● Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust By Götz Aly Metropolitan Books, 304 pages, $30 Early in his penetrating and provocative study of the roots of German anti-Semitism, “Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust,” Götz Aly quotes…
Jonathan Sarna, a leading scholar of American Jewish history and a professor at Brandeis University, remained in critical condition Wednesday at Yale New Haven hospital, the hospital confirmed. The scholar was visiting New Haven for his daughter’s graduation ceremony at Yale University when he became ill, according to Jon Levisohn, a professor at Brandeis. “It’s…
Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I By Richard Ned Lebow Palgrave Macmillan, 256 pages, $27 In the introduction to his new book, “Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I,” Richard Ned Lebow discloses a poignant personal reason for his interest in counterfactual history. The professor of international political…
The much-vaunted distinctiveness of the Jews resides in what they eat, how they attend to their prayers, and the means by which they earn their keep. Their distinctiveness, as it turns out, is a matter of textiles, too. No, I don’t have in mind Torah mantles or challah covers, but something far more quotidian: bedding….
It is depressing to read so many articles decrying the historical inaccuracies in recent movies, whether dealing with outer space, the southern slave trade, Somali pirates, or Walt Disney, articles in which the least deviation from the historical record or “reality” (a word Nabokov insisted routinely belongs within quotation marks), is held up against the…
Following his successful Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel leading Israeli environmental lawyer and activist Alon Tal has produced another must read for anyone interested in learning more about the land of Israel; in this case the trees that call that land home. His latest book, All the Trees of the…
The recent findings of the Pew Research Center study (yes, that again) have left many of us scratching our heads, biting our nails and searching every which way for answers. Some have sought explanation, let alone consolation, in the broad strokes of macro-analysis, others in anecdote and still others in history. The past, as you…
Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation By Yossi Klein Halevi HarperCollins Publishers, 608 pages, $35 Israel’s Six Day War, in 1967, was its greatest military victory, but in the end, a costly one. The territorial gains that resulted became both flash points for conflict and bargaining…
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