Synopses & Reviews
"
The Jews of Egypt, 1920-1970 constitutes a major contribution to what we know about a now vanishing community that was highly respected and prominent in the economic and cultural life of Egypt. . . . [Laskier] has drawn our attention to one of the most tragic consequences of the Arab-Israeli conflict."
Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr.The Pennsylvania State University
"The Jews of Egypt, 1920-1970 . . . provides perhaps the first comprehensive account of the fate of the Egyptian Jewish community under the new revolutionary regime . . . . Informed by an impressive range of Israeli archival as well as published Egyptian materials, the work is a valuable contribution to modern Egyptian and Jewish history."
James Jankowski, University of Colorado at Boulder
Jews have lived in Egypt almost continuously for two millennia. In the period beginning with the aftermath of Wold War I until the death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in September 1970, the social and political status of Egyptian Jewry changed considerably, and Jewish communal life virtually came to an end. During the fifty years that this study spans, the Jews of Egypt were exposed to diverse challenges stemming from European-style anti-Semitism in the 1930s, the perils of World War II, Zionism as it was promoted locally and by emissaries for the Yishuv, and activities after 1948 related to emigration to the newly created Jewish state. Michael M. Laskier details the events that were central in shaping the Middle East as it is today.
Review
“If the theological concepts can be complicated, the language and the stories that illustrate them are simple and direct, full of dramatic incident and studded with metaphors that made the world of old India as palpable and romantic as the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights . . .”-Harpers Magazine,
Synopsis
The Garland of Past Lives is a collection of thirty four stories depicting the miraculous deeds performed by the Buddha in his previous rebirths. Composed in the fourth century C.E. by the Buddhist monk Aryashura, the text's accomplished artistry led Indian aesthetic theorists to praise its elegant mixture of verse and prose. The twenty stories in this first volume deal primarily with the virtues of giving and morality. Ascetics sacrifice their lives for hungry tigers, kings open their veins for demons to drink their blood, helmsmen steer their crew through perilous seas, and quail chicks quench forest fires by proclaiming words of truth. The experience is intended to arouse astonishment in the audience, inspiring devotion, through the future Buddha's transcendence of conventional norms in his quest to acquire enlightenment and save the world from suffering. The importance of such stories of past lives in traditional Buddhist culture, throughout Asia and up to today, cannot be overestimated.
About the Author
Michael Laskier served as the Executive Director of the International Sephardic Educational Center, and is currently a professor of history and political science at Ashqelon College of Bar-Ilan University and Beit Berl College in Israel. He is the author of The Jews of Egypt 1920-1970: In the Midst of Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Middle East Conflict, also published by NYU Press.