Category: Judaism

  • The Harrowing Journey of Jews Across the European Landscape

    When we think of the Holocaust, images of the horrific suffering of millions of people come to mind. For British historian Tim Cole, the physical environment that the victims of the Holocaust encountered is a complex story of death and survival. Cole says that for many Westerners, images of the genocide come from the liberation […]

  • Daughter of the Holocaust

    In the summer of 1942, 22-year-old Franci Rabinek began a three-year journey that would take her from Terezin, the Nazis’ “model ghetto,” to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to slave labor camps in Hamburg and finally to Bergen Belsen. Trained as a dress designer, Franci survived the war and would go on to establish […]

  • Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History

    Kishinev, the rampage that broke out in late-Tsarist Russia, has been described as foreshadowing the Holocaust itself. In April 1903, 49 Jews were killed, 600 raped or wounded, and more than 1,000 Jewish-owned houses and stores were ransacked and destroyed during three days of violence in the Eastern European city. Steven Zipperstein, Stanford University, discusses […]

  • Oy Vey – The Strange Stories of Yiddishland

    Unlike most languages, which are spoken by the residents of a particular area or by members of a particular nationality, Yiddish – at the height of its usage – was spoken by millions of Jews of different nationalities all over the globe. Eddy Portnoy’s book mines century-old Yiddish newspapers to expose the seamy underbelly of […]

  • Dreams That You Dare to Dream

    The annual Lytle Scholarship Concerts were inaugurated in 1996 to benefit the Preuss School at UC San Diego, a public college prep charter school for grades 6 through 12. The concerts are specific to a composer (e.g., Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, Liszt) or to a musical concept or genre (e.g., gospel tunes, tangos, ragtime, Latin jazz). […]