This volume joins other reconsiderations of outsider and minority representations in Westerns to offer a more nuanced view of the genre. Friedmann engages with larger themes of Jewish identity in popular film, including depictions of race, ethnicity, and foreignness. He also identifies similar concerns within the invention and creation of the imaginary West writ large in American culture. The juxtapositions prove to be both unexpected and intuitively understandable.

The lead chapter, by Joel Gereboff, explores the challenges
of constructing and presenting Jewish history and what disparities exist between
amateur historians and professionals in regards to standards, tools, methods,
analysis, and contextualization. Following an overview of key players, major
themes, representative organizations, and recurring critiques, the chapter
proposes ways to address the essential question: Can Jewish history on the
local and regional levels be more inclusive, better integrated with broader
trends of Jewish and general history, and improved according to scholarly norms
and expectations of social history?

Following this are six chapters by leaders of local and
regional Jewish historical societies: George M. Goodwin of the Rhode
Island Jewish Historical Association; Jonathan L. Friedmann of the Western
States Jewish History Association; Mark K. Bauman of the Southern Jewish
Historical Society; Catherine Cangany of the Jewish Historical Society of
Michigan; Jeanne Abrams of the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society; and
Lawrence Bell of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. The selected societies
cover major regions of the country--New England, Midwest, South, Southwest, and
West--and, as such, are representative of the broader phenomenon of American
Jewish historical societies. These chapters are followed by a chronologically
arranged appendix listing American Jewish historical societies, their mission
statements, and their publications.

Historical grounding is imperative for an
understanding of community and self. Equally essential is the type of
information that makes up that history, as well as how that information is
recounted and interpreted. No individual or community exists in isolation;
human history is complex, multilayered, and interwoven. While all history may
be local, it does not exist in a vacuum--this volume illuminates that concept
and situates it within the Jewish historical landscape.

As the twenty-first century continues to bring rapid changes to Judaism and Jewish affiliation, and as major challenges continue to mount within and well beyond the Jewish world, effective leadership increasingly requires familiarity and dexterity in multiple ethical areas: interpersonal, social, political, environmental, medical, and business.

Torah, Service, Deeds presents essays on diverse approaches to the spectrum of ethical issues. Written by faculty and alumni from the transdenominational Academy for Jewish Religion California, the chapters demonstrate that a shared and genuine commitment to values and concerns can be expressed through varied lenses and applications.

Each author is paired with another who has written on related themes. Following their essays, the two authors respond to one another, modeling pluralistic Jewish dialogue. It is our hope that this simulated chavruta (study pair) inspires readers to reach out to people of other stripes, Jews and non-Jews, to productively engage the issues of today.

Music in the Hebrew Bible investigates musical citations in the Hebrew Bible and their relevance for our times. Most biblical musical references are addressed, either alone or as a grouping, and each is considered from a modern perspective. The book consists of one hundred brief essays divided into four parts. Part one offers general overviews of musical contexts, recurring musical-biblical themes and discussions of basic attitudes and tendencies of the biblical authors and their society. Part two presents essays uncovering what the Torah (Pentateuch) has to say about music, both literally and allegorically. The third part includes studies on music's place in Nevi'im (Prophets) and the perceived link between musical expression and human-divine contact. Part four is comprised of essays on musical subjects derived from the disparate texts of Ketuvim (Writings).

Music research has entered something of a Golden Age. Technological advances and scholarly inquiry have merged in interdisciplinary studies--drawing on psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, anthropology and other fields--that illuminate the musical nature of our species. This volume develops, supports and challenges that body of research, examining key issues in the field, such as the difficulty of writing about music, the formation of musical preferences, the emotional impact of musical sounds, the comparison of music and language, the impulse for making music and the connection between music and spirituality.

Jonathan L. Friedmann and John F. Guest document and analyze Sonderling's experience and expression of Judaism through music. Rabbi Sonderling's vision yielded liturgical commissions from exiled Viennese Jewish composers who arrived in Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s. Through these musical settings, activities at the Fairfax Temple, and involvement with the Los Angeles campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Sonderling made an indelible mark on the city's Jewish community and the wider musical world.

Songs of Sonderling focuses on the commissions Sonderling made from 1938 to 1945: Ernst Toch's Cantata of the Bitter Herbs, Arnold Schoenberg's Kol Nidre, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's A Passover Psalm and Prayer, and Eric Zeisl's Requiem Ebraico. Through musical analyses and an examination of Sonderling's career in Los Angeles, Friedmann and Guest contribute to the study of Jewish liturgical music, to Jewish history in the American West, to Jewish identity in the twentieth century, and to Jewish diaspora writ large.

Nondenominational Judaism collects essays from faculty, administrators, and alumni from the Academy for Jewish Religion California and other institutions engaged in pluralistic, nondenominational, and transdenominational Jewish professional and higher education.

Contributors were asked to share personal, academic, and/or philosophical reflections on their experiences learning, teaching, administrating, and leading in pluralistic Jewish settings; the unique roles of pluralism vis-à-vis denominational models; the benefits and challenges of nondenominational Jewish education; and related themes of their choosing.

Their eclectic understandings and approaches are a testament to the diversity and inclusivity of Judaism beyond denominational barriers, and, it is hoped, a contribution to larger conversations concerning changing attitudes and affiliations of twenty-first-century American Jews.

Goliath as Gentle Giant cuts through biblical biases and post-biblical images and considers sensitive and more nuanced portrayals of the giant in popular media, offering revisionist retellings of Goliath that challenge readers to humanize the other.

William Sharlin (1920-2012) was a cantor, synagogue composer, teacher and musicologist. Raised in an Orthodox household, he turned toward Universalism and the liberal Reform movement. A member of the first graduating class of the first cantorial school in America, he was a founding member of the American Conference of Cantors and is recognized as the first to play a guitar in the synagogue. Sharlin developed the Department of Sacred Music at HUC in Los Angeles, where he taught for 40 years, trained women to be cantors before they were allowed in the seminary, and spent nearly four decades at Leo Baeck Temple.

Drawing on interviews conducted with Sharlin late in life, the author chronicles the career of one of the most inventive and creative figures in the history of the cantorate.

With the nineteenth century came new freedom for European Jews. Enjoying an integration that had been denied since the Middle Ages, they now wrestled with the form and degree of that integration in all areas of their lives, including in their creation, appreciation, and criticism of music. The writings focus on Jewish musicology, biography, historical surveys, secular music and songs performed in the synagogue.

Throughout history, music has been a fixture of Jewish religious life. Musical references appear in biblical accounts of the Red Sea crossing and King Solomon's coronation, and music continues to play a central role in virtually every Jewish occasion. Through 100 brief chapters, this volume considers theoretical approaches to the study of Jewish sacred music. Topics include the diversity of Jewish music, the interaction of music and identity, the emotional and spiritual impact of worship music, the text-tone relationship, the musical component of Jewish holidays, and the varied ways prayer-songs are performed. These distillations of complex topics invite a fuller appreciation of synagogue song and an understanding of the ubiquitous presence of music in Jewish worship.