Martin Buber's Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897-1909

Religion & Spirituality

Schmidt, Gilya Gerda

Judaism

Univ of Alabama Pr

The First Buber: Youthful Zionist Writings of Martin Buber (Martin Buber Library)

As a college student Martin Buber was a leader in the early Zionist movement. During the period between 1898 and 1902 he published a series of Zionist writings that were clearly meant to be confrontational and challenge those who embraced traditional Judaism.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Syracuse University Press

As a college student Martin Buber was a leader in the early Zionist movement. During the period between 1898 and 1902 he published a series of Zionist writings that were clearly meant to be confrontational and challenge those who embraced traditional Judaism.

Poetry

Martin Buber and friends successfully lobbied the congress for inclusion of cultural Zionism into the official agenda of the Zionist organization, resulting in the establishment of the Bezalel Art Institute in Jerusalem in 1905. In the first book of its kind, Gilya Gerda Schmidt places this art exhibition in the context of political Zionism as well as anti-Semitism. Jews had been denied the opportunity to be creative, and religious Zionists feared that Jewish culture would usurp religion within the Zionist movement. Hermann Struck, an artist and Orthodox Jew, became a founding member of the religious Zionist Party, further supporting Buber's assertion that culture and religion were not at odds. The forty-eight works of art in the exhibition were created by eleven artists, all but two of whom were famous in their lifetime. Until now, their works had been largely forgotten. In the last decade, contributing artistsEphraim Lilien, Lesser Ury, Jozef Israels, Struck, and Maurycy Gottliebhave enjoyed a revival of their work.

The Art and Artists of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901: Heralds of a New Age (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art)

Arts & Photography

Martin Buber (1878-1965) was born into a world of two cultures - his Jewish family and his Austrian fatherland. During his childhood with his grandparents in Galician Lvov, Jewish values and German aesthetics coexisted. But after Buber re-entered fin-de-siecle Viennese society, the world of his grandparents fell apart. Nothing was as it should have been: Jewish hopes for full social integration were disappointed, Yiddish culture seemingly caused modern Jewish youth to be impoverished, and the Jewish religion had become ossified. In his personal confusion, Buber clearly grasped the essence of the problem: emancipation had failed, German culture was dying, Jews were on their own, and tradition was no longer good enough. During the period from 1897 to 1909, Buber's keen sense of the crisis of humanity, his intimate knowledge of German culture and Jewish sources, and his fearlessness in the face of possible ridicule challenged him to behave in a manner so outrageous and so contrary to German-Jewish tradition that he actually achieved a transformation of himself and those close to him. Calling on spiritual giants of great historical periods in German, Christian, and Jewish history - such as Nicolas of Cusa, Jakob Bohme, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Brazlav, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Nietzsche - Buber proceeded to subvert the existing order by turning his upside-down world of slave morality right side up once more. If contemporary life was bankrupt, why lament? Did not God command humanity to act? Buber wholeheartedly immersed himself in the making of a new world, of Zionist culture, of Hasidic spirituality, of Romantic individuality, of unity from diversity. By examining the multitude of disparate sources that Buber turned to for inspiration, this book aims to elucidate Buber's creative genius and his contribution to turn-of-the-century Jewish renewal. Schmidt's timely and comprehensive study concludes that Buber was successful in creating the German-Jewish symbiosis that Emancipation was to have created for the two peoples, but that this synthesis was tragic because it came too late for practical application by Jews in Germany. Those listening to Buber were about to leave voluntarily for the ancestral Jewish homeland, and the Jews who were not interested then were later forced to leave - or to submit to worse fates. The opportunity for the realization of a German-Jewish symbiosis had passed.

Martin Buber's Formative Years: From German Culture to Jewish Renewal, 1897-1909 (Judaic Studies Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

University Alabama Press

Süssen Is Now Free of Jews offers a close look at the legacy of a few Jewish families from Süssen―a village in the District of Göppingen, which is located in the state of Baden Württemberg in southern Germany. The author, Gilya Gerda Schmidt, looks at this rural region through the lens of two Jewish families―the Langs andthe Ottenheimers―who settled there in the early twentieth century. As a child, she shared with the Langs the same living space for just a few months. She remembers her mother’s telling her of the Jews who lived in Süssen until the Holocaust. More than thirty years later, in a used bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee, the author accidentally found documentation verifying the Jewish presence in a book about the surviving Jews of Württemberg. In it, she found confirmation that there had been Jews living in Süssen until the Holocaust. For the first time, she had the proof she needed to look into the reality behind this lingering mystery. Here began her detective-like journey to find out what happened to the Jews of Süssen.A decade of research into local and regional archives ensued, and this very penetrating study is the result. In it, the author attempts to shed light on not just the original question of what happened to the two families during the Holocaust but also on a host of other questions: What was it like to be Jewish in rural southern Germany a century ago? What were the Jewish traditions of this region? What were the relations between Jews and Christians before the Holocaust? And where did those family members who were able to escape or who survived the concentration camps go when they left Süssen or Göppingen? Few witnesses came forward, yet the documents in the archives spoke volumes. This micro-history records the not-so-romantic journey of two Jewish families who lived in the Fils Valley. The study also addresses issues of being an American prisoner of war; of resuming life after the Holocaust; of the bureaucratic nightmare of requisitions, restitution, and reparations; and of life in America.This unique book will be of interest to a general readership and is an important book for scholars in German and Holocaust studies.

Süssen Is Now Free of Jews: World War II, The Holocaust, and Rural Judaism (World War II: The Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension)

History

Europe

Fordham University Press

Hazzan Mordecai Gustav Heiser: An Artist, His Art, and the Cantor Tradition in America (Charles K. Wolfe Music Series)

Historical

University of Tennessee Press

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Books by Schmidt, Gilya Gerda