Building Jewish Roots

Thousands of young North American Jews visit Israel every year on organized, educational, heritage tours. Israel Experience Programs present religion, homeland, and nation to participants in compelling and sometimes unsettling ways. Supported by Jewish communal institutions, these programs are encouraged for their presumed value in combating assimilation and a loss of Jewish culture. Faydra Shapiro suggests that their real success may lie elsewhere.

A lively look at southern Jewish history and culture.

Looking at Montreal's Jewish community during the first half of the twentieth century, Margolis explores the lives and works of activists, writers, scholars, performers, and organizations that fuelled a still-thriving community. She also considers the foundations and development of Yiddish cultural life in Montreal in its interaction with broader issues of diasporic Jewish culture. An illuminating look at the ways in which Yiddish culture was maintained in North America, Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil is the story of how a minority culture was transplanted and transformed.

This foundational new book reminds us of our ancient obligation to bring justice to the world. The essays in this collection explore the spiritual underpinnings of our Jewish commitment to justice, using Jewish text and tradition, as well as contemporary sources and models. Among the topics covered are women's health, LGBTQ rights, healthcare, racial justice, speaking truth to power, and community organizing.

First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

'In the contemporary British context, ‘heritage’ is a highly politicized and contentious term', Tony Kusher writes in his introduction to this edited collection of essays on the subject of Jewish heritage, thus setting the tone for a book as much interested in the preservation as it is the understanding of this culture. This book provides a more theoretical framework for the pursuit of Jewish historiography and heritage preservation in Britain. The essays collected here look both to the past and to the future, discussing the nature of the Jewish heritage that has already been produced and looking toward possibilities of future development. Kushner has collected a wide range of subjects from social history to architecture to the question of Jewish women. This book will be of interest to students of social history and ethnic studies, particularly Jewish history in London and Manchester. It will be also of some use to those interested in architecture.

Students will explore the themes of exile and return and learn how the values and traditions that have defined our people for countless generations help us to understand our world today.

Dramatic personal stories of the unexpected discovery of a Jewish heritage.