Raanan Rein

Armed Jews in the Americas Raanan Rein

A Jewish weapons manufacturer during the American Civil War, a Jewish-Canadian chair of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Board, and Jewish-Argentine guerrilla fighters-these are some of the individuals discussed in this first-of-its-kind volume. It brings together some of the best new works on armed Jews in the Americas. Links between Jews and their ties to weapons are addressed through multiple cultural, political, social, and ideological contexts, thus breaking down longstanding, stilted myths in many societies about Jews and weaponry. Anti-Semitism and Jewish self-defense, Jewish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and Jewish-American gangsters as ethnic heroes form part of the little-researched topic of Jews and arms in the Americas.