Schocken Books Explained

Parent:	Random House
Founded:	1931
Founder:	Salman Schocken
Country:	United States
Headquarters:	New York City
Distribution:	Penguin Random House
Publications:	Books

Schocken Books is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that specializes in Jewish literary works. Originally established in 1931 by Salman Schocken as Schocken Verlag in Berlin, the company later moved to Palestine and then the United States, and was acquired by Random House in 1987.

History

Schocken Books was founded in 1931 by Schocken Department Store owner Salman Schocken. Schocken has published the writings of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Kafka and S. Y. Agnon, among others.^[1]

After being shut down by the Germans in 1939, Schocken, who immigrated from Germany to Palestine in 1934, founded the Hebrew-language Schocken Publishing House in Mandatory Palestine. Schocken moved to the United States in 1940. In 1945 he founded the English-language Schocken Books in New York City. In 1987 it was bought up by Random House. Schocken Books continues to publish Jewish literary works.

Selected English publications

Franz Kafka

• The Trial
• The Castle
• Amerika
• The Diaries 1910-1923
• Letters to Felice
• Letters to Ottla
• Letters to Milena
• Letters to Family, Friends, and Editors
• The Complete Stories
• The Sons
• The Penal Colony
• The Great Wall of China
• Dearest Father

Bilingual Editions

• The Metamorphosis
• Parables and Paradoxes
• Letter to His Father

Walter Benjamin

• Illuminations
• Reflections

Gershom Scholem

• Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
• The Messianic Idea in Judaism
• On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead
• On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism
• Zohar: The Book of Splendor

Hannah Arendt

• The Promise of Politics
• The Jewish Writings
• Responsibility and Judgment
• Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954
• The Origins of Totalitarianism

Elie Wiesel

• The Time of the Uprooted
• Somewhere a Master
• Wise Men and Their Tales
• The Judges
• Legends of Our Time
• After the Darkness
• And the Sea Is Never Full
• The Testament
• The Fifth Son
• A Beggar in Jerusalem
• All Rivers Run to the Sea
• The Trial of God
• Twilight
• The Gates of the Forest
• The Town Beyond the Wall
• The Forgotten
• From the Kingdom of Memory
• The Oath
• Rashi

See also

• Bücherei des Schocken Verlag
• Nahum Norbert Glatzer
• Haaretz
• Books in the United States
• Books in Germany

External links

• • A Conversation about Schocken Books - Part I - Katharine McNamara talks with Altie Karper.
• A Conversation about Schocken Books - Part II - Katharine McNamara talks with Susan Ralston.
• A Conversation about Schocken Books - Part III - Katharine McNamara talks with Arthur Samuelson.
• Salman Schocken and the Schocken Verlag: a Jewish publisher in Weimar and Nazi Germany . Stephen M. Poppel . Harvard Library Bulletin . 0017-8136 . 21 . 1973.
• Schocken Publishing House Ltd. at Database – Jewish Publishers of German Literature in Exile, 1933-1945

Notes and References

1. Web site: Salman Schocken: Forefather of Haaretz Newspaper and a Modernist in Love With Tradition - Haaretz Magazine - Haaretz.com.