Written by a sociologist and a journalist, The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions recounts the death of a Boston community once home to 90,000 Jews residing among African-Americans and white ethnics. The frightening personal testimonies and blatant evidence of manipulated housing prices illustrate how inadequate government regulation of banks can contribute to ethnic conflict and lives destroyed. “There were no winners,” the authors warn. Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon believe that their findings may be true for American cities in general. Had we learned from what went wrong in Boston — blockbusting by a group of banks, federal programs promoting mortgages to people unable to afford them, real estate brokers seeking quick profits —, perhaps the 2008 nationwide real estate meltdown could have been anticipated. The lessons from this book are essential for students of ethnic relations and urban affairs. “This candid, disturbing, and highly readable book recounts how Boston’s working-class Jewish neighborhoods were transformed into economically devastated black ghettoes.” — The New Yorker “Bankers and real-estate brokers still shape the dynamics of daily life in our fragile urban neighborhoods. Levine and Harmon movingly capture the human side of this often destructive process in their story of redlining and blockbusting in Boston during the 1960s. But their book is more than history. It is a lesson about how to understand and improve our cities and neighborhoods, today and in the future.” — Raymond L. Flynn, Mayor of Boston, President, U.S. Conference of Mayors “Levine and Harmon are sympathetic to the goals of racial integration but are indignant over the brutality and unfairness that accompanied these orchestrations. Bankers and politicians are indicted here by elaborate court evidence and by supplementary research cited by the authors, who use their insiders’ passion (Harmon was born and raised in Dorchester) and professional expertise to forever preserve the corned-beef flavor of old Blue Hill Avenue. As much an elegiac memory book of old Jewish Boston as a searing indictment against her killers.” — Kirkus Reviews “Combines the rigor of good scholarship with the obsessive curiosity of good journalism” — J. Anthony Lukas, Author of Common Ground “What keeps a community alive? What are the social and historical forces that shape or stifle its aspirations? When does a community soar and when does it yield to resignation? These and other questions take on an urgency of their own in Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon’s perceptive, brilliant, and disturbing inquiry.” — Elie Wiesel, University Professor and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Boston University “Levine and Harmon have written a prophetic indictment of the real estate speculation and elite indifference that, along with black crimes, destroyed Boston’s most vibrant Jewish neighborhoods. Have the courage to take their terrible journey; you will not return unchanged!” — Jim Sleeper, Author of The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York “This engagingly written and brilliantly illuminating portrait of the destruction of a vibrant Jewish community radically revises our understanding of the process of neighborhood change. The authors also break new ground in portraying the critical role of social class in American life and the powerful, if unconscious, class bias of Jewish communal leaders.” — Charles E. Silberman, Author of A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today

Judaism's Encounter with American Sports examines how sports entered the lives of American Jewish men and women and how the secular values of sports threatened religious identification and observance. What do Jews do when a society -- in this case, a team -- "chooses them in," but demands commitments that clash with ancestral ties and practices? Jeffrey S. Gurock uses the experience of sports to illuminate an important mode of modern Jewish religious conflict and accommodation to America. He considers the defensive strategies American Jewish leaders have employed in response to sports' challenges to identity, such as using temple and synagogue centers, complete with gymnasiums and swimming pools, to attract the athletically inclined to Jewish life. Within the suburban frontiers of post--World War II America, sports-minded modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis competed against one another for the allegiances of Jewish athletes and all other Americanized Jews. In the present day, tensions among Jewish movements are still played out in the sports arena. Today, in a mostly accepting American society, it is easy for sports-minded Jews to assimilate completely, losing all regard for Jewish ties. At the same time, a very tolerant America has enabled Jews to succeed in the sports world, while keeping faith with Jewish traditions. Gurock foregrounds his engaging book against his own experiences as a basketball player, coach, and marathon runner. By using the metaphor of sports, Judaism's Encounter with American Sports underscores the basic religious dilemmas of our day.

This annotated bibliography documents Jews' significant contributions to American agriculture as farmers, ranchers, scientists and teachers. Works cited include periodicals, books, newspapers, government publications, theses and dissertations, and other miscellaneous sources. The work is indexed by title and subject.

In Ellis Island to Ebbets Field, Peter Levine vividly recounts the stories of Red Auerbach, Hank Greenberg, Moe Berg, Sid Luckman, Nat Holman, Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Marty Glickman, and a host of others who became Jewish heroes and symbols of the difficult struggle for American success. From settlement houses and street corners, to Madison Square and Fenway Park, their experiences recall a time when Jewish males dominated sports like boxing and basketball, helping to smash stereotypes about Jewish weakness while instilling American Jews with a fierce pride in their strength and ability in the face of Nazi aggression, domestic anti-Semitism, and economic depression. Full of marvelous stories, anecdotes, and personalities, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field enhances our understanding of the Jewish-American experience as well as the struggles of other American minority groups.

It is my sincere desire that this simple and elegant practice of the Five Warrior Syllables, which is based on the highest teachings of the Tibetan Bn Buddhist tradition of which I am a lineage holder, will benefit many beings in the West. Please receive it with my blessing, and bring it into your life. Let it support you to become kind and strong and clear and awake. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche One of the world's oldest unbroken spiritual traditions is the Bon Buddhist tradition of Tibet. This wisdom path has survived, thanks to the efforts of a handful of dedicated lamas such as Bn lineage holder Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Now, with Tibetan Sound Healing, you can connect to the ancient sacred sounds of the Bn practiceand through them, activate the healing potential of your natural mind. The Bn healing tradition invokes the Five Warrior Sylla blessed sounds that bring us to the essential nature of mind and release the boundless creativity and positive qualities that are fundamental to it. Through the medicine of sound, you can clear obstacles of your body, your energy and emotions, and the subtle sacred dimensions of your being. In this integrated book-and-CD learning program, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche gives you the tools to access wisdom and compassion and use the vibration of sacred sound to cultivate the healing power within your body s subtle channels. It is my sincere desire that this simple and elegant practice of the Five Warrior Syllables, which is based on the highest teachings of the Tibetan Bn Buddhist tradition of which I am a lineage holder, will benefit many beings in the West. Please receive it with my blessing, and bring it into your life. Let it support you to become kind and strong and clear and awake. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche One of the world's oldest unbroken spiritual traditions is the Bn Buddhist tradition of Tibet.

In this memoir, Fraenkel writes as a member of an enclosed minority: German Jew within a predominantly Lithuanian Jewish community which was part of a white settler community, itself a minority in a predominantly black African territory. A young settler reprimanded him for stepping out of the way of an African family on a narrow bush path: “Walk straight on. They must know who is the master in the land.” Fraenkel found himself whistling the Nazis’ anthem “Clear the streets for the brown battalions. The storm troopers are marching.” He was coming to learn the importance of not conforming. “A vivid account of a childhood in a middleclass, non-observant Jewish family in Nazi Germany, forced to emigrate to Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in 1939.” — Trevor Gundry, Jewish Chronicle “Peter Fraenkel... and his family emigrated in 1939 from Breslau to Northern Rhodesia, where he forged a successful career... in the Central African Broadcasting Service. Fraenkel was thus given the opportunity of using his undoubted skills as a broadcaster to help in the education of black people, using new methods of mass education... his sojourn in Northern Rhodesia came to an end in 1957, a few years after the country was refashioned by the British government as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland — a big mistake, Fraenkel thinks, and one that wasn’t undone until much later when the independent state of Zambia was created. His love affair with Africa came to an end, and he felt impelled to leave, because of his ‘dislike of racist politics in this bastion of white privilege’... Peter Fraenkel’s account of the 20 years in Northern Rhodesia is absorbing... there are riveting chapters on his activities as a somewhat subversive broadcaster, working together with like-minded whites and Blacks... The book is written in a very lively manner and there are countless anecdotes, many of them in direct speech... I recommend it strongly.” — Leslie Baruch Brent, Association of Jewish Refugees “The book bursts with life. Countries like these Central African territories are... far more exciting than countries with a settled structure. Here a new society is emerging. This excitement is lost in official reports and academic studies and one of Fraenkel’s achievements is that he conveys it in full measure. I know of no book which more vividly describes the variety and throb of a modern African township.” — Max Gluckman, The Observer “He brings out the formation of the new African metropolitan and rural societies... I know of no book which describes this surging varied vitality so well.” — Africa

The first comprehensive biography of the preeminent voice of New York sports For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of broadcasting, on television and especially on the radio, garnered for him legions of fans who would not miss his play-by-play accounts. From the 1940s through the 1990s, he was as iconic a sports figure in town as the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, the Knicks’ Walt Frazier, or the Jets’ Joe Namath. His vocabulary and method of broadcasting left an indelible mark on the industry, and many of today’s most famous sportscasters were Glickman disciples. To this very day, many fans who grew up listening to his coverage of Knicks basketball and Giants football games, among the myriad of events that Glickman covered, recall fondly, and can still recite, his descriptions of actions in arenas and stadiums. In Marty Glickman, Jeffrey S. Gurock showcases the life of this important contributor to American popular culture. In addition to the stories of how he became a master of American sports airwaves, Marty Glickman has also been remembered as a Jewish athlete who, a decade before he sat in front of a microphone, was cynically barred from running in a signature track event in the 1936 Olympics by anti-Semitic American Olympic officials. This lively biography details this traumatic event and explores not only how he coped for decades with that painful rejection but also examines how he dealt with other anti-Semitic and cultural obstacles that threatened to stymie his career. Glickman’s story underscores the complexities that faced his generation of American Jews as these children of immigrants emerged from their ethnic cocoons and strove to succeed in America amid challenges to their professional and social advancement. Marty Glickman is a story of adversity and triumph, of sports and minority group struggles, told within the context of the prejudicial barriers that were common to thousands, if not millions, of fellow Jews of his generation as they aimed to make it in America.

The 1936 Olympic Games played a key role in the development of both Hitler’s Third Reich and international sporting competition. The Nazi Olympics gathers essays by modern scholars from prominent participating countries and lays out the issues--sporting as well as political--surrounding the involvement of individual nations. The volume opens with an analysis of Germany’s preparations for the Games and the attempts by the Nazi regime to allay the international concerns about Hitler’s racist ideals and expansionist ambitions. Essays follow on the United States, Great Britain, and France--top-tier Olympian nations with misgivings about participation--as well as Germany's future Axis partners Italy and Japan. Other contributions examine the issues involved for Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Throughout, the authors reveal the high political stakes surrounding the Games and how the Nazi Olympics distilled critical geopolitical issues of the time into a spectacle of sport.