A collection of essays that explore the effects of modernization on Jewish self-understanding. Over the last three centurles, the Jewish experience has been profoundly affected by modernity, which Meyer defines as not only technological advance, cultural innovation, and reliance upon human reason but also as the adaptation of Jews to a modern framework within non-Jewish economies, societies, and cultures. Judaism within Modernity begins with an exploration of Jewish historiography and the problems of periodization in modern Jewish history. In these beginning essays we see the range of Meyer's thinking about what constitutes modernization and how to determine its beginning. He discusses the role of history in defining identity among Jews and suggests that finding an adequate paradigm of continuity is essential to the historian's task. The essays in the second section focus on the Jews of Germany. Here Meyer writes about the influence of German Jews on Jews in the United States, comparing the historical experience of the two communities. These essays also address the intersection of religion, scholarship, and history with politics in nineteenth- and twentiety-century Germany. A third section deals with the European Reform movement, which brought a liberal Judaism to the majority of German Jews. Here Meyer likewise presents a fresh perspective on the way the Reform movement was viewed by those outside of it, especially by non-Jews. The essays in the final section explore Judaism in the United States. In particular, they show how reform Judaism and Zionism were able to recondle their initial differences. Judaism within Modernity is an impressive collection of essays written by a renowned Jewish historian and will be a standard volume for students and scholars of the modern Jewish experience.

Philip Roth's standing on the literary scene is undisputed. The recipient of innumerable literary awards, the Jewish American author has reached past the precincts of his Newark's Weequahic neighborhood to become one of the most significant American novelists of the late twentieth century, an unrivalled master of the art of fiction. His literary output spanning more than 50 years and more than thirty books has been astounding both in terms of quantity and quality. Roth's place among the classics has been established by a host of critical studies presenting Roth's work from a myriad of thematic perspectives. Critical literature on Roth has become a minor industry of sorts and the interested reader may find a number of excellent general book-length treatments of his oeuvre. This book traces Zuckerman's fictional birth in My Life as a Man and The Ghost Writer, his growth through Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, The Prague Orgy, The Counterlife, The Facts, his development in American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain and his death in Exit Ghost, to explore how Roth has been progressively creating and refining this mask and his voice as a means to come to terms with his own biography, his history, and his own self as a writer. All the defining features of Roth's poetics-masking practices, ventriloquism, meta-fictional focus, cultural significance-are visible in the creation of Zuckerman as narrator. This study keeps up the ongoing reflection in Roth's scholarly literature on the foundational relationship between facts and fictions demonstrating how Zuckerman amplifies and perfects the typically Rothian tendency to draw materials for his fictional writing from his own life and reveals Roth's ambition to create a monument out of a specific and well individualized identity: the writer steeped in American history. As Roth's most cherished mask, Nathan Zuckerman opens for the reader interested in the Jewish American author a perfect window on the crucial issue of authorship and on the range of Roth's thematic preoccupations.In proposing to view The Ghost Writer as a narrative beginning, The Counterlife as a middle and Exit Ghost as an end, the book addresses the stakes at play in reading across multiple narratives directly: how is Zuckerman's identity shaped? How does narrative technique interact with biographical data? How do readers make (progressive) sense of Zuckerman and how do they cope with inconsistencies? What kind of coherence can be ascribed to Zuckerman in spite of the gaps his long narrative presents? What if anything is specifically "Jewish" about the creation of Zuckerman as narrator of numerous books? What are the literary functions, the formal and narratological underpinnings and the psychological needs Zuckerman activates and reveals?The book's groundbreaking contribution consists in a unique focus on the inner, that is to say, narratological logic of the fictional world presided over by Nathan Zuckerman and in the contextual attention to how form in its panoply of aspects triggers reader responses and activities. Masiero illuminates Roth's art of fiction through the detailed analysis of Roth's ambitious dream of creating a complete narrative microcosm.This book is important for the general reader interested in contemporary American fiction, as well as for teachers of American literature and Jewish studies, for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, and, of course for Roth scholars and literary theorists.

For Gustav Landauer, literary critic and anarchist, scholar of mysticism and participant of the Bavarian revolution, culture and politics occupied the same spiritual space. While identifying with ethical socialism, his Jewish sensibility increasingly gained over the years, not only, but in great measure due to Buber's influence. This volume brings together leading scholars to assess Landauer's ramified literary and political activities, his life as a Jew and anarchist, paying particular attention to his impact on Martin Buber.

This unique study makes an important contribution to our understanding of the changing problem of `Jewishness' in a German environment as it presented itself to a privileged group of Jews. Following on from Jews in the German Economy (OUP, 1987), which analysed the economic activities of this elite, it presents a detailed picture of the group's socio-cultural profile. Based largely on autobiographical material, it covers such matters as attitudes to Judaism, relations at different levels with Gentiles and with other Jews, marriage patterns, the public role, political culture, cultural activities, and patronage. The major underlying theme is the conflict between preservation of the Jewish identity, and integration into the surrounding society. Different forms of self-identification are examined, as well as various patterns of conformity.

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"Contributes[s] interesting new dimensions to the literature on Jews and blacks in the United States."
--"The Journal of American History"

"A fascinating text which adds to our understanding of recent Jewish Left and feminist politics and activism"
"--Australian Jewish News, Aug. 2001"

"Blending together 15 oral histories and archival research, Schultz shows how northern Jewish women's commitment to social justice - informed in part by living in the shadow of the Holocaust - played out in a time of enormous political, social, and personal upheaval...Sharply observant of her informants' lives, Schultz opens a new window not only into the civil rights movement but also into the sociology of mid-century Jewish-American culture. Her analysis is most impressive at the book's end, when she perceptively describes the protean nature of Jewish identities in the U.S. Such insightful cultural readings and criticism make this a fine contribution to both the literature of the civil rights movement and the field of Jewish studies."
"--Publishers Weekly"

"Schultz's book makes a substantial contribution to feminist scholarship, but in the end it is also a call to renewed action - to never forget the sacrifices of previous generations."
--"The Journal of Southern History"

"A well-written, serious, and important book. I learned a great deal from this interesting and rich study."
"--Joyce Antler, author of The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America"

""Going South" is a heartfelt plea for incorporating women's activism into social movement history."
--Linn Shapiro, "American Jewish History"

"Going South is aremarkable book, reflecting the experiences of fifteen women who joined the 1960s civil rights movement showing how and why they got there, what role, if any religion played in their lives, and what happened to them afterwards."
--"Journal of American Studies"

"The strength of the book is that it is based on interviews; the reader is introduced to each women, her family, the work she performed in the South, the people she met and the difficulties she overcame while there."--"Jewish Observer"

Many people today know that the 1964 murder in Mississippi of two Jewish men--Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman--and their Black colleague, James Chaney, marked one of the most wrenching episodes of the civil rights movement. Yet very few realize that Andrew Goodman had been in Mississippi for one day when he was killed; Rita Schwerner, Mickey's wife, had been organizing in Mississippi for six difficult months.

Organized around a rich blend of oral histories, Going South followsa group of Jewish women--come of age in the shadow of the Holocaust and deeply committed to social justice--who put their bodies and lives on the line to fight racism. Actively rejecting the post-war idyll of suburban, Jewish, middle-class life, these women were deeply influenced by Jewish notions of morality and social justice. Many thus perceived the call of the movement as positively irresistible.

Representing a link between the sensibilities of the early civil rights era and contemporary efforts to move beyond the limits of identity politics, the book provides a resource for all who are interested in anti-racism, the civil rights movement, social justice, Jewish activism and radical women's traditions.

Gershon Brin examines the development of biblical law, suggesting that it may be due to different authors with different legal outlooks, or that the differing policies were required in response to different social needs, etc. Biblical laws appearing in the Dead Sea Scrolls literature are treated in a separate unit. Study of this subject can shed light both on the biblical laws as such, as well as on the manner of their reworking by the Judaean Desert sect. Brin also discusses here questions of the style, the idea, and the historical and ideological background underlying the reworking of these laws in Qumran. The second part of the book presents a comprehensive picture of the issues involved in the laws of the first-born, a subject that has legal, social and religious implications.

This study throws light for the first time on a neglected but very important aspect of Jewish life in the Third Reich, the Jewish press. This term does not refer to the significant number of Jews involved in the German media up to the Second World War but to the 65 newspapers and magazines published by 53 publishing houses with a specific German-Jewish readership in mind. These publications appeared until the end of 1938 and allow a valuable insight into the situation of the German Jews under the Nazi regime. They movingly document the efforts of the Jews to cope with the increasing precariousness of their existence in Germany and to find solutions to the growing problems of survival.

In the second haft of the nineteenth century, Jewish nationalism developed in Europe. One vital form of this nationalism that took root at the beginning of the twentieth century in Eastern Europe was the Yiddishist movement, which held that the Yiddish language and culture should be at the center of any Jewish nationalist efforts. As with most European concepts of folklore, the romantic-nationalist ideas of J. G. Herder on the volk were crucial in the formulation of the study and collection of Yiddish folklore.

Herder's volk, however, denoted the peasantry, whereas Polish Jewry were an urban population. This difference determined the focus and pioneering work that this group of collectors accomplished. Defining the Yiddish Nation examines how these folklorists sought to connect their identity with the Jewish past but simultaneously develop Yiddishism, a movement whose eventual outcome would be an autonomous Jewish national culture and a break with the biblical past.

Itzik Nakhmen Gottesman analyzes the evolution of Yiddish folklore and its role in the creation of Yiddish nationalism in Poland between the two world wars. Gottesman studies three important folklore circles in Poland: the Warsaw group led by Noyekh Prilutski, the S. Ansky Vilne Jewish Historic-Ethnographic Society, and the Ethnographic Commission d the Yivo Institute in Vilne.

This book is much more than a study of the evolution of one particular folklore tradition, it is a look into the formation of a nationalist movement. Defining the Yiddish Nation will prove invaluable for scholars of Jewish studies and Yiddish folklore.

Military cemeteries are one of the most prominent cultural landscapes of Israel. Their story reflects largely the main social processes that Israeli society has been undergoing since the War of Independence (1948) until today. Until the end of the 1970s, the military tombstones and their surroundings were uniform and equal, according to rules set by the State. However, since the 1980s families of the fallen soldiers started to add on the tombstone personal expressions, as well as personal objects, photographs, military artifacts etc. Thus the military tombstone and the Israeli military cemetery became one of the expressions of the dramatic transformation, from a society which emphasized the importance of the collective, to a society which intensifies the significance of the individual. The book is based on many archival documents, as well as interviews and photographs, all of which shed light on one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli society and express its importance as a central component of Israeli identity.

Facing the dizzying array of changes commonly referred to as modernity, Jews in 19th-century Eastern Europe and early 20th-century America reflected the crises and opportunities of the modern world most eloquently in their speech, culture, and literature. Relying on those spoken and written words as eyewitnesses, Eli Lederhendler illustrates how the self- perceptions of Jews evolved, both in the Old World and among immigrants to America. He focuses on a wide range of subjects to provide an overview of this clash between old and new and to reveal ways in which cultural conflicts were reconciled.

How, for instance, was messianic language adapted to serve nationalistic goals? What did America signify to Jewish thinkers at the turn of the century? What do Jewish user's guides to the New World tell us about Jewish secular culture and its perspective on sex, love, marriage, etiquette, and health? More generally, what do Jewish letters and literature tell us about how communities adapt to radically new environments?

"Jewish Responses to Modernity" highlights the manner in which codes and symbols are passed from one generation to the next, reinforcing a group's sense of self and helping to define its relations with other. The book clearly demonstrates the importance of language as a vehicle for minority-group self-expression in the past and in the present.

This book is a contribution to the development of the young discipline of the didactics of the Study of Religions (Religionswissenschaft) in international perspective. Integrative religious education refers to education about different religions in classrooms with children of various religious and non-religious backgrounds. Cornerstones of recent debates about theory and methodology in the academic study of religions and in education are discussed in the first chapter. They form the basis of the following analysis and evaluation of current approaches to integrative religious education in Europe, with a special focus on England and Sweden. Particular attention is paid to the different underlying concepts of religion, education and ways of representing religious plurality in these approaches. Building on a discussion of the current situation of teaching and learning about religions in schools in Europe in the context of wider cultural, social and political debates, the book concludes with the suggestion of a framework for integrative religious education in Europe, from a perspective that combines insights from the study of religions and education.

From its modest beginnings in 1818 Berlin, Wissenschaft des Judentums has burgeoned into a scholarly discipline pursued by a vast cadre of scholars. Now constituting a global community, these scholars continue to draw their inspiration from the determined pioneers of Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth and twentieth Germany. Beyond setting the highest standards of philological and historiographical research, German Wissenschaft des Judentums had a seminal role in creating modern Jewish discourse in which cultural memory supplemented traditional Jewish learning. The secular character of modern Jewish Studies, initially pursued largely in German and subsequently in other vernacular languages (e.g. French, Dutch, Italian, modern Hebrew, Russian), greatly facilitated an exchange with non-Jewish scholars, and thereby encouraging mutual understanding and respect. The present volume is based on papers delivered at a conference, sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, by scholars from North American, Europe, and Israel. The papers and attendant deliberations explored ramified historical and methodological issues. Taken as a whole, the volume represents a tribute to the two hundred year legacy of Wissenschaft des Judentums and its singular contribution to not only modern Jewish self-understand but also to the unfolding of humanistic cultural discourse.

Socrates, Or On Human Knowledge, published in Venice in 1651, is the only work written by a Jew that contains so far the promise of a genuinely sceptical investigation into the validity of human certainties. Simone Luzzatto masterly developed this book as a piece of theatre where Socrates, as main actor, has the task to demonstrate the limits and weaknesses of the human capacity to acquire knowledge without being guided by revelation. He achieved this goal by offering an overview of the various and contradictory gnosiological opinions disseminated since ancient times: the divergence of views, to which he addressed the most attention, prevented him from giving a fixed definition of the nature of the cognitive process. This obliged him to come to the audacious conclusion of neither affirming nor denying anything concerning human knowledge, and finally of suspending his judgement altogether. This work unfortunately had little success in Luzzatto's lifetime, and was subsequently almost forgotten. The absence of substantial evidence from his contemporaries and that of his epistolary have thus increased the difficulty of tracing not only its legacy in the history of philosophical though, but also of understanding the circumstances surrounding the writing of his Socrates. The present edition will be a preliminary study aiming to shed some light on the philosophical and historical value of this work's translation, indeed it will provide a broader readership with the opportunity to access this immensely complicated work and also to grasp some aspects of the composite intellectual framework and admirable modernity of Venetian Jewish culture in the ghetto.

Whether on a national or a personal level, everyone has a complex relationship with their closest neighbors. Where are the borders? How much interaction should there be? How are conflicts solved? Ancient Israel was one of several small nations clustered in the eastern Mediterranean region between the large empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia in antiquity. Frequently mentioned in the Bible, these other small nations are seldom the focus of the narrative unless they interact with Israel. The ancient Israelites who produced the Hebrew Bible lived within a rich context of multiple neighbors, and this context profoundly shaped Israel. Indeed, it was through the influence of the neighboring people that Israel defined its own identity-in terms of geography, language, politics, religion, and culture. Ancient Israel's Neighbors explores both the biblical portrayal of the neighboring groups directly surrounding Israel-the Canaanites, Philistines, Phoenicians, Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and Arameans-and examines what we can know about these groups through their own literature, archaeology, and other sources. Through its analysis of these surrounding groups, this book will demonstrate in a direct and accessible manner the extent to which ancient Israelite identity was forged both within and against the identities of its close neighbors. Animated by the latest and best research, yet written for students, this book will invite readers into journey of scholarly discovery to explore the world of Israel's identity within its most immediate ancient Near Eastern context.

This interdisciplinary volume looks at one of the central cultural practices within the Jewish experience: translation. With contributions from literary and cultural scholars, historians, and scholars of religion, the book considers different aspects of Jewish translation, starting from the early translations of the Torah, to the modern Jewish experience of migration, state-building and life in the Diaspora. The volume addresses the question of how Jews have used translation to pursue different cultural and political agendas, such as Jewish nationalism, the development of Yiddish as a literary language, and the collection of Holocaust testimonies. It also addresses how non-Jews have translated elements of the Judaic tradition to create an image of the Other. Covering a wide span of contexts, including religion, literature, photography, music and folk practices, and featuring an interview section with authors and translators, the volume will be of interest not only to scholars of Jewish studies, translation and cultural studies, but also a wider interested audience.

It has often been argued that Zerubbabel, the Jewish governor of Yehud at the time of the rebuilding of the temple (late 6th century BCE), was viewed by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah as the new king in the line of David. In this new study, Rose offers a contrary proposal for the interpretation of the oracles in Haggai 2 and Zechariah 3 and 6. He traces their background in the pre-exilic prophets, pays special attention to often neglected details of semantics and metaphor, and concludes that neither Haggai nor Zechariah designated Zerubbabel as the new king in Jerusalem. Instead, the oracles in Zechariah 3 and 6 should be seen as fully messianic.>

European Jews achieved civil emancipation during the nineteenth century, becoming equal citizens with all the rights and responsibilities of their Gentile compatriots. This book explores for the first time the impact of this emancipation on a traditional Jewish population largely untouched by secular culture. Focusing on the Jews of Alsace, Paula E. Hyman explores their patterns of acculturation and integration in both countryside and city, analyzing the political, social, and economic factors that not only reshaped their behavior and self-understanding but also sustained their traditional Jewish practice. Drawing on governmental sources, literature, memoirs, and communal records, Hyman relates the experiences of ordinary Jews-the cattle dealers, peddlers, and shopkeepers who lived in the villages and small towns of Alsace. She finds that these Jews resisted new outlooks and new spheres of activity, and that their transformation was far slower and more uneven than the rapid acculturation of Jewish urban elites discussed by previous historians. Hyman describes the Alsatian Jews' emergence from cultural and social isolation, the impact of migration and urbanization, their drift from religious orthodoxy, and the alliance of their community leaders with French authorities. Since European Jews were a largely rural population until after mid-century, Hyman's social history of a typical village society has important implications for understanding the development of Jewish modernity throughout Europe

Hirschka Varshavtchik's story, written by his son, Sidd Raichel is a personal narrative as well as a dramatic family history. It is also, as described by the son himself in his prologue, a quest that each of us has: I grew up confused, surrounded by unuttered family memories I couldn't comprehend. I was all alone in this dark, dark place, where even language itself had failed me. Bits of family stories--true or not, it did not matter--came in hushed breaths. My brother told me once that we got out name Reischer because our father killed a German soldier and took his identity papers. I clutched to each new phrase as a precious piece of the puzzle to answer the questions: "Where did I come from?" and "Who am I?"

This volume contains the papers presented at the 2017 meeting of the SBL Program Unit on Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature in Boston, MA. The theme of the sessions was the interpretation of Torah in deuterocanonical literature. The contributions cover a variety of concepts and themes related to Torah and trace these through the Hebrew Bible, into the Septuagintal deuterocanonical books and other relevant and cognate literature.

In this fascinating book, the planning and building of Yad Vashem, Israel's central and most important institution for commemorating the Holocaust, merits an outstanding in-depth account. Following the development of Yad Vashem since 1942, when the idea to commemorate the Holocaust in Eretz-Israel was raised for the first time, the narrative continues until the inauguration of Nathan Rapoport's Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial in 1976. The prolonged and complicated planning process of Yad Vashem's various monuments reveals the debates, failures and achievements involved in commemorating the Holocaust. In reading this thought-provoking description, one learns how Israel's leaders aspired both to fulfill a moral debt towards the victims of the Holocaust a well as to make Yad Vashem an exclusive center of Holocaust commemoration both in the Jewish world and beyond.

This first-hand empirical study of elderly Soviet Jews who immigrated to Israel during the Great Exodus of 1989 to 1991 demonstrates the double jeopardy of transnational relocation in later life. The book traces the depletions that occurred in the elderly immigrants' social networks and examines the impact of a range of network factors on their personal well-being. Given the dearth of systematic field research into the problems and needs of elderly immigrants, and of this group in particular, gerontologists and sociologists will find this case study invaluable. Students, teachers, policymakers, social service providers, and other professional practitioners will gain from the findings about elderly immigrants' network relationships and from practical suggestions for the planning of effective network interventions on their behalf.