“A fitting conclusion to a well-researched and meticulously edited memoir translation.” — Kirkus Reviews

“You have to read this book… It’s not like anything you read before.” — Tablet Magazine

Set in Ukraine, Crimea, and Israel, this unique two-volume autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in Tsarist Russia and Israel during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy and became a shochet (kosher slaughterer) as a young man, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of his surroundings. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. 

The memoir is brimming with information. Goldenshteyn’s adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities, epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, technology, modernity and secularization. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire and in the Land of Israel.

Volume two begins in 1873, when Goldenshteyn obtains his first position as a shochet in Slobodze, and it follows him to the Crimea, where he endures 34 years  of vicissitudes. In 1913, he fulfills a dream of immigrating to the Land of Israel, hoping to find tranquility in his old age. Instead, he is met with the turbulence of the First World War, as battles rage between the retreating Ottoman Turks and the advancing British forces.

 

Informed by research in Ukrainian, Israeli and American archives and personal interviews with the few surviving individuals who knew Goldenshteyn personally, The Shochet is a magnificent new contribution to Jewish and Eastern European history.

Piety and Rebellion examines the span of the Hasidic textual tradition from its earliest phases to the 20th century. The essays collected in this volume focus on the tension between Hasidic fidelity to tradition and its rebellious attempt to push the devotional life beyond the borders of conventional religious practice. Many of the essays exhibit a comparative perspective deployed to better articulate the innovative spirit, and traditional challenges, Hasidism presents to the traditional Jewish world. Piety and Rebellion is an attempt to present Hasidism as one case whereby maximalist religion can yield a rebellious challenge to conventional conceptions of religious thought and practice.

ENG

Despite its general absence from the Jewish liturgical cycle and its limited place in Jewish practice, the Book of Job has permeated Jewish culture over the last 2,000 years. Job has not only had to endure the suffering described in the biblical book, but the efforts of countless commentators, interpreters, and creative rewriters whose explanations more often than not challenged the protagonist's righteousness in order to preserve Divine justice. Beginning with five critical essays on the specific efforts of ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish writers to make sense of the biblical book, this volume concludes with a detailed survey of the place of Job in the Talmud and Midrashic corpus, in medieval biblical commentary, in ethical, mystical, and philosophical tracts, as well as in poetry and creative writing in a wide variety of Jewish languages from around the world from the second to sixteenth centuries.

RUS

Несмотря на отсутствие в еврейском литургическом цикле и ограниченное место в еврейской религиозной практике, Книга Иова определяет еврейскую культуру на протяжении последних 2000 лет. Усилия бесчисленных комментаторов, толкователей и творческих переписчиков сосредоточились на попытках доказать Божественную справедливость страданий, обрушившихся на Иова. Книга Джейсона Кальмана описывает богатую традицию осмысления этой библейской книги в древних, средневековых и современных еврейских текстах, таких как Талмуд, мидраши и средневековые трактаты еврейских мудрецов.

В книге представлен новый взгляд на сложные взаимоотношения науки, общества и власти в период расцвета французского империализма и европейского расизма. Автор переносит нас в годы становления французской антропологии и социальной теории 1850–1950 годов. В работе анализируется возрождение антропологии — именуемой этнологией — в Париже и французских колониях до и после  Первой мировой войны, а также рассматривается судьба этой дисциплины в обстоятельствах немецкой оккупации и после нее. Автор исследует влияние академических кругов, музейных коллекций и имперских связей на определение человеческого разнообразия с социокультурной точки зрения, особенно в связи с возрождением антисемитизма. «В Музее человека» — захватывающая история сплоченной работы ученых, пришедших к пониманию, что все общества одинаково сложны. Несмотря на то что научная экспертиза когда-то санкционировала расизм, антропологи научились пересматривать свои концепции и выступать против расовой предвзятости.

Building Bridges Among Abraham’s Children honors the extraordinary career of Professor Michael Berenbaum, a luminary in Holocaust studies, museum design, filmmaking, and interfaith dialogue. With contributions from renowned scholars and close friends, the short and highly readable essays in this collection delve into the core themes that have defined Professor Berenbaum’s work: biblical and postbiblical narratives, rabbinic thought and action, Jewish commitment to education, interreligious relations, and Holocaust remembrance. From his role in building the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to his pioneering work in preserving survivor testimonies through film, Professor Berenbaum’s influence is profound and multifaceted, and the compelling essays in this volume serve as a tribute to a scholar whose enduring legacy continues to make a global impact.