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        MICHEL EZRA SAFRA & SONS

        by Amnon Shamosh

        Michel Ezra Safra & Sons is a family saga by a well-known Israeli writer, Amnon Shamosh. The story is semibiographical and takes place partly in Aleppo, Syria, the birthplace of the author. The book describes the life, struggles, and dispersion of a well-to-do Syrian Jewish family during the course of three generations, beginning in the mid-1930’s. The story of the Ezra Safra family is the tale of a Middle Eastern Jewish society and its basic traditional values, which are constantly challenged by other norms, both circumstantial and universal. Shaken by local and global upheavals, the family, headed by Michel and his pretty wife Linda, is driven from their hometown of Aleppo during riots in the aftermath of the United Nations resolution in late 1947 on the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Michel, a practical figure, continues to rule his worldwide business empire. His grip on his children seems to loosen, however, though he still enjoys their respect and love. Rachmo, the eldest son and heir apparent, runs the Paris branch of the family business, but his conduct as a family man does not live up to his parents’ standards. Albert, his younger brother, abhors business and shuns the course he is expected to take. He finds an outlet in Zionist underground activity, including “smuggling” Jews into Palestine. Five other Safra sons and daughters emigrate to Europe, America, and Israel. What concerns Michel most, disturbing and haunting him, is not the state of his financial empire, but a grave “sin” that he has committed. When the old synagogue of Aleppo was set on fire, Michel rescued the “Aram Zova” Torah scroll and managed to keep it from burning. He removed a piece from this priceless, sacred scroll and secreted it in a safe in Nice, France. Although this treasure is protected, Michel construes the tragedies that befall the family as divine punishment. Throughout the novel, the reader follows Michel on his worldwide travels, settling family and business affairs, burdened by poor health and by his conscience. The life of his son Albert, now an influential member of a collective settlement in Israel, is completely alien to him. The saga of the Ezra Safra family draws to a finale when Michel dies heartbroken a few days after his grandson is killed during the 1967 Six-Day War. Later, Rachmo, who was made party to his father’s secret, dies of a heart attack upon learning that the scroll in Nice has been stolen. Linda agrees to join her children in Israel, but refuses to live with them. She chooses to live a solitary life, surrounded by photos and memories of the past. Michel Ezra Safra and Sons was made into a highly successful mini-series for  the Israeli television.   French and Spanish translations of the entire novel are available! 348 pages, 14.5X21 cm

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2024

        Tracking the Jews

        Ecumenical Protestants, conversion, and the Holocaust

        by Carolyn Sanzenbacher

        This book sheds light on an unprecedented Protestant conversion initiative for the global evangelisation of Jews. Founded in 1929, the International Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews (ICCAJ) aimed to bring Jewish people to their 'spiritual destiny', a task it saw as both benevolent and essential for a harmonious society. By the time of Hitler's rise to power it was active in thirty-two countries, educating Protestant churches on the right Christian attitude towards Jews and antisemitism. Reconstructing the activities of the ICCAJ in the years before, during and immediately after the Holocaust, Tracking the Jews reveals how ideas disseminated through the organisation's discourse - 'Jewish problem', 'Jewish influence', 'Judaising threat', 'eternal Jew' - were used to rationalise, justify, explain or advance a number of deeply troubling policies. They were, for vastly different reasons, consciously used elements of argumentation in both Protestant conversionary discourse and Nazi antisemitic ideology.

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        Fiction

        El baile de la abuela muerta (Dead grandma's dance)

        by Elina Malamud

        A hundred years of history from two branches of a Jewish family, set against the backdrop of Tsarist Russia, from the early 19th century to their migration to Argentina in the early 20th century. It's not just the tradition of the Jews from Eastern Europe, but a vivid portrayal of the characters that inhabited this complex and diverse society of declining nobility, gypsies, and Bolsheviks. Clandestine loves, uprisings, and persecutions are described with nostalgic detail, alongside an unexpected display of Hasidic humor and magic.

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        Medicine
        May 2024

        Jewish refugees and the British nursing profession

        A gendered opportunity

        by Jane Brooks

        This book follows the lives of female Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution and became nurses. Nursing was nominally a profession but with its poor pay and harsh discipline, it was unpopular with British women. In the years preceding the Second World War, hospitals in Britain suffered chronic nurse staffing crises. As the country faced inevitable war, the Government and the profession's elite courted refugees as an antidote to the shortages, but many hospitals refused to employ Continental Jews. The book explores the changes in the refugees' status and lives from the war years to the foundation of the National Health Service and to the latter decades of the twentieth century. It places the refugees at the forefront of manoeuvres in nursing practice, education and research at a time of social upheaval and alterations in the position of women.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2004

        Religion in history

        Conflict, conversion and coexistence

        by John Wolffe

        This is an integrated collection of essays by leading scholars that looks at issues of conflict, conversion and coexistence in the religious context since the third century. The range of topics explored include paganism and Christianity in the later Roman world, the Crusades, the impact of the Reformation in Britain and Ireland, subsequent Protestant-Catholic conflict, the Hindu Renaissance in nineteenth-century India, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Britain in the 1960s, women and the ministry, and Christianity, Judaism and the Holocaust. The book concludes by offering an historical perspective on religion, conflict and coexistence in the world today. Published in association with The Open University, this is a student-friendly and accessible volume on popular subjects within religious history, and it will be of value to students on a range of courses, as well as to a wider readership interested in the historical background to the role of religion in the contemporary world. ;

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        May 1985

        Wie entsteht Religion?

        by Alfred North Whitehead, Hans Günter Holl

        Religion in the Making – so der englische Originaltitel – besteht aus vier Vorlesungen, die Whitehead 1926 gehalten hat. In der gleichen Perspektive, wie er in den ein Jahr früher gehaltenen Lowell Lectures, die unter dem Titel Wissenschaft und moderne Welt erschienen sind, Entwicklung und Wirkung der modernen Wissenschaft analysiert hatte, verfolgt er in Wie entsteht Religion? die Ziele, »eine gedrängte Analyse der vielfältigen Faktoren in der menschlichen Natur vorzulegen, die in ihrem Zusammenwirken eine neue Religion entstehen lassen, den unausweichlichen Wandel der Religion im Zusammenhang mit dem Wandel des Wissens darzustellen und insbesondere die Aufmerksamkeit darauf zu richten, wie die Religion von unserer Auffassung jener beständigen Elemente abhängt, vermöge derer es in der Welt eine feste Ordnung gibt – beständige Elemente, ohne die es keine sich verändernde Welt geben könnte«.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2013

        The Jews in western Europe, 1400–1600

        by John Edwards

        As European politics, society, economy and religion underwent epoch-making changes between 1400 and 1600, the treatment of Europe's Jews by the non-Jewish majority was, then as in later periods, a symptom of social problems and tensions in the Continent as a whole. Through a broad-ranging collection of documents, John Edwards sets out to present a vivid picture of the Jewish presence in European life during this vital and turbulent period. Subjects covered include the Jews' own economic presence and culture, social relations between Jews and Christians, the policies and actions of Christian authorities in Church and State. He also draws upon original source material to convey ordinary people's prejudices about Jews, including myths about Jewish 'devilishness', money-grabbing, and 'ritual murder' of Christian children. Full introductory and explanatory material makes accessible the historical context of the subject and highlights the insights offered by the documents as well as the pitfalls to be avoided in this area of historical enquiry. This volume aims to provide a coherent working collection of texts for lecturers, teachers and students who wish to understand the experience of Jewish Europeans in this period.

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        Medicine
        September 2023

        Situating religion and medicine in Asia

        Methodological insights and innovations

        by Michael Stanley-Baker

        This edited volume presents the latest research on the intersection of religion and medicine in Asia. It features chapters by internationally known scholars, who bring to bear a range of methodological and geographic expertise on this topic. The book's central question is to what extent 'religion' and 'medicine' have overlapped or interrelated in various Asian societies. Collectively, the contributions explore a number of related issues, such as: which societies separated out religious from medical concerns, at which times and in what ways? Where have medicine and religion converged, and how has such knowledge been defined by scholars and cultural actors? Are 'religion' and 'medicine' the best terms by which scholars can grapple with knowledge about the sacred and the self, destiny and disease?

      • Trusted Partner
        May 2002

        Die Religion der Gesellschaft

        by Niklas Luhmann, André Kieserling

        Die Klassiker der Soziologie hatten die Religionssoziologie als einen zentralen Teil der Gesellschaftstheorie angesehen, und zwar auch und gerade dort, wo ihnen die moderne, angeblich so religionsfern gebaute Gesellschaft vor Augen stand. Der vorliegende Band, an dem Niklas Luhmann bis kurz vor seinem Tod gearbeitet hat, erneuert diesen Anspruch, indem er die Religion als autonomes Kommunikationssystem innerhalb der modernen Gesellschaft beschreibt.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2022

        Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan

        The cult of the Two Grand Elders

        by Fabian Graham

        In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell's 'enforcers', the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple's spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia (and their counterparts in Taiwan) through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions about the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham's innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the destigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2023

        No masters but God

        Portraits of anarcho-Judaism

        by Hayyim Rothman

        The forgotten legacy of religious Jewish anarchism, and the adventures and ideas of its key figures, finally comes to light in this book. Set in the decades surrounding both world wars, No masters but God identifies a loosely connected group of rabbis and traditionalist thinkers who explicitly appealed to anarchist ideas in articulating the meaning of the Torah, traditional practice, Jewish life and the mission of modern Jewry. Full of archival discoveries and first translations from Yiddish and Hebrew, it explores anarcho-Judaism in its variety through the works of Yaakov Meir Zalkind, Yitshak Nahman Steinberg, Yehudah Leyb Don-Yahiya, Avraham Yehudah Heyn, Natan Hofshi, Shmuel Alexandrov, Yehudah Ashlag and Aaron Shmuel Tamaret. With this ground-breaking account, Hayyim Rothman traces a complicated story about the modern entanglement of religion and anarchism, pacifism and Zionism, prophetic anti-authoritarianism and mystical antinomianism.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2007

        Religion in Revolutionary England

        by Christopher Durston, Judith Maltby

        This book offers a collection of essays tightly focused around the issue of religion in England between 1640 and 1660, a time of upheaval and civil war in England. Edited by well-known scholars of the subject, topics include the toleration controversy, women's theological writing, observance of the Lord's Day and prayer books. To aid understanding, the essays are divided into three sections examining theology in revolutionary England, inside and outside the revolutionary National Church and local impacts of religious revolution. Carefully and thoughtfully presented, this book will be of great use for those seeking to better understand the practices and patterns of religious life in England in this important and fascinating period. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2021

        Religion and life cycles in early modern England

        by Caroline Bowden, Emily Vine, Tessa Whitehouse

        Religion and life cycles in early modern England assembles scholars working in the fields of history, English literature and art history to further our understanding of the intersection between religion and the life course in the period c. 1550-1800. Featuring chapters on Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities, it encourages cross-confessional comparison between life stages and rites of passage that were of religious significance to all faiths in early modern England. The book considers biological processes such as birth and death, aspects of the social life cycle including schooling, coming of age and marriage and understandings of religious transition points such as spiritual awakenings and conversion. Through this inclusive and interdisciplinary approach, it seeks to show that the life cycle was not something fixed or predetermined and that early modern individuals experienced multiple, overlapping life cycles.

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        Medieval history
        November 2011

        Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages

        A quiet revolution

        by Simha Goldin

        Goldin's study explores the relationships between men and women within Jewish society living in Germany, northern France and England among the Christian population over a period of some 350 years. Looking at original Hebrew sources to conduct a social analysis, he takes us from the middle of the tenth century until the middle of the second half of the fourteenth century, when the Christian population had expelled the Jews from almost all of the places they were living. Particularly fascinating are the attitudes towards women, as well as their changes in social status. By examining the factors involved in these issues, including views of the leadership, economic influences, internal power politics and gender struggles, Goldin's book provides a greater understanding of the functioning of these communities. This volume will be of great interest to historians of medieval Europe, gender and religion.

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        October 2014

        Farewell, Aleppo

        by Claudette E. Sutton

        The Jews of Aleppo, Syria, had been part of the city's fabric for more than two thousand years, in good times and bad, through conquerors and kings. But in the middle years of the twentieth century, all that changed. To Selim Sutton, a merchant with centuries of roots in the Syrian soil, the dangers of rising anti-Semitism made clear that his family must find a new home. With several young children and no prospect of securing visas to the United States, he devised a savvy plan for getting his family out: "exporting" his sons.In December 1940, he told the two oldest, Mea¯r and Saleh, that arrangements had been made for their transit to Shanghai, where they would work in an uncle's export business. China, he hoped, would provide a short-term safe harbor and a steppingstone to America.But the world intervened for the young men, now renamed Mike and Sal by their Uncle Joe. Sal became ill with tuberculosis soon after arriving and was sent back to Aleppo alone. And the war that soon would engulf every inhabited land loomed closer each day. Joe, Syrian-born but a naturalized American citizen, barely escaped on the last ship to sail for the U.S. before Pearl Harbor was bombed and the Japanese seized Shanghai.Mike was alone, a teen-ager in an occupied city, across the world from his family, with only his mettle to rely on as he strived to survive personally and economically in the face of increasing deprivation. Farewell, Aleppo is the story–told by Mike's daughter–of the journey that would ultimately take him from the insular Jewish community of Aleppo to the solitary task of building a new life in America.It is both her father's tale that journalist Claudette Sutton describes and also the harrowing experiences of the family members he left behind in Syria, forced to smuggle themselves out of the country after it closed its borders to Jewish emigration. The picture Sutton paints is both a poignant narrative of individual lives and the broader canvas of a people's survival over millennia, in their native land and far away, through the strength of their faith and their communities. Multiple threads come richly together as she observes their world from inside and outside the fold, shares an important and nearly forgotten epoch of Jewish history, and explores universal questions of identity, family, and culture.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences

        Naguib Mahfouz Annuals: About Youth and Freedom

        by Naguib Mahfouz

        Religion is taught in schools as if a branch of science consisting of some Koranic verses, prophetic tradition (Hadith), creed, worships, and biography! Pupils usually study such items by heart, then they go to exam and forget all. Religion is neither a branch of science nor a branch of material knowledge. Religion is a spiritual education that had to be applied in society. It is felt in the way people behave or conduct. Sometimes we meet a clever pupil but he has bad manners! Another, may get high marks in religion but dismissed out of the school for his ill behaviors and bad manners. I believe that religion must be taught as a spiritual education surrounded by a sphere of sympathy and affection. It is something felt by heart, not studied by heart. Teachers have to adress minds to make pupils convinced. They have to teach them biography of the prophet and also of the orthodox Caliphs. They have to select Koran verses according to “the age and the need”. For example Koranic verses dealing with” prayers”, must be studied in an early stage. Then Koranic verses dealing with “fasting”. After that comes verses dealing with moral conducts. In an advanced stage or secondary school, students can study views, ideas, conceptions, visions and philosophy of Islamic eminent characters, as well as eminent characters of other religions. There is a sort of a deflagrated competition between different religions, though they are similar in concepts and attitudes. Also, rivalary between Islam and Western civilization, and communism, is considered. Western civilization has its own entity. It is an integral doctrine having its theories and applications. Western civilization admits human rights and free economy. It could achieve marvellous progress in different fields of life. At the other hand communism also has its own integral doctrine with a private philosophy, economy and ruling systems. It aspires equality between all people, regardless to their colour or race. As a matter of fact it could achieve marevellous progress in different fields of life. Islam stands in between those two different civilizations, trying to get up and rise after a long sleep in the darkness of stagnancy and retardation. Lately, Islam did not achieve adequate progress in fields like modern science, technology, and material power. But it didn’t surrender, because it is till standing as a civilization having its own historical dignity and tradition. But now it is working hard to compensate what it did lose and indemnify what has gone, without contradicting its message and entity.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2024

        An empire of many cultures

        Bahá’ís, Muslims, Jews and the British state, 1900–20

        by Diane Robinson-Dunn

        Based upon extensive archival research and bringing to life the words and actions of extraordinary individuals from the early 20th century, this book calls into question contemporary assumptions about the appreciation of diversity as a solely postcolonial phenomenon. It shows how Bahá'í, Muslim, and Jewish leaders prior to and during WWI found value in the existence of many different religions, races, languages, nations, and ethnicities within the British Empire. Recognition of this heterogeneity combined with sympathy for certain liberal traditions allowed those historical actors to engage with that imperial state and culture in ways that would have an impact on future generations and relevance to modern debates.

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