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"Jews Biography"
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Genius & anxiety : how Jews changed the world, 1847-1947
Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Bernhardt and Kafka. Between the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a few dozen men and women changed the way we see the world. But many have vanished from our collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth. These visionaries all have something in common - their Jewish origins and a gift for thinking outside the box. In 1847 the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world's population, and yet they saw what others could not. How?
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A Man of Three Worlds
In the late fifteenth century, many of the Jews expelled from Spain made their way to Morocco and established a dynamic community in Fez. A number of Jewish families became prominent in commerce and public life there. Among the Jews of Fez of Hispanic origin was Samuel Pallache, who served the Moroccan sultan as a commercial and diplomatic agent in Holland until Pallache's death in 1616. Before that, he had tried to return with his family to Spain, and to this end he tried to convert to Catholicism and worked as an informer, intermediary, and spy in Moroccan affairs for the Spanish court. Later he became a privateer against Spanish ships and was tried in London for that reason. His religious identity proved to be as mutable as his political allegiances: when in Amsterdam, he was devoutly Jewish; when in Spain, a loyal converso (a baptized Jew). In A Man of Three Worlds, Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers view Samuel Pallache's world as a microcosm of early modern society, one far more interconnected, cosmopolitan, and fluid than is often portrayed. Pallache's missions and misadventures took him from Islamic Fez and Catholic Spain to Protestant England and Holland. Through these travels, the authors explore the workings of the Moroccan sultanate and the Spanish court, the Jewish communities of Fez and Amsterdam, and details of the Atlantic-Mediterranean trade. At once a sweeping view of two continents, three faiths, and five nation-states and an intimate story of one man's remarkable life, A Man of Three Worlds is history at its most compelling.
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My father's wars : migration, memory, and the violence of a century
\"My Father's wars is an anthropologist's vivid account of her father's journey across continents, countries, cultures, generations, and wars. It is a daughter's moving portrait of a charming, funny, wounded and difficult man. And it is a scholar's reflection on the dramatic forces of history, the experience of exile and immigration, the legacies of culture, and the enduring power of memory. This book is for Anthropology and Sociology courses in qualitative methods, ethnography, violence, migration, and ethnicity\" -- Provided by publisher.
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Self-Portrait, with Parents and Footnotes
In this book, Aronowicz explores the lives of her parents, who lived through the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the post-war Communist world, with much migration in between. Through stories about her childhood, she investigates larger questions about memory, Judaism, politics, and religion.
eBook
An Irish-Jewish Politician, Joyce's Dublin, and Ulysses
A forgotten historical figure and his influence on the
writing of James Joyce
In this book, Neil Davison argues that Albert Altman (1853 ‒
1903), a Dublin-based businessman and Irish nationalist, influenced
James Joyce's creation of the character of Leopold Bloom, as well
as Ulysses 's broader themes surrounding race, nationalism,
and empire. Using extensive archival research, Davison reveals
parallels between the lives of Altman and Bloom, including how the
experience of double marginalization-which Altman felt as both a
Jew in Ireland and an Irishman in the British Empire-is a major
idea explored in Joyce's work.
Altman, a successful salt and coal merchant, was involved in
municipal politics over issues of Home Rule and labor, and
frequently appeared in the press over the two decades of Joyce's
youth. His prominence, Davison shows, made him a familiar name in
the Home Rule circles with which Joyce and his father most
identified. The book concludes by tracing the influence of Altman's
career on the Dubliners story \"Ivy Day in the Committee
Room,\" as well as throughout the whole of Ulysses . Through
Altman's biography, Davison recovers a forgotten life story that
illuminates Irish and Jewish identity and culture in Joyce's
Dublin.
A volume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian
D. G. Knowles
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Derrida's Marrano Passover : exile, survival, betrayal, and the metaphysics of non-identity
\"The first book devoted to Derrida's Marranism - his paradoxical 'non-Jewish Jewishness' - connecting it to the Derridean themes of exile, survival, betrayal and autobiography\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Two Lives in Uncertain Times
Published in Association with the German Historical Institute [http://www.ghi-dc.org/], Washington, D.C. Wilma and Georg Iggers came from different backgrounds, Wilma from a Jewish farming family from the German-speaking border area of Czechoslovakia, Georg from a Jewish business family from Hamburg. They both escaped with their parents from Nazi persecution to North America where they met as students. As a newly married couple they went to the American South where they taught in two historic Black colleges and were involved in the civil rights movement. In 1961 they began going to West Germany regularly not only to do research but also to further reconciliation between Jews and Germans, while at the same time in their scholarly work contributing to a critical confrontation with the German past. After overcoming first apprehensions, they soon felt Göttingen to be their second home, while maintaining their close involvements in America. After 1966 they frequently visited East Germany and Czechslovakia in an attempt to build bridges in the midst of the Cold War. The book relates their very different experiences of childhood and adolescence and then their lives together over almost six decades during which they endeavored to combine their roles as parents and scholars with their social and political engagements. In many ways this is not merely a dual biography but a history of changing conditions in America and Central Europe during turbulent times.
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An Island Called Home
Yiddish-speaking Jews thought Cuba was supposed to be a mere layover on the journey to the United States when they arrived in the island country in the 1920s. They even called it \"Hotel Cuba.\" But then the years passed, and the many Jews who came there from Turkey, Poland, and war-torn Europe stayed in Cuba. The beloved island ceased to be a hotel, and Cuba eventually became \"home.\" But after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, the majority of the Jews opposed his communist regime and left in a mass exodus. Though they remade their lives in the United States, they mourned the loss of the Jewish community they had built on the island.As a child of five, Ruth Behar was caught up in the Jewish exodus from Cuba. Growing up in the United States, she wondered about the Jews who stayed behind. Who were they and why had they stayed? What traces were left of the Jewish presence, of the cemeteries, synagogues, and Torahs? Who was taking care of this legacy? What Jewish memories had managed to survive the years of revolutionary atheism?An Island Called Homeis the story of Behar's journey back to the island to find answers to these questions. Unlike the exotic image projected by the American media, Behar uncovers a side of Cuban Jews that is poignant and personal. Her moving vignettes of the individuals she meets are coupled with the sensitive photographs of Havana-based photographer Humberto Mayol, who traveled with her.Together, Behar's poetic and compassionate prose and Mayol's shadowy and riveting photographs create an unforgettable portrait of a community that many have seen though few have understood. This book is the first to show both the vitality and the heartbreak that lie behind the project of keeping alive the flame of Jewish memory in Cuba.
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