Based on published primary and secondary materials and oral interviews with some eighty communal and organizational leaders, experts and scholars, this book provides a comparative account of the ...reconstruction of Jewish communal life in both Germany and in Austria (where 98% live in the capital, Vienna) after 1945. The author explains the process of reconstruction over the next six decades, and its results in each country.The monograph focuses on the variety of prevailing perceptions about topics such as: the state of Israel, one's relationship to the country of residence, the Jewish religion, the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the influx of post-soviet immigrants. Cohen- Weisz examines the changes in Jewish group identity and its impact on the development of communities. The study analyzes the similarities and differences in regard to the political, social, institutional and identity developments within the two countries, and their changing attitudes and relationships with surrounding societies; it seeks to show the evolution of these two country's Jewish communities in diverse national political circumstances and varying post-war governmental policies.
From the last decades of the nineteenth century through the late 1930s, the West Bohemian spa towns of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad were fashionable destinations for visitors wishing to "take ...a cure"-to drink the waters, bathe in the mud, be treated by the latest X-ray, light, or gas therapies, or simply enjoy the respite afforded by elegant parks and comfortable lodgings. These were sociable and urbane places, settings for celebrity sightings, match-making, and stylish promenading. Originally the haunt of aristocrats, the spa towns came to be the favored summer resorts for the emerging bourgeoisie. Among the many who traveled there, a very high proportion were Jewish. InNext Year in Marienbad, Mirjam Zadoff writes the social and cultural history of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad as Jewish spaces. Secular and religious Jews from diverse national, cultural, and social backgrounds mingled in idyllic and often apolitical-seeming surroundings. During the season, shops sold Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers, kosher kitchens were opened, and theatrical presentations, concerts, and public readings catered to the Jewish clientele. Yet these same resorts were situated in a region of growing hostile nationalisms, and they were towns that might turn virulently anti-Semitic in the off season.Next Year in Marienbaddraws from memoirs and letters, newspapers and maps, novels and postcards to create a compelling and engaging portrait of Jewish presence and cultural production in the years between thefin de siècleand the Second World War.
Winner of the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, Anthologies and CollectionsThe year 1929 represents a major turning point in interwar Jewish society, proving to be a year when Jews, regardless of ...where they lived, saw themselves affected by developments that took place around the world, as the crises endured by other Jews became part of the transnational Jewish consciousness. In the United States, the stock market crash brought lasting economic, social, and ideological changes to the Jewish community and limited its ability to support humanitarian and nationalist projects in other countries. In Palestine, the anti-Jewish riots in Hebron and other towns underscored the vulnerability of the Zionist enterprise and ignited heated discussions among various Jewish political groups about the wisdom of establishing a Jewish state on its historical site. At the same time, in the Soviet Union, the consolidation of power in the hands of Stalin created a much more dogmatic climate in the international Communist movement, including its Jewish branches. Featuring a sparkling array of scholars of Jewish history, 1929 surveys the Jewish world in one year offering clear examples of the transnational connections which linked Jews to each other - from politics, diplomacy, and philanthropy to literature, culture, and the fate of Yiddish - regardless of where they lived. Taken together, the essays in 1929 argue that, whether American, Soviet, German, Polish, or Palestinian, Jews throughout the world lived in a global context.Hasia Dineris Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History, Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. She is the author of the award-winningWe Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962(NYU Press, 2009).Gennady Estraikhis Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies, Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.In theGoldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History
How well integrated were Jews in the Mediterranean society controlled by ancient Rome? The Torah's laws seem to constitute a rejection of the reciprocity-based social dependency and emphasis on honor ...that were customary in the ancient Mediterranean world. But were Jews really a people apart, and outside of this broadly shared culture? Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? argues that Jewish social relations in antiquity were animated by a core tension between biblical solidarity and exchange-based social values such as patronage, vassalage, formal friendship, and debt slavery. Seth Schwartz's examinations of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, the writings of Josephus, and the Palestinian Talmud reveal that Jews were more deeply implicated in Roman and Mediterranean bonds of reciprocity and honor than is commonly assumed. Schwartz demonstrates how Ben Sira juxtaposes exhortations to biblical piety with hard-headed and seemingly contradictory advice about coping with the dangers of social relations with non-Jews; how Josephus describes Jews as essentially countercultural; yet how the Talmudic rabbis assume Jews have completely internalized Roman norms at the same time as the rabbis seek to arouse resistance to those norms, even if it is only symbolic.
Early modern Jewry Ruderman, David B
2010., 20100412, 2010, 2010-01-01
eBook
Early Modern Jewry boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors ...unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society. Looking at how Jewish settlements in the early modern period were linked to one another in fascinating ways, he shows how Jews were communicating with each other and were more aware of their economic, social, and religious connections than ever before.
The chosen few Botticini, Maristella; Eckstein, Zvi
2012, 2012., 20120805, 2012-08-05, 20120101, Volume:
42
eBook, Book
In 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492 the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in ...crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change?The Chosen Fewpresents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history.
Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein show that, contrary to previous explanations, this transformation was driven not by anti-Jewish persecution and legal restrictions, but rather by changes within Judaism itself after 70 CE--most importantly, the rise of a new norm that required every Jewish male to read and study the Torah and to send his sons to school. Over the next six centuries, those Jews who found the norms of Judaism too costly to obey converted to other religions, making world Jewry shrink. Later, when urbanization and commercial expansion in the newly established Muslim Caliphates increased the demand for occupations in which literacy was an advantage, the Jews found themselves literate in a world of almost universal illiteracy. From then forward, almost all Jews entered crafts and trade, and many of them began moving in search of business opportunities, creating a worldwide Diaspora in the process.
The Chosen Fewoffers a powerful new explanation of one of the most significant transformations in Jewish history while also providing fresh insights to the growing debate about the social and economic impact of religion.
FDR and the Jews Breitman, Richard; Lichtman, Allan J
03/2013
eBook
Open access
A contentious debate lingers over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Hitler's Europe. FDR and the Jews reveals a concerned leader whose efforts on behalf of Jews were ...far greater than those of any other world figure but whose moral leadership was tempered by the political realities of depression and war.
Kosher pork -- an oxymoron? Anna Shternshis's fascinating study traces
the creation of a Soviet Jewish identity that disassociated Jewishness from Judaism.
The cultural transformation of Soviet Jews ...between 1917 and 1941 was one of the most
ambitious experiments in social engineering of the past century. During this period,
Russian Jews went from relative isolation to being highly integrated into the new
Soviet culture and society, while retaining a strong ethnic and cultural identity.
This identity took shape during the 1920s and 1930s, when the government attempted
to create a new Jewish culture, national in form and socialist in
content. Soviet and Kosher is the first study of key Yiddish documents that
brought these Soviet messages to Jews, notably the Red Haggadah, a
Soviet parody of the traditional Passover manual; songs about Lenin and Stalin;
scripts from regional theaters; Socialist Realist fiction; and magazines for
children and adults. More than 200 interviews conducted by the author in Russia,
Germany, and the United States testify to the reception of these cultural products
and provide a unique portrait of the cultural life of the average Soviet
Jew.
Enlightenment writers, revolutionaries, and even Napoleon discussed and wrote about France's tiny Jewish population at great length. Why was there so much thinking about Jews when they were a ...minority of less than one percent and had little economic and virtually no political power? In this unusually wide-ranging study of representations of Jews in eighteenth-century France-both by Gentiles and Jews themselves-Ronald Schechteroffers fresh perspectives on the Enlightenment and French Revolution, on Jewish history, and on the nature of racism and intolerance. Informed by the latest historical scholarship and by the insights of cultural theory,Obstinate Hebrewsis a fascinating tale of cultural appropriation cast in the light of modern society's preoccupation with the "other." Schechter argues that the French paid attention to the Jews because thinking about the Jews helped them reflect on general issues of the day. These included the role of tradition in religion, the perfectibility of human nature, national identity, and the nature of citizenship. In a conclusion comparing and contrasting the "Jewish question" in France with discourses about women, blacks, and Native Americans, Schechter provocatively widens his inquiry, calling for a more historically precise approach to these important questions of difference.
Miriam Bodian's study of crypto-Jewish martyrdom in Iberian lands depicts
a new type of martyr that emerged in the late 16th century -- a defiant, educated
judaizing martyr who engaged in disputes ...with inquisitors. By examining closely the
Inquisition dossiers of four men who were tried in the Iberian peninsula or Spanish
America and who developed judaizing theologies that drew from currents of
Reformation thinking that emphasized the authority of Scripture and the religious
autonomy of individual interpreters of Scripture, Miriam Bodian reveals unexpected
connections between Reformation thought and historic crypto-Judaism. The complex
personalities of the martyrs, acting in response to psychic and situational
pressures, emerge vividly from this absorbing book.
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