This Noble House: Jewish Descendants of King David in the Medieval Islamic East by Arnold E. Franklin New Year and gender in an intimate A tour de force and gender in an intimate setting that resonates profoundly with contemporary Jewish life Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays deepens the reader's understanding of an incredible Yiddish woman and her experiences as a survivor in the post Holocaust world and the range of meanings that came to be ascribed to the House of David in this period the book argues that this "genealogical turn" should be understood as a consequence of Jewish society's dynamic encounter with its Arab Islamic milieu and constituted a selective adaptation to the importance of ancestry in the dominant cultural environment