Download or read book Rabbi Leo Baeck written by Michael A. Meyer and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-11-20 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rabbi, educator, intellectual, and community leader, Leo Baeck (1873-1956) was one of the most important Jewish figures of prewar Germany. The publication of his 1905 Das Wesen des Judentums (The Essence of Judaism) established him as a major voice for liberal Judaism. He served as a chaplain to the German army during the First World War and in the years following, resisting the call of political Zionism, he expressed his commitment to the belief in a vibrant place for Jews in a new Germany. This hope was dashed with the rise of Nazism, and from 1933 on, and continuing even after his deportation to Theresienstadt, he worked tirelessly in his capacity as a leader of the German Jewish community to offer his coreligionists whatever practical, intellectual, and spiritual support remained possible. While others after the war worked to rebuild German Jewish life from the ashes, a disillusioned Baeck pronounced the effort misguided and spent the rest of his life in England. Yet his name is perhaps best-known today from the Leo Baeck Institutes in New York, London, Berlin, and Jerusalem dedicated to the preservation of the cultural heritage of German-speaking Jewry. Michael A. Meyer has written a biography that gives equal consideration to Leo Baeck's place as a courageous community leader and as one of the most significant Jewish religious thinkers of the twentieth century, comparable to such better-known figures as Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. According to Meyer, to understand Baeck fully, one must probe not only his thought and public activity but also his personality. Generally described as gentle and kind, he could also be combative when necessary, and a streak of puritanism and an outsized veneration for martyrdom ran through his psychological makeup. Drawing on a broad variety of sources, some coming to light only in recent years, but especially turning to Baeck's own writings, Meyer presents a complex and nuanced image of one of the most noteworthy personalities in the Jewish history of our age.
Download or read book Our Crowd written by Stephen Birmingham and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times bestseller that traces the rise of the Guggenheims, the Goldmans, and other families from immigrant poverty to social prominence. They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of “the 400,” a register of New York’s most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. In response, they created their own elite “100,” a privileged society as opulent and exclusive as the one that had refused them entry. “Our Crowd” is the fascinating story of this rarefied society. Based on letters, documents, diary entries, and intimate personal remembrances of family lore by members of these most illustrious clans, it is an engrossing portrait of upper-class Jewish life over two centuries; a riveting story of the bankers, brokers, financiers, philanthropists, and business tycoons who started with nothing and turned their family names into American institutions.
Download or read book The Book Thieves written by Anders Rydell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A chilling reminder of Hitler’s twisted power." —BBC For readers of The Monuments Men and The Hare with Amber Eyes, the story of the Nazis' systematic pillaging of Europe's libraries, and the small team of heroic librarians now working to return the stolen books to their rightful owners. While the Nazi party was being condemned by much of the world for burning books, they were already hard at work perpetrating an even greater literary crime. Through extensive new research that included records saved by the Monuments Men themselves—Anders Rydell tells the untold story of Nazi book theft, as he himself joins the effort to return the stolen books. When the Nazi soldiers ransacked Europe’s libraries and bookshops, large and small, the books they stole were not burned. Instead, the Nazis began to compile a library of their own that they could use to wage an intellectual war on literature and history. In this secret war, the libraries of Jews, Communists, Liberal politicians, LGBT activists, Catholics, Freemasons, and many other opposition groups were appropriated for Nazi research, and used as an intellectual weapon against their owners. But when the war was over, most of the books were never returned. Instead many found their way into the public library system, where they remain to this day. Now, Rydell finds himself entrusted with one of these stolen volumes, setting out to return it to its rightful owner. It was passed to him by the small team of heroic librarians who have begun the monumental task of combing through Berlin’s public libraries to identify the looted books and reunite them with the families of their original owners. For those who lost relatives in the Holocaust, these books are often the only remaining possession of their relatives they have ever held. And as Rydell travels to return the volume he was given, he shows just how much a single book can mean to those who own it.
Download or read book The Oppermanns written by Lion Feuchtwanger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in real time, as the Nazis consolidated their power over the winter of 1933, The Oppermanns captures the fall of Weimar Germany through the eyes of one bourgeois Jewish family, shocked and paralyzed by an ideology they cannot comprehend. In the foment of Weimar-era Berlin, the Oppermann brothers represent tradition and stability. One brother oversees the furniture chain founded by their grandfather, one is an eminent surgeon, one a respected critic. They are rich, cultured, liberal, and public spirited, proud inheritors of the German enlightenment. They don’t see Hitler as a threat. Then, to their horror, the Nazis come to power, and the Oppermanns and their children are faced with the terrible decision of whether to adapt—if they can—flee, or try to fight. Written in 1933, nearly in real time, The Oppermanns captures the day-to-day vertigo of watching a liberal democracy fall apart. As Joshua Cohen writes in his introduction to this new edition, it is “one of the last masterpieces of German-Jewish culture.” Prescient and chilling, it has lost none of its power today.
Download or read book Too Deep Were Our Roots written by Sonia Wachstein and published by UNET 2 Corporation. This book was released on 2001 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This riveting first-person account includes the stories of Bernhard Wachstein, Sonia's father, a prominent Jewish scholar; her brother Max, a doctor who is sent to Dachau; and many other friends and family members. Woven throughout are the themes of roots and identity, and the stark question: what is to be done when homeland is no longer home?
Download or read book The German Jewish Cookbook written by Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cookbook features recipes for German-Jewish cuisine as it existed in Germany prior to World War II, and as refugees later adapted it in the United States and elsewhere. Because these dishes differ from more familiar Jewish food, they will be a discovery for many people. With a focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients, this indispensable collection of recipes includes numerous soups, both chilled and hot; vegetable dishes; meats, poultry, and fish; fruit desserts; cakes; and the German version of challah, Berches. These elegant and mostly easy-to-make recipes range from light summery fare to hearty winter foods. The Gropmans-a mother-daughter author pair-have honored the original recipes Gabrielle learned after arriving as a baby in Washington Heights from Germany in 1939, while updating their format to reflect contemporary standards of recipe writing. Six recipe chapters offer easy-to-follow instructions for weekday meals, Shabbos and holiday meals, sausage and cold cuts, vegetables, coffee and cake, and core recipes basic to the preparation of German-Jewish cuisine. Some of these recipes come from friends and family of the authors; others have been culled from interviews conducted by the authors, prewar German-Jewish cookbooks, nineteenth-century American cookbooks, community cookbooks, memoirs, or historical and archival material. The introduction explains the basics of Jewish diet (kosher law). The historical chapter that follows sets the stage by describing Jewish social customs in Germany and then offering a look at life in the vibrant _migr_ community of Washington Heights in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. Vividly illustrated with more than fifty drawings by Megan Piontkowski and photographs by Sonya Gropman that show the cooking process as well as the delicious finished dishes, this cookbook will appeal to readers curious about ethnic cooking and how it has evolved, and to anyone interested in exploring delicious new recipes.
Download or read book Eva and Eve written by Julie Metz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker. It was difficult to imagine her living anywhere else except the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In truth, Eve had endured a harrowing childhood in Nazi-occupied Vienna, though she rarely spoke about it. Yet after her passing, Julie discovered a keepsake box filled with farewell notes from friends and relatives addressed to a ten-year-old girl named Eva, her mother. This was the first clue to the secret pain that Julie's mother had carried as an immigrant, and it shed light on a family that had to rely on its own perseverance to escape the xenophobia that threatened their survival. A beautiful blend of personal memoir and family history, Metz shows how one woman's search for her mother's lost childhood offers valuable lessons about the sacrifices people make to save their families during some of the darkest times in history.
Download or read book The World of Aufbau written by Peter Schrag and published by University of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aufbau—a German-language weekly, published in New York and circulated nationwide—was an essential platform for the generation of refugees from Hitler and the displaced people and concentration camp survivors who arrived in the United States after the war. The publication served to link thousands of readers looking for friends and loved ones in every part of the world. In its pages Aufbau focused on concerns that strongly impacted this community in the aftermath of World War II: anti-Semitism in the United States and in Europe, the ever-changing immigration and naturalization procedures, debates about the designation of Hitler refugees as enemy aliens, questions about punishment for the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes, the struggle for compensation and restitution, and the fight for a Jewish homeland. The book examines the columns and advertisements that chronicled the social and cultural life of that generation and maintained a detailed account of German-speaking cultures in exile. Peter Schrag is the first to present a definitive account of the influential publication that brought postwar refugees together and into the American mainstream.
Download or read book The Passenger written by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A BEST BOOK OF 2021 FOR THE GUARDIAN * FINANCIAL TIMES * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT * MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE * THE TIMES Hailed as a remarkable literary discovery, a lost novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity about flight and persecution in 1930s Germany Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had long patronized, and fearful of being exposed as a Jew despite his Aryan looks, he boards a train. And then another. And another . . . until his flight becomes a frantic odyssey across Germany, as he searches first for information, then for help, and finally for escape. His travels bring him face-to-face with waiters and conductors, officials and fellow outcasts, seductive women and vicious thieves, a few of whom disapprove of the regime while the rest embrace it wholeheartedly. Clinging to his existence as it was just days before, Silbermann refuses to believe what is happening even as he is beset by opportunists, betrayed by associates, and bereft of family, friends, and fortune. As his world collapses around him, he is forced to concede that his nightmare is all too real. Twenty-three-year-old Ulrich Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938, fresh in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, and his prose flies at the same pace. Taut, immediate, infused with acerbic Kafkaesque humor, The Passenger is an indelible portrait of a man and a society careening out of control.
Download or read book German Jewish History in Modern Times Emancipation and acculturation 1780 1871 written by Mordechai Breuer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This four-volume collective project by a team of leading scholars offers a vivid portrait of Jewish history in German-speaking countries over nearly four centuries. This series is sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute, established in 1955 in Jerusalem, London, and New York for the purpose of advancing scholarship on the Jews in German-speaking lands.
Download or read book Assimilation and Racial Anti Semitism written by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Passing Illusions written by Kerry Wallach and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges the notion that Weimar Jews sought to be invisible or indistinguishable from other Germans by "passing" as non-Jews
Download or read book The Impossible Exile written by George Prochnik and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original study of exile, told through the biography of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig By the 1930s, Stefan Zweig had become the most widely translated living author in the world. His novels, short stories, and biographies were so compelling that they became instant best sellers. Zweig was also an intellectual and a lover of all the arts, high and low. Yet after Hitler’s rise to power, this celebrated writer who had dedicated so much energy to promoting international humanism plummeted, in a matter of a few years, into an increasingly isolated exile—from London to Bath to New York City, then Ossining, Rio, and finally Petrópolis—where, in 1942, in a cramped bungalow, he killed himself. The Impossible Exile tells the tragic story of Zweig’s extraordinary rise and fall while it also depicts, with great acumen, the gulf between the world of ideas in Europe and in America, and the consuming struggle of those forced to forsake one for the other. It also reveals how Zweig embodied, through his work, thoughts, and behavior, the end of an era—the implosion of Europe as an ideal of Western civilization.
Download or read book German Jewish Pioneers in Science 1900 1933 written by D. Nachmansohn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Leo Baeck Institute, to whose late president this book is dedicated, has three branches, located in Jerusalem, London, and New York. Its chief aim is the collection of documents describing the history of Jews in German-speaking countries, the manifold aspects of the association of the two ethnic groups, over a period of about 150 years; that is, from the time of the Enlightenment until the rise to power of the Nazi regime. Twenty-three Year Books (1956-1978) so far and many additional vol umes about special fields have been published by the institute. They offer an impressive documentation of the role Jews played in Germany, some of their great achievements, the difficulties they encountered in their struggle for equal rights, as well as its slow but seemingly success ful progress. A wealth of interesting material describes the mutual stimu lation of the creative forces of the two ethnic groups in a great variety of fields-literature, music, the performing arts, philosophy, humanities, the shaping of public opinion, economy, commerce, and industry. Since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, there have been only a few periods during which Jews played such an eminent role in the history of their host nation. As was forcefully emphasized by Gerson D.
Download or read book Digitization in the Real World written by Kwong Bor Ng and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The 34 papers presented in this book represent our best effort to present a diverse and comprehensive overview of key issues in the management and realization of digitization projects. ... This is, above all, a book written by practitioners for practitioners who together recognize the critical needs and goals in digitization in our industry"--P. x-xi.
Download or read book The Radetzky March written by Joseph Roth and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2002-08-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author’s masterpiece, an epic saga of a family and an empire in decline, is “full of psychological penetration and tragic force” (The New Yorker). The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth’s classic novel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, follows three generations of the privileged von Trotta family as Europe advances inexorably toward World War I. With a breadth and richness that draws comparison to Tolstoy, it encompasses the entire social fabric of Austro-Hungarian society. Shot through with dark humor and tragic irony, The Radetzky March is an unparalleled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such a universal story for our times. “A masterpiece . . . The totality of Joseph Roth’s work is no less than a tragédie humaine achieved in the techniques of modern fiction. No other contemporary writer, not excepting Thomas Mann, has come close to achieving the wholeness . . . that Lukács cites as our impossible aim.” —Nadine Gordimer
Download or read book Self Constitution written by Christine M. Korsgaard and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-03-27 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christine M. Korsgaard presents an account of the foundation of practical reason and moral obligation. Moral philosophy aspires to understand the fact that human actions, unlike the actions of the other animals, can be morally good or bad, right or wrong. Few moral philosophers, however, have exploited the idea that actions might be morally good or bad in virtue of being good or bad of their kind - good or bad as actions. Just as we need to know that it is the function of the heart to pump blood to know that a good heart is one that pumps blood successfully, so we need to know what the function of an action is in order to know what counts as a good or bad action. Drawing on the work of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, Korsgaard proposes that the function of an action is to constitute the agency and therefore the identity of the person who does it. As rational beings, we are aware of, and therefore in control of, the principles that govern our actions. A good action is one that constitutes its agent as the autonomous and efficacious cause of her own movements. These properties correspond, respectively, to Kant's two imperatives of practical reason. Conformity to the categorical imperative renders us autonomous, and conformity to the hypothetical imperative renders us efficacious. And in determining what effects we will have in the world, we are at the same time determining our own identities. Korsgaard develops a theory of action and of interaction, and of the form interaction must take if we are to have the integrity that, she argues, is essential for agency. On the basis of that theory, she argues that only morally good action can serve the function of action, which is self-constitution.
