front cover of The Soul of the Stranger
The Soul of the Stranger
Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective
Joy Ladin
Brandeis University Press, 2018
Reading some of the best-known Torah stories through the lens of transgender experience, Joy Ladin explores fundamental questions about how religious texts, traditions, and the understanding of God can be enriched by transgender perspectives, and how the Torah and trans lives can illuminate one another. Drawing on her own experience and lifelong reading practice, Ladin shows how the Torah, a collection of ancient texts that assume human beings are either male or female, speaks both to practical transgender concerns, such as marginalization, and to the challenges of living without a body or social role that renders one intelligible to others—challenges that can help us understand a God who defies all human categories. These creative, evocative readings transform our understanding of the Torah’s portrayals of God, humanity, and relationships between them.
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Philosophical Witnessing
The Holocaust as Presence
Berel Lang
Brandeis University Press, 2009
In this volume, eminent scholar Berel Lang brings the perspective of philosophical analysis to bear on issues related to the Holocaust. Setting out from a conception of philosophical “witnessing” that expands and illuminates the standard view of the witness, he confronts the question of what philosophy can add to the views of the Holocaust provided in other disciplines. Drawing on the philosophical areas of political theory, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history, he draws attention especially to the post-Holocaust emphasis on the concepts of genocide and “group rights.” Lang’s study, which emphasizes the moral choices that now face post-Holocaust thought, inspires the reader to think of the Holocaust in new ways, showing how its continued presence in contemporary consciousness affects areas of thought and practice not directly associated with that event.
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Climate Ghosts
Migratory Species in the Anthropocene
Nancy Langston
Brandeis University Press, 2021
Climate Ghosts deals with the important issue of climate change and human impact on three species: woodland caribou, common loons, and lake sturgeon.
 
Environmental historian Nancy Langston explores three “ghost species” in the Great Lakes watershed—woodland caribou, common loons, and lake sturgeon. Ghost species are those that have not gone completely extinct, although they may be extirpated from a particular area. Their traces are still present, whether in DNA, in small fragmented populations, in lone individuals roaming a desolate landscape in search of a mate. We can still restore them if we make the hard choices necessary for them to survive. In this meticulously researched book, Langston delves into how climate change and human impact affected these now ghost species. Climate Ghosts covers one of the key issues of our time.
 
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front cover of Best of Times, Worst of Times
Best of Times, Worst of Times
Memoirs of a Political Education
Walter Laqueur
Brandeis University Press, 2009
Walter Laqueur has been writing and teaching for over six decades, primarily in the fields of twentieth century history and politics, always as a shrewd and thoughtful generalist in an age of specialization. In this engaging memoir, Laqueur focuses on the political and historical events that shaped his thinking and that have inspired his intellectual work throughout his life. He discusses living and attending school under Nazism; Marxism, the Soviet Union, and the part he played in Cold War politics; and the image his generation had of Zionism, Israel, and the Middle East. Laqueur shares his views on beltway politics and think tanks, and concludes with a look at guerrilla warfare and terrorism, and the future of Europe.
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Breaking the Silence
The German Who Exposed the Final Solution.
Walter Laqueur
Brandeis University Press, 1994
Through unparalleled historical detective work, noted scholars Walter Laqueur and Richard Breitman reveal the inspiring tale of Eduard Schulte, the Breslau business leader who risked his life to gather information about such Nazi activities as the revised date of the German attack on Poland and the Nazi plan for mass extermination of European Jews. First published in 1986, Breaking the Silence is reissued with both a new foreword and afterword by the authors.
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front cover of A Field Guide to the Familiar
A Field Guide to the Familiar
Learning to Observe the Natural World
Gale Lawrence
Brandeis University Press, 1998
Designed both to encourage beginning naturalists and to challenge more experienced observers to look at the familiar in new ways, A Field Guide to the Familiar offers an introduction to common plants, animals, and natural phenomena. Beautiful drawings add to the book's refreshing approach to nature study. Organized by the seasons of the year, each chapter focuses on one subject and one learning objective. From fall’s first frost to the field crickets of high summer, this innovative guide explores in depth such familiar sights as bumblebees, rainbows, acorns, blueberries, and shooting stars. Each chapter includes descriptive information to help readers identify each subject, as well as life cycle information that shows how a subject functions within a grander scheme. Readers learn that every plant and animal – even the atmosphere – has its own story, and they begin to perceive the natural world as whole, interconnected, and continuous. Whether read sequentially or used as a field companion or handy desk reference, A Field Guide to the Familiar gives every reader a sense of the natural world as an accessible – and endlessly fascinating – place.
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front cover of Bringing Down the Temple House
Bringing Down the Temple House
Engendering Tractate Yoma
Marjorie Lehman
Brandeis University Press, 2022
A feminist project that privileges the Babylonian Talmudic tractate as culturally significant.
 
While the use of feminist analysis as a methodological lens is not new to the study of Talmudic literature or to the study of individual tractates, this book demonstrates that such an intervention with the Babylonian Talmud reveals new perspectives on the rabbis’ relationship with the temple and its priesthood. More specifically, through the relationships most commonly associated with home, such as those of husband-wife, father-son, mother-son, and brother-brother, the rabbis destabilize the temple bayit (or temple house). Moving beyond the view that the temple was replaced by the rabbinic home, and that rabbinic rites reappropriate temple practices, a feminist approach highlights the inextricable link between kinship, gender, and the body, calling attention to the ways the rabbis deconstruct the priesthood so as to reconstruct themselves.
 
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front cover of A New Orient
A New Orient
From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel
Amit Levy
Brandeis University Press, 2024
A history of knowledge transfer of Oriental Studies stretching along an axis from Germany to Palestine/Israel.
 
This study examines the history of Zionist academic Orientalism—referred to throughout as Oriental studies, the term contemporary English speakers would have used—in light of its German-Jewish background, as a history of knowledge transfer stretching along an axis from Germany to Palestine. The transfer, which took place primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, involved questions about the re-establishment, far from Germany, of a field of knowledge with deep German roots. Like other German-Jewish scholars arriving in Palestine at the time, some of the Orientalist agents of transfer did so out of Zionist conviction as olim (immigrants making aliyah, or literally “ascending” to the homeland), while others joined them later as refugees from Nazi Germany; both groups were integrated into the institutional apparatus of the Hebrew University. Unlike other fields of knowledge or professions, however, the transfer of Orientalist knowledge was unique in that the axis involved an essential change in the nature of its encounter with the Orient: from a textual-scientific encounter at German universities, largely disconnected from contemporary issues to a living, substantive, and unmediated encounter with an essentially Arab region—and the escalating Jewish-Arab conflict in the background. Within the new context, German-Jewish Orientalist expertise was charged with political and cultural significance it had not previously faced, fundamentally influencing the course of the discipline’s development in Palestine and Israel.
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front cover of Jews Welcome Coffee
Jews Welcome Coffee
Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Germany
Robert Liberles
Brandeis University Press, 2012
Tracing the introduction of coffee into Europe, Robert Liberles challenges long-held assumptions about early modern Jewish history and shows how the Jews harnessed an innovation that enriched their personal, religious, social, and economic lives. Focusing on Jewish society in Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and using coffee as a key to understanding social change, Liberles analyzes German rabbinic rulings on coffee, Jewish consumption patterns, the commercial importance of coffee for various social strata, differences based on gender, and the efforts of German authorities to restrict Jewish trade in coffee, as well as the integration of Jews into society.
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Hadassah
An American Story
Hadassah Lieberman
Brandeis University Press, 2021

Born in Prague to Holocaust survivors, Hadassah Lieberman and her family immigrated in 1949 to the United States. She went on to earn a BA from Boston University in government and dramatics and an MA in international relations and American government from Northeastern University. She built a career devoted largely to public health that has included positions at Lehman Brothers, Pfizer, and the National Research Council. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she married Joe Lieberman, a US senator from Connecticut who was the Democratic nominee for vice president with Al Gore and would go on to run for president.

In Hadassah, Lieberman pens the compelling story of her extraordinary life: from her family's experience in Eastern Europe to their move to Gardner, Massachusetts; forging her career; experiencing divorce; and, following her remarriage, her life on the national political stage. By offering insight into her identity as an immigrant, an American Jew, a working woman, and a wife, mother, and grandmother, Lieberman’s moving memoir speaks to many of the major issues of our time, from immigration to gender politics. Featuring an introduction by Joe Lieberman and an afterword by Megan McCain, it is a true American story.

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front cover of Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora
Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora
Julia R. Lieberman
Brandeis University Press, 2010
This collection of essays examines an important and under-studied topic in early modern Jewish social history”—the family life of Sephardi Jewish families in the Ottoman Empire as well as in communities in Western Europe. At the height of its power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire spanned three continents, controlling much of southeastern Europe, western Asia, and North Africa. Thousands of Jewish families that had been expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century created communities in these far-flung locations. Later emigrants from Iberia, who converted to Christianity at the time of the expulsion or before, created communities in Western European cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Livorno. Sephardi communities were very different from those of Ashkenazi Jews in the same period. The authors of these essays use the lens of domestic life to illuminate the diversity of the post-Inquisition Sephardi Jewish experience, enabling readers to enter into little-known and little-studied Jewish historical episodes. Contributors include: Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, Hannah Davidson, Cristina Galasso, David Graizbord, Ruth Lamdan, and Julia Lieberman
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front cover of Birdwatching in Maine
Birdwatching in Maine
The Complete Site Guide
Derek J. Lovitch
Brandeis University Press, 2024
An invaluable site guide for New England birders, now available in a new updated edition.
 
With over 470 species of birds recorded, Maine offers an abundance of birding opportunities for people of all levels of interest and experience, from those looking beyond their backyards for the first time to knowledgeable visitors looking to plug a hole in their list of sightings. The state’s wealth of undeveloped land and its extensive coastline, countless islands, and varied habitat combine to host an impressive diversity of birds at all times of the year. Birders travel to Maine from near and far to seek hard-to-find species, from the only Atlantic puffins breeding in the United States on offshore islands to Bicknell’s thrushes high in the mountains.
 
This book fills an important niche for the birdwatching community by offering comprehensive entries detailing the best locations for finding birds throughout the state for enthusiasts of all levels of skill and interest. It contains descriptions of 202 birding sites in Maine, with explicit directions on how to get there, for all sixteen of the state’s counties, several as large as other New England states! Each chapter features a county map, a brief overview by Derek J. Lovitch, numerous specific site guides, and a list of rarities. The book also contains a detailed and useful species accounts guide for finding the most sought-after birds.
 
Lavishly illustrated in color throughout, Birdwatching in Maine is the best available resource for finding birds in the largest of the New England states. This updated edition features a new introduction, as well as new birding sites and maps.
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