Penn Press Log

The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance--Now Available

The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance
Dana E. Katz
248 pages | 6 x 9 | 70 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4085-6 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

Dana E. Katz reveals how Italian Renaissance painting became part of a policy of tolerance that deflected violence from the real world onto a symbolic world. While the rulers upheld toleration legislation governing Christian-Jewish relations, they simultaneously supported artistic commissions that perpetuated violence against Jews.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange--Now Available

Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange: Comparative Exegesis in Context
Edited by Natalie B. Dohrmann and David Stern
376 pages | 6 x 9 | 7 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4074-0 | $65.00 | £42.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

Biblical interpretation is not simply study of the Bible's meaning. This volume focuses on signal moments in the histories of scriptural interpretation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the ancient period to the early modern, and shows how deeply intertwined these religions have always been.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Israel Independence Day Reading

Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography
Anita Shapira
Translated by Evelyn Abel
392 pages | 6 x 9 | 29 illus.
Cloth 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4028-3 | $49.95 | £32.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

A bestseller in Israel, Yigal Allon, Native Son is the only biography of the charismatic leader. Born in 1918 into the fabric of Arab-Jewish frontier life at the foot of Mt. Tabor, Allon rose to become commander of the Palmah, one of the founding figures of the state of Israel and an architect of its politics. The book  focuses on Allon's life up to 1950, his clash with founding father David Ben-Gurion, the end of his military career, and the watershed in culture and character between the Jewish Yishuv and Israeli statehood.

The story of Allon's life frames the history of Israel, its relationship with its Arab neighbors, its culture and spirit. This biography touches on matters--Israel's borders, refugees, military might--that remain very much alive today.

The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews--Now Available

The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews
Edited by Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn
336 pages | 6 x 9 | 9 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4064-1 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

In this multidisciplinary volume, leading historians provide new understanding of a time that sent shockwaves through Jewish communities in and beyond the Russian Empire and transformed the way Jews thought about the politics of ethnic and national identity.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Culture Front--Now Available

Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe
Edited by Benjamin Nathans and Gabriella Safran
344 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4055-9 | $65.00 | £42.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

Bringing together contributions by historians and literary scholars, Culture Front explores how Jews and their Slavic neighbors produced and consumed imaginative representations of Jewish life in chronicles, plays, novels, poetry, memoirs, museums, and elsewhere.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Shapira's Allon Biography Raises Questions

In a Daily Jewish Forward review of Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography, Miriam Shaviv asks why the former "golden boy" of Israel has faded into relative obscurity.

Yigal Allon, Native Son--Now Available

Yigal Allon, Native Son: A Biography
Anita Shapira Translated by Evelyn Abel
392 pages | 6 x 9 | 29 illus.
Cloth 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4028-3 | $49.95 | £32.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

Recipient of the Zalman Shazar Award for Research in Jewish History

"A superb biography. . . . Few Israelis have radiated the legendary aura that surrounded Yigal Allon."--Jerusalem Post "

Anita Shapira has written a very readable, wise, often eye-opening and captivating book."--Ha'aretz

A best-selling biography in Israel, available for the first time in the English language.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Wonderful Blood--Now in Paperback

Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond
Caroline Walker Bynum
456 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 34 illus.
Cloth 2006 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3985-0 | $49.95 | £32.50
Paper 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2019-3 | $24.95 | £16.50
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

Recipient of the 2007 Award for Excellence in the Historical Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion

"For three decades now, Bynum has been pivotal in drawing the attention even of nonspecialists to some of the overlooked, sophisticated conceptions that late medieval piety developed of personal identity, death, redemption, gender, asceticism, and the body. She now zooms in on and brilliantly illuminates the equally complex and equally crucial issue of blood. . . . Her empathy with medieval Christians has allowed her to put her finger on one of their key concerns, and Wonderful Blood should refocus the study of late medieval piety once more."--Times Literary Supplement

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times--Now Available

The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp, Editors
464 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 59 illus.
Cloth 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4002-3 | $49.95 | £32.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

This richly illustrated volume illuminates how the arts have helped Jews confront the challenges of modernity. There truly is an art to being Jewish in the modern world--or, alternatively, an art of being modern in the Jewish world--and this collection fully captures its range, diversity, and historical significance.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Jewish Art Book Sparks Companion Web Project

As the official release of The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times approaches, co-editors Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp have extended their collaboration from the printed page to the internet.  A companion web site, hosted by New York University, is scheduled to go online in the spring of 2008. Here, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Karp describes their path from conversation to book to web.