In the months leading up to the outbreak of World War Two, Britain rushed to evacuate nearly 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazi occupied territories. Through the unprecedented cooperation of religious and governmental organizations, the Kindertransport spared thousands of Jewish children from the terror of the Third Reich and provided them with host families in Britain. "Children's Exodus" offers an in-depth look at the people and politics behind the various chains of rescue as well as the personal narratives of the children who left everything behind in the hope of finding safety. Drawing on unpublished interviews, journals, and articles, Vera K. Fast examines the religious and political tensions that emerged throughout the migration and at times threatened to bring operations to a halt. "Children's Exodus" captures the life-affirming stories of child refugees with vivid detail and examines the motivations - religious or otherwise - of the people that orchestrated one of the greatest rescue missions of all time.

This in-depth examination of one of the most controversial episodes in U.S.-Cuba relations sheds new light on the program that airlifted 14,000 unaccompanied children to the United States in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. Operation Pedro Pan is often remembered within the U.S. as an urgent “rescue” mission, but Deborah Shnookal points out that a multitude of complex factors drove the exodus, including Cold War propaganda and the Catholic Church’s opposition to the island’s new government. Shnookal illustrates how and why Cold War scare tactics were so effective in setting the airlift in motion, focusing on their context: the rapid and profound social changes unleashed by the 1959 Revolution, including the mobilization of 100,000 Cuban teenagers in the 1961 national literacy campaign. Other reforms made by the revolutionary government affected women, education, religious schools, and relations within the family and between the races. Shnookal exposes how, in its effort to undermine support for the revolution, the U.S. government manipulated the aspirations and insecurities of more affluent Cubans. She traces the parallel stories of the young “Pedro Pans” separated from their families—in some cases indefinitely—in what is often regarded in Cuba as a mass “kidnapping” and the children who stayed and joined the literacy brigades. These divergent journeys reveal many underlying issues in the historically fraught relationship between the U.S. and Cuba and much about the profound social revolution that took place on the island after 1959. Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A philosophical case against religious violence We live in an age beset by religiously inspired violence. Terms such as “holy war” are the stock-in-trade of the evening news. But what is the relationship between holiness and violence? Can acts such as murder ever truly be described as holy? In Does Judaism Condone Violence?, Alan Mittleman offers a searching philosophical investigation of such questions in the Jewish tradition. Jewish texts feature episodes of divinely inspired violence, and the position of the Jews as God’s chosen people has been invoked to justify violent acts today. Are these justifications valid? Or does our understanding of the holy entail an ethic that argues against violence? Reconstructing the concept of the holy through a philosophical examination of biblical texts, Mittleman finds that the holy and the good are inextricably linked, and that our experience of holiness is authenticated through its moral consequences. Our understanding of the holy develops through reflection on God’s creation of the natural world, and our values emerge through our relations with that world. Ultimately, Mittleman concludes, religious justifications for violence cannot be sustained. Lucid and incisive, Does Judaism Condone Violence? is a powerful counterargument to those who claim that the holy is irrational and amoral. With philosophical implications that extend far beyond the Jewish tradition, this book should be read by anyone concerned about the troubling connection between holiness and violence.

The Torah is truly the Book of Revolutions, born from a military coup (the Northern Israelite revolution), the aftermath of an assassination and regency (a Judean revolution), and a quiet but radical revolution effected by outsiders whose ideas proved persuasive (Babylonian exile). Emerging from each of these were three key legal codes—the Covenant Code (Exodus), the Deuteronomic Code (Deuteronomy), and the Holiness Code (Leviticus)—which in turn shaped the Bible, biblical Judaism, and Judaism today. In dramatic historical accounts grounded in recent Bible scholarship, Edward Feld unveils the epic saga of ancient Israel as the visionary legacy of inspired authors in different times and places. Prophetic teaching and differing social realities shaped new understandings concretized in these law codes. Revolutionary biblical ideas often encountered great difficulties in their time before they triumphed. Eventually master editors wove the threads together, intentionally preserving competing narratives and law codes. Ultimately, the Torah is an emblem of pluralistic belief born of revolutionary moments that preserved spiritual realities that continue to speak powerfully to us today.

Have fun with faith using Old Testament Take-Home Books That Move! for grades K–2! This 128-page book features captivating, easy-to-assemble storybooks that children love because the Old Testament jumps off the pages right before their eyes! The 30 bookmaking projects enrich children's joy and knowledge of the Bible. The book also includes patterns, instructions, and teaching tips.

Sharon Betsworth examines the narratives, parables, and teachings of and about children in the gospels and the literature of Early Christianity. Betsworth begins with a discussion of the social-historical context of children and childhood in the first century before discussing the role of children in all four gospels. She shows that for Mark and Matthew, children are integral to understanding each evangelist's perspective on the reign of God and on Jesus' identity in each Gospel. In the Gospel of Luke the childhood of Jesus is shown to be crucial to the broader themes of the Gospel. In the Gospel of John, Betsworth examines the metaphorical use of the word 'children' looking at 'children of light' and of 'darkness'. She then explores stories of Jesus' childhood in the non-canonical Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas, as well as the childhood of his mother, Mary in the latter shedding light upon views of children, discipleship, and the person of Jesus in early christianity and in the ancient world more generally.

In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of reading and thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Attentive to nuance while engagingly straightforward, Walzer examines the commentary of the ancient biblical writers and discusses the implications for such urgent modern topics as the nature of political society, hierarchy and justice, the use of political power, the justification for and rules of warfare, and the responsibilities of clerical figures, monarchs, and their subjects./divDIV DIVBecause there are many biblical writers, and because they represent different political views, pluralism is a central feature of biblical politics, Walzer observes. Yet pluralism is never explicitly defended in the Bible—indeed it couldn't be defended since God's word is one. There is, however, an anti-political teaching which recurs in biblical texts: if you have faith in God, you have no need for particular political institutions or prudent political leaders or deliberative assemblies or loyal citizens. And, Walzer finds a strong moral teaching common to the Bible's authors. He identifies God's decree for ethics and investigates its implications for just policymaking in our own times./div