The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East
For Jews of a certain age, June 5, 1967 is and always will be a date as familiar as one’s own birthday. It was on that day that Israel launched a preemptive strike in response to the mobilization of Egyptian forces along the Israeli border in the Sinai Peninsula and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights.
Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War
In 1938, Hank Greenberg came three home runs shy of eclipsing Babe Ruth’s record of 60 homers in a season.
Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis
German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller is best known for his celebrated confession. These oft-quoted words at Holocaust commemorative observances might lead you to believe that Niemöller was sympathetic to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. Not true.
Beyond the Shadows: The Holocaust and the Danish Exception
Judy Glickman Lauder’s photographs in Beyond the Shadows: The Holocaust and the Danish Exception are so masterfully crafted they make us feel as if we ourselves are on the train tracks approaching Treblinka, behind the barbed wire fence at Majdanek, at the entrance of Dachau under the sign Arbeit Macht Frei, outside a gas chamber at Auschwitz. Faced with these images, we can’t help but imagine what it must have been like for the millions of innocents who entered these passageways, in most cases never to return.
Behold, America: The Entangled History of "America First" and "The American Dream"
Many American Jews shuddered as Donald Trump proclaimed, “The American Dream is dead!” and “America first!” to rally crowds during his 2016 presidential campaign. We remembered how, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, these slogans were an open call for virulent anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sentiment, white supremacy, xenophobia, and nativism.
America's Jewish Women: A History From Colonial Times to Today
What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? What did it mean to be a Jewish woman throughout American history? These are questions Dr. Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History and director of Jewish Studies at American University, asks in her important new book, America’s Jewish Women: A History From Colonial Times to Today.
Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures
In her new book, Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures (Yale University Press), essayist and biographer Adina Hoffman captures the turbulent life of one o
Wholly Jewish: Anjelica: Dia de los Muertos Meets Yom Kippur
A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That, But Always 100% Me
What do we all have in common?