History and Culture
![Two Jewish settlers of American West](2023/may/images/jewsinwest960.jpg)
The Changing Identity of Jews in the American West
A new Brandeis University Press book examines the role Jews played in America's westward expansion, raising troubling questions about their complicity with this country's racist and colonial past.
More Stories
![ewish police in Germany detain an alleged Jewish concentration camp guard, circa 1945.](2023/february/images/jewishhonorcourts735.jpg)
Professor Laura Jockusch studies the special honors courts that decided the fate of Jews who allegedly committed crimes against their fellow Jews during the Holocaust.
![Drawing of people putting a Band-Aid on a globe](2023/may/images/repairing-the-world-735-490.jpg)
Once an obscure term, tikkun olam is now ubiquitous in American Judaism. Professor Jonathan Krasner explains how the concept has evolved over the millennium.
![An illustration of the Queen of Sheba from Konrad Kyeser's "Bellifortis" ("Strong in War"), a military treatise from Germany circa 1405.](2021/december/images/queenofsheba735.jpg)
Professor Jillian Stinchcomb traces the depiction of the Queen from the Bible through the Qur’an to the medieval origin story of the Ethiopian royal family.
![Jacob (Jack) Brandon Maduro](2023/january/images/jacob-brandon-maduro-735x490.jpg)
Scholar Dalia Wassner charts the life and career of Jacob Brandon Maduro, who aided German Jewish refugees in Cuba during World War II.
![An iconic image connected to Jungfernhof projected onto the wall of the Šķirotava train station.](2021/september/images/jungfernhof/n005-je-train-station1-735x490-final.jpg)
Scholar Karen Frostig is battling to preserve the memory of the Jungfernhof concentration camp in Latvia, where her grandparents perished.