Books about Brandeis from Amazon.com

Many arts organizations today find themselves in financial difficulties because of economic constraints inherent in the industry. While other companies can improve productivity through the use of new technologies or better systems, these approaches are not available in the arts. Hamlet requires the same number of performers today as it did in Shakespeare's time. The New York Philharmonic requires the same number of musicians now as it did when Tchaikovsky conducted it over one hundred years ago. Costs go up, but the size of theaters and the price resistance of patrons limit what can be earned from ticket sales. Therefore, the performing arts industry faces a severe gap between earnings and expenses. Typical approaches to closing the gap--raising ticket prices or cutting artistic or marketing expenses--don't work.

What, then, does it take to create and maintain a healthy arts organization?

Michael M. Kaiser has revived four major arts organizations: the Kansas City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, and London's Royal Opera House. In The Art of the Turnaround he shares with readers his ten basic rules for bringing financially distressed arts organizations back to life and keeping them strong. These rules cover the requirements for successful leadership, the pitfalls of cost cutting, the necessity of extending the programming calendar, the centrality of effective marketing and fund raising, and the importance of focusing on the present with a positive public message. In chapters organized chronologically, Kaiser brings his ten rules vividly to life in discussions of the four arts organizations he is credited with saving. The book concludes with a chapter on his experiences at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, an arts organization that needed an artistic turnaround when he became the president in 2001 and that today exemplifies in practice many of the ten rules he discusses throughout his book..
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Written by the core faculty of the Hebrew Program at Brandeis University, Brandeis Modern Hebrew is an accessible introduction to the Hebrew language for American undergraduates and high school students. Its functional and contextual elements are designed to bring students from the beginner level to the intermediate level, and to familiarize them with those linguistic aspects that will prepare them to function in advanced stages.

This volume reflects some of the main principles that have shaped the Brandeis Hebrew curriculum during the past decade. These include:

* an emphasis on the learner's ability to use the target language in all four skills areas: speaking, listening, reading, and writing
* an effort to contextualize each unit within a specific subject or theme
* exposing the student to authentic and semi-authentic materials (texts written by native speakers)
* exploring different elements from Israeli and Jewish culture in the language drills, reading passages, and in selections of sources from the Hebrew literary canon

The text in this edition comprises a short introduction to the instructor, 11 units, supplementary Hebrew proficiency guidelines, and a vocabulary list. Included is a CD that contains audio material for some of the exercises and an enrichment program linked to the text..
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This timely anthology, completely revised and updated from the original edition in 1984, provides convenient access to the most significant documents of the Zionist movement since 1882 and of Israel's domestic and foreign policy issues between 1948 and 2006.

Comprised largely of primary sources from Israeli, Arab, and American records, documents encompass not only political and diplomatic history but economic, cultural, legal and social aspects of the region as well. The second edition also addresses areas not covered by the 1984 volume: a new chapter on the pre-state period, additional documents that reflect the Palestinian perspective, and the voices of women. Divided into seven chronological sections, documents are introduced by an overview of the entire era. They are annotated and preceded by explanatory headnotes..
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Our Musicals, Ourselves is the first full-scale social history of the American musical theater from the imported Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas of the late nineteenth century to such recent musicals as The Producers and Urinetown. While many aficionados of the Broadway musical associate it with wonderful, diversionary shows like The Music Man or My Fair Lady, John Bush Jones instead selects musicals for their social relevance and the extent to which they engage, directly or metaphorically, contemporary politics and culture.

Organized chronologically, with some liberties taken to keep together similarly themed musicals, Jones examines dozens of Broadway shows from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present that demonstrate numerous links between what played on Broadway and what played on newspapers' front pages across our nation. He reviews the productions, lyrics, staging, and casts from the lesser-known early musicals (the "gunboat" musicals of the Teddy Roosevelt era and the "Cinderella shows" and "leisure time musicals" of the 1920s) and continues his analysis with better-known shows including Showboat, Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma, South Pacific, West Side Story, Cabaret, Hair, Company, A Chorus Line, and many others.

While most examinations of the American musical focus on specific shows or emphasize the development of the musical as an art form, Jones's book uses musicals as a way of illuminating broader social and cultural themes of the times. With six appendixes detailing the long-running diversionary musicals and a foreword by Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof, Jones's comprehensive social history will appeal to both students and fans of Broadway..
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Yehuda Amichai is one of the twentieth century's (and Israel's) leading poets. In this remarkable book, Gold offers a profound reinterpretation of Amichai's early works, using two sets of untapped materials: notes and notebooks written by Amichai in Hebrew and German that are now preserved in the Beinecke archive at Yale, and a cache of ninety-eight as-yet unpublished letters written by Amichai in 1947 and 1948 to a woman identified in the book as Ruth Z., which were recently discovered by Gold.

Gold found irrefutable evidence in the Yale archive and the letters to Ruth Z. that allows her to make two startling claims. First, she shows that in order to remake himself as an Israeli soldier-citizen and poet, Amichai suppressed ("camouflaged") his German past and German mother tongue both in reference to his biography and in his poetry. Yet, as her close readings of his published oeuvre as well as his unpublished German and Hebrew notes at the Beinecke show, these texts harbor the linguistic residue of his European origins. Gold, who knows both Hebrew and German, establishes that the poet's German past infused every area of his work, despite his attempts to conceal it in the process of adopting a completely Israeli identity.

Gold's second claim is that Amichai somewhat disguised the story of his own development as a poet. According to Amichai's own accounts, Israel's war of independence was the impetus for his creative writing. Long accepted as fact, Gold proves that this poetic biography is far from complete. By analyzing Amichai's letters and reconstructing his relationship with Ruth Z., Gold reveals what was really happening in the poet's life and verse at the end of the 1940s. These letters demonstrate that the chronological order in which Amichai's works were published does not reflect the order in which they were written; rather, it was a product of the poet's literary and national motivations.
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Offers a complete sociological perspective of Jews and Jewish life in Israel from 1948 to the present .
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Since 2000, nearly one hundred fifty thousand young adult Jews have participated in Birthright Israel, conceived to curb assimilation by shifting an entire generation of Diaspora Jews from a trajectory of noninvolvement with the Jewish community to one of identity and engagement. birthright israel is a free ten-day educational experience available to any young adult Jew between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six. Most of those who have received the "gift" to reconnect with their heritage have been from North America and demand for the program has far exceeded available slots. Dozens of organizations served as trip sponsors, from campus-based Hillels, to youth movements, to private educational tour companies. Each group implemented a carefully planned model of experiential education that involved exposure to ancient and modern history, as well as to the people of Israel. Key to the program is participation of Israeli peers who spend half or more of the trip with their Diaspora counterparts.

Although Birthright Israel's focus is parochial, with an emphasis on Jewish identity, the program provides a fascinating social laboratory in which to understand young adults' religious/ethnic identity and the impact of educational experiences. As a study of ethnic identity formation in postmodern society, it illuminates important lessons about how intensive exposure to one's heritage can be a catalyst for identity formation, as well as how educational programs can be made more engaging and effective.

With Leonard Saxe and Barry Chazan serving as tour guides and interpreters, this story and analysis of Birthright Israel unfolds in ten chapters that parallel the ten days of the trip. This structure showcases the experiences of the participants, bringing them vividly to life, and shows how the program's effects may well last far beyond the time they spend together in Israel..
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A translation of the famous 18th-century German treatise with introduction and detailed commentary..
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