The Judean monarch Hezekiah remains one of the most significant figures in biblical studies. For all of his greatness, however, there is little about him that may be stated with certainty. This study provides a detailed reexamination of this enterprising ruler. It commences with data outside the biblical text from Assyrian records and ancient Near Eastern archaeology which may be brought to bear in reconstructing the historical Hezekiah, and subsequently…
Illustrated by Annie Wilkinson Shoshana loves spending time at Grandma Jacobs’ art studio and for Shavuot, Grandma Jacobs has a very special art project in mind! Shoshana learns how to make papercuts by carefully folding squares of paper and cutting shapes out of them. But can she create works of art as beautiful as the ones Grandma makes? Review at the Jewish Journal
When the Great Depression hits, Florence Fein leaves Brooklyn College for what appears to be a plum job in Moscow—and the promise of love and independence. But once in Russia, she quickly becomes entangled in a country she can’t escape. Many years later, Florence’s son, Julian, will make the opposite journey, immigrating back to the United States. His work in the oil industry takes him on frequent visits to Moscow,…
JOSEF is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world . . . ISABEL is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America . . . MAHMOUD is a…
The breadth of Werner Weinberg’s scholarship was prodigious, yielding monographs on ancient Hebrew epigraphy and biblical exegesis; the syntax of Rabbinic Hebrew; medieval grammars; and numerous studies on various aspects of Modern Hebrew. Both Weinberg and Lisl, his wife, survived internment at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. This collection of essays reprinted here, a little more than three decades after it first appeared, conveys Weinberg’s ongoing struggle to put into words…
Alejandro Shiela, illustrator Challah Boy, the school bully, has torn through the halls of his school, scattering crumbs everywhere. He did this right before Passover, no less. Like the Maccabees who stood up to bullies so that Jews could keep Judaism, Matza Boy must fight Challah Boy in order so that Jews everywhere can have a kosher Passover. However, the Maccabees were a group and Matza Boy is one boy.…
Yiddish Schools and Their Periodicals for American Children, 1917-1950 This unique literary study of Yiddish children’s periodicals casts new light on secular Yiddish schools in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Rejecting the traditional religious education of the Talmud Torahs and congregational schools, these Yiddish schools chose Yiddish itself as the primary conduit of Jewish identity and culture. Four Yiddish school networks emerged, which despite their political…
Ancient Literary Convention and the Limits of Source Criticism Inconsistencies in the Torah is a critical intellectual history of the theories of textual growth in biblical studies. The historical critical approach to the Pentateuch has long relied upon scholarly intuition concerning some of its narrative and legal discrepancies, which scholars have taken as signs of fragmentation and competing agendas. Those hypotheses are, Joshua A. Berman argues, based on anachronistic, nineteenth-century…
Beth Bograt, illustrator There was one thing Knotty, Knotsalot, and Notnow loved to do more than anything in the world: tangle children’s hair! Long ago, in the town of Knottingham, there were three little goblins: Knotty was naughty, Knotsalot was no good, and Notnow was no good, no how, not then and not now! More than anything else, these mischievous goblins liked to tangle children’s hair! Find out how the…
Joining the ranks of Unbroken, Band of Brothers, and Boys in the Boat, the little-known saga of young German Jews, dubbed The Ritchie Boys, who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, came of age in America, and returned to Europe at enormous personal risk as members of the U.S. Army to play a key role in the Allied victory. In 1942, the U.S. Army unleashed one of its greatest secret…