witnessed a decline in the number of participants over the past forty years, and many who remain active struggle to reconcile their hallowed traditions with new perspectives—from feminism and the LGBTQ movement to “do-it-yourself religion” and personally defined spirituality. Taking a fresh look at American Judaism today, Jack Wertheimer, a leading authority on the subject, sets out to discover how Jews of various orientations practice their religion in this radically altered landscape. The New American Judaism is a quintessentially American story of rash disruption and creative reinvention, religious illiteracy and dynamic experimentation.
In this gripping revisionist history of Italy’s role in the Holocaust, Simon Levis Sullam presents an unforgettable account of how ordinary Italians actively participated in the deportation of Italy’s Jews between 1943 and 1945, when Mussolini’s collaborationist republic was under German occupation. While most historians have long described Italians as relatively protective of Jews during this time, The Italian Executioners tells a very different story, recounting in vivid detail the shocking events of a period in which Italians set in motion almost half the arrests that sent their Jewish compatriots to Auschwitz.