CRWS Books

By Neil Bar

This book offers a systematic analysis of the ideology and enduring influence of Rabbi Meir Kahane in Israel, the American-born leader and thinker who rose to become one of the most radical far-right figures ever to hold political power in Israel.

It unveils the core of his doctrinal structure: the algorithmic interpretation of history, a rigid, deterministic system positing that Jewish fate is governed by an immutable, binary divine code wherein absolute separation between Jews and gentiles guarantees glory, while assimilation ensures catastrophe...

By: Emine Fidan Elcioglu

The construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border—whether to build it or not—has become a hot-button issue in contemporary America. A recent impasse over funding a wall caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, sharpening partisan divisions across the nation. In the Arizona borderlands, groups of predominantly white American citizens have been mobilizing for decades—some help undocumented immigrants bypass governmental detection, while others help law enforcement agents to apprehend immigrants. Activists...

By Arlie Russell Hochschild: For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we’ve ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel “stolen”?

Hochschild’s research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where...

By Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg - Why do pogroms occur in some localities and not in others? Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg examine a particularly brutal wave of violence that occurred across hundreds of predominantly Polish and Ukrainian communities in the aftermath of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The authors note that while some communities erupted in anti-Jewish violence, most others remained quiescent. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of communities saw pogroms in 1941, and most ordinary gentiles never attacked Jews.

Intimate...