Jewish

Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protests and even her eventual confession that she was Jewish, he married her and kept her identity a secret.

In wrenching detail, Edith recalls a life of constant, almost paralyzing fear. She tells of German officials who casually questioned the lineage of her parents; of how, when giving birth to her daughter, she refused all painkillers, afraid that in an altered state of mind she might reveal something of her past; and of how, after her husband was captured by the Soviet army, she was bombed out of her house and had to hide while drunken Russian soldiers raped women on the street.

Yet despite the risk it posed to her life, Edith created a remarkable record of survival. She saved every document and set of papers issued to her, as well as photographs she managed to take inside labor camps. Now part of the permanent collection at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., these hundreds of documents, several of which are included in this volume, form the fabric of a gripping new chapter in the history of the Holocaust -- complex, troubling, and ultimately triumphant.

Following the 1972 Olympics, a sportswriter referred to Mark Spitz, winner of seven gold medals, as "the first great Jewish athlete." He couldn't have been more wrong. As Jewish Sports Legends shows, Jews have excelled at athletics for centuries. This handsome volume illuminates the lives and unforgettable accomplishments of Jews in virtually every major sport played worldwide. Baseball stars Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg, basketball's Red Auerbach and Dolph Schayes, and football's Sid Luckman and Marv Levy are only a few outstanding examples. Did you know that-

- A Jewish woman, New York stenographer Charlotte Epstein, is "the mother of American women's swimming?"

- An ordained cantor, Ike Berger of the United States, once held twenty-three world and Olympic weightlifting records?

- Jewish, Lithuanian-born Senda Berenson introduced women's basketball to America?

- The NFL's New York Giants bought the entire 1928 Detroit Wolverine football team in order to acquire the contract of its All-Pro quarterback, Benny Friedman?

- Jewish Olympic champions Agnes Keleti (gymnastics), Maria Gorokhovskaya (gymnastics), Dara Torres (swimming), and Irena Kirszenstein-Szewinska (track and field) have won a combined total of 33 Olympic medals?

- South African rugby star Okey Geffin learned to play the game while a prisoner in a World War II German POW camp?

- An eighteenth-century prizefighter, Daniel Mendoza of Great Britain, was the first of more than thirty Jewish boxers to be crowned world champion?

Containing hundreds of photographs, Jewish Sports Legends introduces the famous, and not-so-famous Jewish sports greats throughout history. Also featuring great coaches, officials, journalists, and other significant contributors to the thrilling world of sports, it is a fabulous gift for all serious sports fans.

Presents a biography of the Jewish leader who led the revolt against the Seleucid Empire, taking Jerusalem in 164 B.C. and rededicating the Temple.

Sherwin B. Nuland—best-selling author of How We Die—focuses his surgeon’s eye and writer’s pen on this greatest of rabbis, most intriguing of Jewish philosophers, and most honored of Jewish doctors.

Moses Maimonides was a Renaissance man before there was a Renaissance: a great physician, a dazzling Torah scholar, a daring philosopher. Eight hundred years after his death, his notions about God, faith, the afterlife, and the Messiah still stir debate; his life as a physician still inspires; and the enigmas of his character still fascinate. Nuland's portrait of Maimonides that makes his life, his times, and his thought accessible to the general reader as they have never been before.

“What is hateful unto you, do not do unto your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary. Now, go and study.”
 
This is the most famous teaching of Hillel, one of the greatest rabbis of the Talmudic era. What makes it so extraordinary is that it was offered to a gentile seeking conversion. Joseph Telushkin feels that this Talmudic story has great relevance for us today. At a time when religiosity is equated with ritual observance alone, when few Jews seem concerned with bringing Jewish teachings into the world, and when more than 40 percent of Jews intermarry, Judaism is in need of more of the openness that Hillel possessed two thousand years ago.
 
Hillel’s teachings, stories, and legal rulings can be found throughout the Talmud; many of them share his emphasis on ethical and moral living as an essential element in Jewish religious practice, including his citing the concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world) as a basis for modifying Jewish law. Perhaps the most prominent rabbi and teacher in the Land of Israel during the reign of Herod, Hillel may well have influenced Jesus, his junior by several decades. In a provocative analysis of both Judaism and Christianity, Telushkin reveals why Hillel’s teachings about ethics as God’s central demand and his willingness to encourage the process of conversion began to be ignored in favor of the stricter and less inclusive teachings of his rabbinic adversary, Shammai.
 
Here is a bold new look at an iconic religious leader.

Anyone who has seen Maxwell Street has a story about Maxwell Street. You didn't have to shop there, work there, or eat there. You didn't have to be Jewish. You just had to go there, or merely pass-by, in order to experience something that stuck in your mind forever. Only a few blocks south of Chicago's downtown, Maxwell Street was predominately a Jewish enclave, but you could also hear the Blues, bargain with Gypsies, and find bargain hunters from all walks of life. This book focuses on the stories of the last Jewish generations that lived and worked in the Maxwell Street market area. Beginning in the late 19th century, it was there that thousands of Jewish immigrants first grasped the American dream. The descendents of those first Jewish peddlers absorbed the legacies left them; some went on to be among the most notable and successful personalities of the 20th century. On Maxwell Street, the best merchandise was knowledge.