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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Ethnic studies > Jewish studies
Jews and Armenians are often perceived as peoples with similar
tragic historical experiences. Not only were both groups forced
into statelessness and a life outside their homelands for
centuries, in the 20th century, in the shadow of war, they were
threatened with collective annihilation. Thus far, academic
approaches to these two "classical" diasporas have been quite
different. Moreover, Armenian and Jewish questions posed during the
19th and 20th centuries have usually been treated separately. The
conference "We Will Live After Babylon" that took place in Hanover
in February 2019, addressed this gap in research and was one of the
first initiatives to deal directly with Jewish and Armenian
historical experiences, between expulsion, exile and annihilation,
in a comparative framework. The contributions in this volume take
on multidisciplinary approaches relating to the conference's
central themes: diaspora, minority issues and genocide.
The chapters in this volume examine a few facets in the drama of
how the beleaguered Jewish people, as a phoenix ascending of
ancient legend, achieved national self-determination in the reborn
State of Israel within three years of the end of World War II and
of the Holocaust. They include the pivotal 1946 World Zionist
Congress, the contributions of Jacob Robinson and Clark M.
Eichelberger to Israel's sovereign renewal, American Jewry's
crusade to save a Jewish state, the effort to create a truce and
trusteeship for Palestine, and Judah Magnes's final attempt to
create a federated state there. Joining extensive archival research
and a lucid prose, Professor Monty Noam Penkower again displays a
definitive mastery of his craft.
The volume contains some of the most incisive texts of the New
School of Polish Jewish studies. The chapters present new ways of
thinking about modern Polish-Jewish history and the Holocaust. The
authors are reformulating the terms of current discourses in
various fields of research. Introduced by Jan T. Gross, the book
includes chapters by several important scholars and an
extraordinary poem by Jacek Podsiad(3)o, translated and commented
upon by Alissa Valles.
This book analyzes the ways in which literary works and cultural
discourses employ the construct of the Jew's body in relation to
the material world in order either to establish and reinforce, or
to subvert and challenge, dominant cultural norms and stereotypes.
It examines the use of physical characteristics, embodied
practices, tacit knowledge and senses to define the body
taxonomically as normative, different, abject or mimetically
desired. Starting from the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky through to
contemporary Russian-Jewish women's writing, the book argues that
materiality also embodies fictional constructions that should be
approached as a culture-specific material-semiotic interface.
A Story of YHWH investigates the ancient Israelite expression of
their deity, and tracks why variation occurred in that expression,
from the early Iron Age to the Persian period. Through this text,
readers will gain a better appreciation for the complexities and
contexts in the development of YHWH, from its earliest origins to
the Persian period. Two interpretive frameworks-cultural
translation and subversive reception-are offered for filtering
through the textual data and contexts. Comparative study with
ancient Near Eastern deities and select biblical texts lead readers
through early YHWHism, YHWH's original outsider status, and the
eventual impact of urbanization on the expression. Perceived and
real pressures then challenge urbanite YHWHism and invite new
directions for forming a unique expression of divinity in the
ancient world. This book is intended for those interested in the
study of ancient divinity broadly as well as those who study
ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible. The work provides generalists
with a better appreciation for the particular challenges in working
in the ancient Near East and with the bible specifically, while it
provides specialists with a broad theory that can be continually
tested. For both, the study provides two reading lenses to work
through similar questions and an accounting of why the many
contextually driven and varied constructions of YHWH may have
occurred.
The Hebrew Bible is a philosophical testament. Abraham, the first
biblical philosopher, calls out to the world in God's name exactly
as Plato calls out in the name of the Forms. Abraham comes forward
as a critic of pagan thought about, specifically, persons. Moses,
to whom the baton is passed, spells out the practical implications
of the Bible's core anthropological teachings. In Persons and Other
Things Mark Glouberman explores the Bible's philosophy, roughing
out in the course of a defence of it how men and women who see
themselves in the biblical portrayal (as he argues that most of us
do once the "religious" glare is reduced) are committed to conduct
their personal affairs, arrange their social ties, and act in the
natural world. Persons and Other Things is also the author's
testament about the practice of philosophy. Glouberman sets out the
lessons he has acquired as a lifelong learner about thinking
philosophically, about writing philosophy, and about philosophers.
Advances in genetics are renewing controversies over inherited
characteristics, and the discourse around science and technological
innovations has taken on racial overtones, such as attributing
inherited physiological traits to certain ethnic groups or using
DNA testing to determine biological links with ethnic ancestry.
This book contributes to the discussion by opening up previously
locked concepts of the relation between the terms color, race, and
"Jews", and by engaging with globalism, multiculturalism,
hybridity, and diaspora. The contributors-leading scholars in
anthropology, sociology, history, literature, and cultural
studies-discuss how it is not merely a question of whether Jews are
acknowledged to be interracial, but how to address academic and
social discourses that continue to place Jews and others in a
race/color category.
A pathbreaking study of the Parisian press's attempts to claim
Richard Wagner's place in French history and imagination during the
unstable and conflict-ridden years of the Third Reich. Richard
Wagner was a polarizing figure in France from the time that he
first entered French musical life in the mid nineteenth century.
Critics employed him to symbolize everything from democratic
revolution to authoritarian antisemitism. During periods of
Franco-German conflict, such as the Franco-Prussian War and World
War I, Wagner was associated in France with German nationalism and
chauvinism. This association has led to the assumption that, with
the advent of the Third Reich, the French once again rejected
Wagner. Drawing on hundreds of press sources and employing close
readings, this book seeks to explain a paradox: as the German
threat grew more tangible from 1933, the Parisian press insisted on
seeing in Wagner a universality that transcended his Germanness.
Repudiating the notion that Wagner stood for Germany, French
critics attempted to reclaim his role in their own national history
and imagination. Claiming Wagner for France: Music and Politics in
the Parisian Press, 1933-1944 reveals how the concept of a
universal Wagner, which was used to challenge the Nazis in the
1930s, was gradually transformed into the infamous collaborationist
rhetoric promoted by the Vichy government and exploited by the
Nazis between 1940 and 1944. Rachel Orzech's study offers a close
examination of Wagner's place in France's cultural landscape at
this time, contributing to our understanding of how the French
grappled with one of the most challenging periods in their history.
After 1945, Jewish writing in German was almost unimaginable-and
then only in reference to the Shoah. Only in the 1980s, after a
period of mourning, silence, and processing of the trauma, did a
new Jewish literature evolve in Germany and Austria. This volume
focuses on the re-emergence of a lively Jewish cultural scene in
the German-speaking countries and the various cultural forms of
expression that have developed around it. Topics include current
debates such as the emergence of a post-Waldheim Jewish discourse
in Austria and Jewish responses to German unification and the Gulf
wars. Other significant themes addressed are the memorialization of
the Holocaust in Berlin and Vienna, the uses of Kafka in
contemporary German literature, and the German and American-Jewish
dialogue as representative of both the history of exile and the
globalization of postmodern civilization. The volume is enhanced by
contributions from some of the most significant representatives of
German-Jewish writing today such as Esther Dischereit, Barbara
Honigmann, Jeanette Lander, and Doron Rabinovici. The result is a
lively dialogue between European and North American scholars and
writers that captures the complexity and dynamism of Jewish culture
in Germany and Austria at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Covering the period from 200 BCE to 600 CE, this book describes
important aspects of identity formation processes within early
Judaism and Christianity, and shows how negotiations involving
issues of ethnicity, stereotyping, purity, commensality, and
institution building contributed to the forming of group
identities. Over time, some of these Jewish group identities
evolved into non-Jewish Christian identities, others into a
rabbinic Jewish identity, while yet others remained somewhere in
between. The contributors to this volume trace these developments
in archaeological remains as well as in texts from the Qumran
movement, the New Testament and the reception of Paul's writings,
rabbinic literature, and apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings,
such as the Book of Dreams and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. The
long timespan covered in the volume together with the combined
expertise of scholars from various fields make this book a unique
contribution to research on group identity, Jewish and Christian
identity formation, the Partings-of-the-ways between Judaism and
Christianity, and interactions between Jews and Christians.
Between 1941 and 1945, thousands of German Jews, in fear for their
lives, made the choice to flee their impending deportations and
live submerged in the shadows of the Nazi capital. Drawing on a
wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this
book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin
during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that "hidden"
Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the
outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable
individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to
ensure their own survival.
The family tomb as a physical claim to the patrimony, the
attributed powers of the dead and the prospect of post-mortem
veneration made the cult of the dead an integral aspect of the
Judahite and Israelite society. Over 850 burials from throughout
the southern Levant are examined to illustrate the Judahite form of
burial and its development. Vessels for foods and liquids were of
paramount importance in the afterlife, followed by jewellery with
its protective powers. The cult of the dead began to be an
unacceptable feature of the Jerusalem Yahwistic cult in the late
eighth to seventh century BCE. This change of attitude was
precipitated by the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel and the
consequent theological response.
This monograph examines the problem of universally inclusive
language in the book of Revelation and the resulting narrative
tension created by narrowly exclusive language. Analysis is
conducted by placing relevant texts within their literary-narrative
context and through consideration of how the author understood and
appropriated biblical traditions. A key feature of this study is
its examination of four early Jewish documents with significant
similarities to the problem being examined in Revelation. From
these documents (Tobit; Similitudes of Enoch [1 Enoch 37-71]; 4
Ezra; and, Animal Apocalypse [1 Enoch 85-90]) a contextual picture
emerges which allows a fuller understanding of Revelation's
distinctive approach toward the problem of the fate of the nations.
This study contends that the interpretive strategies applied to
biblical traditions in Revelation have their roots in the wider
early Jewish milieu. From this comparative analysis, identifiable
patterns with regard to the role of 'universal terminology' in the
communicative strategy of John's Apocalypse emerge.
Increasing numbers of Jews are returning to their religious roots
in a search for meaning, eager to explore a heritage that is deeply
embedded in history and at the same time rapidly changing. But what
is Judaism today? And what does it mean -- culturally, spiritually,
and ritually -- to be Jewish in the twenty-first century?
In "Being Jewish," Ari L. Goldman offers eloquent, thoughtful
answers to these questions through an absorbing exploration of
modern Judaism. A bestselling author and widely respected
chronicler of Jewish life, Goldman vividly contrasts the historical
meaning of Judaism's heritage with the astonishing and multiform
character of the religion today. The result will be a revelation
for those already involved with Judaism and a fascinating
introduction for those whose interests are newly minted or
rekindled.
This inspiring volume encourages us to find our own place within
the tradition and leads us into a deeper understanding not just of
the details of the religion but, ultimately, of what it means to be
Jewish.
Boleslaw Prus and the Jews shows the complexity of the so-called
"Jewish question" in nineteenth-century Congress Poland and
especially its significance in Prus' social concept reflected in
his extensive body of journalistic work, fiction, and treatises.
The book traces Prus' evolving worldview toward Jews, from his
support of the Assimilation Program in his early years to his
eventual support of Zionism. These contrasting ideas show us the
complexity of the discourse on Jewish issues from the individual
perspective of a significant writer of the time, as well as the
dynamics of the Jewish modernization process in a "non-existent"
partitioned Poland. The portrait of Prus that emerges is
surprisingly ambivalent.
While the ideologies of Territorialism and Zionism originated at
the same time, the Territorialists foresaw a dire fate for Eastern
European Jews, arguing that they could not wait for the Zionist
Organization to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. This
pessimistic worldview led Territorialists to favor a solution for
the Jewish state ""here and now""-and not only in the Land of
Israel. In Zionism without Zion: The Jewish Territorial
Organization and Its Conflict with the Zionist Organization, author
Gur Alroey examines this group's unique perspective, its struggle
with the Zionist movement, its Zionist rivals' response, and its
diplomatic efforts to obtain a territory for the Jewish people in
the first decades of the twentieth century. Alroey begins by
examining the British government's Uganda Plan and the ensuing
crisis it caused in the Zionist movement and Jewish society. He
details the founding of the Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO)
in 1903 and explains the varied reactions that the Territorialist
ideology received from Zionists and settlers in Palestine. Alroey
also details the diplomatic efforts of Territorialists during their
desperate search for a suitable territory, which ultimately never
bore fruit. Finally, he attempts to understand the reasons for the
ITO's dissolution after the Balfour Declaration, explores the
revival of Territorialismwith the New Territorialists in the 1930s
and 1940s, and describes the similarities and differences between
the movement then and its earlier version. Zionism without Zion
sheds new light on the solutions Territorialism proposed to
alleviate the hardship of Eastern European Jews at the start of the
twentieth century and offers fresh insights into the challenges
faced by Zionism in the same era. The thorough discussion of this
under-studied ideology will be of considerable interested to
scholars of Eastern European history, Jewish history, and Israel
studies.
She's an iconic Jewish storyteller. She's a widely acclaimed
professor and folklorist. She's the one and only Peninnah Schram,
and Peninnah's World: A Jewish Life in Stories is her authorized
biography, told through individual stories. What is a biography
told through stories? Because Schram's art form is storytelling,
Peninnah's World dramatizes in vivid scenes her extraordinary
trajectory from the New London, Connecticut-born child of immigrant
parents steeped in Jewish tradition in the 1930s and '40s to
award-winning, New York-based performer, writer and scholar. The
book features landmarks such as the old Mohican Hotel in New London
and Stern College for Women in Manhattan. Along the way, Schram
enjoys close encounters with such luminaries as Noble Laureates
Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer, as well as famed
Yiddish-theater actress Molly Picon, actor Jeff Goldblum,
singer/ethnomusicologist Ruth Rubin and others. Written by
storytelling studies professor and performer Caren Schnur Neile,
the stories are in a form tailor-made to enjoy and share aloud. At
the same time, they serve as models for all those interested in
creating their own life and family stories, whatever their
background, whether on the page, on the stage, or among neighbors
and loved ones. Welcome to Peninnah's World. Prepare to explore
your own.
The Jewish community in America is currently undergoing profound
changes, and American Jews are experiencing personal and communal
realities that differ markedly from those of their parents and
grandparents. To meet the needs of this population, a complex human
service delivery system has evolved, with a vast array of agencies
and organizations providing health care, housing, nutrition
programs, counseling, child care, Jewish education, and many other
services. In this work, the editors have brought together a
collection of essays that explore the nature of these services, the
profound implication they are having for the Jewish community, and
the planning issues that confront today's American Jews. The
editors have divided the essays into three subject groups, all of
which explore the numerous issues crucial to understanding the
nature of planning in contemporary Jewish communities. The first
section examines transformations in the behavior of American Jews
and Jewish identity, covering such topics as education and careers,
ethnic clustering, and Jewish fundraising. Section two explores
issues involved in providing services to specific populations,
including social, educational, and recreational services for
singles, families, and children. The final section addresses the
planning strategies necessary to meet the changing needs of the
community. The four essays here focus on understanding the planning
paradigms and realities in the Jewish community, and the roles
professionals play in implementing change. This work will be an
important resource for students of sociology and Jewish studies,
and a valuable addition to most library collections.
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