The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town

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Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393249433
Total Pages : 206 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town by : Edward Berenson

Download or read book The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town written by Edward Berenson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chilling investigation of America’s only alleged case of blood libel, and what it reveals about antisemitism in the United States and Europe. On Saturday, September 22, 1928, Barbara Griffiths, age four, strayed into the woods surrounding the upstate village of Massena, New York. Hundreds of people looked everywhere for the child but could not find her. At one point, someone suggested that Barbara had been kidnapped and killed by Jews, and as the search continued, policemen and townspeople alike gave credence to the quickly spreading rumors. The allegation of ritual murder, known to Jews as “blood libel,” took hold. To believe in the accusation seems bizarre at first glance—blood libel was essentially unknown in the United States. But a great many of Massena’s inhabitants, both Christians and Jews, had emigrated recently from Central and Eastern Europe, where it was all too common. Historian Edward Berenson, himself a native of Massena, sheds light on the cross-cultural forces that ignited America’s only known instance of blood libel, and traces its roots in Old World prejudice, homegrown antisemitism, and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Residues of all three have persisted until the present day. More than just the disturbing story of one town’s embrace of an insidious anti-Jewish myth, The Accusation is a shocking and perceptive exploration of American and European responses to antisemitism.

Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253011140
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia by : Robert Weinberg

Download or read book Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia written by Robert Weinberg and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “riveting history . . . brings us face to face with this notorious trial” of a Russian Jew who was framed for ritual murder in 1913 (Jewish Book World). On Sunday, March 20, 1911, children playing in a cave near Kiev made a gruesome discovery: the blood-soaked body of a partially clad boy. After right-wing groups asserted that the killing was a ritual murder, the police, with no direct evidence, arrested Menachem Mendel Beilis, a thirty-nine-year-old Jewish manager at a factory near the site of the crime. Beilis’s trial in 1913 quickly became an international cause célèbre. The jury ultimately acquitted Beilis but held that the crime had the hallmarks of a ritual murder. Robert Weinberg’s account of the Beilis Affair explores the reasons why the tsarist government framed Beilis, shedding light on the excesses of antisemitism in late Imperial Russia. It is a gripping narrative culled from trial transcripts, newspaper articles, Beilis’s memoirs, and archival sources, many appearing in English for the first time.

Legacy of Blood

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0190466456
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Legacy of Blood by : Elissa Bemporad

Download or read book Legacy of Blood written by Elissa Bemporad and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Legacy of Blood, Elissa Bemporad traces the legacies of the two most extreme manifestations of tsarist antisemitism-pogroms and blood libels-in the Soviet Union, from 1917 to the early 1960s. By exploring the phenomenon and the memory of anti-Jewish violence under the Bolsheviks, this book sheds light on the changing position of Jews in Stalinist society.

The Murder of William of Norwich

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0190219629
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Murder of William of Norwich by : E. M. Rose

Download or read book The Murder of William of Norwich written by E. M. Rose and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1144, the mutilated body of William of Norwich, a young apprentice leatherworker, was found abandoned outside the city's walls. The boy bore disturbing signs of torture, and a story spread that it was a ritual murder, performed by Jews in imitation of the Crucifixion as a mockery of Christianity. The outline of William's tale eventually gained currency far beyond Norwich, and the idea that Jews engaged in ritual murder became firmly rooted in the European imagination. E.M. Rose's engaging book delves into the story of William's murder and the notorious trial that followed to uncover the origin of the ritual murder accusation - known as the "blood libel" - in western Europe in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the specific historical context - 12th-century ecclesiastical politics, the position of Jews in England, the Second Crusade, and the cult of saints - and suspensefully unraveling the facts of the case, Rose makes a powerful argument for why the Norwich Jews (and particularly one Jewish banker) were accused of killing the youth, and how the malevolent blood libel accusation managed to take hold. She also considers four "copycat" cases, in which Jews were similarly blamed for the death of young Christians, and traces the adaptations of the story over time. In the centuries after its appearance, the ritual murder accusation provoked instances of torture, death and expulsion of thousands of Jews and the extermination of hundreds of communities. Although no charge of ritual murder has withstood historical scrutiny, the concept of the blood libel is so emotionally charged and deeply rooted in cultural memory that it endures even today. Rose's groundbreaking work, driven by fascinating characters, a gripping narrative, and impressive scholarship, provides clear answers as to why the blood libel emerged when it did and how it was able to gain such widespread acceptance, laying the foundations for enduring antisemitic myths that continue to present.

The Velizh Affair

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190640529
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis The Velizh Affair by : Eugene M. Avrutin

Download or read book The Velizh Affair written by Eugene M. Avrutin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Velizh case was the longest ritual murder investigation in the modern world. Drawing on newly discovered trial records, historian Eugene M. Avrutin looks beyond antisemitism as the single most important factor in understanding ritual murder accusations, and in the process, provides an intimate glimpse of small-town life in eastern Europe.

Blood Libel

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Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472902547
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (729 download)

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Book Synopsis Blood Libel by : Hannah Johnson

Download or read book Blood Libel written by Hannah Johnson and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ritual murder accusation is one of a series of myths that fall under the label blood libel, and describes the medieval legend that Jews require Christian blood for obscure religious purposes and are capable of committing murder to obtain it. This malicious myth continues to have an explosive afterlife in the public sphere, where Sarah Palin's 2011 gaffe is only the latest reminder of its power to excite controversy. Blood Libel is the first book-length study to analyze the recent historiography of the ritual murder accusation and to consider these debates in the context of intellectual and cultural history as well as methodology. Hannah R. Johnson articulates how ethics shapes methodological decisions in the study of the accusation and how questions about methodology, in turn, pose ethical problems of interpretation and understanding. Examining recent debates over the scholarship of historians such as Gavin Langmuir, Israel Yuval, and Ariel Toaff, Johnson argues that these discussions highlight an ongoing paradigm shift that seeks to reimagine questions of responsibility by deliberately refraining from a discourse of moral judgment and blame in favor of an emphasis on historical contingencies and hostile intergroup dynamics.

The Damascus Affair

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521483964
Total Pages : 516 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (839 download)

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Book Synopsis The Damascus Affair by : Jonathan Frankel

Download or read book The Damascus Affair written by Jonathan Frankel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-13 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Jewish delegation led by Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux was sent to the Middle East in the hope of discovering the real murderers.

Blood Inscriptions

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812298381
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Blood Inscriptions by : Hillel J. Kieval

Download or read book Blood Inscriptions written by Hillel J. Kieval and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the Enlightenment had seemed to bring an end to the widely held belief that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes, charges of the so-called blood libel were surprisingly widespread in central and eastern Europe on either side of the turn to the twentieth century. Well over one hundred accusations were made against Jews in this period, and prosecutors and government officials in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia broke with long established precedent to bring six of these cases forward in sensational public trials. In Blood Inscriptions Hillel J. Kieval examines four cases—the prosecutions that took place at Tiszaeszlár in Hungary (1882-83), Xanten in Germany (1891-92), Polná in Austrian Bohemia (1899-1900), and Konitz, then Germany, now in Poland (1900-1902)—to consider the means by which discredited beliefs came to seem once again plausible. Kieval explores how educated elites took up the accusations of Jewish ritual murder and considers the roles played by government bureaucracies, the journalistic establishment, forensic medicine, and advanced legal practices in structuring the investigations and trials. The prosecutors, judges, forensic scientists, criminologists, and academic scholars of Judaism and other expert witnesses all worked hard to establish their epistemological authority as rationalists, Kieval contends. Far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, these ritual murder trials were in all respects a product of post-Enlightenment politics and culture. Harnessed to and disciplined by the rhetoric of modernity, they were able to proceed precisely because they were framed by the idioms of scientific discourse and rationality.

The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520290844
Total Pages : 632 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature by : Bezalel Bar-Kochva

Download or read book The Image of the Jews in Greek Literature written by Bezalel Bar-Kochva and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark contribution to ongoing debates about perceptions of the Jews in antiquity examines the attitudes of Greek writers of the Hellenistic period toward the Jewish people. Among the leading Greek intellectuals who devoted special attention to the Jews were Theophrastus (the successor of Aristotle), Hecataeus of Abdera (the father of "scientific" ethnography), and Apollonius Molon (probably the greatest rhetorician of the Hellenistic world). Bezalel Bar-Kochva examines the references of these writers and others to the Jews in light of their literary output and personal background; their religious, social, and political views; their literary and stylistic methods; ethnographic stereotypes current at the time; and more.

The Myth of Ritual Murder

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300047462
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (474 download)

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Book Synopsis The Myth of Ritual Murder by : R. Po-chia Hsia

Download or read book The Myth of Ritual Murder written by R. Po-chia Hsia and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mid-fifteenth century to the early seventeenth, German Jews were persecuted and tried for the alleged ritual murders of Christian children, whose blood purportedly played a crucial part in Jewish magical rites. In this engrossing book R. Po-Chia Hsia traces the rise and decline of ritual murder trials during that period. Using sources ranging from Christian and Kabbalistic treatises to judicial records and popular pamphlets, Hsia examines the religious sources of the idea of child sacrifice and blood symbolism and reconstructs the political context of ritual murder trials against the Jews. "This volume combines clarity of thinking, elegance of style, and exemplary scholarly attention to detail with intellectual sobriety and human compassion."--Jerome Friedman, Sixteenth Century Journal "Hsia has... succeeded in turning established knowledge to illuminatingly new purposes."--G.R. Elton, New York Review of Books "This meticulously researched and unusually perceptive book is social and intellectual history at its best."--Library Journal "A fresh perspective on an old problem by a major new talent."--Steven Ozment, Harvard University R. Po-chia Hsia, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is also the author of Society and Religion in Münster, 1535-1618

Trent 1475

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300051069
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Trent 1475 by : R. Po-chia Hsia

Download or read book Trent 1475 written by R. Po-chia Hsia and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On Easter Sunday, 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family's house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested all eighteen Jewish men and one Jewish woman living in Trent on the charge of ritual murder - the killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish religious rites. Under judicial torture and imprisonment, the men confessed and were condemned to death; their women-folk, who had been kept under house arrest with their children, denounced the men under torture and eventually converted to Christianity. A papal hearing in Rome about possible judicial misconduct in Trent made the trial widely known and led to a wave of anti-Jewish propaganda and other accusations of ritual murder against the Jews." "In this engrossing book, R. Pochia Hsia reconstructs the events of this tragic persecution, drawing principally on the Yeshiva Manuscript, a detailed trial record made by authorities in Trent to justify their execution of the Jews and to bolster the case for the canonization of "little Martyr Simon." Hsia depicts the Jewish victims (whose testimonies contain fragmentary stories of their tragic lives as well as forced confessions of kidnap, torture, and murder), the prosecuting magistrates, the hostile witnesses, and the few Christian neighbors who tried in vain to help the Jews. Setting the trial and its documents in the historical context of medieval blood libel, Hsia vividly portrays how fact and fiction can be blurred, how judicial torture can be couched in icy orderliness and impersonality, and how religious rites can be interpreted as ceremonies of barbarism."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A Child of Christian Blood

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Publisher : Schocken
ISBN 13 : 0805242996
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis A Child of Christian Blood by : Edmund Levin

Download or read book A Child of Christian Blood written by Edmund Levin and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Jewish factory worker is falsely accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy in Russia in 1911, and his trial becomes an international cause célèbre. On March 20, 1911, thirteen-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky was found stabbed to death in a cave on the outskirts of Kiev. Four months later, Russian police arrested Mendel Beilis, a thirty-seven-year-old father of five who worked as a clerk in a brick factory nearby, and charged him not only with Andrei’s murder but also with the Jewish ritual murder of a Christian child. Despite the fact that there was no evidence linking him to the crime, that he had a solid alibi, and that his main accuser was a professional criminal who was herself under suspicion for the murder, Beilis was imprisoned for more than two years before being brought to trial. As a handful of Russian officials and journalists diligently searched for the real killer, the rabid anti-Semites known as the Black Hundreds whipped into a frenzy men and women throughout the Russian Empire who firmly believed that this was only the latest example of centuries of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children—the age-old blood libel. With the full backing of Tsar Nicholas II’s teetering government, the prosecution called an array of “expert witnesses”—pathologists, a theologian, a psychological profiler—whose laughably incompetent testimony horrified liberal Russians and brought to Beilis’s side an array of international supporters who included Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Anatole France, Arthur Conan Doyle, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Jane Addams. The jury’s split verdict allowed both sides to claim victory: they agreed with the prosecution’s description of the wounds on the boy’s body—a description that was worded to imply a ritual murder—but they determined that Beilis was not the murderer. After the fall of the Romanovs in 1917, a renewed effort to find Andrei’s killer was not successful; in recent years his grave has become a pilgrimage site for those convinced that the boy was murdered by a Jew so that his blood could be used in making Passover matzo. Visitors today will find it covered with flowers. (With 24 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)

Blood Libels

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Publisher : Halban
ISBN 13 : 1905559739
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (55 download)

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Book Synopsis Blood Libels by : Clive Sinclair

Download or read book Blood Libels written by Clive Sinclair and published by Halban. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I am convinced, " says Jake Silkstone, the hypochondriac narrator of Clive Sinclair's still provocative novel, "that if Rabbi Nathan hadn't tried to rape Helga, our German au pair, during the course of my barmitzvah celebrations at the Café Royal on the evening of 21 May 1961, things would have turned out very differently...." In the event, "things", as far as Jake is concerned, have been turning out differently since long before the night of Rabbi Nathan's folly. Sharing a birthday with a the modern State of Israel, son of the man whose deep-penetration passes on the football field are rumoured to have inspired the guerrilla warfare tactics of Orde Wingate, chief fan and chronicler of the all-Jewish Wingate Football Club, adolescent blackmailer of the desirable Helga, and latterly literary editor of the Jewish Voice -Jake Silkstone's life has been marked by the finger of destiny, if not by the finger of the Lord. As things progress from worse to terrible in a world only slightly madder than our own, Jake Silkstone becomes the unwitting cause of the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon and finally victim of a blood libel -the accusation of ritual murder, England's special contribution to antisemitism. Clive Sinclair's dazzling, funny and ultimately serious novel reaches a climax that launches the reader into vertiginous orbit spinning between the twin suns of fiction and reality. "In Blood Libels, Clive Sinclair has assembled the Jewish anomaly: at odds with the Old Judaism, ambivalent towards the new Zionism. The old and new mythologies about Jewishness produce an irreconcilable conflict: within Jacob Silkstone, in the State of Israel and throughout the world. More funny than sad, more ironic than tragic, the novel presents the story, rather than the history, of statelessness." TLS "The blurred sense of where reality begins and fantasy stops (or vice versa) gives Blood Libels an immediacy and an edge that stimulates the reader's imagination... The novel cracks with fast, funny, farcical incidents, accidents, coincidences, and inconsequential events which nevertheless, hang together monstrously to change the world." The Scotsman

Passovers of Blood

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Publisher : Clemens & Blair, LLC
ISBN 13 : 9781734804218
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Passovers of Blood by : Ariel Toaff

Download or read book Passovers of Blood written by Ariel Toaff and published by Clemens & Blair, LLC. This book was released on 2020-04-25 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, Jews have been accused of something called "blood libel" or "ritual murder": the killing of non-Jews, often children, to use their blood in bizarre religious ceremonies or to make food. For centuries, this has been denied by Jews. But in fact there may be some truth to such claims after all.

The Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108787657
Total Pages : 543 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (87 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism by : Steven Katz

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism written by Steven Katz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Anti-Semitism examines the history, culture and literature of antisemitism from antiquity to the present. With contributions from an international team of scholars, whose essays were specially commissioned for this volume, it covers the long history of antisemitism starting with ancient Greece and Egypt, through the anti-Judaism of early Christianity, and the medieval era in both the Christian and Muslim worlds when Jews were defined as 'outsiders,' especially in Christian Europe. This portrayal often led to violence, notably pogroms that often accompanied Crusades, as well as to libels against Jews. The volume also explores the roles of Luther and the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the debate over Jewish emancipation, Marxism, and the social disruptions after World War 1 that led to the rise of Nazism and genocide. Finally, it considers current issues, including the dissemination of hate on social media and the internet and questions of definition and method.

The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 030013472X
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague by : Yehudah Yudl Rozenberg

Download or read book The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague written by Yehudah Yudl Rozenberg and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of interrelated stories about a sixteenth-century Prague rabbi and the golem he created became an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1909. So widely popular and influential was Yudl Rosenberg's book, it is no exaggeration to claim that the author transformed the centuries-old understanding of the creature of clay and single-handedly created the myth of the golem as protector of the Jewish people during times of persecution. In addition to translating Rosenberg's classic golem story into English for the first time, Curt Leviant also offers an introduction in which he sets Rosenberg's writing in historical context and discusses the golem legend before and after Rosenberg's contributions. Generous annotations are provided for the curious reader. The book is full of adventures, surprises, romance, suspense, mysticism, Jewish pride, and storytelling at its best. The Chief Rabbi of Prague, known as the Maharal, brings the golem Yossele to life to help the Jews fight false accusations of ritual murder-the infamous blood libel. More human, more capable, and more reliable as a protector than any golem imagined before, Rosenberg's Golem irrevocably changed one of the most widely influential icons of Jewish folklore.

Two Nations in Your Womb

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520258181
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (581 download)

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Book Synopsis Two Nations in Your Womb by : Israel Jacob Yuval

Download or read book Two Nations in Your Womb written by Israel Jacob Yuval and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-08-19 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since it was first published in Hebrew in 2000, this provocative book has been garnering acclaim and stirring controversy for its bold reinterpretation of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in the Middle Ages, especially in medieval Europe. Looking at a remarkably wide array of source material, Israel Jacob Yuval argues that the inter-religious polemic between Judaism and Christianity served as a substantial component in the mutual formation of each of the two religions. He investigates ancient Jewish Passover rituals; Jewish martyrs in the Rhineland who in 1096 killed their own children; Christian perceptions of those ritual killings; and events of the year 1240, when Jews in northern France and Germany expected the Messiah to arrive. Looking below the surface of these key moments, Yuval finds that, among other things, the impact of Christianity on Talmudic and medieval Judaism was much stronger than previously assumed and that a "rejection of Christianity" became a focal point of early Jewish identity. Two Nations in Your Womb will reshape our understanding of Jewish and Christian life in late antiquity and over the centuries.