Does the world need yet another book about Adolf Hitler?

To my mind, three British prominent historians – Alan Bullock, Richard J. Evans, and Ian Kershaw – have definitively covered the subject for English-speaking readers.

Still, fascination of the German Fuhrer does not abate, as evidenced by Cory Taylor’s addition to the genre with How Hitler Was Made: Germany and the Rise of the Perfect Nazi (Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 2018).  An Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker, Taylor delves into Germany’s post-World War I years (1918-1924), the time when Hitler became “the perfect Nazi.”  
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The first 104 pages of his 274-page book detail the political upheavals in Munich, the Bavarian capital, during the six chaotic years following the 1918 Armistice and the collapse of the German Empire. We learn of Soviet-style leaders in Bavaria, coups and counter-coups, assassinations, street clashes pitting Communists against armed right-wing army veterans, and the emergence of gangs of thugs who emulated the brutal tactics of Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.

In Mavericks, Mystics & False Messiahs: Episodes from the Margins of Jewish History, Pini Dunner provides a series of bizarre stories describing how some Jews crashed through conventional guardrails of staid Jewish tradition and sped forward onto aberrant lanes of false messiahs, forgers of Passover Haggadot, rabbis searching for subversive religious meanings of Hebrew amulets, and an 18th-century British lord who converted to Judaism. Best of all, there is the raffish tale of a 20th-century Jewish con man who makes all other imposters in history look like amateur frauds.

Dunner, an Orthodox rabbi who leads a Beverly Hills, California, congregation, combines an expertise in ancient Hebrew manuscripts with a command of rabbinic texts and Jewish history to bring his band of Jewish miscreants to life.  

Heading Dunner’s list is the infamous Shabbatai Tzvi (1626-1676). Born in Turkey, Shabbatai attracted a large number of Jewish followers who fervently believed he was the long awaited Messiah. Dunner writes:

“…he [Shabbatai]  was …joyful, exuberant, and ecstatic, while at other times he was depressed, anxious, paranoid, and passive…symptoms of acute manic depression, or bipolar syndrome…To [his] detractors his behavior was evidence he was an evil madman. To his supporters… his strange behavior attested to the fact that he was divine and a holy man.”
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On May 31, 1665 Shabbatai publicly declared he was the “King of the Jews” and the “Redeemer” of Israel. His followers were delirious with joy, especially because Shabbatai Tzvi had repudiated much of the rigorous religious and moral laws of Judaism and encouraged wild sexual excesses.

(RNS) — The brutality of anti-Semitism in several forms dominated the top 10 news stories related to Jews and Judaism this year. But there were important and even happy developments as well.
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1. The Tree of Life synagogue shooting
The “slaughter of the innocents” in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October was the single worst anti-Jewish attack in U.S. history, with 11 worshippers killed (among them were two of my cousins, Cecil and David Rosenthal). The swift public revulsion and denunciation of the massacre cut across all religious, ethnic and racial boundaries and resulted in a vast outpouring of support for the American Jewish community.

2. U.S. embassy moves to Jerusalem
In May, the U.S. embassy in Israel officially relocated from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as President Trump followed through on a December 2017 announcement. The move, met with both celebration and foreboding from political and faith leaders at the time, has been largely overwhelmed by other events, including violent attempts to breach the Jewish state’s borders by Palestinians in Gaza, Iran’s continued support of the brutal Syrian regime and the terrorist group Hezbollah based in Lebanon, and the discovery of several Hezbollah secret military tunnels that encroached into Israeli territory. Though Saudi Arabia’s King Salman was among those who criticized the embassy move, Israel strengthened its diplomatic outreach to Saudi Arabia this year.
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(RNS) — On a chilly, rainy Sunday in April 1991, my wife Marcia and I were among a small number of religious leaders who spent nearly six hours with President George H.W. Bush at Camp David. We were there for the dedication service of the newly constructed interreligious chapel at the presidential retreat in Maryland, which had also served as a relaxed but conducive place for top-level diplomatic negotiations.

For more than two years, Protestant, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox clergy and laypeople and myself, the sole Jewish member of the group, had worked together to raise private funds for a building to be used for worship, study, and meditation by presidents, their families, camp support staff and, of course, visiting world leaders.
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FDR was the first chief executive to use the former Boy Scout campsite north of Washington as an escape from the brutal Washington summer heat. Though the exact location was kept from the public — President Roosevelt called the retreat “Shangri-La,” adding to its mystery — it is only seventy-four miles from the capital in the Catoctin mountains of Maryland.