Jews and Journeys PDF Download

Author: Joshua Levinson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812252950
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
What happens when Jewish authors—whether by force or of their own free will, whether in reality or in the imagination—travel from one place to another? Jews and Journeys explores what it is about travel writing that enables it to become a central mechanism for exploring the realities and fictions of individual and collective identity.

Author: Joshua Levinson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812297938
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Journeys of dislocation and return, of discovery and conquest hold a prominent place in the imagination of many cultures. Wherever an individual or community may be located, it would seem, there is always the dream of being elsewhere. This has been especially true throughout the ages for Jews, for whom the promises and perils of travel have influenced both their own sense of self and their identity in the eyes of others. How does travel writing, as a genre, produce representations of the world of others, against which one's own self can be invented or explored? And what happens when Jewish authors in particular—whether by force or of their own free will, whether in reality or in the imagination—travel from one place to another? How has travel figured in the formation of Jewish identity, and what cultural and ideological work is performed by texts that document or figure specifically Jewish travel? Featuring essays on topics that range from Abraham as a traveler in biblical narrative to the guest book entries at contemporary Israeli museum and memorial sites; from the marvels medieval travelers claim to have encountered to eighteenth-century Jewish critiques of Orientalism; from the Wandering Jew of legend to one mid-twentieth-century Yiddish writer's accounts of his travels through Peru, Jews and Journeys explores what it is about travel writing that enables it to become one of the central mechanisms for exploring the realities and fictions of individual and collective identity.

Author: Laura Arnold Leibman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197530494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother's maternal line. Using family heirlooms to unlock the mystery of Moses's ancestors, Once We Were Slaves overturns the reclusive heiress's assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives as poor Christian slaves in Barbados. Tracing the siblings' extraordinary journey throughout the Atlantic World, Leibman examines artifacts they left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and, finally, New York, to show how Sarah and Isaac were able to transform themselves and their lives, becoming free, wealthy, Jewish, and--at times--white. While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten population of mixed African and Jewish ancestry that constituted as much as ten percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived, and sheds new light on the fluidity of race--as well as on the role of religion in racial shift--in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Author: Howard Jacobson
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468305794
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
When fast-breaking political events forced British novelist Jacobson (Peeping Tom) to put off a trip to Lithuania planned as a search for his Jewish roots, he accepted an offer from the BBC to visit Jewish communities around the globe instead. This informed and witty account of his experiences deals with the wide variety of contemporary Jewish life, as well as with how Jacobson's observations affected his own concept of what it means to be a Jew. Riding an emotional roller coaster, he witnessed the hostility between Jews and African Americans in New York City, attended services in a gay synagogue in California and found his basic cynicism about religion reinforced after he spent time with Orthodox Jews in Israel, although his spirits were lifted by a visit to an idealistic, tolerant Israeli kibbutz. His journey concluded with the postponed trip to Lithuania, where the author found virulent anti-Semitism.

Author: Tuvia Book
Publisher: Maggid
ISBN: 9781592645909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This beautifully Illustrated history book is the the first volume to be published in a planned six-volume series directed at Jewish young adults. It is noteworthy that this inaugural volume tells the story of Jews returning to the Land of Israel, while the Diaspora continues to thrive in a world of superpowers which clash and cooperate - a period not unlike our own. We hope that this series will go some way to rectify the ignorance of our unique, long, and complex history, and to enable future Jewish adults to understand both their past and ground their future in a changing and evolving world.

Author: Paula Amann
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1580237851
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Follow the soul treks of Jews lost and found. Be inspired to connect with Judaism in new ways. “No two people take the same journey.... Yet the telling of each story can ease the footsteps of those who follow.... It is my hope that [these] tales will offer you camaraderie, a guidepost here and there, and, most of all, the heart and strength to pursue your own path.” —from the Introduction What draws Jews back to their religious roots? What drives them away? What obstacles must they overcome to find their way home? Paula Amann candidly probes these questions and more as she explores how secular and nominal Jews are blazing their own trails toward a vibrant, twenty-first-century Judaism. With the ear of a journalist and the heart of a seeker, Amann weaves a tapestry of human stories—of alienation, connection, spiritual detours, and unexpected portals into a life of faith. The people you meet in this engaging book will throw a fresh light on Jewish thought and practice. And their tales of personal transformation might just renew your relationship with Judaism—or send you off on your own Jewish journey. Topics include: Swerving In and Out of Other Faiths Traditions That Chafe The Arts as a Portal Healing Body and Soul Making a Jewish Life That Works ... And Many Others

Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987155
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling from across a dozen countries in Latin America, in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus’s arrival. In the tradition of V.S. Naipaul’s explorations of India, the Caribbean, and the Arab World, he came back with an extraordinarily vivid travelogue. Stavans talks to families of the desaparecidos in Buenos Aires, to “Indian Jews,” and to people affiliated with neo-Nazi groups in Patagonia. He also visits Spain to understand the long-term effects of the Inquisition, the American Southwest habitat of “secret Jews,” and Israel, where immigrants from Latin America have reshaped the Jewish state. Along the way, he looks for the proverbial “seventh heaven,” which, according to the Talmud, out of proximity with the divine, the meaning of life in general, and Jewish life in particular, becomes clearer. The Seventh Heaven is a masterful work in Stavans’s ongoing quest to find a convergence between the personal and the historical.

Author: Jeremy Leigh
Publisher: Armchair Traveller (Haus Publi
ISBN: 9781904950394
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The 'journey' is at the heart of the Jewish experience - an anthology of Jewish 'travel writing'

Author: Mike Marqusee
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781683654
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
If I Am Not For Myself is a passionate, thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century. It traces the author's upbringing in 1960s Jewish-American suburbia, his anti-war and pro-Palestinian activism on the British left, and life as a Jew among Muslims in Pakistan, Morocco, and Britain. Interwoven with this are the experiences of his grandfather's life in Jewish New York of the 1930s and 40s, his struggles with anti-Semitism and the twists and turns that led him from anti-fascism to militant Zionism. In the course of this deeply personal story, Marqusee refutes the claims of Israel and Zionism on Jewish loyalty and laments their impact on the Jewish diaspora. Rather, he argues for a richer, more multi-dimensional understanding of Jewish history and identity, and reclaims vital political and personal space for those castigated as "self-haters" by the Jewish establishment.

Author: Gadi BenEzer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900439656X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
In Migration Journeys to Israel, psychologist/anthropologist Gadi BenEzer examines the neglected subject of journeys of migrants and refugees, focusing on the experience and meaning of such journeys for Jews migrating to Israel from around the world during the 20th century.