Founded by Louis Littman in memory of his father to explore, explain, and perpetuate the Jewish heritage, the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization published its first book in 1965. It has gone on to publish many highly regarded titles and has established a reputation as one of the world’s leading publishers in the field.
To celebrate #LUP120, we’ve been focusing on Jewish studies and our work with the Littman Library. Below are some key books from our partner to add to your collection!
Must A Jew Believe Anything? by Menachem Kellner
The crucial question for today’s Jewish world, Kellner argues, is not whether Jews will have Jewish grandchildren, but how many different sorts of mutually exclusive Judaisms those grandchildren will face. This accessible book examines how the split that threatens the Jewish future can be avoided. For this second edition, the author has added a substantial Afterword, reviewing his thinking on the subject and addressing the reactions to the original edition.
Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History by Marc B. Shapiro
A consideration of how segments of Orthodox society rewrite the past by eliminating that which does not fit in with their world-view. This wide-ranging and original review of how this policy is applied in practice adds a new perspective to Jewish intellectual history and to the understanding of the contemporary Jewish world.
Hadassah: American Women Zionists and the Rebirth of Israel by Mira Katzburg-Yungman
Hadassah is the largest Zionist organization in the Diaspora, the largest and most active women’s organization in Jewish history, and the largest women’s organization in the United States. The history of Hadassah is inseparable from the history of American Jewry and of the State of Israel; this is an extensive, diverse, and balanced contribution to both those areas as well as to the history of Jewish women.
Jewish Cultural Studies series
Under the general editorship of Simon Bronner, the Jewish Cultural Studies series offers a contemporary view of Jewish culture as it has been constructed, symbolized, produced, communicated, and consumed around the globe. The first in the series Jewishness: Expression, Identity and Representation examines the idea of Jewishness with provocative interpretations of Jewish experience, and fresh approaches to the understanding of Jewish cultural expressions. Most recently published was
Connected Jews: Expressions of Community in Analogue and Digital Culture, edited by Simon J. Bronner and Caspar Battegay. These essays consider how different media shape actions and project anxieties, conflicts, and emotions, and how Jews and Jewish institutions harness, tolerate, or resist media to create their ethnic and religious social belonging.
This much-updated second edition of a ground-breaking book expands the broad coverage of its stimulating approach. With forty-five new photographs and accompanying essays, it convincingly demonstrates the complexity of the Jewish past in Polish Galicia and the attempts to memorialize its heritage, as well as the unexpected revival of Jewish life.
Ada Rapoport-Albert has been a key partner in the profound transformation of the history of hasidism that has taken shape over the past few decades. The essays in this volume show the erudition and creativity of her contribution. Written over a period of forty years, they have been updated with regard to significant detail and to take account of important works of scholarship written after they were originally published.
The Jews in Poland and Russia: A Short History by Antony Polonsky
This first volume of a three-volume series begins with an overview of Jewish life in Poland and Lithuania down to the mid-eighteenth century, including social, economic, and religious history. The period from 1764 to 1881 is covered in more detail, with attention focused on developments in each country in turn.
Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry series
Established in 1986 by the Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies, Polin has acquired a well-deserved reputation for publishing authoritative material on all aspects of Polish Jewry. Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 32 will be publishing later this year and will consider cantorial and religious music; Jews in popular culture; Jews in the classical music scene; the Holocaust reflected in Jewish music; and klezmer in Poland today.
Jewish Theology and World Religions by Alon Goshen Gottstein and Eugene Korn
The contributors to this volume represent a range of disciplines and denominations within Judaism and share the conviction that articulating contemporary Jewish views of other world religions is an urgent objective for Judaism. Their essays show why a Jewish theology of world religions is a priority for Jewish thinkers and educators concerned with reinvigorating Judaism’s contribution to the contemporary world and maintaining Jewish identity and continuity.
Ideology and Experience: Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair by Stephen Wilson
This analysis of racism in late 19th-century France views the subject not in isolation, but in its social context, as an indicator and symptom of social change. It also provides general analysis of anti-Semitic ideology in France, and of the Jewish response to this challenge.
For more information about any of the above books, please visit the Liverpool University Press website.
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