This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This book consists of three parts, “Background”, “Close-up” and “Perspective”. The first part is a survey of the developments which led to the foundation of the State of Israel. It lays no claim to historical completeness and is written from a specific angle which stresses the part played by irrational forces and emotive bias in history. I am not sure whether this emphasis has not occasionally resulted in over-emphasis—as is almost inevitable when one tries to redress a balance by spot-lighting aspects which are currently neglected. But it was certainly not my intention, by underlining the psychological factor, to deny or minimize the importance of the politico-economic forces. My aim was rather to present, if I may borrow a current medical term, a “psycho-somatic” view of one of the most curious episodes in modern history. The second part, “Close-up”, is meant to give the reader a close and coloured, but not I hope technicoloured, view of the Jewish war and of everyday life in the new State. It opens and ends with extracts from the diary of my last sojourn as a war correspondent in Israel. The emphasis here is on life in the towns, with only occasional glimpses of the collective settlements, since I have given a detailed description of these in an earlier book. The third part, “Perspective”, is an attempt to present to the reader a comprehensive survey of the social and political structure, the cultural trends and future prospects of the Jewish State.

The Companion to Jewish Culture - From the Eighteenth Century to the Present was first published in 1989. It is a single-volume encyclopedia containing biographical and topic entries ranging from 200 to 1000 word each.

This book examines the expression of a Jewish identity in French films and the characteristics used by filmmakers to portray this nebulous concept in movies produced after the Shoah and World War II. Throughout a sixty-year span, French directors struggled to define Jewish identity and a correlation with the larger question of French national identity. The study delves into the larger question of Jewish identity as characterised in works of cinematic fiction in accordance with the history of the Jews of France, using the centrality of the emancipation paradigm of 1791 and the theoretical frame provided by Jean-Paul Sartre’s Réflexions sur la question juive. The book identifies and describes three categories of films produced between 1950 and 2010 that represent the manner in which directors portrayed an evolving Jewish identity and its relation to French society, rejecting the practice of labeling a film as “Jewish” because of the ethnicity of a director or writer. Based on extensive research including the review of over 200 full-length films, the book provides an overview of features addressing the concept of Jewish identity and includes a Descriptive Filmography of productions matching the author’s definition of a Jewish-identity film. From the template La Grande Illusion to contemporary releases, the book argues that French Jewish-identity films dwell in the sociological realm of Jewishness, as the epicenter of tension is rooted in identity rather than religion.

The book that is providing a storm of controversy, from ‘Israel’s bravest historian’ (John Pilger) Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking work on the formation of the State of Israel. 'Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' NEW STATESMAN Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called 'ethnic cleansing'. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East. *** 'Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' JOHN PILGER 'Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'A major intervention in an argument that will, and must, continue. There's no hope of lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk.' INDEPENDENT

"Written by one of the outstanding biblical scholars in the world, this book is very important, not only as technical biblical criticism but also for its treatment of one of the most pressing and controversial issues of our own time."--David N. Freedman, co-editor of "The Archaeology of the Bible"