Author: Kenneth B. Moss Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674245105 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
A revisionist account of interwar EuropeÕs largest Jewish community that upends histories of Jewish agency to rediscover reckonings with nationalismÕs pathologies, diasporaÕs fragility, ZionismÕs promises, and the necessity of choice. What did the future hold for interwar EuropeÕs largest Jewish community, the font of global Jewish hopes? When intrepid analysts asked these questions on the cusp of the 1930s, they discovered a Polish Jewry reckoning with Òno tomorrow.Ó Assailed by antisemitism and witnessing liberalismÕs collapse, some Polish Jews looked past progressive hopes or religious certainties to investigate what the nation-state was becoming, what powers minority communities really possessed, and where a future might be foundÑand for whom. The story of modern Jewry is often told as one of creativity and contestation. Kenneth B. Moss traces instead a late Jewish reckoning with diasporic vulnerability, nationalismÕs terrible potencies, ZionismÕs promises, and the necessity of choice. Moss examines the works of Polish JewryÕs most searching thinkers as they confronted political irrationality, state crisis, and the limits of resistance. He reconstructs the desperate creativity of activists seeking to counter despair where they could not redress its causes. And he recovers a lost grassroots history of critical thought and political searching among ordinary Jews, young and powerless, as they struggled to find a viable future for themselvesÑin Palestine if not in Poland, individually if not communally. Focusing not on ideals but on a search for realism, Moss recasts the history of modern Jewish political thought. Where much scholarship seeks Jewish agency over a collective future, An Unchosen People recovers a darker tradition characterized by painful tradeoffs amid a harrowing political reality, making Polish Jewry a paradigmatic example of the minority experience endemic to the nation-state.
Author: Hella Winston Publisher: Beacon Press ISBN: 0807036277 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 218
Book Description
An exploration of Hasidic Jews struggling to live within their restrictive communities—and, in some cases, to carve out a new life beyond them When Hella Winston began talking with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn for her doctoral dissertation in sociology, she was surprised to be covertly introduced to Hasidim unhappy with their highly restrictive way of life and sometimes desperately struggling to escape it. Unchosen tells the stories of these “rebel” Hasidim, serious questioners who long for greater personal and intellectual freedom than their communities allow. She meets is Malky Schwartz, who grew up in a Lubavith sect in Brooklyn, and started Footsteps, Inc., an organization that helps ultra-Orthodox Jews who are considering or have already left their community. There is Yossi, a young man who, though deeply attached to the Hasidic culture in which he was raised, longed for a life with fewer restrictions and more tolerance. Yossi's efforts at making such a life, however, were being severely hampered by his fourth grade English and math skills, his profound ignorance of the ways of the outside world, and the looming threat that pursuing his desires would almost certainly lead to rejection by his family and friends. Then she met Dini, a young wife and mother whose decision to deviate even slightly from Hasidic standards of modesty led to threatening phone calls from anonymous men, warning her that she needed to watch the way she was dressing if she wanted to remain a part of the community. Someone else introduced Winston to Steinmetz, a closet bibliophile worked in a small Judaica store in his community and spent his days off anxiously evading discovery in the library of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, whose shelves contain non-Hasidic books he is forbidden to read but nonetheless devours, often several at a sitting. There were others still who had actually made the wrenching decision to leave their communities altogether. In her new Preface, Winston discusses the passionate reactions the book has elicited among Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike. Named one of Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Religion Books of 2005. Honorable Mention in the 2012 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism
Author: Kenneth B. Moss Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674035102 Category : Foreign Language Study Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
Between 1917 and 1921, Jewish intellectuals and writers across the Russian empire pursued a “Jewish renaissance.” Here is a revisionist argument about the nature of cultural nationalism, the relationship between nationalism and socialism, and culture itself—the pivot point for the encounter between Jews and European modernity over the past century.
Author: Joel N. Lohr Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 1575066157 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Winner of the 2011 RBY Scott Award from the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies/Société canadienne des études bibliques The God of the Bible favors a national people, Israel, and this is at the cost of the other nations. In fact, not being Israel usually means humiliation or destruction or simply being ignored by God. Reading the text “with the grain” or placing oneself within the chosen’s perspective may seem very well until one considers the unchosen. There is much regarding the unchosen that has not been explored in scholarly research, but in this important work, Lohr attempts to make sense of the question of election and nonelection in the OT as a Christian interpreter and with a concern for the history of interpretation and Jewish-Christian dialogue. He also corrects a Christian tendency to read election and nonelection as love and damnation, respectively, a perception that is altogether foreign to the OT itself. The unchosen are important to the overall world view of Scripture and, although election entails exclusion, and God’s love for the one people Israel is a love in contrast to others, it does not follow that the unchosen fall outside of the economy of God’s purposes, his workings, or his ways. The unchosen often face important tests of their own and have a responsibility to God and the chosen, however much this idea defies modern-day notions of fairness. It is a central idea of Scripture that already appears in the original call of and promises made to Abram and something that, if ignored, places our larger understanding of God at risk. Equally important, if contemporary faith communities (both Jewish and Christian) form their understanding of “the other” on a faulty reading of Scripture regarding the unchosen, chaos and hatred can ensue. The political and religious climate of our contemporary world has never presented a more important time to get this matter right. Scholars and students alike are finding Chosen and Unchosen to be an indispensable resource as they mull over these difficult questions.
Author: Charles Foster Kent Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135779996 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 158
Book Description
First published in 2007. This classic work explores the seminal early periods of Jewish history. The destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. by the army of Nebuchadnezzar marks a radical turning point in the life of the people of Jehovah, for then the history of the Hebrew state and monarchy ends, and the Jewish history, the records of experiences, not of a nation but of the scattered, oppressed remnants of the Jewish people, begins.
Author: Kenneth Stow Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674044050 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
This narrative history surveying one thousand years of Jewish life integrates the Jewish experience into the context of the overall culture and society of medieval Europe. It presents a new picture of the interaction between Christians and Jews in this tumultuous era. Alienated Minority shows us what it meant to be a Jew in Europe in the Middle Ages. The story begins in the fifth century, when autonomous Jewish rule in Palestine came to a close, and when the papacy, led by Gregory the Great, established enduring principles regarding Christian policy toward Jews. Kenneth Stow examines the structures of self-government in the European Jewish community and the centrality of emerging concepts of representation. He studies economic enterprise, especially banking; constructs a clear image of the medieval Jewish family; and portrays in detail the very rich Jewish intellectual life. Analyzing policies of Church and State in the Middle Ages, Stow argues that a firmly defined legal and constitutional position of the Jewish minority in the earlier period gave way to a legal status created expressly for Jews, who in the later period were seen as inimical to the common good. It was this special status that paved the way for the royal expulsions of Jews that began at the end of the thirteenth century.
Author: Katharyn Blair Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062657666 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
Katharyn Blair crafts a fiercely feminist fantasy with a horrifying curse, swoon-worthy sea captains, and the power of one girl to choose her own fate in this contemporary standalone adventure that's perfect for fans of The Fifth Wave and Seafire, and for anyone who has ever felt unchosen. For Charlotte Holloway, the world ended twice. The first was when her childhood crush, Dean, fell in love—with her older sister. The second was when the Crimson, a curse spread through eye contact, turned the majority of humanity into flesh-eating monsters. Neither end of the world changed Charlotte. She’s still in the shadows of her siblings. Her popular older sister, Harlow, now commands forces of survivors. And her talented younger sister, Vanessa, is the Chosen One—who, legend has it, can end the curse. When their settlement is raided by those seeking the Chosen One, Charlotte makes a reckless decision to save Vanessa: she takes her place as prisoner. The word spreads across the seven seas—the Chosen One has been found. But when Dean’s life is threatened and a resistance looms on the horizon, the lie keeping Charlotte alive begins to unravel. She’ll have to break free, forge new bonds, and choose her own destiny if she has any hope of saving her sisters, her love, and maybe even the world. Because sometimes the end is just a new beginning.
Author: Naomi Shepherd Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674704114 Category : Jewish radicals Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
Why, in the late nineteenth century, did Jewish women suddenly march en masse into the pages of radical history? A Price Below Rubies explores this question and introduces us to these women--particularly, Anna Kuliscioff, Rosa Luxemburg, Esther Frumkin, Manya Shochat, Bertha Pappenheim, Rose Pesotta, and Emma Goldman. Naomi Shepherd's collective biography of these seven women and others tells the story of a revolution that began at home, in communities whose limits stirred women to rebel.
Author: Julie Burchill Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1783521031 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
'They say you never get over your first love and in my case, they were right. But, typically greedy, my first love was a whole race of people - the Jews.' Bristling with strong opinions and fizzing with wit, Julie Burchill narrates the story of how a chance discovery of her father's copy of a World at War magazine about the holocaust kindled an obsessive love that still sustains her today. The book follows the course of this affair from her days as a rock journalist pretending to be Jewish, through her volatile marriage to a Jewish man, her public spats with anti-Israel writers, her dislike.
Author: David Stern Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674654488 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
David Stern shows how the parable or mashal--the most distinctive type of narrative in midrash--was composed, how its symbolism works, and how it serves to convey the ideological convictions of the rabbis. He describes its relation to similar tales in other literatures, including the parables of Jesus in the New Testament and kabbalistic parables. Through its innovative approach to midrash, this study reaches beyond its particular subject, and will appeal to all readers interested in narrative and religion.