The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler.
by Edmund Kessler
ISBN 978-1-934843-98-7
250 pp. cloth
$30.00
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Publication Date: February, 2010

 In The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler, Dr. Kessler, a Jewish attorney from Lwow, Poland, gives an eye-witness account of the Holocaust through the events recorded in his diary between the years, 1942-1944. In vivid, raw, documentary style, he describes his experiences in the Lwow Ghetto, the Janowska Concentration Camp, and in an underground bunker where he and twenty-three other Jews were hidden by a courageous Polish farmer and his family. The book includes a chapter written by Kazimierz Kalwinski, who, as a teenager, was a care-taker for the hidden Jews on his family’s farm. Edmund’s daughter, Renata Kessler, coordinated the book and has written the epilogue about her search for the story, which has taken her to Israel, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine. Renowned scholar Antony Polonsky contributes an insightful historical overview of the times in which the book takes place. A tremendous resource for historians, scholars and those interested in the Holocaust.

Reviews:

“The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is a slim volume with considerable power. In prose and poetry, Kessler describes the conditions of Jewish life in the large but understudied ghetto of Lwow, Poland. His observations are keen, precise, his tone reserved and understated. He writes simply: “needless to say, conditions were difficult.” Elsewhere he says: “I owe my survival to the fact that admirable people still in the world.”
-- Michael Berenbaum, Director, Sigi Ziering Institute, Professor of Jewish Studies,            American Jewish University (Los Angeles)

“The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is not only a gripping account of the fate of Lwow Jewry during the war but also a unique mirror of the parallel perspectives of the rescued and their rescuers. This rich collection includes Kessler's wartime diary, his wartime poetry, and a 1998 memoir by Kazimierz Kalwinski, the son of the Polish couple who hid Kessler, his wife and 22 other Jews on their farm. Kessler was not what many regard as "a typical Polish Jew." He was an accomplished attorney, highly educated and spoke Polish as his first language. But in a way, Kessler was representative of a now destroyed subculture, the rich world of pre-war acculturated middle class Galician Jewry, a world which combined a deep love of Polish culture with a strong devotion to Jewish identity. Kessler was both an attorney and a poet, a shrewd observer for whom the horrors that he was experiencing only encouraged him to reaffirm his humanity through poetry of witness. It is especially important that this collection includes Kalwinski's memoirs. To hide Jews in German occupied Poland was to expose oneself and one's family to the risk of execution. It was not so easy to procure food and to secure a hiding place from the scrutiny of prying eyes at a time when Germans were conducting constant searches for food and for hidden arms. How does one do this for 24 people? This book is indeed an important addition to our knowledge of the Holocaust.”
-- Samuel Kassow, Charles H Northam professor of history, Trinity College (Hartford, CT), author of Who Will Write Our History?



Series: Jews of Poland

The Mind Behind the Gospels: A Commentary to Matthew 1–14.
by Herbert Basser
ISBN 978-1-934843-33-8
396 pp. cloth
$69.00
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Publication Date: July, 2009

This work offers a new translation of Matthew, graciously offered by Peter Zaas (with some minor revisions by David Malone and Herbert Basser). Basser gives us a verse-by-verse commentary to the first half of the Gospel in his study of Matthew through the lens of Jewish texts. These texts, skillfully interpreted by Basser, illuminate the powerful poetry and mystery behind much of Matthew’s genius in reworking evangelist’s sources. These Jewish materials provide a creative, cultural way of thinking about what God expects from human beings that is infused with the words and images of Matthew. Basser shows how Jewish idioms and artistry move the speeches, story, and figure of Jesus, through various layers of Church tradition, from a Jewish preacher to a Gentile savior. Each chapter of commentary is preceded by a preliminary discussion and the book is introduced by a scholarly yet accessible preface and introduction discussing the methodological issues of the commentary as a whole. In many ways, this book deepens Basser’s initial views of the New Testament in his Studies in Exegesis, Leiden and Boston, E.J. Brill, 2000. The present book will appeal to a broad audience of knowledgeable readers of any or no faith. Basser is presently completing his annotations to the Epistle of James for The Jewish Annotated New Testament to be published by Oxford University Press.

Reviews:
"Herbert Basser's commentary on Matthew 1-14 both offers fresh insights into the composition of the First Gospel and makes a major contribution to the understanding of the Jewish roots of Christian origins. Employing later compilations of Jewish literature along with the expected Tannaitic, Targumic and Qumran materials, he is able to construct an interpretive model of how Jews read Scripture, discerned orthopraxy and maintained community. His approach does not artificially force Judaism into a predetermined model; instead, it recognizes that within the diversity of that thought there exist particular interpretive strategies and rhetorical modes of argumentation. Confirming many of his connections are both Septuagintal readings and Syriac translations of both Hebrew biblical material and early (Greek) Christian literature. Basser's decision generally to avoid theoretical issues of synoptic parallels for criticism and textual variants is wise. The commentary does address synoptic parallels and textual variants where relevant."  -- Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School

"this book can be genuinely, even startlingly, transformative. Certainly, it is one of the most seminal volumes I have read in recent years--as one brilliant "mind" from antiquity is here explicated by another from modernity, admirably providing "new and strong oars for navigating the Gospel material afloat in the sea of the Jewish literary tradition" (p. 18)."
-- Michael Cook, Hebrew Union College -- Jewish Institute of Religion, published on H-Judaic, January 2010

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages.
by Raphael Jospe
ISBN 978-1-934843-09-3
620 pp. cloth
$65.00
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Publication Date: June, 2009

Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the formative period of medieval Jewish philosophy, from its beginnings with Saadiah Gaon to its apex in Maimonides, when Jews living in Islamic countries and writing in Arabic were the first to develop a conscious and continuous tradition of philosophy.The book includes a dictionary of selected philosophic terms, and discusses the Greek and Arabic schools of thought that influenced the Jewish thinkers and to which they responded.The discussion covers: the nature of Jewish philosophy, Saadiah Gaon and the Kalam, Jewish Neo-Platonism, Bahya ibn Paqudah, Abraham ibn Ezra's philosophical Bible exegesis, Judah Ha-Levi's critique of philosophy, Abraham ibn Daud and the transition to Aristotelianism, Maimonides, and the controversy over Maimonides and philosophy.

Reviews:
"This volume is [a] great achievement. [Dr. Jospe's] book can be used as both a textbook and reference book because of its clear and extensive index of names and topics. Yet the clarity of the book's presentation and its readability make it a perfect introductory volume for a lay reader. His introductory chapter “What is Jewish Philosophy" alone is worth the price of the book because it surveys the wide variety of approaches of Jewish philosophy. There is, as Dr. Jospe makes very clear, no single, uniform Jewish philosophy. Thus, many Jews who understand this, become confused, throw up their hands and ask, "If so, what should I believe?" Jospe's excellent book helps people reach an answer." --Israel Drazen, The Jewish Eye

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

Jewish Religion After Theology.
by Avi Sagi
ISBN 978-1-934843-20-8
264 pp. cloth
$59.00
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Publication Date: May, 2009

Avi Sagi's book ponders one of the most intriguing shifts in modern Jewish thought: from a metaphysical and theological standpoint toward a new manner of philosophizing based primarily on practice. Different chapters study this great shift and its various manifestations. The central figure of this new examination is Isaiah Leibowitz, whose thoughts encapsulate more than any other Jewish thinker this stance of religion without metaphysics. Sagi explores corresponding issues such as observance, the possibility of pluralism, the meaning of penance without messianic suppositions, and pragmatic coping with theodicy after the Holocaust, presenting the different possibilities within this great alteration in Jewish thought.

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

The Wisdom of Love: Man, Woman and God in Jewish Canonical Literature.
by Naftali Rothenberg
ISBN 978-1-934843-29-1
200 pp. cloth
$50.00
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Publication Date: January, 2009

 The Wisdom of Love strives to challenge the discrepancy between the way source texts relate to love and the way they are perceived to do so, introducing readers to the extensive, profound, and significant treatment of love in the Jewish canon. This is a book about love, not its repression; it is an opportunity to study the wisdom of love, not those who lack such wisdom and are unlikely to ever acquire it.

The Wisdom of Love brings about not only a change in perception—recognizing the existence of the wisdom of love per se—but also the realization that this wisdom is the very foundation of religious wisdom as a whole, rather than a peripheral branch of it. All love derives from a single source: love between man and woman. It is from this source that all other manifestations of love, such as love of God, love of wisdom, love of one’s fellow, draw their meaning.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Religious Zionism: History and Ideology.
by Dov Schwartz
ISBN 978-1-934843-25-3
160 pp. cloth
$45.00
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Publication Date: December, 2008

Religious Zionism is a major component of contemporary Israeli society and politics. The author reviews the history of religious Zionism from both a historical and ideological-theological perspective. His basic assumption is that religious Zionism cannot be fully understood solely through a historical description, or even from social, political, and philosophical vantage points. This book is the first study on this subject to be published in English.

Reviews:
"This small book is a concise yet successful introduction into the history and worldview of religious Zionism. Schwartz begins his story in 1902, with the founding of the Mizrahi movement and its revolutionary "activism of pioneering and political variety foreign to the existing Torah world." The majority of the work is dedicated to the movement before 1948 and Israel's early years. When Schwartz does discuss more recent phenomenon, he tries to highlight how these represent shifts from classic religious Zionist belief. The chapters are short and accessible, and will serve lay readers well to get a valuable introduction into early religious Zionism... This is a valuable contribution to the growing literature in English on religious Zionism. "
-- Shlomo Brody, Tradition Online

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

A World Apart: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Nineteenth-Century Galicia.
by Joseph Margoshes, translated by Ira Robinson, edited by Simcha Fishbane, Ira Robinson
ISBN 978-1-934843-10-9
204 pp. cloth
$50.00
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Publication Date: August, 2008

In 1936, Joseph Margoshes (1866-1955), a writer for the New York Yiddish daily Morgen Journal, published a memoir of his youth in Austro-Hungarian Galicia entitled Erinerungen fun mayn leben . In it, he evoked a world that had been changed almost beyond recognition as a result of the First World War, and was shortly to be completely obliterated by the Holocaust. In telling his story, Margoshes gives the reader important insights into the many-faceted Jewish life ofAustro-Hungarian Galicia.We read of the Orthodox and the Enlightened, urban and rural life, Jews and their gentile neighbors, and much more.This book is an important evocation of an entire Jewish society and civilization, and bears comparison withYehielYeshaiaTrunk's masterful evocation of Jewish life in Poland, Poyln.5

Reviews:

From the Religious Studies Review, June 2009

"This delightful memoir, written in Yiddish in the 1930s (and published in Yiddish in 1936), evokes life in Galicia and the author’s own personal saga. Eliezer Margoshes (1866-1955) was born in Lemberg (Lvov) and came to America at the turn of the century. In the States, he wrote for Yiddish newspapers. The book is rich in descriptions of traditional education, famous (and not so famous) rabbis, the process or modernization and change, as well as many topics relevant to social and cultural history. The picture Margoshes offers is honest, detailed, and with a little romanticization or sentimentality. The book is very well translated and preserves the flavor of the Yiddish original without sacrificing readability. The vivid descriptions of religious life make this a useful primary source, especially on Hasidic life, for students who are limited to English, and it can easily be used to illustrate more abstract theories and models. The index adds to the usefulness of the book."

        --Shaul Stampfer, Hebrew University

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Jewish Peoplehood: Change and Challenge.
edited by Ezra Kopelowitz, Menachem Revivi
ISBN 978-1-934843-24-6
200 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: August, 2008

 At a time when Jewish communities have become increasingly anxious about weakening Jewish identity, one response strategy is to engage with the concept of Jewish Peoplehood as a social phenomenon, in its varied contexts and processes.
This volume represents the first in-depth effort to address the concept of Jewish peoplehood since the initial attempts of early 20th century Jewish intellectuals, Mordechai Kaplan and Salo Baron. Indeed, its substance goes far beyond the range of a contemporary academic anthology - constituting, rather, a dynamic think tank on the concept of Jewish peoplehood through bringing together intellectuals from France, Israel, the UK, and the United States. The collection offers both intellectual and practical frameworks for grappling with the policy outcomes of different understandings of the peoplehood concept, and contributors to this volume include noted figures from diverse walks of life: academic disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, a rabbi, a literary figure, and communal leaders.

Series: Out of the Series

The Idea of Modern Jewish Culture.
by Eliezer Schweid, edited by Leonard Levin
ISBN 978-1-934843-05-5
292 pp. cloth
$60.00
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Publication Date: July, 2008

The vast majority of intellectual, religious, and national developments in modern Judaism revolve around the central idea of "Jewish culture." This book is the first synoptic view of these developments that organizes and relates them from this vantage point. The first Jewish modernization movements perceived culture as the defining trait of the outside alien social environment to which Jewry had to adapt. To be "cultured" was to be modern-European, as opposed to medieval-ghetto-Jewish. In short order, however, the Jewish religious legacy was redefined retrospectively as a historical "culture," with fateful consequences for the conception of Judaism as a human and not only a divinely mandated regime.The conception of Judaism-as-culture took two main forms: an integrative, vernacular Jewish culture that developed in tandem with the integration of Jews into the various nations of western-central Europe and America, and a national Hebrew culture which, though open to the inputs of modern European society, sought to develop a revitalized Jewish national identity that ultimately found expression in the revival of the Jewish homeland and the State of Israel.
This is a large, complex story in which the author describes the contributions of Mendelssohn, Wessely, Krochmal, Zunz, the mainstream Zionist thinkers (especially Ahad Ha-Am, Bialik, and A.D. Gordon), Kook, Kaplan, and Dubnow to the formulation of the various versions of the modern Jewish cultural ideal.

Review:
"…Schweid's work is a significant addition to the analysis of European Jewish thought in the modern period."
        -- Rabbi Josh Levy, Manna, Autumn 2009

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

Time and Life Cycle in Talmud and Midrash: Socio-Anthropological Perspectives.
by Nissan Rubin
ISBN 978-1-934843-07-9
220 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: May, 2008

Focusing on the concept of time and the life cycle, this collection of articles examines Jewish life in theTalmudic period through the lens of Jewish law and custom of the time.The essays are the work of Nissan Rubin (one written in collaboration with Admiel Kosman) and come together to present the cultural perspective of the sages and scholars who produced the stepping-stones of Jewish life and custom. By using a structural approach, Rubin is able to identify processes of long-term change in a society that remains largely traditional and stable. Symbolic analysis supplies an additional dimension to these studies, enabling the reader to experience the cultural subtexts.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

Theological and Philosophical Premises of Judaism.
by Jacob Neusner
ISBN 978-1-934843-19-2
240 pp. cloth
$55.00
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Publication Date: May, 2008

Classical Judaism imagined the people Israel’s situation in three aspects to be unique among the nations of the earth. The nations lived in unclean lands contaminated by corpses and redolent of death. They themselves are destined to die without hope of renewed life after the grave. They were prisoners of secular time, subject to the movement and laws of history in its inexorable logic. Heaven did not pay attention to what they did and did not care about their conduct, so long as they observed the basic decencies mandated by the commandments that applied to the heirs of Noah, seven fundamental rules in all.
That is not how Israel the holy people was conceived. The Israel contemplated by Rabbinic Judaism lives in sacred space and in enchanted time, all the while subject to the constant surveillance of an eye that sees
all and an ear that hears all and a sentient being that recalls all. Why the divine obsession with Israel? God yearned for Israel’s love and constantly contemplated its conduct. The world imagined by the Rabbis situated Israel in an enchanted kingdom, a never-never-land and conceived of God as omniscient and ubiquitous.
 Here Neusner shows that in its generative theology Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age invoked the perpetual presence of God overseeing all that Israelites said and did. It conceived of Israel to transcend the movement of history and to live in a perpetual present tense. Israel located itself in a Land like no other. And it organized its social order in a hierarchical structure ascending to the one God situated at the climax and head of all being.

Series: Judaism and Jewish Life

The Reasons for the Commandments in Jewish Thought.
by Isaac Heinemann, translated by Leonard Levin
ISBN 978-1-934843-04-8
220 pp. cloth
$50.00
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Publication Date: May, 2008

This classic work by early-20th-century Jewish humanist and scholar Isaac Heinemann surveys the crucial phases of Jewish thought concerning correct conduct as codified in the comandments. Heinemann provides his own systematic insights about the intellectual, emotional, pedagogical, and pragmatic reasoning advanced by the major Jewish thinkers.
This volume covers Jewish thinkers from the Bible, rabbis and Hellenistic philosophers through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including Saadiah, Halevi, Maimonides,Albo, and many others. Heinemann addresses such questions as:What were the Biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern rationales offered for the commandments in the course of Jewish thought?

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

The Philosophy of the Bible as Foundation of Jewish Culture: Philosophy of Biblical Narrative.
by Eliezer Schweid, translated by Leonard Levin
ISBN 978-1-934843-00-0
216 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: January, 2008

The fundamental book of Eliezer Schweid is a modern interpretation of the Bible as narrative and law that can reopen the dialogue of contemporary Jews with the Bible, from which a dynamic Jewish culture can continue to draw its inspiration. The approach draws at the same time from the philosophical modernism of Hermann Cohen, the dialogical philosophy of Buber, the religious phenomenology of Heschel, and the insights of contemporary Biblical scholars, including literary analysts of the Bible.
Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God’s creation whose resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and needs-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally—a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

The Philosophy of the Bible as Foundation of Jewish Culture: Philosophy of Biblical Law.
by Eliezer Schweid, translated by Leonard Levin
ISBN 978-1-934843-01-7
224 pp. cloth
$70.00
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Publication Date: January, 2008

Like Spinoza in his Theological-Political Treatise, Schweid helps us grasp the potential for seeing radically new messages in this oldest of books, the Bible. The American Founding Fathers realized that the Bible offers strong support for the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Socially, it offers a message of egalitarianism, especially in the provisions of the Jubilee. It is hardly an accident that two modern political movements found mottos ready at hand from the 25th chapter of Leviticus: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (from the Liberty Bell), and: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity” (motto of the Jewish National Fund).
More broadly, Schweid helps us to appreciate the broader message of the narrative of creation and settlement of the land in its ecumenical and planetary dimensions. The world is God’s creation whose resources are to be deployed as necessary for the sustenance and needs-fulfillment of all peoples and all creatures equally—a message very much relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all at the present time.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

The Horizontal Society: Understanding the Covenant and Alphabetic Judaism (vol 1 and vol 2).
ISBN 978-1-936235-04-9
676 pp.
$0.00
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Publication Date: January, 2010

The Horizontal Society is an exposition of rabbinic thought as exemplified by Maimonides.The thought streams of Greece, Rome, and Christendom serve as a contrast. This work is in the Hebrew rhetorical tradition of melisa. The main text in five sections-—The God of Israel, The Books of Israel, The Governance of Israel, The Memory of Israel, and The Folly of Israel—focuses on these core matters. It includes numerous references to orient the reader. The mode is similar to the author's previous work, such as Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition, interacting with the latest thought from today's academy.
This book illustrates the horizontal organization of the Jewish people. Other social organization is based on hierarchy. Two principles made this difference possible for Israel. First, the Hebrew Scriptures alone propose that every human being is created in the image of God.This necessitates the absolute equality of every human being. Second, the Sinai covenant establishes the Law as the supreme authority. Whereas in other societies, might is the source of authority, in Judaism authority is limited by the Law. These principles were summarized by the last Prophet of Israel: "Had not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously…, profaning the covenant of our fathers?" (Mal 2:10). There is a subdivided bibliography of forty pages, including both Jewish and "Western" sources.The scholarly apparatus includes indices of terms, names, and subjects. There are also seventy appendices of interest to rabbinic readership.

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

The Scroll of Secrets: The Hidden Messianic Vision of R. Nachman of Breslav.
ISBN 978-1-934843-93-2
350 pp. cloth
$49.00
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Publication Date: February, 2010

 Concealed for two centuries and known only to a select individual in each generation, the Scroll of Secrets is the hidden Messianic vision of R. Nachman of Bratslav. Despite being written in an encoded language, with acronyms and abbreviations, after a clarification and cautious reconstruction of what can be decoded, the reader is presented with an exalted Messianic vision. The book marks a turning point in our knowledge of R. Nachman's spiritual world, and initiates a renewed discussion of an intriguing Hasidism that excites scholars and broad circles within the Jewish and Israeli publics.  The reader is presented with a sublime and enticing vision of the eschatological End of Days that contains song and prayer, Torah, melodies and longings, and love and compassion for every man.

Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History

A Partisan of Vilna.
by Rachel Margolis, edited by Marjorie Margolis
ISBN 978-1-934843-91-8
520 pp. cloth
$40.00
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Publication Date: April, 2010

 A Partisan of Vilna is the memoir of Rachel Margolis, the sole survivor of her family, who escaped from the Vilna Ghetto with other members of the resistance movement, the FPO (United Partisan Organization), and joined the Soviet partisans in the forests of Lithuania to sabotage the Nazis. Beginning with an account of Rachel’s life as a precocious, privileged girl in pre-war Vilna, it goes on to detail life in the Vilna Ghetto, including the development and struggles of the FPO against the Nazis. Finally, the book chronicles the escape of a group of FPO members into the forest of Belarus, where Rachel became a partisan fighter. Rather than “keep house” back at their bunker like other female partisans, Rachel demanded assignments to active duty alongside the men. Going on military assignments, Rachel burned down a bridge, blew up railroad tracks, and helped bring in food supplies for her fellow partisans.  The book opens with an introductory essay by renowned historian, Antony Polonsky.

Review:

"Arguably the most extraordinary Holocaust survivor of our time, Rachel Margolis left a safe hiding place to join her (doomed) family in the Vilna Ghetto, then left the ghetto to join the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests. After the war, she helped build a small Holocaust museum, then rediscovered, transcribed and published the lost diary of a Christian Pole who witnessed tens of thousands of murders of Jews by enthusiastic Lithuanian nationalists. In her mid eighties, she published the Russian original of this memoir. The local anti-Semitic press focused battened on one paragraph, took it out of context, and then – in May 2008, armed police came looking for Rachel and a fellow woman partisan survivor. Currently living in Israel and prevented from returning to her native Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) by the prosecutors’ campaign, she is a survivor who can’t return home. This book is the reason why. In publishing it in English, Academic Studies Press does a great service to both the dwindling community of Holocaust survivors, and the growing community of readers who just want to know."

--Dovid Katz, Professor of Judaic Studies, Vilnius University; Director of Research, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, www.HolocaustInTheBaltics.com, www.DovidKatz.net

Series: Jews of Poland