In the author’s own words: “When you live in Israel, it’s plain to see that food holds a special place in Jewish life. From early morning until dawn the next day, Israelis are always noshing on something and enjoying one another’s company. On any given holiday, the festive table groans under the weight of a multitude of dishes and goodies. A Taste of Israel opens a door into the kitchens of the ordinary Israeli home. It is an invitation to explore the country’s diverse street food and get a glimpse behind the scenes at some of its gourmet restaurants. You’ll find recipes for dishes that do much more than just satisfy hunger. Here are memories and stories shared with me over the course of five years by Litvaks from Israel and South Africa, by my Israeli friends, their mothers and their grandmothers. The recipes reflect the traditions, history and customs passed from generation to generation and they are an attempt at returning a piece of Jewish heritage to the small but vibrant community in Lithuania.” Available for the first time in English, A Taste of Israel describes the food through the eyes of a foreigner, and non-Jew, who was lucky enough to become part of the Israeli Jewish community. Chapters are divided into the usual arrangements for appetisers, starters, mains and desserts, but there are also sections on the different Jewish religious festivals, as well as information on what constitutes ‘kosher’. Well-known classics include dishes such as Gefilte Fish, Knaidlach, Latkes and Challah.

Distilling the teachings and thought of Rabbi Simha Bunim, one of the foremost figures in the Przysucha school of Hasidism, this study sheds light both on what students of the Pryzsucha tradition believed as well as on its influence on Polish Hasidism at large. Pryzsucha Hasidism believed in a service to God that demanded both passion and analytical study, and sought to understand the human being, rather than God himself. This exploration of Rabbi Bunim's thought illustrates how the spiritual leader was able to transform Przysucha Hasidism into a genuine movement and, in doing so, become the dominant personality in the Hasidic community in Poland during the early part of the 19th century.

Magnetic duo and stars of the Brooklyn food scene, Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz revitalize Old World food traditions for today's modern kitchens in their debut cookbook.

2012 marks the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba - the most traumatic catastrophe that ever befell Palestinians. This book explores new ways of remembering and commemorating the Nakba. In the context of Palestinian oral history, it explores 'social history from below', subaltern narratives of memory and the formation of collective identity. Masalha argues that to write more truthfully about the Nakba is not just to practise a professional historiography but an ethical imperative. The struggles of ordinary refugees to recover and publicly assert the truth about the Nakba is a vital way of protecting their rights and keeping the hope for peace with justice alive. This book is essential for understanding the place of the Palestine Nakba at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the vital role of memory in narratives of truth and reconciliation.

In a bold rethinking of the Hollywood blacklist and McCarthyite America, Joseph Litvak reveals a political regime that did not end with the 1950s or even with the Cold War: a regime of compulsory sycophancy, in which the good citizen is an informer, ready to denounce anyone who will not play the part of the earnest, patriotic American. While many scholars have noted the anti-Semitism underlying the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC’s) anti-Communism, Litvak draws on the work of Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, and Max Horkheimer to show how the committee conflated Jewishness with what he calls “comic cosmopolitanism,” an intolerably seductive happiness, centered in Hollywood and New York, in show business and intellectual circles. He maintains that HUAC took the comic irreverence of the “uncooperative” witnesses as a crime against an American identity based on self-repudiation and the willingness to “name names.” Litvak proposes that sycophancy was (and continues to be) the price exacted for assimilation into mainstream American culture, not just for Jews, but also for homosexuals, immigrants, and other groups deemed threatening to American rectitude. Litvak traces the outlines of comic cosmopolitanism in a series of performances in film and theater and before HUAC, performances by Jewish artists and intellectuals such as Zero Mostel, Judy Holliday, and Abraham Polonsky. At the same time, through an uncompromising analysis of work by informers including Jerome Robbins, Elia Kazan, and Budd Schulberg, he explains the triumph of a stoolpigeon culture that still thrives in the America of the early twenty-first century.

Publisher Description

On Burning Ground is the tale of one desperate and brilliant man's ultimate choice: at the eve of the Nazi purging of Poland, to disguise his Jewish origin and pose first as a Christian, then to join the Nazi SS. Living in constant fear, Michael Skakun's father, Joseph, not only assumed a dangerous array of identities in order to survive, but subsequently compromised his very spirit. On Burning Ground is a brave and revelatory tale of a son's father who risked it all, and through his amazing odyssey, was keenly aware of the price of such deceits.

Simple meals inspired by Israeli street food, by the authors of the best-selling James Beard Book of the Year, Zahav.

Tablet’s list of the 100 most Jewish foods is not about the most popular Jewish foods, or the tastiest, or even the most enduring. It’s a list of the most significant foods culturally and historically to the Jewish people, explored deeply with essays, recipes, stories, and context. Some of the dishes are no longer cooked at home, and some are not even dishes in the traditional sense (store-bought cereal and Stella D’oro cookies, for example). The entire list is up for debate, which is what makes this book so much fun. Many of the foods are delicious (such as babka and shakshuka). Others make us wonder how they’ve survived as long as they have (such as unhatched chicken eggs and jellied calves’ feet). As expected, many Jewish (and now universal) favorites like matzo balls, pickles, cheesecake, blintzes, and chopped liver make the list. The recipes are global and represent all contingencies of the Jewish experience. Contributors include Ruth Reichl, Éric Ripert, Joan Nathan, Michael Solomonov, Dan Barber, Gail Simmons, Yotam Ottolenghi, Tom Colicchio, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, Maira Kalman, Action Bronson, Daphne Merkin, Shalom Auslander, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Phil Rosenthal, among many others. Presented in a gifty package, The 100 Most Jewish Foods is the perfect book to dip into, quote from, cook from, and launch a spirited debate.