Books published by Academic Studies Press

In 2015, a post-modern version of the Salem witchcraft trials took place at Connecticut College on the Thames River. This time instead of sorcery it was Zionism. The affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards ""public shaming"" that not only deeply compromises the integrity of academia, but increasingly spreads to many aspects of society.

Between 1840 and 1880, a mature, increasingly comfortable, native-born Jewish community emerged and matured in London. The history of this community and the ways it developed are explored in this volume, using archival and contemporary advertising material that appeared in the Jewish Chronicle and other Anglo-Jewish newspapers in these years.

Examines Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's evolution as a literary artist from his early autobiographical novel Love the Revolution to the experimental mega-saga The Red Wheel, and beyond. Tempest shows how this author gives his characters a presence so textured that we can readily imagine them as figures of flesh and blood.

Yuri Tynianov was a key figure of Russian Formalism, an intellectual movement in early 20th century Russia that also included Viktor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson. Permanent Evolution gathers together for the first time Tynianov's seminal articles on literary theory and film, including several articles never before translated into English.

Reveals Stanley Kubrick to be a genuine master of the art of embodying the mental life of characters - a filmmaker who perhaps more than any other director, uses all the resources of filmmaking in such a controlled and dense manner as to elicit the embodied conditions necessary to achieve a level of conceptual depth.

Offers a critical engagement with the thought of Rabbi Dr. Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, one of the most thoughtful and earnest voices to emerge from within American Orthodoxy. It examines his lifelong and complex encounter with the Modern Orthodox stream of American Judaism and the extent to which his teachings functioned as "the road not taken.

One distinct feature of antisemitism today is its demonization of the State of Israel. Older ideas also feature Jews being blamed for all the world''s ills, thought to possess almost supernatural levels of power and wealth, and conspiring to harm the non-Jewish other. These and other ideas forming the background to antisemitism in Europe and North America are unpacked in this book with a view to understanding-and thereby combatting- contemporary antisemitism.

Offers a critical engagement with the thought of Rabbi Dr. Irving "Yitz" Greenberg, one of the most thoughtful and earnest voices to emerge from within American Orthodoxy. It examines his lifelong and complex encounter with the Modern Orthodox stream of American Judaism and the extent to which his teachings functioned as "the road not taken.

This book is devoted to Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's discussions on the practice of prayer. Prayer is analysed across a broad and complex spectrum in Soloveitchik's work, and his writings describing and analysing the experience of prayer afford a profound insight into its diversity, ranging from existential crisis to communion with God.

A collection of Russian short stories from the 21st century that includes works by famous writers and young talents alike, representing a diversity of generational, gender, ethnic and national identities. Taken together, these short stories display the rich and complex cultural and intellectual reality of contemporary Russia.

This volume honours Rabbi Professor Nehemia Polen, one of those rare scholars whose religious teachings, spiritual writings, and academic scholarship have come together into a sustained project of interpretive imagination and engagement. These essays are a testament to his enduring impact on the scholarly community.

Captures the story of the Taratuta family and their struggle to flee the hardships of the USSR and repatriate to Israel in the late twentieth century. The narrative follows the lives of three family members, Aba, his wife Ida, and their son Misha, as they endure countless struggles throughout their journey to freedom.

Includes an analysis of the Jehoash Inscription Tablet, which describes renovations made to the First Temple and is considered the only written evidence of its existence. At the same time, a new technique for authenticating artifacts is described - especially important in determining the authenticity of artifacts collected from unprovenanced sites.

Writer, professor, translator, and editor Luba Jurgenson lives between two languages - her native Russian and her adopted French. She recounts the coexistence of these two languages, as well as two bodies and two worlds, in an autobiographical text packed with fascinating anecdotes.

Simon Reznikov, the Boston-based immigrant protagonist of Maxim D. Shrayer's A Russian Immigrant, is restless. Unresolved feelings about his Jewish (and American) present and his Russian (and Soviet) past prevent Reznikov from easily putting down roots in his new country.

Meyer Raskin is a wealthy Jewish entrepreneur running an agricultural estate in Belarus on the outskirts of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. His life is interrupted by the Russian revolution of 1905 and later by World War I, which eventually turns his family into refugees. This is an autobiographical novel based on the author's family.

A collection of Russian short stories from the 21st century that includes works by famous writers and young talents alike, representing a diversity of generational, gender, ethnic and national identities. The stories display a vast spectrum of subgenres, from grotesque absurdist to lyrical essays, from realistic narratives to fantastic parables.

Presents the first fully annotated and chronologically arranged collection of the Russian philosopher-poet's most important letters, the vast majority of which have never before been translated into English.

This biographical history follows the iconoclastic career of John R. Friedeberg Seeley, pre-eminent ""Pop Sociologist"" and Mental Health Activist of the 1950s.

The first novel of Abdulhamid Sulaymon o'g'li Cho'lpon's unfinished dilogy of novels, Night and Day, gives readers a glimpse into the everyday struggles of men and women in Russian imperial Turkestan. More than just historical prose, Cho'lpon's magnum opus reads as poetic elegy and turns on dramatic irony.

This collection of articles constitutes a major contribution to the growing field of Latin American Jewish studies, offering different perspectives on the rich and complex phenomena in the social, political, and cultural development of Jewish communities in the area.

During World War II some 40,000 Jews found themselves under Japanese occupation. Virtually all of them survived. This book traces the evolution of Japan's policy towards the Jews from the beginning of the 20th century, the existence of anti-Semitism in Japan, and why Japan ignored Nazi demands to become involved in the "final solution".

Provides a collection of essays with a broad interdisciplinary focus. This book includes contributions by leading Dostoevsky scholars, social scientists, scholars of religion and philosophy. It considers aesthetics, philosophy, theology, and science of the 19th century Russia and the West that might have informed Dostoevsky's thought and art.

Employing text critical methods, Jonathan S. Milgram argues that, in the absence of the hermeneutic underpinnings for tannaitic innovations, the inheritance laws of the tannaim were not the result of the rabbinic penchant for inventive interpretation of Scripture.

Translations in Travels from Dostoevsky's Siberia, gathered from archives and appearing in English for the first time, offer a fresh look at Dostoevsky's House of the Dead from the perspective of his fellow inmates and Siberians who were imprisoned, tortured, and exiled by the regime of Nicholas I.

All twenty-two articles in this volume are based on lectures given at the conference ""The Jews in Italy: Their Contribution to the Development and Diffusion of Jewish Heritage"". Geographically, the articles range from Italy to the Ottoman Empire, from France and Germany to the Middle East, including Israel, North and East Africa.

Translations in Travels from Dostoevsky's Siberia, gathered from archives and appearing in English for the first time, offer a fresh look at Dostoevsky's House of the Dead from the perspective of his fellow inmates and Siberians who were imprisoned, tortured, and exiled by the regime of Nicholas I.

Twenty-five years ago this year, Ilan Stavans published his first book, Imagining Columbus. Since then, he has become a polarizing figure, dismissed and praised in equal measure. This collection celebrates Stavans's work with essays that describe the good and the bad, the inspired and the pedestrian, the worthwhile and the questionable.

Critically examines the image of Jews from the contemporary perspective of ordinary Chinese citizens. This volume includes chapters on Chinese Jewish Studies programs, popular Chinese books and blogs about Jews, China's relations with Israel, and innovative examinations of the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng.