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PRIZE-WINNING UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA BOOK
SOON TO BE RELEASED IN PAPERBACK
GAINESVILLE – University Press of Florida is pleased to announce the upcoming release, in paperback, of Nissim Rejwan’s award-winning book, Israel’s Place in the Middle East: A Pluralist Perspective. Originally published last fall, Rejwan’s work recently garnered the Jewish Book Council’s 1998 Morris J. and Betty Kaplun Foundation National Jewish Book Award for the year’s best book of non-fiction published in the category of Israel Studies. The Jewish Book Council award committee specifically lauded its "interesting and informative style that gives new and fresh ideas about the situation."
Nissim Rejwan is currently a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A Jew of Arab descent living in Israel, Rejwan occupies a special position for observing and explaining the diversity that characterizes Israel’s political, historical, and cultural relationship to Arabs, Islam, and the Middle East. In a very engaging manner, he points out the error of those who think that Jews and Arabs stand in intractable opposition to each other. Pointing out that Israel is populated by people with a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds – including Middle Eastern and North African Jews, native-born Israelis of European origin, and Arabs --
Israel’s Place in the Middle East shows that peaceful and neighborly relations among these groups have nearly always prevailed. He shows that the lot of Jews has been clearly better in the neighborhood of Islam than it has been in the West. Ammiel Alcalay of Queens College has said it is "an important book," one that successfully "demystif[ies] prevailing assumptions and attitudes brilliantly and elegantly."
Rejwan has also recently published two other books with the University Press of Florida. In 1997 the University Press issued his Arabs Face the Modern World: Religious, Cultural, and Political Responses to the West. Alvin Z. Rubinstein of the University of Pennsylvania has called this book "masterly . . . . A rare synthesis of the interaction between ideas and the responses they elicit; of the relationship of Arab intellectuals to the realm of politics; and of how key ideas and movements had different effects." Most recently, Spring of 1999 saw publication of Israel in Search of Identity: Reading the Formative Years. And once again his work was met with praise. Shukri B. Abed of the University of Maryland calls this work "thought-provoking and eminently readable. A refreshingly original approach to a subject long bedeviled by controversy and partisanship."
Dr. Rejwan is a founding member of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a member of the editorial board for New Outlook, a senior research fellow at the Shiloah Institute of Middle Eastern and African Studies, and feature editor for Israel Arabic Broadcasts. His first book, The Jews of Iraq: 3000 Years of History and Culture, was published by Westview Press in 1987. Currently, in addition to his teaching and research duties, Rejwan is working on a memoir of his childhood growing up in Baghdad.
| Books by Nissim Rejwan available now from University Press of Florida: | |
| Arabs
Face the Modern World: Religious, Cultural, and Political
Responses to the West (1998) 6 x 9. 256 pp. Notes, index. Cloth, $49.95 |
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| Israel’s
Place in the Middle East: A Pluralist Perspective (1998) 6 x 9. 224 pp. Notes, index. Cloth, $49.95 Available in paperback in August: 6 x 9. 224 pp. Notes, index. Paper, $19.95 |
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| Israel
in Search of Identity: Reading the Formative Years
(1999) 6 x 9. 192 pp. Notes, index. Cloth, $59.95 |
 |
These books may be purchased at book stores or ordered directly from the publisher
by calling toll-free at 1-800-226-3822.
For information about the author or for
interviews, please contact the University Press of Florida, or
email him at:
msdon@mscc.huji.ac.il
