Indiana University Press blog

Book review: The Making of a Reform Jewish Cantor

"The accessible and readable style of Cohen’s account coupled with  relevant CD illustrations will make this a useful case study for a course on music in contemporary religious practice, while his theoretical observations will provide a springboard for much wider discussion of musical texts and processes." —Music & Letters

Reading selections for Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. To commemorate this occasion, we offer the following reading selections to further your understanding of the history of the Holocaust:

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 - Volume II
Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe
Geoffrey P. Megargee, General Editor
Martin Dean, Volume Editor
Introduction by Christopher R. Browning
Read excerpt

Volume II offers a comprehensive account of how the Nazis conducted the Holocaust throughout the scattered towns and villages of Poland and the Soviet Union. It covers more than 1,150 sites, including both open and closed ghettos. This an indispensable reference work on the destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.

Also available: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 - Volume I
Read excerpt

The End of the Holocaust
Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Read excerpt

"The End of the Holocaust is a model of critical intelligence, restrained in its judgments, never shrill or accusatory in its disagreements, always illuminating in its insights into the motives and achievements of the major Holocaust writers Rosenfeld discusses." —Forward

Last Folio

Textures of Jewish Life in Slovakia

Yuri Dojc and Katya Krausova

Photographs by Yuri Dojc
Read excerpt

"Books in these photographs . . . are possessed by spirits exorcised through Yuri Dojc's magical eye: as they disintegrate into dust, the camera illuminates how that moment of disintegration is also a moment of immense energy and movement, one last and glorious statement of defiance, resisting both death and oblivion." —Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Who Will Write Our History
Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive
Samuel D. Kassow
Read excerpt

"This may well be the most important book about history that anyone will ever read." —The New Republic

Who Will Write Our History tells the gripping story of Emanuel Ringelblum and his determination to use historical scholarship and the collection of documents to resist Nazi oppression.

The Unknown Black Book
The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories
Edited by Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya Altman
Read excerpt

The Unknown Black Book provides a revelatory compilation of testimonies from Jews who survived open-air massacres and other atrocities carried out by the Germans and their allies in the occupied Soviet territories during World War II.

Author event: Alvin Rosenfeld to speak at the University of Minnesota

The End of the Holocaust author Alvin H. Rosenfeld will speak at the University of Minnesota on Sunday, April 15 at 7:30 p.m. as part of a symposium that will explore the mutation of academic ideals under National Socialism.

This event is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.

For more information, please visit the "Betrayal of the Humanities" homepage.

New IUP book coincides with 90th anniversary of first American bat mitzvah

On March 18, 1922, the first American bat mitzvah was celebrated in New York City. While the idea may have been slow to catch on at first, in the 21st century, Jewish girls in North America alone will celebrate some 40,000 bat mitzvahs each year, and the number is growing because every sub-group of Judaism, including Orthodox, recognizes some form of bat mitzvah ceremony.

Today I Am a Woman: Stories of Bat Mitzvah around the World is an ideal gift book for Jewish girls to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the first American bat mitzvah and to discover different Jewish communities around the world. The book offers several fascinating stories that uncover how this milestone is celebrated on six different continents.

Narrations of the first bat mitzvah at the only synagogue in Indonesia, a moving bat mitzvah memory of World War II Italy, and an American bat mitzvah shared with girls in a Ukrainian orphanage are a few of the rich testimonies from both the past and present in this collection.

In celebration of the 90th anniversary of the bat mitzvah, you can save 40% off Today I Am a Woman. Use code BDAY40 at checkout. Hurry, offer valid today only! Shop now

Book review: Kiev, Jewish Metropolis

"This well-written, engaging book seeks to reconstruct the fabric of Jewish daily life in the dynamic city of Kiev, known as the mother of Russian Orthodox cities." —Jewish Book Council

Book review: The End of the Holocaust

"Although Holocaust denial threatens to undermine the record of Nazi Germany's criminal legacy, Rosenfeld persuasively argues that other forces are inadvertently as dangerous." —Hadassah Magazine

Book review: A Prophetic Peace

"Inspired by his combat experience in the second Lebanon war, Alick Isaacs’s goal in this deeply personal and thought provoking book is to challenge conventional perspectives on peace and war and reconcile the bellicosity found in religion with its messages of peace." —Jewish Book Council

Book review: Kiev, Jewish Metropolis

"The best books in Russian-Jewish history of recent years continue to question the myths and to look at the facts anew with the help of archival materials and other rare sources. Natan Meir's book does exactly this. ... As he demonstrates in this book, Natan Meir is a careful and innovative scholar." —Slavonic and East European Review

Brown University Bookstore to host event with author Marcy Brink-Danan

Marcy Brink-Danan will read from her new book Jewish Life in 21st Century Turkey at the Brown University Bookstore February 9 at 5:30 p.m. For more information, visit the bookstore's event page.

Book review: Today I Am a Woman

"Today I am a Woman is filled with lyrical accounts of being a bat mitzvah in such exotic places as Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Tegucigalpa, Honduras. ... All the vignettes are accompanied by a well-researched history of the Jewish community in the area." —Jewish Book Council