Diversity in Our Collections

"New historical fiction from a Newbery Honor-winning author about how middle schooler Ariel Goldberg's life changes when her big sister elopes following the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, and she's forced to grapple with both her family's prejudice and the antisemitism she experiences, as she defines her own beliefs. Twelve-year-old Ariel Goldberg's life feels like the moment after the final guest leaves the party. Her family's Jewish bakery runs into financial trouble, and her older sister has eloped with a young man from India following the Supreme Court decision that strikes down laws banning interracial marriage. As change becomes Ariel's only constant, she's left to hone something that will be with her always--her own voice"--Publisher's description.

Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, the nation was deeply, dangerously divided. In Hitler's American Friends, Bradley W. Hart uncovers the homegrown groups who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of these "friends" were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophecy. Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. Some were even members of Congress, who used their franking privilege - sending mail at cost to American taxpayers - to distribute German propaganda. And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee. We try to tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism. Hilter's American Friends is a powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people - and how we stepped back from the ledge. -- From dust jacket.

Provides an illustrated biography of Hannah Arendt, one of the most prominent philosophers of the twentieth century, a hero of political thought, and a complex, controversial, deeply flawed, and courageous woman. Her intelligence and "virulent truth telling" led her to insights into the human condition, and her experience continues to shine a light on how to live as an individual and a public citizen in troubled times. --Adapted from publisher description

"From an award-winning historian, the first full depiction of the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms that followed the Russian Revolution and how they laid the groundwork for the Holocaust. Includes illustrations and maps"-- Provided by publisher.

"A fascinating and timely examination of how genocide can take root at the local level--turning neighbors, friends and even family members against one another--as seen through the little-known story of the Eastern European border town Buczacz during World War II"--Provided by publisher

"Planet Auschwitz explores the diverse ways in which the Holocaust influences and shapes science fiction and horror film and television by focusing on notable contributions from the last fifty years. The supernatural and extraterrestrial are rich and complex spaces with which to examine important Holocaust themes - trauma, guilt, grief, ideological fervor and perversion, industrialized killing, and the dangerous afterlife of Nazism after World War II. Planet Auschwitz explores why the Holocaust continues to set the standard for horror in the modern era and asks if the Holocaust is imaginable here on Earth, at least by those who perpetrated it, why not in a galaxy far, far away? The pervasive use of Holocaust imagery and plotlines in horror and science fiction reflects both our preoccupation with its enduring trauma and our persistent need to "work through" its many legacies"-- Provided by publisher.

Haunted by the events of World War II, young Cressida lives in terror of George Harding, a severely disfigured soldier who recovers in the family's stately African home, a situation that binds them when George saves Cressida's family from financial ruin.

"Leonard Cohen is the kind of artist who divides listeners into camps marked "love" and "hate". With a reputation as a lugubrious-voiced depressive, his name is often a byword for a peculiarly 60s brand of self-indulgence. In his defense is the heart-stopping poignancy of his concert and record performances and the sensuality with which he lays bare his artistic soul." "From his Montreal childhood to his current monastic lifestyle, this book traces Cohen's 50-year odyssey through Judaic mythology, drugs, alcohol, sex, and Buddhism to locations as far-flung as Greece, Cuba, and Tennessee. He emerges as a man of charm and wit continually moving toward his ultimate goal: the lyrical

Most people know little more than fragments of Dutch Jewish history: the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam; Jewish socialism; the devastating years of the Second World War. So where is the storyline? What happened to the Jews in the Netherlands from the moment they first settled there permanently? This book answers that question. It presents the central points of 700 years of Jewish history in the Netherlands briefly and succinctly. One hundred elements of the story have been chosen that taken as a whole create a balanced and representative picture. Each relates to a central event, place, person or object that helps to illuminate one important aspect of the history of the Jews in the Netherlands, and each is linked to a striking, iconic image. They are grouped by century around unifying themes that make them part of an ongoing story.

This book uncovers cultural traces of the ancient Jewry of Eastern Europe from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries in translations from Hebrew into East Slavic. These translations range from accounts of Old Testament prophets and other historical figures important to both Jews and Christians, such as Alexander the Great, to scientific and philosophical texts on subjects spanning astronomy, physiognomy, and metaphysics.

One of the unanticipated results of the First Crusade in 1095 was a series of violent assaults on major Jewish communities in the Rhineland. Robert Chazan offers the first detailed analysis of these events, illuminating the attitudes that triggered the assaults as well as the beliefs that informed Jewish reactions to them.

This volume explores an underappreciated feature of the standard Tiberian Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew, namely its composite nature. Focusing on cases of dissonance between the tradition's written (consonantal) and reading (vocalic) components, the study shows that the Tiberian spelling and pronunciation traditions, though related, interdependent, and largely in harmony, at numerous points reflect distinct oral realisations of the biblical text. Where the extant vocalisation differs from the apparently pre-exilic pronunciation presupposed by the written tradition, the former often exhibits conspicuous affinity with post-exilic linguistic conventions as seen in representative Second Temple material, such as the core Late Biblical Hebrew books, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira, rabbinic literature, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and contemporary Aramaic and Syriac material.

" Perceptions of Jewish History scintillates with original ideas and insights. It will appeal to a broad audience."--Michael A. Signer, University of Notre Dame "Students of the Jewish past will welcome this volume; it will also attract readers with the widest possible range of interests."--Robert Chazan, New York University

The interaction of Jew and Greek in antiquity intrigues the imagination. Both civilizations boasted great traditions, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenic culture, the culture of the ascendant classes in many of the cities of the Near East, held widespread attraction and appeal. Jews were certainly not immune. In this thoroughly researched, lucidly written work, Erich Gruen draws on a wide variety of literary and historical texts of the period to explore a central question: How did the Jews accommodate themselves to the larger cultural world of the Mediterranean while at the same time reasserting the character of their own heritage within it?

Contradictory stereotypes about Jewish sexuality pervade modern culture, from Lenny Bruce's hip eroticism to Woody Allen's little man with the big libido (and even bigger sexual neurosis). Does Judaism in fact liberate or repress sexual desire? David Biale does much more than answer that question as he traces Judaism's evolving position on sexuality, from the Bible and Talmud to Zionism up through American attitudes today. ... He discovers an erotic tradition that is not dogmatic, but a record of real people struggling with questions that have challenged every human culture, and that have relevance for the dilemmas of both Jews and non-Jews today.

"In this moving graphic memoir, Eisner Award-winning writer and artist Michael Kupperman traces the life of his reclusive father--the once-world-famous Joel Kupperman, Quiz Kid. That his father is slipping into dementia--seems to embrace it, really--means that the past he would never talk about might be erased forever. Joel Kupperman became one of the most famous children in America during World War II as one of the young geniuses on the series Quiz Kids. With the uncanny ability to perform complex math problems in his head, Joel endeared himself to audiences across the country and became a national obsession. Following a childhood spent in the public eye, only to then fall victim to the same public's derision, Joel deliberately spent the remainder of his life removed from the world at large. With wit and heart, Michael Kupperman presents a fascinating account of mid-century radio and early television history, the pro-Jewish propaganda entertainment used to counteract anti-Semitism, and the early age of modern celebrity culture. All the Answers is both a powerful father-son story and an engaging portrayal of what identity came to mean at this turning point in American history, and shows how the biggest stages in the world can overcome even the greatest of players."

In tumultuous late '60s Chicago, 10-year-old Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a Holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen's investigation takes us back to Anka's life in Nazi Germany, the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge.

"A minyen yidn is a collection of stories by Max Perlson, translated from original Yiddish into English and adapted to graphic novel format by a variety of artists. The stories are about everyday people in Duboy and in Brooklyn between 1900-1935."-- Provided by publisher.

Provides an illustrated biography of Hannah Arendt, one of the most prominent philosophers of the twentieth century, a hero of political thought, and a complex, controversial, deeply flawed, and courageous woman. Her intelligence and "virulent truth telling" led her to insights into the human condition, and her experience continues to shine a light on how to live as an individual and a public citizen in troubled times. --Adapted from publisher description

This book is an adaptation of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl into a graphic version, featuring direct quotations from Frank's diary. This book is the only graphic biography of the diary that has been authorized by the Anne Frank Foundation--Adapted from publisher's description.

The creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus reflects on the comics form and its influence on his life and art as he traces his evolution from comics obsessed boy to a neurotic adult exploring the effects of his parents' memories of Auschwitz on his own son, in a volume that includes a facsimile of Breakdowns, the artist's comics from the 1970s.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in "drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust" (The New York Times). Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us

In this graphic novel Will Eisner draws on his memories of growing up in New York in the 1930s, to depict the lives and dreams of the residents of a Bronx tenement.

The creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus reflects on the comics form and its influence on his life and art as he traces his evolution from comics obsessed boy to a neurotic adult exploring the effects of his parents' memories of Auschwitz on his own son, in a volume that includes a facsimile of Breakdowns, the artist's comics from the 1970s.

Over the course of one day, traces the loss of the author's Zionist faith against a backdrop of Jewish history, recounting how his growing disaffection with the modern state of Israel was shaped by the mythologies and realities of the Jewish homeland.

Presents the graphic tale of an opinionated middle-aged loner whose inability to connect with anyone but his dog compels him to seek human companionship, an effort complicated by the discovery of a teenage daughter he never knew.

Database
Over 450 publications covering all aspects of Jewish studies, most available in full text. Material from 1922-present. Jewish Studies Source is a rich full-text database offering a multidisciplinary view of Jewish civilization, from its historical origins to the present. It provides hundreds of publications devoted to Jewish studies, including scholarly journals, magazines, books, monographs, biographies and more.

The library holds several CDs from this series, including musicians such as Darius Milhaud, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill, Dave Brubeck, Gerard Schwarz, David Amram, Gershon Kingsley, and more.

Recordings of cantorial singing in America from 1920 to 1947.

"The Klezmorim, founded in Berkeley, California, in 1975, was the world's first klezmer revival band, widely credited with spearheading the global renaissance of klezmer in the 1970s and 1980s." -- Wikipedia