Book Notes

American Jewish Life

Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America, by Beth B. Cohen. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007. 223 pp. $44.95. ISBN 0-8135-3953-6.

Case Closed challenges the prevailing optimistic perception of the lives of Holocaust survivors in postwar America by scrutinizing their first years through the eyes of those who lived it. The facts brought forth in this book are supported by case files recorded by Jewish social service workers, letters and minutes from agency meetings, oral testimonies, and much more.

Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945-2006, by Marianne R. Sanua. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press, 2007. 495 pp. $60.00. ISBN 1-58465-631-X.

The American Jewish Committee, founded in 1906, has a long-term mission to protect the civil and religious rights of Jews in the U.S. and around the globe. The AJC has also been distinguished for its outstanding staff and superb library, for its importance as a research center, and for its efforts to bring about social change through public education. Marianne Sanua's volume offers a history of this important organization.

Biblical and Rabbinic Literature

Exploring the Old Testament: Vol. 2: A Guide to the Historical Books, by Philip E. Satterthwaite and J. Gordon McConville. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. 295 pp. $25.00. ISBN 978-0-8308-2552-3.

This guidebook introduces the content and context of the historical books of the Bible from Joshua to Ezra and Nehemiah, presenting them within the setting of ancient history and history writing and emphasizing their literary artistry and their lasting value as theological and ethical resources. Designed especially for students.

Biography, Autobiography, Memoirs, Diaries

Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb, edited by David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. 523 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-691-12094-2.

Albert Einstein was one of the century's most outspoken political activists. Deeply engaged with the events of his tumultuous times, from the two world wars and the Holocaust, to the atomic bomb and the Cold War, to the effort to establish a Jewish homeland, Einstein was a prolific political writer, someone who took courageous and often unpopular stands against nationalism, militarism, antisemitism, racism, and McCarthyism. In Einstein on Politics, David Rowe and Robert Schulmann gather Einstein's most important public and private political writings and put them into historical context.

Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman among Books, by Ilana M. Blumberg. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 177 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-0 8032-1367-8.

Blumberg's memoir of negotiating the worlds of traditional Jewish practice and modern, secular wisdom is the story of how a Jewish woman's life was shaped by a passion for learning; it is also a look into the life of Modern Orthodoxy. Blumberg traces her own path from a childhood immersed in Hebrew and classical Judaic texts as well as Anglo-American novels and biographies, to a womanhood where the two literatures suddenly represent mutually exclusive possibilities for life.

Shimon Peres: The Biography, by Michael Bar-Zohar. New York: Random House, 2007. 554 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978-1-4000-6292-8.

Drawing on his decades-long association with Peres, as well as the full cooperation of the leader's family, friends, supporters, and political rivals, Bar-Zohar has presents a portrait of a man whose life and career span the entire history of Israel.

Education and Teaching

Approaches to Teaching Wiesel's Night, edited by Alan Rosen. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2007. 169 pp. $37.50 (c); $19.75 (p). ISBN 978-0-87352-589-3 (c); 978-0-87352-590-9 (p).

The seventeen essays of this volume in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature examine the historical, cultural, and literary contexts of Wiesel's book as well as strategies for teaching it in the classroom.

Family Matters: Jewish Education in an Age of Choice, edited by Jack Wertheimer. Hanover: University Press of New England/Brandeis University Press...