Displays of Jewish ritual objects in public, non-Jewish settings by Jews are a comparatively re-cent phenomenon. So too is the establishment of Jewish museums. This volume explores the origins of the Jewish Museum of New York and its evolution from collecting and displaying Jewish ritual objects, to Jewish art, to exhibiting avant-garde art devoid of Jewish content, created by non-Jews. Established within a rabbinic seminary, the museum’s formation and development reflect changes in Jewish society over the twentieth century as it grappled with choices between religion and secularism, particularism and universalism, and ethnic pride and assimilation.

The resurgence of ethnic consciousness over the past decade has had a profound effect on many Jewish artists, writers, performers, and the Jewish community at large. Surprisingly, however, Jewish identity remains one of the least explored terrains in contemporary discussions of multiculturalism and identity-based art. Too Jewish? takes a fresh, often confrontational and sometimes humorous, approach to newly considered representations of Jewish identity. This book, accompanied by a major exhibition at The Jewish Museum, New York, places the Jewish identity subjects in the recent art of such artists as Deborah Kass, Rona Pondick, Archie Rand, Elaine Reichek, Art Spiegelman, Hannah Wilke, and others within a larger continuum of influences ranging from nineteenth-century art history to twentieth-century media and pop culture. Essays by major writers explore the historic and scientific roots of the construction of the Jew's "otherness," assimilation strategies, and stereotypes inherent in past and present definitions of Jewish masculinity and femininity. The contributors include cultural critic Maurice Berger, sociologist Sander L. Gilman, playwright Tony Kushner, art theorist Rhonda Lieberman, art historian Margaret Olin, and anthropologist Riv-Ellen Prell. Renowned art historian Linda Nochlin provides a clever and highly personal foreword that captures her complicated reaction to the Hasidic-inspired clothing from Jean Paul Gaultier's Fall 1993 collection. The exhibition curator and editor of this work, Norman L. Kleeblatt, offers an insightful introduction on the complex history of post war Jewish identity and its impact on visual artists. This is a lively and provocative book that offers a unique critical perspective on Jewish identity, multiculturalism, or contemporary art.

By most accounts, Gidon Lev, born in 1935 in former Czechoslovakia, is an ordinary man - except for the fact that of the approximately 15,000 children who were imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp of Terezin, only an estimated 92 survived. Gidon is one of those children. The True Adventures of Gidon Lev is the story of a charming, playful octogenarian Holocaust survivor, a Californian thirty years his junior and the writing of a book about a very long and storied life. With humor, humanity, and compassion, the story of Gidon Lev offers insights into carrying on despite a painful past, a primer on Jewish and Israeli history, and observations of both the ethos of the modern state of Israel and its conflict today and the opportunities that disaster can create. Weaving Gidon's valuable first-person recollections together with the cultural and historical backstory of time and place, Julie Gray invites readers inside the process of mining memories for truths and history for lessons.

In this heartfelt middle school drama, Hannah's schemes for throwing her own bat mitzvah unleash family secrets, create rivalries with best friends, and ultimately teach Hannah what being Jewish is all about. With a delicious mix of prose, poetry, and recipes, this hybrid novel is another fresh, thoughtful, and accessible Versify novel that is cookin’. - New York Times Best-Selling Author Kwame Alexander Hannah Malfa-Adler is Jew . . . ish. Not that she really thinks about it. She'd prefer to focus on her favorite pastime: baking delicious food! But when her best friend has a beyond-awesome Bat Mitzvah, Hannah starts to feel a little envious ...and a little left out. Despite her parents firm no, Hannah knows that if she can learn enough about her own faith, she can convince her friends that the party is still in motion. As the secrets mount, a few are bound to explode. When they do, Hannah learns that being Jewish isn't about having a big party and a fancy dress and a first kiss -- it's about actually being Jewish. Most importantly, Hannah realizes that the only person's permission she needs to be Jewish, is her own.

Jewish Lunacy looks back on six millennia of Jewish history, presenting it as the history of a family by telling it through the reminiscences of Eric, who calls himself the Tygrrrr Express. He grew up hearing stories of heartbreaking pain, insightful wisdom, and sidesplitting humor from Jewish relatives and the elders in Long Island, where he grew up. Drawing upon his familys rich oral traditions, the author explores the deeply serious and humorously welcoming history of the Jewish people. Organized by topics, the book explores the lunacy of the authors growing up and uncovers the strange elements in topics as varied as sex, sports, philosophy, politics, pacifism, conspiracy theories, and religion. If you find yourself bemoaning the bleak landscape of the days news and would like a refreshing approach in reading stories that take seriously the truly significant realities of lifeGod, family, and relationshipswhile finding in them reasons and occasions for laughter, then Jewish Lunacy will take you on a journey through history and entertain you with such stories. As its subtitle promises, Jewish Lunacy tells the stories that 6000 years full of tradition and pride have given as gifts to be passed on to others.

Movie-Made Jews focuses on a rich, usable American Jewish cinematic tradition. This tradition includes fiction and documentary films that make Jews through antisemitism, Holocaust indirection, and discontent with assimilation. It prominently features the unapologetic assertion of Jewishness, queerness, and alliances across race and religion. Author Helene Meyers shows that as we go to our local theater, attend a Jewish film festival, play a DVD, watch streaming videos, Jewishness becomes part of the multicultural mosaic rather than collapsing into a generic whiteness or being represented as a life apart. This engagingly-written book demonstrates that a Jewish movie is neither just a movie nor for Jews only. With incisive analysis, Movie-Made Jews challenges the assumption that American Jewish cinema is a cinema of impoverishment and assimilation. While it’s a truism that Jews make movies, this book brings into focus the diverse ways movies make Jews.

In this humorous work, Brook explores the cultural significance of the recentunprecedented explosion in "Jewish" sitcoms.