David Patterson holds the Hillel Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. A winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the Koret Jewish Book Award, he has published more than two hundred and fifty articles and chapters on philosophy, literature, Judaism, and Holocaust studies. His more than forty books include Judaism, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust; Shoah and Torah; Portraits: Elie Wiesel's Hasidic Legacy; and The Holocaust and the Non-Representable.

This book argues that one means of preventing genocide is to think concretely about our flesh-and-blood relations to fellow human beings.

1. Introduction: a name, not an essence; 2. Why Jewish thought and what makes it Jewish?; 3. Deadly philosophical abstraction; 4. The stranger in your midst; 5. Nefesh: the soul as flesh and blood; 6. The environmentalist contribution to genocide; 7. Torture; 8. Hunger and homelessness; 9. Philosophy, religion, and genocide; 10. A concluding reflection on body and soul.