The story of the migration of German Jews between the two world wars is a multifaceted story that spans different routes and destinations: to the United States, the Land of Israel, Britain, and other places in the world. The book explores this story from a comparative perspective and from the perspective of the immigrants themselves. In this way, the envelope that defines the migration of Jews from Germany as a movement of purely persecuted refugees, as passive objects swept along in the course of history, is unraveled. The book seeks to examine the decisions of migration, its timing, and its destinations, and to illuminate the similarities and differences in the identities of the immigrants at different times and destinations. To this end, it traces the course of immigration from the moment the decision to emigrate was made, the choice of timing and destination, the obstacles and opportunities, to the patterns of adaptation in the destination countries and the role played by immigrant groups in the host countries. This historical perspective places the question of whether the immigration of German Jews created a distinct German Jewish diaspora or whether it marked the end of the German chapter in Jewish history at the center.

Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe is a topic laced by prejudice on one hand and apologetics on the other. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While these accusations were, for the most part, unfounded, in other cases criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and archival sources, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner examines the reasons for the involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed crimes, and the ways and mechanisms employed by the legal and communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes committed by Jews. A society's attitude toward individuals identified as criminals - by others or themselves - can serve as a window into that society's mores and provide insight into how transgressors understood themselves and society's attitudes toward them.

A refugee crisis of huge proportions erupted as a result of the mid-seventeenth-century wars in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tens of thousands of Jews fled their homes, or were captured and trafficked across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Rescue the Surviving Souls is the first book to examine this horrific moment of displacement and flight, and to assess its social, economic, religious, cultural, and psychological consequences. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources in twelve languages, Adam Teller traces the entire course of the crisis, shedding fresh light on the refugee experience and the various relief strategies developed by the major Jewish centers of the day. Teller pays particular attention to those thousands of Jews sent for sale on the slave markets of Istanbul and the extensive transregional Jewish economic network that coalesced to ransom them. He also explores how Jewish communities rallied to support the refugees in central and western Europe, as well as in Poland-Lithuania, doing everything possible to help them overcome their traumatic experiences and rebuild their lives. Rescue the Surviving Souls offers an intimate study of an international refugee crisis, from outbreak to resolution, that is profoundly relevant today.

Polin , established in 1986 by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, has acquired a well-deserved reputation for publishing authoritative material on all aspects of Polish Jewry. Contributions are drawn from many disciplines—history, politics, religious studies, literature, linguistics, sociology, art, and architecture—and from a wide variety of viewpoints. Polin is published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. It is sponsored by the Institute of Polish–Jewish Studies, which is an associated institute of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London, and by the American Association for Polish–Jewish Studies, which is linked with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University.

Simon Bernfeld (1860–1940) was one of the most popular Jewish European writers of the early twentieth century. A prolific bestselling author in a broad range of fields of history and Jewish studies, and a pivotal figure in the renaissance of Jewish national culture. His oeuvre encompassed dozens of books, hundreds of essays, and thousands of daily columns published in Hebrew and German. Yet despite his vast influence, Bernfeld remained outside the mainstream. His prominent presence until the late 1920s stands in stark contrast to his subsequent obscurity. This gap prompts for an examination of whether his “forgetting” was deliberate and connected to the historical narrative he sought to promote. His political views, expressed in his sermons as a modern rabbi in Belgrade, in his polemic essays criticizing both the rabbinate and the Zionist Congress, were similarly marginalized. On The Margins: A Biography of Simon Bernfeld unfolds a biography woven into the history of the Jewish intelligentsia circles in Galicia, his birthplace, and Berlin, where he lived for many years until his death. His correspondence with a wide array of figures reviles the emergence of Hebrew mass media and a national canon. Through spatial and cultural analysis, exploring themes of Jewish imperial relations and intra-European migration, the book maps the Jewish intellectual networks of Galicia and the Pale of Settlement, examining their impact on the formation of Jewish cultural and intellectual power centers at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A Guide to Jewish Warsaw 1938 is an extraordinary book, describing a place that no longer exists: Jewish Warsaw was, as is well known, utterly destroyed in World War II. And yet, the book seeks to pretend as if everything is still intact, and it is possible to go on a tour following it or embark on an imaginary journey. Every detail is based on information pertaining to Jewish Warsaw in 1938 from countless sources: newspapers, literature, travel guides, written and oral memoirs, archives, interviews, films, and exhibitions. A Guide to Jewish Warsaw 1938 seeks to reveal the beauty hidden from the eye in the largest Jewish city in Europe before the war. The acquaintance with Jewish Warsaw is made through general and useful introductions, describing its history, its beliefs and opinions, its unique language, and its tastes and smells. At the center of the book are seven walking tours, revealing the city's delights: the antique bookstores on Świętokrzyska Street; the buffet at the Writers and Journalists Association at Tłomacka 13; the "Maccabi" swimming pool and the Bund's sports field; cantorial music at the Great Synagogue and Hasidic melodies in the Modrzyc courtyard in the resort town of Otwock; the summer terrace at the Rubinchik cafe, opening onto Krasiński Garden, "the Jewish Garden"; modern marble sculptures in the cemetery; the "Tel Aviv" cafe on Nowolipie Street; the treasures in the Jewish Museum; courtyards that are a world of their own on Nalewki Street and its surroundings, and much more.

How does the past remain present in the urban landscape—in houses, streets, and public squares—even after the culture that once sustained it has been destroyed? What happens when history is not merely an abstract memory but a material reality that continues to shape and unsettle the present? In Bloody Wednesday , Yechiel Weizman traces the ghostly presence of the Jews of Olkusz, a town in south-central Poland whose large Jewish community flourished for centuries, until the Holocaust. Despite their total physical absence, from the end of the war until today the memory of the Jews is palpable and persistent—and at the same time silenced and repressed—in every street corner: in empty houses, in abandoned cemeteries and synagogues, in plaques and monuments, and through the ongoing public debates about property, heritage, and commemoration. Using the case study of a single Polish town, the book shows how the urban topography of Eastern Europe was continuously reshaped and redefined in relation to the legacy of the Second World War, the question of Jewish property, and the politics of Holocaust memory during the Communist period and after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Adopting a microhistorical lens and examining the smallest details of everyday life and urban history, the book reveals how the persistent debate over the presence of the dead Jews in the concrete and imagined spaces of one small town became a dramatic arena for a painful, intimate, and nostalgic confrontation with the violent fingerprints of the twentieth century and with pressing questions of responsibility, ethics, and guilt.

The book sheds light on the aims and achievements of the twelve first female members, who served in the first Israeli Knesset, and in particular on the perception of the status of women in the early years of the state. This study examines the heated debates that arose with the legislation of the following laws: the Marriage Age Law; the Income Tax Ordinance, which serves as a mirror of the status of the married woman; the Security Service Law, which can contribute to the understanding of Israeli society; and the Women’s Equal Rights Law of 1951, whose enactment concluded the work of the first Knesset. The influence of this legislation is felt to this day.

Immediately upon the establishment of the State of Israel, Israel welcomed approximately 720,000 as part of the Great Aliyah. More than one third of these newcomers, immigrants and refugees, were housed in immigrant camps and later in transit camps known as maabarot . Some were later removed from them or left on their own accord; others remained in the maabarot for many years, and the maabarot remained within them. In their early years, the maabarot played an important social role and gave rise to new interethnic relations and new identities. Within a short period of time, and in a space intended to serve as a temporary way station, a shared form of existence emerged in the maabarot. It established principles of organization, fostered cooperation that crossed boundaries of ethnic and communal origin, and created communal cohesion that developed despite the limitations imposed by the absorbing establishment. This book reexamines life in the maabarot through a division into three distinct subperiods that reflect profound changes in social composition, in patterns of power, and in the immigrants’ consciousness of identity. The elimination of the heterogeneity that had characterized the social fabric not only changed the status of the residents in the eyes of the state and society, but also narrowed the social and future possibilities that had opened before them. Through an examination of diverse sources, a detailed depiction of everyday life, and a thematic analysis of language, religion, and education, a formative chapter in the social history of Israel is revealed through the world of the immigrants as they themselves shaped it. From a charged encounter among diasporas, social groups, and a harsh, brutal, and impossible daily routine, a society emerges that has until now remained at the margins of historical research.

In this issue: Diego Rotman | The Sukkah and Its Double: Copies, Variants, and the Stereoscopic Image Shani Tamari Matan | The First Hebrew Dance-Gathering at Kibbutz Dalia (1944): Decoding of an Archival and Choreographic Event Hagar Salamon and Carmela Abdar | Glory of the “Sets”: Praxis and Meaning of Dressing Children in Haredi Families in Israel Ravit Raufman | The October 7 Massacre in Light of the Folktale “The Wolf and Kid”: A Realization of Primal Fantasy Ronni Shaked | Commemoration and Conflict: How the Palestinian Calendar Shapes Identity and Resistance

The Last Trial deals with the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk, who was tried in the State of Israel in 1986 on charges of being "Ivan the Terrible," the operator of the gas chambers at the Treblinka extermination camp, and was acquitted after a seven-year legal process. The book is based on in-depth archival research and reveals for the first time a rich collection of historical documents from the legal authorities in Israel, the United States, and Germany. The book is also based on in-depth interviews with senior members of the legal system who were involved in the trial – judges, attorneys, and witnesses. The Demjanjuk case was considered both a case with a high chance of conviction and a potential for severe punishment, and a case that was expected to bring the memory of the Holocaust back onto the public agenda, some half a century after the Eichmann trial. It was chosen from among the cases of other suspects to be the first test case for the possibility of extraditing Nazi criminals from the United States to Israel. The results of the trial therefore had a decisive impact on the continued activity of the State of Israel in bringing Nazi criminals to justice. When Demjanjuk was acquitted, it became clear that not only had the prosecution failed to achieve the desired result of convicting the defendant, but also that the legal process in his case had failed to fulfill the educational, documentary, and historical goals that were attached to it. In the final analysis, this resounding failure brought the prosecution of the Nazis and their accomplices in the State of Israel to an end. The tension between the legal field and the historical field, and between legal judgment and factual truth, runs throughout the book. The greatest danger of blurring the lines between "law" and "history" lies in the fact that the legal outcome of a criminal proceeding – "guilty" or "not guilty" – may mistakenly be linked to the historical determination of "did happen" or "did not happen." A misunderstanding of legal acquittal as historical acquittal is one of the biggest obstacles to the influence of criminal law, which ends in acquittal, on collective memory. As the book shows, the case of Demjanjuk's extradition and trial in Israel illustrates the difficulties inherent in dealing with the Holocaust within the courtroom, and also sharpens the problematic nature of using criminal law tools to establish historical truths.

Usury: Moneylending, Money and Society in Rabbinic Literature is a study of the moneylending norms in the early stratum of rabbinic literature. It shows how these norms use the language of legal formalism to construct a community of status-equals, into which rabbinic adherents can buy their entry by making the correct investment choices. Placing these norms in a broad historical and intercultural context, it is a fresh look at Jewish moneylending norms, the first in over 30 years.