A tribute to a generation of survivors, Mordecai Hacohen's powerful memoir recounts the little-known clandestine immigration of Jews from Nazi-controlled Europe to Israel, the foundation of the State of Israel, and the birth of the Israeli Foreign Service. Hacohen, who devoted his life to the creation and promotion of the state of Israel, relates the numerous efforts that brought him into contact with many of the brightest and most influential personalities of the twentieth century, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Isaac Stern, Golda Meir, and many others.

In the 1723 Journal of a Voyage up the Gambia, an English narrator describes the native translators vital to the expedition's success as being "Black as Coal." Such a description of dark skin color was not unusual for eighteenth-century Britons—but neither was the statement that followed: "here, thro' Custom, (being Christians) they account themselves White Men." The Complexion of Race asks how such categories would have been possible, when and how such statements came to seem illogical, and how our understanding of the eighteenth century has been distorted by the imposition of nineteenth and twentieth century notions of race on an earlier period. Wheeler traces the emergence of skin color as a predominant marker of identity in British thought and juxtaposes the Enlightenment's scientific speculation on the biology of race with accounts in travel literature, fiction, and other documents that remain grounded in different models of human variety. As a consequence of a burgeoning empire in the second half of the eighteenth century, English writers were increasingly preoccupied with differentiating the British nation from its imperial outposts by naming traits that set off the rulers from the ruled; although race was one of these traits, it was by no means the distinguishing one. In the fiction of the time, non-European characters could still be "redeemed" by baptism or conversion and the British nation could embrace its mixed-race progeny. In Wheeler's eighteenth century we see the coexistence of two systems of racialization and to detect a moment when an older order, based on the division between Christian and heathen, gives way to a new one based on the assertion of difference between black and white.

Every new American President has a plan to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and every one fails. Every “peace process” has failed in its primary objective: to establish a stable and lasting accord between the two parties, such that they can live together side-by-side in friendship rather than enmity. But why? And what can be done instead? While this failure is a consistent pattern stretching back decades, there is virtually no public discussion or even basic understanding of the primary reason for this failure. The Palestinian Delusion is unique in situating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict within the context of the global jihad that has found renewed impetus in the latter portion of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Briskly recounting the tumultuous history of the “peace process,” Robert Spencer demonstrates that the determination of diplomats, policymakers, and negotiators to ignore this aspect of the conflict has led the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world down numerous blind alleys. This has often only exacerbated, rather than healed, this conflict. The Palestinian Delusion offers a general overview of the Zionist settlement of Palestine, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the Arab Muslim reaction to these events. It explores the dramatic and little-known history of the various peace efforts—showing how and why they invariably broke down or failed to be implemented fully. The Palestinian Delusion also provides shocking evidence from the Palestinian media, as well as statements from the Palestinian leadership, showing that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will never work. But there is still cause for hope. Spencer delineates a realistic, viable alternative to the endless and futile “peace process,” that shows how the Jewish State and the Palestinian Arabs can truly coexist in peace—without illusions or unrealistic expectations.

Representing four centuries of collecting and 1000 years of Jewish history, this book brings together extraordinary Hebrew manuscripts and rare books from the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges. Highlights of the collections include a fragment of Maimonides' autograph draft of the Mishneh Torah; the earliest dated fragment of the Talmud, exquisitely illuminated manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible; stunning festival prayerbooks and one of the oldest surviving Jewish seals in England. Lavishly illustrated essays by experts in the field bring to life the outstanding works contained in the collections, as well as the personalities and diverse motivations of their original collectors, who include Archbishop William Laud, John Selden, Edward Pococke, Robert Huntington, Venetian Jesuit Matteo Canonici, Benjamin Kennicott and Rabbi David Oppenheim. Saved for posterity by religious scholarship, intellectual rivalry and political ambition, these extraordinary collections also detail the consumption and circulation of knowledge across the centuries, forming a social and cultural history of objects moved across borders, from person to person. Together, they offer a fascinating journey through Jewish intellectual and social history from the tenth to the twentieth century.

This handbook and dictionary aims to provide the reader with a general overview of Zionist history and historiography, to tabulate all data on Zionism, and to gather in one source as many terms dealing directly or indirectly with Zionism and Jewish nationalism as possible.

Despite their longing for a better world, people aren’t trying hard enough. If you’re distressed by that, Zoa’s Arks offers a place to share rage, and may nudge a few people to try harder. Bilal, whose family is tragically affected by a racial hate crime, becomes disillusioned with slow social progress. A college friend muses that humans might expedite change by embracing “some sort of bigger education” that evokes oneness based on science and history. Initially skeptical, Bilal adopts her idea. He is later touched by an account of a man who aids a wild animal hit by a car. Bilal wonders how the world would be if more people acted with such compassion. He travels globally and is heartbroken by how people mistreat each other and other animals. He sees these oppressions intersect. Bilal works hard advocating for all lives, but folks remain sluggish to reform. Dismissing his friend’s warnings, he resorts to helping a mysterious individual named Zoa carry out an apocalyptic scheme that expedites change by force. This alters life on Earth and creates unexpected hardships, but delivers an immediate victory to animals and an opportunity for humanity.