Toward a Creative American Jewish Culture

Toward a Creative American Jewish Culture PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 17

Book Description


Divergent Jewish Cultures

Divergent Jewish Cultures PDF Author: Deborah Dash Moore
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030013021X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
Two creative centers of Jewish life rose to prominence in the twentieth century, one in Israel and the other in the United States. Although Israeli and American Jews share kinship and history drawn from their Eastern European roots, they have developed divergent cultures from their common origins, often seeming more like distant cousins than close relatives. This book explores why this is so, examining how two communities that constitute eighty percent of the world’s Jewish population have created separate identities and cultures. Using examples from literature, art, history, and politics, leading Israeli and American scholars focus on the political, social, and memory cultures of their two communities, considering in particular the American Jewish challenge to diaspora consciousness and the Israeli struggle to forge a secular, national Jewish identity. At the same time, they seek to understand how a sense of mutual responsibility and fate animates American and Israeli Jews who reside in distant places, speak different languages, and live within different political and social worlds.

Toward a Creative Jewish Community in America

Toward a Creative Jewish Community in America PDF Author: Robert Gordis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Community (Jewish)
Languages : en
Pages : 45

Book Description


Judaism as a Civilization

Judaism as a Civilization PDF Author: Mordecai M. Kaplan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827609183
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 659

Book Description
In a book originally published in 1934, the author introduces a different way of looking at Judaism--as a changing religious civilization that requires new ideas in liturgy and ritual, the elimination of obsolete customs and an adjustment based on social, political and cultural conditions. Reprint.

Jewish in America

Jewish in America PDF Author: Sara Blair
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780472068807
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"Jewish culture in America is creating a genuinely new archive---a powerful admixture of texts old and new, Jewish and gentile, sacred and secular, on which our writers and critics offer creative commentary and to which they make compelling response. Shaped in the American crucible of race and ethnicity, pushed and pulled by the American traditions of ahistorical and individualist thinking, empowered by a powerful sacramental and hermeneutic tradition yet challenged by that tradition's stunning variety of inflections, impelled to furious response by world crisis, these writers testify not only to the anguishing and joyous complexity of being Jewish in America, but the creative energies such multiplicity generates." -From the Introduction This rare and original work of cultural studies offers uncommon and engaging perspectives-as well as provocative and humorous insights-on what it means to be Jewish in America. Jewish in America features poetry, art, essays, and stories from an impressive and respected list of contributors, including among others Stephen Greenblatt, Richard Kostelanetz, Jacqueline Osherow, Robert Pinsky, Sharon Pomerantz, Nancy Reisman, Grace Schulman, Louis Simpson, Alisa Solomon, and Stephen J. Whitfield. In addition to pieces by some of the country's leading writers, the book features a stunning gallery of original photographs that transport the viewer from the crowded Coney Island beaches of the 1940s to the landscapes of Oaxaca, Mexico in the 1990s.

Judaism as a Civilization

Judaism as a Civilization PDF Author: Mordecai Menahem Kaplan
Publisher: New York : Schocken Books
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 630

Book Description


Jewish Megatrends

Jewish Megatrends PDF Author: Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, PhD
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1580237207
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
Visionary solutions for a community ripe for transformational change—from fourteen leading innovators of Jewish life. "Jewish Megatrends offers a vision for a community that can simultaneously strengthen the institutions that serve those who seek greater Jewish identification and attract younger Jews, many of whom are currently outside the orbit of Jewish communal life. Schwarz and his collaborators provide an exciting path, building on proven examples, that we ignore at our peril." —from the Foreword The American Jewish community is riddled with doubts about the viability of the institutions that well served the Jewish community of the twentieth century. Synagogues, Federations and Jewish membership organizations have yet to figure out how to meet the changing interests and needs of the next generation. In this challenging yet hopeful call for transformational change, visionary leader Rabbi Sidney Schwarz looks at the social norms that are shaping the habits and lifestyles of younger American Jews and why the next generation is so resistant to participate in the institutions of Jewish communal life as they currently exist. He sets out four guiding principles that can drive a renaissance in Jewish life and gives evidence of how, on the margins of the Jewish community, those principles are already generating enthusiasm and engagement from the very millennials that the organized Jewish community has yet to engage. Contributors—leading innovators from different sectors of the Jewish community—each use Rabbi Schwarz's framework as a springboard to set forth their particular vision for the future of their sector of Jewish life and beyond.

Beyond Stereotypes

Beyond Stereotypes PDF Author: Bruce Zuckerman
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1557536996
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
In the decades after the Civil War, sports slowly gained a prominent position within American culture. This development provided Jews with opportunities to participate in one of the few American cultures not closed off to them. Jewish athleticism challenged anti-Semitic depictions of Jews' supposed physical inferiority and an Americanization narrative emerged that connected Jewish athleticism with full acceptance and integration into American society. This acceptance was not without struggle, but Jews succeeded and participated in the American sporting culture as athletes, coaches, owners, and fans. The contributions to this volume paint a broad picture of Jewish participation in sports, with essays written by respected historians who examine the impact of sport on Judaism. Despite the continued belief that Jewish religious or cultural identity remains somehow distinct from the American idea of the "athlete," the volume demonstrates that American Jews have made a tremendous contribution to American sports, and that sports have helped construct American Jewish culture and identity.

The Wonders of America

The Wonders of America PDF Author: Jenna Weissman Joselit
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805070026
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
The selective relish with which most American Jews affirm their identity -- consuming kosher delicacies once a year, extravagantly celebrating the bar mitzvahs of their sons and the weddings of their daughters -- has usually given rise to satire or consternation. The Wonders of America offers an alternative perspective, for this pioneering social history of Jewish culture highlights the cultural ingenuity and adaptive genius of American Jewish life. Drawing on advertisements, etiquette manuals, sermons, and surveys, Jenna Weissman Joselit constructs a lively and humorous account of how three generations of American Jews created their distinctive American culture. This provocative, enlightening study describes the forging of a rich and exuberant modern Jewish identity and makes it clear that it is not the theoretical debates of rabbis and scholars but the small choices of daily life that shape and sustain a culture

Creativity and Continuity

Creativity and Continuity PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 20

Book Description