No comments about My Dear Daughter: Rabbi Benjamin Slonik and the Education of Jewish Women in Sixteenth-Century Poland (Monographs of the Hebrew Union College) (Monographs of the Hebrew Union College).

2 comments about Female, Jewish, and Educated: The Lives of Central European University Women (Modern Jewish Experience).

1. I have finished reading your latest book and it has certainly fulfilled what it promised. I learned a great deal from it about the women whom you chose to discuss in your work, about the issues which moved them, about the problems which they had to struggle against and about the historical background of their lives. It also confirmed a suspicion of mine, namely that anti-Semitism was a lesser obstacle than bias against women. So many of the women you write about are fascinating characters and have led colorful lives. I found your presentation lively, entertaining, your scholarship thorough and most impressive. You also show remarkable empathy toward these women.



2. Transcending two strikes against them, being Jewish, and being female, a group of Central European Jewish university women of the early 20th century -- who often opted not to marry -- defied conventional expectations when they sought personal self-fulfillment in higher education and then invaded traditional male professions. In a clear, fascinating work, Harriet Freidenreich breaks new ground in her examination of the ramifications of religion and gender in a relatively new research field: Jewish Women's History. The text structures around life cycles and personal in experiences tracking these pioneers as they overcame significant obstacles. Freidenreich skillfully weaves primary sources, incorporating highly revelatory material from personal interviews, questionnaires, published and unpublished memoirs, enhanced by the haunting faces of the subjects in 20 pages of photographs. Some of the women, like Hanna Arendt, became famous. Others, less well known, still made significant contributions. Reading this highly intelligent, scholarly work about our professional foremothers -- intended for educated women to learn about educated women -- provides a most gratifying experience!

3 comments about No Common Place: The Holocaust Testimony of Alina Bacall-Zwirn.

1. it made quite an impact on me. emotionally draining. how Alina kept her sanity is remarkable. Stark did not try to editorialize. instead as painful as it was, he let her tell it in her own way, regardless of syntax. i have never read anything like it...in only three hours i experienced an unforgettable voice.



2. This was a difficult book for me to read. It is in the first person style. I can hear their voices. I did an interview three years ago. It is on tape. Yet i can not listen to it.. Such a difficult time in our youth, in our lives. I recommend this book. This one voice speaks for so many.



3. The author recounts her experiences in a form of interviews given in the 1990's, some fifty years after the events. She also expresses anger over those who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, and lists some of her loved ones who perished in this tragedy that supposedly never happened.
   
   Alina Bacall-Zwirn understands the fact that much of the so-called Polish police, in the service of the Germans, actually consisted of ethnic Germans. She comments: "That was the Volksdeutsche, working for Gestapo. That was the Polish police." (p. 40).
   
   She lived in the Warsaw ghetto, and was shipped to Treblinka. She managed to jump from the train, and was aided by a Pole who brought her food (p. 35). She then made it back to Warsaw.
   
   Later, she met with Poles who were being shipped to Germany for forced labor, and Poles who were incarcerated in concentration camps as a result of the failed Warsaw Uprising.

No comments about Guess Who's Jewish in American History.

1 comments about I AM Love: From Nothing...to All Things.

1. Excellent spiritual lessons from a life lived for God in the midst of challenging circumstances.

3 comments about Born Jewish: A Childhood in Occupied Europe.

1. The holocaust is a "popular" topic. I don't mean that in the positive sense, but in the publishing sense. Much has been published on the holocaust, Nazi occupation and the party Hitler hosted. History demands that people write it and people demand to hear "the truth" about the past. "Born Jewish" offers something different, something that isn't necessarily in demand, but is neccessary for the canon of work on the war and aftermath of the holocaust.
   Marcel Liebman, for anyone unfamiliar with his other work, is a reknowned Marxist/Leninist/Soviet Union historian and historical analysist. This is clearly, his most personal work, but he does not leave his politics or his academic work at the door. "Born Jewish", as he says, "questions history", not in the sense of the accuracy of the event(Liebman writes how dismayed he is that the world did not fully accept Hannah Arendt's accounts of Jewish collaboration with the Nazi's as having actually happened.) but in the sense of the accuracy of historical accounts of it.
   The new perspective Liebman adds is one often obscured by accounts of Nazi occupation and anti-semitism: that class conflict did not dissolve the day the swastika was raised over Europe's cities. In fact, the Nazi's capitalized on the class difference amongst Jewish populations. For Liebman, the horror of his brother's execution at Auschwitz is intimantly connected with the horrors of exploitation and collaboration within the Jewish community.
   Liebman composes his memories carefully and beautifully, resisting sacrilization of experiences he realizes must answer to history as much as to his own heart, and criticizing the radical Zionism that he was to see flourish during his lifetime.
   The incredible forward by Jacqueline Rose is a great appetite whetter for the book. She sums up the book far better than I ever could: "Amongst other things, this memoir stands as an extraordinary rejoinder to those who insist that Israel is the only and definitive answer to the genocide of the Jews...It is one of the strenghts of [the memoir] that Liebman can be so unerring in this analysis while at the same time acknowledging the point where understanding trails off into uncomprehending terror, where the most painful part of mourning trumps all rational thought."
   I highly reccommend this book for anyone who was interested in the slough of memoirs on the subject. It should be read alongside Judith Butler's new book on mourning, violence, 9/11, anti-semitism and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, "Precarious Life".



2. Born Jewish: A Childhood In Occupied Europe by graphically authored by Marcel Liebman and deftly translated by Liz Heron is a vivid memoir of one man's childhood tale of Nazi control, familial struggle, and the betrayal he faced from more powerful Jews in times already hard. As a revealing and historically important biographical account of international history during the second world war, Born Jewish is an invaluable documentation which is very highly recommended for historians and laymen alike, as each and all may take some interest and understanding in this book. Born Jewish is a compelling and valued addition to the growing library of Holocaust literature so fundamentally necessary if the world is never again to experience genocide on such a massive and methodical scale.



3. This is a spellbinding account of a Jewish teenager in Belgium, during the war. The second of four boys in a loving Jewish family in Brussels, Liebman gives density and texture to the anxieties, terrors, and perils of life under the Nazis. Always on the run, sometimes together, sometimes apart, Liebman is a superb observer of the venalities and kindnesses that accompany him through these tragic days. It is also a compelling coming of age story. All except the last chapter, which takes advantage of his survivor's status to mount a soap box against racism, with a special target being Zionism (hence Jacqueline Rose's breathless intro). Even aside from its polemics, the chapter feels like it is tacked on to what is otherwise a superb addition to Holocaust memoirs.

No comments about Yannina: A Journey to the Past.

No comments about How to Write a Play.

1 comments about Rashi (Jewish Thinkers).

1. Rabbi Chaim Pearl of blessed memory would often speak lovingly of Parshandata, the greatest Jewish Biblical commentator of all, Rashi. In this small volume he introduces us to the life and commentary of this giant of the Jewish tradition. Rashi is the commentator who in a one word or phrase opens up the Biblical text in a way no other commentator can. He is a pillar of the Jewish tradition, and a model to many who come after him.
   I strongly recommend this volume as a way of learning more about this great figure. It is elegantly written and is a wonderful introduction to his life and thought.

No comments about Golden Opportunities: A Biographical History of Montana's Jewish Communities.