Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy (Jewish Identities in Post-Modern Society)

For centuries, fervently observant Jewish communities have produced thousands of works of Jewish law, thought, and spirituality. But in recent decades, the literature of America’s Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] community has taken on brand-new forms: selfhelp books, cookbooks, monthly magazines, parenting guides, biographies, picture books, even adventure stories and spy novels― all produced by Haredi men and women, for the Haredi readership. What’s changed? Why did these works appear, and what do they mean to the community that produces and consumes them? How has the Haredi world, as it seeks fidelity to unchanging tradition, so radically changed what it writes and what it reads? In answering these questions, Strictly Kosher Reading points to a central paradox in contemporary Haredi life. Haredi Jewry sets itself apart, claiming to reject modern secular culture as dangerous and threatening to everything Torah stands for. But in practice, Haredi popular literature reveals a community thoroughly embedded in contemporary values. Popular literature plays a critical role in helping Haredi Jews to understand themselves as different, even as it shows them to be very much the same.

Literature & Fiction

Finkelman, Yoel

History & Criticism

Academic Studies Press

Turn it and Turn it Again

Jon A. Levisohn

Susan P. Fendrick

Asher Ginsberg (1856-1927), also known as Ahad Ha-Am, was a prominent pre-state Zionist thinker and considered the founder of Cultural Zionism, fighting for what he described as “a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews.” This 1912 collection of essays, translated by Leon Simon, expresses his philosophy and beliefs on Zionism and other Jewish topics, helping the reader build an understanding of Ahad Ha-Am and his era.

Ahad Ha-am: Selected Essays (Classics in Judaica)

Ginsberg, Asher

Mordecai Kaplan, the co-founder of the Reconstructionist movement, defines that movement for the reader in this classic volume, which can serve as a contemporary account of the beginning of the Reconstructionist movement.

Questions Jews Ask: Reconstructionist Answers (Classics in Judaica)

History

Kaplan, Mordecai M.

World

Throughout history, Judaism has been under attack by other religions, attacks which strengthened the identification of the group as a whole. Modern challenges, however, are coming from different directions, and are producing different results. Jewish identification is declining at the same time as more and more Jewish groups to identify with are rising. Rather than being a disaster, Kaplan argues that the multiplicity of threads in Jewish life today represents the process of a radical transformation “nothing less than metamorphosis.” It is in this way that Judaism is creating its own future, the greater Judaism in the making.

The Greater Judaism in Making: A Study of Modern Evolution of Judaism (Classics in Judaica)

A survivor of concentration camps and the Death March, Eli Pfefferkorn looks back on his Holocaust and post-Holocaust experiences to compare patterns of human behavior in extremis with those of ordinary life. What he finds is that the concentration camp Müselmann, who has lost his hunger for life and is thus shunned by his fellow inmates on the soup line, bears an eerie resemblance to an office employee who has fallen from grace and whose coworkers avoid spending time with him at the water cooler. Though the circumstances are unfathomably far apart, the human response to their situations is triggered by self-preservation rather than by calculated evil. By juxtaposing these two separate worlds, Pfefferkorn demonstrates that ultimately the human condition has not changed significantly since Cain slew Abel and the Athenians sentenced Socrates.

The Muselmann at the Water Cooler: A Study of Survival in Extreme and Day-to-Day Situations: The Inside View of a Holocaust Survivor (Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History)

Biographies & Memoirs

Pfefferkorn, Eli

Community & Culture

Freedom from Violence and Lies is a collection of forty-one essays by Simon Karlinsky (1924–2009), a prolific and controversial scholar of modern Russian literature, sexual politics, and music who taught in the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures from 1964 to 1991. Among Karlinsky’s full-length works are major studies of Marina Tsvetaeva and Nikolai Gogol, Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin; editions of Anton Chekhov’s letters; writings by Russian émigrés; and correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson. Karlinsky also wrote frequently for professional journals and mainstream publications like the New York Times Book Review and the Nation. The present volume is the first collection of such shorter writings, spanning more than three decades. It includes twenty-seven essays on literary topics and fourteen on music, seven of which have been newly translated from the Russian originals.

Freedom From Violence and Lies: Essays on Russian Poetry and Music by Simon Karlinsky (Ars Rossica)

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist organization of America, has wielded power in the halls of American political institutions and in the minds of many Jews in the United States. This book enriches our understanding of both modern Jewish history and American women’s history. Hadassah is important not only for what it tells us about women but also for what it reveals about Jewish history and politics, about Zionism, and about America. In the post-World War II era, Hadassah played a significant role in shaping Jewish women’s political action and identity. Widely known for its work in Israel, Hadassah played a central role in shaping the way generations of American Jewish women thought about themselves and about their involvement on the American political scene.

From Fashion to Politics: Hadassah and Jewish American Women in the Post World War II Era

Arts & Photography

Brautbar, Shirli

Graphic Design

This collection includes two symposia, on “The Renaissance of Jewish Philosophy in America” and on “Maimonides on the Eternity of the World,” as well as other studies in medieval Jewish philosophy and modern Jewish thought. Contributors include: Leora Batnitzky, Ottfried Fraisse, William A. Galston, Lenn E. Goodman , Raphael Jospe, Steven Kepnes, Haim Howard Kreisel, Charles Bezalel Manekin, Haggai Mazuz, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Alan Mittleman, Michael Morgan, David Novak, James T. Robinson, Norbert M. Samuelson, Dov Schwartz, Yossef Schwartz, Kenneth Seeskin, Roslyn Weiss, and Martin Yaffe.

Jewish Philosophy: Perspectives and Retrospectives (Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

This far-ranging study develops Morson’s concept of “prosaics,” which stresses the importance of ordinary events and the novel’s unique ability to portray them. Arguing that time is open and contingency real, Morson develops a “prosaics of process” showing how some masterpieces have found an alternative to structure. His well-known pseudonym Alicia Chudo, the inventor of “misanthropology,” explores the disturbing philosophical content of laughter, disgust, and even empathy. Northwestern University’s most popular professor, Morson attributes declining student interest in literature to current teaching methods. He argues in favor of showing how literature fosters empathy with people unlike ourselves. Ever playful, Morson explores the relation of games to wit, which expresses the power of the mind to triumph over contingency in the social world.

Prosaics and Other Provocations: Empathy, Open Time, and the Novel (Ars Rossica)

Morson, Gary Saul

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