Showing results by publisher "University Press Audiobooks" in Judaism

The first genocide of the 20th century, though not well known, was committed by Germans between 1904-1907 in the country we know today as Namibia, where they exterminated thousands of Herero and Nama people and subjected the surviving indigenous men, women, and children to forced labor. The perception of Africans as subhuman - lacking any kind of civilization, history, or meaningful religion - and the resulting justification for the violence against them is what author Elizabeth R. Baer refers to as the "genocidal gaze", an attitude that was later perpetuated by the Nazis. 

Was God being ironic in commanding Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of wisdom? Carolyn J. Sharp suggests that many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures may be ironically intended. Deftly interweaving literary theory and exegesis, Sharp illumines the power of the unspoken in a wide variety of texts from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. She argues that reading with irony in mind creates a charged and open rhetorical space in the texts.

Gilbert Michlin's sober text thoroughly documents the story of a Jewish immigrant family in France during the war years. Known as the country of enlightenment and human rights, France drew many Jews from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, including Michlin's parents, who fled the harsh conditions of Poland in the mid-1920s. Michlin's memoir evokes the golden years of his family's life in prewar Paris, where he was born, but also reflects on the difficulties of being Jewish in France.

When the rabbis composed the Mishnah in the late second or early third century C.E., the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed for more than a century. Why, then, do the Temple and its ritual feature so prominently in the Mishnah? Against the view that the rabbis were reacting directly to the destruction and asserting that nothing had changed, Naftali S. Cohn argues that the memory of the Temple served a political function for the rabbis in their own time.

This audiobook invites listeners to reconsider what they think they know about the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, from the creation of the world, through the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel, to the introduction of Abraham. Edwin M. Good offers a new translation of and literary commentary on these chapters, approaching the material as an ancient Hebrew book.

One of the most common assumptions about World War II is that the Jews did not actively or effectively resist their own extermination at the hands of the Nazis. In this powerful book, Benjamin Ginsberg convincingly argues that the Jews not only resisted the Germans but actually played a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. The question, he contends, is not whether the Jews fought but where and by what means.

This audio tells the stories of Polish Holocaust survivors and their rescuers. The authors traveled extensively in the United States and Poland to interview some of the few remaining participants before their generation is gone. Tammeus and Cukierkorn unfold many stories that have never before been made public: gripping narratives of Jews who survived against all odds and courageous non-Jews who risked their own lives to provide shelter.

Following the horrors of Kristallnacht in November of 1938, frightened parents were forced to find refuge for their children, far from the escalating anti-Jewish violence. A courageous group of Belgian women organized a desperate and highly dangerous rescue mission to usher nearly 1,000 children out of Germany and Austria. Of these children, 93 were placed on a freight train, traveling through the night away from their families and into the relative safety of Vichy France.

Judaism, Fourth Edition presents the basic beliefs of the Jewish religious heritage and highlights the different manners in which these traditions can be upheld. Both Orthodox Judaism and the religious practices and movements within Reformed Judaism, including Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism, are explored in this fascinating book. The book is published by Chelsea House Publishers, a leading publisher of educational material.

In this gripping memoir, Lederman tells her story of survival during one of the most horrific episodes in history. Beginning with Lederman as a young girl in Poland in 1941, Sheva's Promise traces her experience in a Nazi ghetto with her mother and sister. Resolved that she must avoid the detention camp to help her family, Lederman obtains a false birth certificate and escapes the ghetto.

In Who is Jesus?, Leander E. Keck discusses the quest for the Jewish Jesus of history and challenges listeners to think seriously not only about Jesus' historical existence but also about his ongoing moral and theological significance. Keck clarifies the difference between the way Jesus is presented in the gospels and the way critical historians portray him.

Susan Handelman considers how teacher/student relations sustain and renew the Jewish tradition, especially during troubled times. As a commentary on historical and contemporary educational practices, she asks a range of questions about teaching and learning: What is it that teachers do when they teach? How do knowledge, spirituality, and education relate? What might Jewish models of study and commentary say about how we teach and learn today?

The commonly held view of Albert Einstein is of an eccentric genius for whom the pursuit of science was everything. But in actuality, the brilliant innovator whose Theory of Relativity forever reshaped our understanding of time was a man of his times, always politically engaged and driven by strong moral principles. An avowed pacifist, Einstein’s mistrust of authority and outspoken social and scientific views earned him death threats from Nazi sympathizers in the years preceding World War II.

Estelle’s memoir, published sixty-four years after her liberation from the Nazis, is a narrative of fear and hope and resiliency. While it is a harrowing tale of destruction and loss, it is also a story of the goodness that still exists in a dark world, of survival and renewal.