In 1942 & 1943, after nine years of merciless harassment, persecution, starvation & deprivation, 1336 Jewish people living in Mainz, Germany were deported, tortured and murdered. For hundreds of these innocent victims, who had no surviving family members, all traces of their lives were reduced to ashes & fragments of bone. They have no graves, no tombstones, and nobody to remember them. It is as though they never existed.The scant bits of discoverable information about 20 such former residents of Mainz without descendants, are presented in this book along with personal accounts, original Nazi anti-Jewish edicts and archival photographs, which will give the reader some feeling for what it was like to be a Jew living in Nazi Germany.

Jews of Kaiserstrasse vividly details the fate of the Jewish residents of single street in Mainz, Germany from 1939-45. This book is the culmination of Michael Phillips' meticulous research into the lives of approximately 300 individuals that at one point during the period covered lived on the impressive boulevard. It catalogues the destruction of the wealthy Jewish community, which, before the rise of German National Socialism and the implementation of viciously anti-Semitic legislation from 1933 until the end of the Second World War and the defeat of Germany in September 1945, had been active in the Rhineland town's commercial, social and municipal life. Jews of Kaiserstrasse draws from numerous academic, popular and genealogical sources.

Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.

This book traces the history of conflict and contact between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Ottoman Middle East prior to 1914.

Jewish customs and traditions about death, burial and mourning are numerous, diverse and intriguing. They are considered by many to have a respectable pedigree that goes back to the earliest rabbinic period. In order to examine the accurate historical origins of many of them, an international conference was held at Tel Aviv University in 2010 and experts dealt with many aspects of the topic. This volume includes most of the papers given then, as well as a few added later. What emerges are a wealth of fresh material and perspectives, as well as the realization that the high Middle Ages saw a set of exceptional innovations, some of which later became central to traditional Judaism while others were gradually abandoned. Were these innovations influenced by Christian practice? Which prayers and poems reflect these innovations? What do the sources tell us about changing attitudes to death and life-after death? Are tombstones an important guide to historical developments? Answers to these questions are to be found in this unusual, illuminating and readable collection of essays that have been well documented, carefully edited and well indexed.