Why Should Jews Survive

Author : Michael Goldberg
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 1996-10-10
Category : History
ISBN : 0199792585

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Why Should Jews Survive? by Michael Goldberg Pdf

In the fifty years since the Holocaust, the Jewish People have felt one overriding concern: survival. The ghosts of the murdered six million, along with the living generation of survivors, have called out the unifying chant, "never again." In 1948, this concern found a second focus in the state of Israel, the ultimate refuge of Jews worldwide. But Rabbi Michael Goldberg finds that these twin pillars of Jewish identity are brittle, and have already begun to crumble; they will not be enough to support or sustain the next generation. The time has come to answer the question: Why should Jews survive? In this provocative book, Goldberg launches a bold attack on what he calls the "Holocaust cult," challenging Jews to return to a deeper, richer sense of purpose. He argues that this cult--with shrines like the U.S. Holocaust Museum, high priests such as Elie Wiesel, and rites like UJA death camp pilgrimages--is deeply destructive of Jewish identity. As the current "master story" of Judaism, Goldberg writes, the Holocaust has been used to depict Jews as uniquely victimized in human history--transforming them from God's chosen to those who manage to survive despite God's silent complicity in their persecution. This Holocaust-centered, survival-for-survival's-sake Judaism is already showing its emptiness, Goldberg contends; the generation that survived Hitler and founded Israel is dying, and the new generation seems adrift (for instance, one recent survey predicts that 70% of American Jewish marriages will be intermarriages by the turn of the century). Jews need positive reasons for remaining Jewish, he argues; they need to return to the Exodus as their master story--the story of God leading the Jews out of slavery and making with them an eternal covenant that gave the Jews a unique place in God's plan. The Jews should survive, Goldberg concludes, because they are the linchpin in God's redemption of the world. Rabbi Michael Goldberg has long wrestled with the crisis of identity facing today's Jewish community. In Why Should Jews Survive?, he provides a provocative and powerfully argued challenge to the dominant theme of modern Jewish thought.

Author : Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz
Publisher : Turner Publishing Company
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2015-02-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781580238267

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Does the Soul Survive? (2nd Edition) by Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz Pdf

Near-death experiences? Past-life regression? Reincarnation? Are these sorts of things Jewish? With a blend of candor, personal questioning, and sharp-eyed scholarship, Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz relates his own observations and the firsthand accounts shared with him by others, experiences that helped propel his journey from skeptic to believer that there is life after life. From near-death experiences to reincarnation, past-life memory to the work of mediums, Rabbi Spitz explores what we are really able to know about the afterlife, and draws on Jewish texts to share that belief in these concepts—so often approached with reluctance—is in fact true to Jewish tradition. “The increasing interest and faith in survival of the soul may grow into a cultural wave that is as potentially transformative for society as the civil rights movement and feminism. A renewed faith in ‘the soul’s journeys’ will call for a reassessment of our priorities, and will enable traditional religions to renew and transform their adherents.” —from the Introduction

Author : Evgeny Finkel
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2017-02-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9781400884926

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Ordinary Jews by Evgeny Finkel Pdf

How Jewish responses during the Holocaust shed new light on the dynamics of genocide and political violence Focusing on the choices and actions of Jews during the Holocaust, Ordinary Jews examines the different patterns of behavior of civilians targeted by mass violence. Relying on rich archival material and hundreds of survivors' testimonies, Evgeny Finkel presents a new framework for understanding the survival strategies in which Jews engaged: cooperation and collaboration, coping and compliance, evasion, and resistance. Finkel compares Jews' behavior in three Jewish ghettos—Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok—and shows that Jews' responses to Nazi genocide varied based on their experiences with prewar policies that either promoted or discouraged their integration into non-Jewish society. Finkel demonstrates that while possible survival strategies were the same for everyone, individuals' choices varied across and within communities. In more cohesive and robust Jewish communities, coping—confronting the danger and trying to survive without leaving—was more organized and successful, while collaboration with the Nazis and attempts to escape the ghetto were minimal. In more heterogeneous Jewish communities, collaboration with the Nazis was more pervasive, while coping was disorganized. In localities with a history of peaceful interethnic relations, evasion was more widespread than in places where interethnic relations were hostile. State repression before WWII, to which local communities were subject, determined the viability of anti-Nazi Jewish resistance. Exploring the critical influences shaping the decisions made by Jews in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe, Ordinary Jews sheds new light on the dynamics of collective violence and genocide.

Author : Esther Gitman
Publisher : Paragon House
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2011-03-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1557788944

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When Courage Prevailed by Esther Gitman Pdf

A historical study of the treatment of Jews in Yugoslavia after Nazi ideology was adopted, with an emphasis on the ways Jews survived and were rescued by those who put their own lives in great peril. When Courage Prevailed examines the ways Jews were rescued and survived in a country which the Ustaše, with their roots in Yugoslavia's nationality conflicts and politics, adopted the Nazi ideology which emphasized that there could be no compromise in regard to the Jewish Question and the Final Solution: no Jews deserved rescue. Survival of Jews was complicated by Yugoslavia's dismemberment at the hands of the Axis Powers; Germany and Italy and its satellites and puppets. The Nazi propaganda machine advocated that Jews must be exterminated for the good of the Aryans which included the Volksdeutsche, (Yugoslav of German ancestry), the Croats and the Muslims. Those who dared to defy German commands suffered severe penalties.

Author : David N. Myers
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 135 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2017-04-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199912858

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Jewish History: A Very Short Introduction by David N. Myers Pdf

How have the Jews survived? For millennia, they have defied odds by overcoming the travails of exile, persecution, and recurring plans for their annihilation. Many have attempted to explain this singular success as a result of divine intervention. In this engaging book, David N. Myers charts the long journey of the Jews through history. At the same time, it points to two unlikely-and decidedly this-worldly--factors to explain the survival of the Jews: antisemitism and assimilation. Usually regarded as grave dangers, these two factors have continually interacted with one other to enable the persistence of the Jews. At every turn in their history, not just in the modern age, Jews have adapted to new environments, cultures, languages, and social norms. These bountiful encounters with host societies have exercised the cultural muscle of the Jews, preventing the atrophy that would have occurred if they had not interacted so extensively with the non-Jewish world. It is through these encounters--indeed, through a process of assimilation--that Jews came to develop distinct local customs, speak many different languages, and cultivate diverse musical, culinary, and intellectual traditions. Left unchecked, the Jews' well-honed ability to absorb from surrounding cultures might have led to their disappearance. And yet, the route toward full and unbridled assimilation was checked by the nearly constant presence of hatred toward the Jew. Anti-Jewish expression and actions have regularly accompanied Jews throughout history. Part of the ironic success of antisemitism is its malleability, its talent in assuming new forms and portraying the Jew in diverse and often contradictory images--for example, at once the arch-capitalist and revolutionary Communist. Antisemitism not only served to blunt further assimilation, but, in a paradoxical twist, affirmed the Jew's sense of difference from the host society. And thus together assimilation and antisemitism (at least up to a certain limit) contribute to the survival of the Jews as a highly adaptable and yet distinct group.

Author : Maxine B. Rosenberg
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 1998-03-23
Category : History
ISBN : 0395900204

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Hiding to Survive by Maxine B. Rosenberg Pdf

During the time of the Holocaust, some Jewish families were able to hide their children with non-Jews. These poignant stories--the experiences of fourteen of these hidden children--include postscripts about the child-rescuer relationship after the war. Photos.

Author : Jeremy Dauber
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2017-10-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780393247886

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Jewish Comedy: A Serious History by Jeremy Dauber Pdf

Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award “Dauber deftly surveys the whole recorded history of Jewish humour.” —Economist In a major work of scholarship that explores the funny side of some very serious business (and vice versa), Jeremy Dauber examines the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing Jewish comedy into “seven strands”—including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar—he traces the ways Jewish comedy has mirrored, and sometimes even shaped, the course of Jewish history. Dauber also explores the classic works of such masters of Jewish comedy as Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Philip Roth, Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart, and Larry David, among many others.

Author : Elliott Abrams
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Christianity and other religions
ISBN : 9780684825113

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Faith Or Fear by Elliott Abrams Pdf

The author addresses the loss of Jewish identity in a Christian Society, and calls for Jews to return to their heritage.

Author : Israel J. Rosengarten
Publisher : Syracuse University Press
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2000-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0815605803

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Survival by Israel J. Rosengarten Pdf

Translated into English for the first time, this book is a personal story of a teenage boy in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. Israel Rosengarten writes with no historical pretension beyond the insight his own experience provides about everyday life and the horrors of the camps. His memoir begins with his deportation in 1942 to the Belgium concentration camp of Breendonk at the age of sixteen and follows his movements through a series of camps until 1945. The book concludes with the Auschwitz death march and the author's return to Belgium, only to discover that he was the lone survivor of a family of seven. Rosengarten survived his 1,000 days of incarceration through incredible coincidences, miracles, and by his fierce struggle to emerge from this atrocious nightmare.

Author : Rudy Rosenberg
Publisher : Author House
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2008-04-23
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781452047829

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And Somehow We Survive by Rudy Rosenberg Pdf

“We have passed through the eye of the needle!” my father was fond of saying. And indeed we had. Now, after four years and four months of German occupation, we had survived. Neither morality nor faith had anything to do with our survival but survive we did. Money, sex and luck all had a hand in it. Germany, the most powerful nation in Europe, had decreed that all Jews were to be exterminated, not only the adults but especially the children. Once the children had been murdered, the “Jewish Question” would have been resolved once and for all. The Allied armies had finally swept through Belgium and liberated us after we had spent twenty-seven months in hiding. Our parents, Hilaire and Frieda Rosenberg went about trying to resume some semblance of family life; my sister Ruth and I would be going back to school after nearly three years of interrupted studies. It would take years for me to fathom the enormity of what we had been through, to understand why we did survive. Our parents were gamblers and people they knew through the Casinos hid us. Hilaire made large amounts of money in black-market dealings with the Germans so we could pay for the cupidity of those who would hide us. Frieda had an affair with an SS officer who warned us when we had to go into hiding. After attending the 1991 Conference of Hidden Children in New York City I knew that this unusual story of survival had to be written. Thus began a journey to a second liberation, an understanding that although they had been less than perfect parents, Hilaire and Frieda did all they humanly could do to ensure the survival of this nucleus of our family.

Author : Eliyana R. Adler
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020-11-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674988026

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Survival on the Margins by Eliyana R. Adler Pdf

The forgotten story of 200,000 Polish Jews who escaped the Holocaust as refugees stranded in remote corners of the USSR. Between 1940 and 1946, about 200,000 Jewish refugees from Poland lived and toiled in the harsh Soviet interior. They endured hard labor, bitter cold, and extreme deprivation. But out of reach of the Nazis, they escaped the fate of millions of their coreligionists in the Holocaust. Survival on the Margins is the first comprehensive account in English of their experiences. The refugees fled Poland after the German invasion in 1939 and settled in the Soviet territories newly annexed under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Facing hardship, and trusting little in Stalin, most spurned the offer of Soviet citizenship and were deported to labor camps in unoccupied areas of the east. They were on their own, in a forbidding wilderness thousands of miles from home. But they inadvertently escaped Hitler’s 1941 advance into the Soviet Union. While war raged and Europe’s Jews faced genocide, the refugees were permitted to leave their settlements after the Soviet government agreed to an amnesty. Most spent the remainder of the war coping with hunger and disease in Soviet Central Asia. When they were finally allowed to return to Poland in 1946, they encountered the devastation of the Holocaust, and many stopped talking about their own ordeals, their stories eventually subsumed within the central Holocaust narrative. Drawing on untapped memoirs and testimonies of the survivors, Eliyana Adler rescues these important stories of determination and suffering on behalf of new generations.

Author : Leonard Gross
Publisher : Open Road Media
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2015-01-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9781497689381

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The Last Jews in Berlin by Leonard Gross Pdf

New York Times Bestseller: The true story of twelve Jews who went underground in Nazi Berlin—and survived: “Consummately suspenseful” (Los Angeles Times). When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately one hundred sixty thousand Jews called Berlin home. By 1943 less than five thousand remained in the nation’s capital, the epicenter of Nazism, and by the end of the war, that number had dwindled to one thousand. All the others had died in air raids, starved to death, committed suicide, or been shipped off to the death camps. In this captivating and harrowing book, Leonard Gross details the real-life stories of a dozen Jewish men and women who spent the final twenty-seven months of World War II underground, hiding in plain sight, defying both the Gestapo and, even worse, Jewish “catchers” ready to report them to the Nazis in order to avoid the gas chambers themselves. A teenage orphan, a black-market jewel trader, a stylish young designer, and a progressive intellectual were among the few who managed to survive. Through their own resourcefulness, bravery, and at times, sheer luck, these Jews managed to evade the tragic fates of so many others. Gross has woven these true stories of perseverance into a heartbreaking, suspenseful, and moving account with the narrative force of a thriller. Compiled from extensive interviews, The Last Jews in Berlin reveals these individuals’ astounding determination, against all odds, to live each day knowing it could be their last.

Author : George Edward Novack
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 22 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 1969
Category : Socialism
ISBN : OCLC:44685421

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How Can the Jews Survive? by George Edward Novack Pdf

Author : Adam Starkopf
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2012-02-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781438420981

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Will to Live by Adam Starkopf Pdf

This story of a Jewish family's survival in Nazi-occupied Poland by assuming "Aryan" identities shows the Starkopf family's courage and tremendous will to live. The book documents their journey from Warsaw to the immediate vicinity of one of the most frightful places on earth—the Treblinka death camp. The Starkopfs survive on false papers and false identities as they witness the tragedy of millions.

Author : Barbara Miller
Publisher : Faces of Eve
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0995369186

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If I Survive by Barbara Miller Pdf

"This is a true story of Holocaust survival. The story of Nazi Germany and the Jews is a story of anti-Semitism, gas chambers, genocide and World War 11. The Warsaw ghetto where the Nazis had imprisoned the Jews was being emptied as Adolph Hitler's Final Solution to murder all of European Jewry was put into action. Lena kept thinking, "It's my turn next." As some Jews escaped Treblinka and exposed it as being a death camp not a labour camp, young men and women in the ghetto decided to make a stand. Lena helped in the resistance which became the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by gathering light bulbs from empty houses which could be used for Molotov cocktails. By a miracle, she escaped the ghetto before it became an inferno. But where could she hide? After 18 months in hiding, she found herself tossed out on the streets of war-torn Warsaw. The Poles had risen up against the Germans who crushed the resistance and levelled the city. Where could Lena hide? How did she maintain the will to survive? When it was over and she could walk free, the tears she had held back flooded out because she was all alone and there was no one to care that she had survived and no one to go to. How to rebuild from all the destruction? Author Barbara Miller adds to Holocaust history by skilfully weaving her research with Lena's diary and interviews to bring her biography to life. Lena helped her companions in hiding to survive with her humour and compassion. She is 100 in January 2019 and her miraculous story of survival against the odds will inspire you to not give up no matter how dark the time or difficult the situation or cruel the people around you."--Publisher's website.