The Jews: A History (2nd Edition) - Softcover

Efron, John; Weitzman, Steven; Lehmann, Matthias

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0205858260 ISBN 13: 9780205858262

Publisher: Pearson Higher Education, 2013

Synopsis

Explores the history of the Jewish people

 

The Jews: A History, 2/e, explores the religious, cultural, social, and economic diversity of the Jewish people and their faith. The latest edition incorporates new research and includes a broader spectrum of people — mothers, children, workers, students, artists, and radicals — whose perspectives greatly expand the story of Jewish life.

 

 

About this title

About the Author:

John M. Efron is the Koret Professor of Jewish History in the Department of History and Director of the Institute for European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Efron’s research focuses on the German-Jewish engagement with medicine, anthropology, and anti-Semitism. He has also written on Jewish political and popular culture in Central Europe, on Yiddish political satire in Poland and Israel, and on the role of sport in the modern Jewish experience. He is author of Medicine and the German Jews: A History (2001); and Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (1994). He is coauthor of The Jews: A History (2012). He is currently at work on a new book that will explore modern German Jewry’s attraction to the aesthetics of medieval Sephardic Jewry.

 

Steven Weitzman is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion at Stanford University and director of its Jewish Studies program. Trained at Harvard University, Weitzman is a scholar of biblical and early Jewish literature, seeking through his research to illuminate the beginnings of Jewish culture and how ancient texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls relate to the contexts that produced them. His other publications include Surviving Sacrilege (Harvard) and Solomon: the Lure of Wisdom (Yale).

 

Matthias B. Lehmann is a historian of early modern and modern Jewish history, with a special interest in the history of the Spanish Jews and the Judeo-Spanish diaspora in the Mediterranean. He teaches at the University of California, Irvine, where he holds the Teller Family Chair in Jewish history. After studying in Freiburg and Berlin, Germany, as well as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid, Spain, he earned his Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin in 2002. He is the author of a book entitled Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture (Indiana University Press, 2005), as well as Emissaries from the Holy Land (forthcoming from Stanford University Press).

Review:

"The Jews is well written, conceptually clear, lively, interesting, and informative. It strikes just the right balance between sketching out the major issues and providing enough detail so that students who have no background can fully understand the main point. The authors understand all the major issues in Jewish history and are capable of presenting those issues in a clear and engaging manner."

-- Marsha Rozenblit, University of Maryland

 

“The Jews is a highly accessible, attractive, and lively account of the fortunes, failures, and accomplishments of the Jews from biblical times to the present. It is distinguished by the attention it gives to average Jews and to everyday life. Drawing upon the special expertise of the authors, it seeks, above all, to understand and to explain a complex history. Without going into excessive detail, it makes the reader aware of continuing controversies of interpretation and cites from sources that are of special interest.”

-- Michael Meyer, Hebrew Union College

 

“This is a superb, wide-ranging, and well-written book. The task at hand is an exceptionally difficult one, given the wide varieties and geographic dispersion of Jews throughout the world. To pull together the various strands is a great challenge. With admirable skill, the authors have succeeded in doing so–indeed, in producing perhaps the best single volume on the Jewish experience.”

-- David Myers, University of California Los Angeles

About this edition

• Publisher: Pearson Higher Education
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0205858260
• ISBN 13: 9780205858262
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 560