Responsa from the Holocaust

Responsa from the Holocaust PDF Author: Efroim Oshry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This breathtakingly moving book documents the remarkable continuity of religious life under the horrendous conditions of Nazi-occupied Lithuania. The Jews of the Kovno ghetto went to Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, one of the remaining religious authorities in the ghetto, and posed their questions to him. He answered their questions and recorded each and every query by copying it onto scraps that he tore off of cement sacks. He then buried these scraps of papers in cans in the soil around the ghetto. This book brings to light these unearthed questions and answers, and bears witness to the power of faith to survive in the most dire of circumstances.

Responsa from the Holocaust

Responsa from the Holocaust PDF Author: Efroim Oshry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This breathtakingly moving book documents the remarkable continuity of religious life under the horrendous conditions of Nazi-occupied Lithuania. The Jews of the Kovno ghetto went to Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, one of the remaining religious authorities in the ghetto, and posed their questions to him. He answered their questions and recorded each and every query by copying it onto scraps that he tore off of cement sacks. He then buried these scraps of papers in cans in the soil around the ghetto. This book brings to light these unearthed questions and answers, and bears witness to the power of faith to survive in the most dire of circumstances.

Rabbinic Responsa of the Holocaust Era

Rabbinic Responsa of the Holocaust Era PDF Author: Robert S. Kirschner
Publisher: Schocken Books Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
A translation of 14 rabbinic responsa (halakhic rulings) issued during and immediately after the Holocaust, which "reveal the tragic situations occurring daily at this time." The issues discussed include: whether one is obliged to object to the sterilization of a mentally ill woman, whether it is permissible to stun an animal before ritual slaughter, the status of Jewish prisoners' ashes which were returned to their families (after "Kristallnacht"), whether one must repent for inadvertently suffocating a crying infant while hiding from the Nazis, the status of Jews who converted to Christianity in order to avoid deportation, whether one may ransom a family member at the expense of another's life, and whether one may volunteer to die in order to save a Torah scholar.

The Holocaust and Halakhah

The Holocaust and Halakhah PDF Author: Irving J. Rosenbaum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description


Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust

Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust PDF Author: Michael A. Grodin, M.D.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782384189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Faced with infectious diseases, starvation, lack of medicines, lack of clean water, and safe sewage, Jewish physicians practiced medicine under severe conditions in the ghettos and concentration camps of the Holocaust. Despite the odds against them, physicians managed to supply public health education, enforce hygiene protocols, inspect buildings and latrines, enact quarantine, and perform triage. Many gave their lives to help fellow prisoners. Based on archival materials and featuring memoirs of Holocaust survivors, this volume offers a rich array of both tragic and inspiring studies of the sanctification of life as practiced by Jewish medical professionals. More than simply a medical story, these histories represent the finest exemplification of a humanist moral imperative during a dark hour of recent history.

Judaism of the Poskim

Judaism of the Poskim PDF Author: Gidon Rothstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781952370878
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Yiddish in Israel

Yiddish in Israel PDF Author: Rachel Rojanski
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253045185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Yiddish in Israel: A History challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in Israel from the proclamation of the State until today, Rojanski reveals that although Israeli leadership made promoting Hebrew a high priority, it did not have a definite policy on Yiddish. The language's varying fortune through the years was shaped by social and political developments, and the cultural atmosphere in Israel. Public perception of the language and its culture, the rise of identity politics, and political and financial interests all played a part. Using a wide range of archival sources, newspapers, and Yiddish literature, Rojanski follows the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture. With compassion, she explores the tensions during Israel's early years between Yiddish writers and activists and Israel's leaders, most of whom were themselves Eastern European Jews balancing their love of Yiddish with their desire to promote Hebrew. Finally Rojanski follows Yiddish into the 21st century, telling the story of the revived interest in Yiddish among Israeli-born children of Holocaust survivors as they return to the language of their parents.

The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry

The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry PDF Author: Efroim Oshry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Pt. 1 (pp. 1-173), "The Kovno Ghetto, 1941-1944", is a history and memoir by Oshry, a former student at the Slobodka Yeshiva. Figured prominently are many great Torah scholars, as well as simple Jews (including children) whose spiritual resistance to the Nazis included devotion to religious practice to the point of martyrdom. Oshry, a rabbi, survived until liberation in a hidden bunker for 38 days. Pt. 2 (pp. 178-291), "The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry: The Cities and Towns of Jewish Lithuania", provides short histories of 47 communities, with a focus on their outstanding religious personalities and institutions, and an account of the destruction of each of these communities and almost all of their inhabitants during the Holocaust.

Guidance, Not Governance

Guidance, Not Governance PDF Author: Joan S. Friedman
Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press
ISBN: 087820122X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Solomon Bennett Freehof (1892-1990) was one of America's most distinguished, influential, and beloved rabbis. Ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1915, he was of the generation of rabbis from east European immigrant backgrounds who moved Reform Judaism away from its classical form toward a renewed appreciation of traditional practices. Freehof himself was less interested in restoring discarded rituals than in demonstrating how the Reform approach to Jewish religious practice was rooted in the Jewish legal tradition (halakhah). Opposed to any attempt to create a code of Reform practice, he nevertheless called for Reform Judaism to turn to the halakhah, not in order to adhere to codified law, but to be guided in ritual and in all areas of life by its values and its ethical insights. For Reform Jews, Jewish law was to offer "guidance, not governance," and this guidance was to be provided through the writing of responsa, individual rulings based on legal precedent, written by an organized rabbinic authority in response to questions about real-life situations. After World War II, the earlier consensus about what constituted proper observance in a Reform context vanished as the children of east European immigrants flocked to new Reform synagogues in new suburbs, bringing with them a more traditional sensibility. Even before Freehof was named chairman of the Central Conference of American Rabbis Responsa Committee in 1956, his colleagues began turning to him for guidance, especially in the situations Freehof recognized as inevitably arising from living in an open society where the boundaries between what was Jewish and what was not were ambiguous or blurred. Over nearly five decades, he answered several thousand inquiries regarding Jewish practice, the plurality of which concerned the tensions Jews experienced in navigating this open society-questions concerning mixed marriage, Jewish status, non-Jewish participation in the synagogue, conversion, and so on-and published several hundred of these in eight volumes of Reform responsa. In her pioneering study, Friedman analyzes Freehof's responsa on a select number of crucial issues that illustrate the evolution of American Reform Judaism. She also discusses the deeper issues with which the movement struggled, and continues to struggle, in its attempt to meet the ever-changing challenges of the present while preserving both individual autonomy and faithfulness to the Jewish tradition.

Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment

Zohar, the Book of Enlightenment PDF Author: Daniel Chanan Matt
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809123872
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This is the first translation with commentary of selections from The Zohar, the major text of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. This work was written in 13th-century Spain by Moses de Leon, a Spanish scholar.

The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews

The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews PDF Author: Susan Zuccotti
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
Drawing on the extensive memoir literature of Jews who survived the Nazi period in France, Zuccotti paints a collective portrait of the victims, of those who tried to help them, of those who persecuted them and of the vast majority of French people who looked the other way. Zuccotti concludes that “benign neglect, vague goodwill, and, occasionally, active support” helped three-quarters of French Jews survive, while almost half of foreign-born Jews living under Nazi occupation or in the Vichy government “free” zone were sent to extermination camps with the active help of the French authorities. “Valuable and lucid. [...] Susan Zucccotti's book is admirable in many important ways.” — Patrice Higonnet, New York Times Book Review “Ms. Zuccotti combines vivid narrative with the most scrupulous historical accuracy. It is good to be able to enter the helpful gestures of many French individuals into the scales against the unspeakable actions of many Vichy officials and zealots.” — Robert O. Paxton, Mellon Professor of the Social Sciences, Columbia University, author ofVichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 “Dr. Zuccotti’s book, admirably balanced and free of bias, is a rich and compassionate study of the plight of Jews in France during World War II.” — Léon Poliakov, Honorary Director of Research, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) “In a vividly narrated reexamination of the historical record, Zuccotti tells the horrifying story of the fate of French Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their Vichy collaborators. [...] A balanced yet heartrending contribution to Holocaust literature.” —Kirkus Review “Zuccotti forces us to rethink the French response to the Holocaust in this challenging book” — Publishers Weekly “By use of precise examples, Zuccotti is able to illustrate the human side and contribute to a new understanding of [the fate of France’s Jewish population during World War II]” — American Historical Review “Ms. Zuccotti finds France to be a nation which, in time of crisis, showed itself to be made up of a handful of villains, a few magnificent heroes and a vast assortment of the cowardly, the apathetic and the self-serving.” — Forward “Zuccotti presents the most comprehensive account of the Holocaust in France available to the English reader.” — Paula Hyman, Yale University, Journal of Interdisciplinary History “An excellent narrative.” — Choice, American Library Association “Zuccotti has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust in France. Above all, she has illuminated in fascinating detail the extraordinary range of organizational and individual responses.” — Journal of Modern History “Zuccotti’s account investigates the popular responses of the French to the measures offered and implemented by [Vichy] officials... an essential tool for gaining a more complete understanding of Vichy France and the Holocaust” — Anne Higgins,University of Vermont History Review “This is an important work of 20th-century history. It is admirably researched, but remains lucid. It is, of necessity, sometimes harrowing, but illuminates moments of selfless heroism. Above all, it details a period of French history which has for too long been known to foreigners in only the broadest outlines... This is a valuable book deserving a wide readership.” — Morning Star “[Zuccotti’s] book is replete with personal histories and memories, culled from a very wide reading in the growing library of autobiographies, memoirs, and monographs dealing with this period.” — Tony Judt, New York Review of Books