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Book Notes American Jewish Life Book Notes 189 The Holocaust in American Life, by Peter Novick. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999. 384 pp. $27.00 (c). ISBN 0-395-84009-0. In the fIrst decades after World War II, the Holocaust wasn't much talked about, even by American Jews; now it has become the foundation ofhow American Jews understand themselves. As a result, a heated debate is emerging over the place of the Holocaust in contemporary American life. Peter Novick offers an account of how the Holocaust has become such a dominant and defIning event in American culture, and challenges us to ask whether this is where we want to be. How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America, by Karen Brodkin. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. 272 pp. $48.00 (c); $18.00 (p). ISBN 0-8135-2589-6 (c); 0-8135-2590-X (p). The history ofJews in the United States is one ofracial change that provides useful insights on race in America. At times, prevailing classifIcations have assigned Jews to the white race and at others have created an off-white designation for them. Those changes in racial assignment have shaped the ways American Jews of different eras have constructed their ethnoracial identities. Karen Brodkin shows how Jews experience a kind of double vision that comes from racial middleness: on the one hand, marginality with regard to whiteness; on the other, whiteness and belonging with regard to blackness. The Leo Frank Case, by Leonard Dinnerstein. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999. 272 pp. $15.95. ISBN 0-8203-2145-1. Eighty-fIve years ago the murder of Mary Phagan and the subsequent trial and lynching of the accused killer, Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager from the North, was the event that prompted B'nai B'rith to found the Anti-Defamation League. Dinnerstein not only tells the story ofPhagan's and Frank's deaths, but he also places Frank's trial and lynching in the context ofa rapidly changing southern society. 190 Ancient World and Archaeology SHOFAR Spring 2000 Vol. 18, No.3 Integrating Jewish Women into Second Temple History, by Tal Ilan. TUbingen: Mohr Siebeck,1999. 300 pp. DM 250. ISBN 3-16-147107-5. Most studies about women, Jewish and other, are usually confined to the domestic sphere. In this book Tal Han seeks to discover women in public places and at the main events of Second Temple Judaism. The primary principle guiding her work is that ifby chance women are mentioned in sources, they should not be treated as a means for explaining the event but rather as an end in themselves. Thus sources showing women as remote or obscure tum out to yield much relevant material. Ilan investigates women's association with the Pharisees and other sects and analyzes women's role in the wirtings of Josephus, Ben Sira, and other important sources. She also presents new insights into famous women. The Jewish Manumission Inscriptions of the Bosporus Kingdom: Release in the Prayerhouse, by E. Leigh Gibson. TUbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999. 201 pp. DM 128. ISBN 3-16-147041-9. E. Leigh Gibson analyzes a little-known group ofGreek inscriptions that record the manumission ofslaves in synagogues located on the hellenized north shore ofthe Black Sea in the first three centuries ofthe common era. Through a comparison of this corpus with manumission inscriptions from elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world and an analysis ofGreco-Roman Judaism's own interaction with slavery, she assesses the degree to which the Black Sea Jewish community adopted classical traditions ofmanumissions. In so doing, she tests the.assumption that these Jewish communities developed idiosyncratic slave practices underthe influence ofbiblical injunctions regarding Israelite ownership ofslaves. More generally, she reconisders the extent of Jewish isolation from or interactions with Greco-Roman culture. Messianische Texte aus Qumran: Konigliche, priesterliche und prophetische Messiasvorstellungen in den Schriftenfunden von Qumran, by Johannes Zimmermann. TUbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998. 541 pp. DM 130. ISBN 3-16-147057-5. Johannes Zimmerman presents a description and interpretation ofMessianic texts from Qumran. He analyzes all the relevant texts, considers previous research on the subject, and shows a synthesis of how...

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