History & Community Bibliography

Bibliography: History & Community

If you are seeking to build your personal Jewish library, the following are the top books about Jewish History & Community, as recommended by the editors of MyJewishLearning.com. Click on any book's title to purchase it.

To go directly to a specific category, click below:

General books about Jewish history and community
Ancient History
Medieval History
Modern History
Israel
Contemporary Religious Issues

General

Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, , edited by Judith Baskin (Wayne State University Press, 1991).

A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People: From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present, edited by Eli Barnavi (Schocken, 1992).

Jewish History and Jewish Memory, edited by Elisheva Carlebach et al (University Press of New England, 1998).

The Illustrated History of the Jewish People, edited by Nicholas DeLange (Harcourt Brace and Company, 1997).

Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice, edited by Bernard Lewis (W.W. Norton, 1986).

Ideas of Jewish History, edited by Michael Meyer (Wayne State University Press, 1987).

The Jewish Search for a Usable Past, by David G. Roskies (Indiana University Press, 1999).

Jewish People: Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History, by Robert Seltzer (MacMillan, 1980).

Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, by Yosef Hayim Yerushalami (Schocken, 1989).

Ancient

Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict: From Late Antiquity to the Reformation, edited by Jeremy Cohen (New York University, 1991).

From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, by Shaye D. Cohen, (Westminster, 1989).

“Women Like This,” New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, edited by Amy Jill Levine (Scholars Press, 1991).

From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism, by Lawrence Schiffman (KTAV, 1991).

Ancient Israel: A Short History from Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, by Herschel Shanks (Prentice Hall, 1988).

Medieval

European Jewry and the First Crusade, by Robert Chazen (University of California, 1994).

Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, by Mark Cohen (Princeton, 1994).

The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience, by Jane Gerber (The Free Press, 1992).

The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, edited by Jacob Rader Marcus (Hebrew Union College Press, 1990).

Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe, by Kenneth Stowe (Harvard University Press, 1992).

Modern

The American Jewish Desk Reference, by the American Jewish Historical Society (Random House Reference, 1999).

A History of the Holocaust, by Yehuda Bauer (F.Watts, 1982).

The Jew in the Modern World: A Sourcebook, by Paul Mendes Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz (Oxford University Press, 1995).

The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, by Arthur Hertzberg (Athenaeum, 1969).

Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History, by Paula Hyman (University of Washington Press, 1995).

A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, by Howard Sachar (Knopf, 1996).

A History of Jews in America, by Howard Sachar (Vintage, 1993).

The American Jewish Experience, edited by Jonathan D. Sarna (Homes and Meier, 1997)

American Judaism: A History, by Jonathan Sarna (Yale University Press, 2004).

The Jews in Arab Lands, by Norman Stillman (Jewish Publication Society, 1979).

Israel

A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Ian Bickerton and Carla Klausner (University of Missouri, 2002).

Zionism: The Sequel, by Carol Diament (Hadassah, 1998).

The Jewish State: A Century Late, by Alan Dowty(University of California Press, 1998).

Israel: A Spiritual Travel Guide: A Companion for the Modern Jewish Pilgrim, by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman (Jewish Lights, 1998)

What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle East Response, by Bernard Lewis (Oxford, 2002).

Coffins on our Shoulders: the Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel, by Dan Rabinowitz and Khawla Abu-Baker (University of California Press, 2005).

Arab Politics in Israel at the Crossroads, edited by Elie Rekhess, and T. Yegnes (Tel Aviv University Press, 1996).

A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, by Howard Sachar (Knopf, 1996).

Contemporary Religious Issues

Funny You Don’t look Buddhist: On Being a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist, by Sylvia Boorstein (Harper, 1998).

Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today’s Jewish Mystical Masters, by Rodger Kamenetz (Harper, 1997).

The Half-Jewish Book: A Celebration, by Daniel M. Klein and Freke Voijst (Villard, 2000).

The Best Contemporary Jewish Writing, edited by Michael Lerner, (Jossey-Bass, 2001).

Judaism Since Gender, by Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt (Routledge, 1997).

Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism, edited by Danya Ruttenberg (Seal Press, 2001).

Queer Jews, edited by David Shneer and Caryn Aviv (Routledge, 2002).