Book Blurbs

 

Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court, from Brandeis to Kagan

“I thought I knew a lot about the Supreme Court’s eight Jewish justices, since I have known six of them personally. But I learned so much more from David Dalin’s brilliant and readable account of their very different lives and connections to their Jewish heritage. A must read for anyone interested in Jewish, American or legal history.”

ALAN DERSHOWITZ,  Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School and author of Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law

 

 “This landmark collective biography of the Jewish men and women who have served on our nation’s highest court reminds us that, long before the twenty-first century, conservatives and liberals battled over the limits of free speech, the rule of reason, and even fake news. David Dalin’s  Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court is that all too rare history that serves up lessons from the past that speak to our moment in time.”

PAMELA S. NADELL, President, Association for Jewish Studies, Patrick Clerenden Chair in Women’s and Gender History, American University and author of Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889-1985

 

 “Although Jewish justices have played a central role on the modern Supreme Court, David Dalin’s book is the first to offer a comprehensive series of portraits of the entire group, from Louis Brandeis to Elena Kagan. With memorable details and gripping narrative, Dalin provides an invaluable account of the contributions of these remarkable justices, who continue to shape our understanding of the Constitution today.”

JEFFREY ROSEN, President and CEO, National Constitution Center and author of Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet

 

“The scholarship behind this work is impressive. The writing is authoritative, the research and knowledge displayed and breadth extraordinary. . . . this will be the go-to book regarding Jews and the Supreme Court.”

GIL TROY, Professor of History, McGill University and author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s

 

“David Dalin’s book is a fascinating history of American law, of Jewish accomplishment in the American legal field, and of the lives of the Jewish Justices who have served on the Supreme Court.”

RABBI DAVID WOLPE,  Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, California and the author of David: The Divided Heart

 

 


Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam (Random House, 2008) – A San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller

“This book is of great importance since it exposes, possibly for the first time, the deep connection between the Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler, and between the Palestinian and Arab leaders and Nazi Germany, and Haj Amin al-Husseini’s role in the Holocaust. It proves beyond a doubt that the roots of present-day radical Islamic terrorism are based in the ideology of Haj Amin al-Husseini and Hitler.”

—URI BAR NER, former Israeli Ambassador to Turkey

 

“A gripping, full-scale portrait of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem … a must for anyone seeking to understand what is happening in the Middle East today.”

—RUTH GRUBER, author of Exodus, 1947

 

“A comprehensive study of one of the truly malevolent figures of the twentieth century, and a man whose obsessive anti-Jewish hatred has poisoned the Middle East since his rise to power in the 1920s … that tells an important story in a compelling and authoritative style.”

—JOSEPH TELUSHKIN, Best-selling author of Jewish Literacy and Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History

 

 

The Presidents of the United States and the Jews (Jonathan David Publishers, 2000)

“A fascinating, well-organized and highly readable compendium of little known information concerning America’s Presidents and the Jews. Filled with surprises, this book helps to explain what made America different for Jews, and how, since the days of George Washington, Jews and American presidents have interacted.”

—JONATHAN D. SARNA
Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University
Author of American Judaism: A History
Chief Historian, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, PA                                                                                                       Past President, Association for Jewish Studies

 

“This rich book chronicles the connections between Jews and the presidents, administration by administration, and has mined the historical record in order to give us a segment of presidential history that has lain, for the most part, untouched. The reward for the reader is the discovery on a large scale of how Jews and those closely associated with them have left a mark on every major epoch in the nation’s history.”

—HENRY F. GRAFF
Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University

 

 

Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience (University of Notre Dame Press,  1997) – Selected by CHOICE Magazine as one of the “Outstanding Academic Books of 1998.

“A welcome, sober contribution to the wide-ranging debate over the proper relationship of church and state in America.  Sarna and Dalin have done the Jewish community a great service by bringing together sources that illustrate how Jews in the past had a far more nuanced approach to these arrangements than they do today.  Their reader offers rich perspectives for the rethinking that must take place for the good of America – and its Jews.”

—JACK WERTHEIMER – Professor of American Jewish History,  Jewish Theological Seminary of America

 

“Perusing the marvelous collection of historical documents gathered by Sarna and Dalin is reliving 350 years of Jewish life in America. This volume is chock-full of heretofore buried gold nuggets – the complete text of contemporaneous expressions by Jews and non-Jews about minority religion in America, and particularly about the Jewish faith. The authors’ own essays and notes place the primary sources into a scholarly context that makes the book not only the most useful existing collection of historical documents on the subject,  but also an absorbing volume for leisure reading.

—NATHAN LEWIN – President, International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (American Section)

 
 
 

©2024 Rabbi David Dalin – Author, Speaker, Historian
 
Designed by Access Technology