A moving biography of Oswald Rufeisen, a Jew who passed as a Christian in occupied Poland, worked as a translator for the German police, and risked his life to save hundreds from the Nazis. Denounced, he escaped and found shelter in a convent, where he became a Catholic and later a priest and monk.

Begun in 1690, this diary of a forty-four-year-old German Jewish widow, mother of fourteen children, tells how she guided the financial and personal destinies of her children, how she engaged in trade, ran her own factory, and promoted the welfare of her large family. Her memoir, a rare account of an ordinary woman, enlightens not just her children, for whom she wrote it, but all posterity about her life and community. Gluckel speaks to us with determination and humor from the seventeenth century. She tells of war, plague, pirates, soldiers, the hysteria of the false messiah Sabbtai Zevi, murder, bankruptcy, wedding feasts, births, deaths, in fact, of all the human events that befell her during her lifetime. She writes in a matter of fact way of the frightening and precarious situation under which the Jews of northern Germany lived. Accepting this situation as given, she boldly and fearlessly promotes her business, her family and her faith. This memoir is a document in the history of women and of life in the seventeenth century.

The classic, essential guide to the beliefs, ideals and practices that form the historic Jewish faith.

Jews in exile have often struggled for the protection of the highest governmental power, whether king, emperor, caliph, or pope, because they learned early that their safety could not be entrusted to the goodwill of their gentile neighbors or the local authorities. Alexandrian Jews in the Hellenistic period relied on Imperial Rome instead of their native Alexandria, and Jews in medieval Europe sought ties with the Carolingian emperors, circumventing all inferior feudal relationships. In all such cases of vertical alliances Jews have both gained and lost. In this landmark study, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi presents the Lisbon Massacre as one chapter in the history of alliances between Jews and the powers that have ruled over them. Through an exploration of Jewish attitudes and their consequences at this important juncture in Jewish history, he uncovers the myth of the royal alliance in the thought of Ibn Verga and others. He offers a fresh review of available data on the course of the pogrom and relates it to the "Shebet Yehudah." Two appendices include the German account of the massacre, based on three printed editions (two of them previously unknown), and the major documentary sources, giving historians access to key primary materials as well as Yerushalmi s analysis. Even the modern era did not fundamentally change these dynamics. Hannah Arendt emphasized the extent to which Jews have allied themselves to the modern nation-state and have become vulnerable when other groups oppose that nation-state. Modern Jews have frequently clung to an uncritical faith in the state s protection, even when that faith bears no correspondence to reality."

"The Falashas, who are the most isolated and most ancient Jewish community extant, have preserved their own religious writings through the centuries. This book offers a cross section of their sacred literature, translated for the first time into English from Ethiopic sources. In addition, the translator provides a detailed description of the life and mores of the Falashas, based on his personal experience and observation during a prolonged stay in their community"--Back cover.