In this groundbreaking study, Henry L. Feingold - one of the most prominent historians today - examines the special challenges facing American Jews. The twin processes of American acculturation and secularization have acted like a powerful whirlpool, pulling them away from their inherent sense of separateness as Jews. They became Americans. These thirteen essays examine the loss of Jewish identity and the survival anxiety it brought in its wake. Feingold tackles topics such as the impact of anti-Semitism in a pluralistic society, the impact of secularism on Jewish survivability, and American Jewish political culture, focusing on Jewish liberalism. As with all of Feingold's work, Lest Memory Cease forces the reader to examine a much-discussed topic in a brand new light.

The topics of Edward Shapiro's book span the gamut of the American Jewish experience: from the politics of American Jews, the nature of American Jewish identity, relations between Jews and blacks, and Jews and American capitalism. He discusses writer Herman Wouk; Patrick Buchanan and the Jews; John Higham's interpretation of American anti-Semitism, Nathan Glazer's view of American Orthodoxy, and the Jewishness of Sidney Hook. Of particular interest is the author's exploration of how American Jews have reconciled their dual identities as Americans and as Jews. These solutions has shaped the way Jews have voted, prayed, earned a living, married, and chosen a profession. America, Shapiro argues, has truly been different for Jews, but this difference has shaped the history of America's Jews in unexpected and ironic ways. The fact that Jews have risen rapidly up the economic and social ladder and have become politically influential has not eliminated their insecurity and the sense they have of themselves as a marginal group.

Leading scholar and author of the celebrated five-volume series, The Jewish People in America, Henry L. Feingold offers a fresh and inspiring look at the Russian/Soviet Jewish emigration phenomenon. Haunted by its sense of failure during the Holocaust, the Soviet Jewry movement set for itself an almost unrealizable goal of finding sanctuary for Jews from a hostile Soviet government. Working together with activists in Israel and Europe, and with a remarkable group of refuseniks that had been denied the right to emigrate, this courageous group mounted a relentless campaign lasting almost three decades. Although Feingold credits Israel with initiating the struggle for Soviet Jewry and fostering it within American Jewry, he maintains that it was the actions of a secure and confident American Jewry that finally delivered the Jews from the Soviet Union. Feingold’s mastery of detail and broadness of scope provide a prodigious and sweeping account of the American Jewish movement. He finds early roots of the effort in the American Jewish involvement with Jewish emigration in late Tsarist Russia. He highlights both the human dimension of the exodus and the complex international ramifications of the movement, especially in the Middle East. "Silent No More" concludes by pondering the role of the movement’s effective public relations campaign, which focused on the human right of freedom of movement in hastening the collapse of the Soviet empire. Feingold’s rigorous scholarship sheds light on an important, yet rarely told episode in history, one that will enliven further examination of the subject. This book will be of interest to scholars of American Jewish history, the cold war, Israeli studies, and American ethnic and immigration history.

Jews have long occupied visible roles in the South. Jewish families have owned establishments ranging from dry-goods stores to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and some of the region's most important writers and scholars have been Jewish. Yet surveys of southern culture rarely assess the contributions of Jews, while histories of Jews in America virtually exclude those living in the South. Eliza R. L. McGraw's multifaceted study fills both gaps and in doing so expands how we define the South. In Two Covenants, McGraw mines eclectic representations of Southern Jewishness as varied as the Carolina Israelite newspaper, the Mardi Gras Krewe du Jieux, southern Baptist conversion--instruction pamphlets, and the film Driving Miss Daisy. She also considers literary representations of southern Jews in the works of both Jewish and non-Jewish writers, including Thomas Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren, Walker Percy, Lillian Hellman, David Cohn, Louis Rubin, Jr., Eli Evans, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, and Charles Chesnutt. While concerned with established concepts such as ethnicity and region, McGraw raises many questions that illustrate the complexity of southern Jewishness. Can one individual straddle two identities? How do race, class, and gender influence southern Jewishness? What are the differences between southern Jews and other southerners, or between southern Jews and other Jews? Does anti-Semitism manifest itself differently or with unique effects in the South? In suggesting answers to these and other questions, McGraw ranges widely over the southern cultural landscape and reveals that although southern Jewishness remains a marginal identity due to the small size of its constituency it nevertheless inhabits and helps to form the South at large. The very presence and vitality of southern Jewishness demonstrate that southern identity, like national identity, is a fluid cultural experience.

Exalted for centuries as a hero and author of the Bible, Moses is inseparable from biblical tradition itself. Moses is also an inherently ambiguous figure and a perennial focus of controversy, from ancient disputes of priestly rivalry to modern issues of class, gender and race. In Rewriting Moses, Brian Britt analyses elements of polemic and ideology in the Moses of the Bible, of film, novel, visual art and scholarship. He argues that the biblical Moses lives within writing, while the post-biblical Moses lives more often in biography. Yet later rewritings of Moses refract biblical traditions of writing in surprising ways. Rewriting Moses provides an original account of the Freudian insight that traditions preserve what they repress. This is volume 14 in the Gender, Cutlure, Theory series and is volume 402 in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplements series.

"The Well at the World's End" is a fantasy novel by the British artist, poet, and author William Morris. This book has a strong influence on other fantasy, including Tolkien's "Lord of The Rings." The book tells about Ralph, the youngest son of a minor King who runs away from his home to seek a mysterious well, which waters give strength, youth, and immortality. Yet, as it often happens, the best part of a story is the travel itself: on the way to the cherished well, Ralf learns about life and sees the real good and evil.

The epic fantasy novel that defined the genre, now in one volume As the youngest son of a king, Ralph of Upmeads is expected to forsake adventure for the safety of home. But the call of the Well at the World’s End is too powerful to resist, and Ralph disobeys his parents in order to seek out his true destiny in its magical waters. The journey is long and arduous as the well lies on the far side of a distant mountain range and the lands beyond Upmeads are full of treacherous characters. With the help of a beautiful maiden and an ancient hermit, Ralph completes his quest and raises the cup of immortality and wisdom to his lips. The question is, what will he do with his newfound powers? Widely recognized as the forerunner to modern fantasy, The Well at the World’s End is a magnificent tale of romance and adventure and a major influence on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.