One People?: "Tradition, Modernity, and Jewish Unity 2nd Edition"

History

Sacks Rab, Rabbi Jonathan

World

Littman Library of Jewish Civilization

Using previously unpublished material, including private correspondence, Shapiro (Judaic Studies, U. of Scranton, Pennsylvania) discusses the many aspects of the life and thought of Rabbi Weinberg (1884-1966), an important ideologue of modern Orthodoxy. The author focuses on his evolving philosophical orientation, from his early years in Poland, his years in Germany, Lithuania, and Poland from WWI through the Nazi era, and his post-war years in Switzerland.

Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884-1966 (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)

Biographies & Memoirs

Shapiro, Marc B.

Community & Culture

Poland today is a very different country from Poland of the past, yet attitudes inherited from the past continue to affect Polish Jewish relations in the present. In Poland itself, memories of the Jewish place in Poland's history are being re-evaluated. In America the old attitudes that divided the two sides in the Old Country seemed for a long time to be becoming more entrenched. This volume, probably the first comprehensive study of Polish Jewish relations in North America, explores how this happened, and also considers the efforts being made to put the resentments caused by past conflicts to one side as the influences long dominant in the Polish Jewish relationship in North America begin to lose their formative power. The contributors deal boldly with matters at the heart of the relationship. There is an attempt to quantify the attitudes of both sides to a number of key aspects of the Holocaust, and fascinating questions are raised about how the Holocaust has distorted the structure of Polish Jewish mutual perceptions, and why the Holocaust remains a problem in Polish Jewish relations. There is an investigation of how crude stereotypes of Polish peasants have found their way into Jewish history textbooks, crucially affecting the disposition of American Jews towards Poland, and of how the stereotyped world of the shtetl still haunts the American Jewish imagination with great consequences for the attitude to Poles and Polish Americans. The way in which this stereotype confronts reality in the context of the March of the Living is provocatively discussed, along with the options for dealing with a landscape 'poor in Jews, but rich in Jewish ruins'. A number of chapters describe attempts to overcome mutual stereotyping, including a detailed and valuable account of the National Polish American Jewish American Council and of the attempts that have been made to steer the Jedwabne debate in a constructive direction. These small beginnings show that it is possible to go beyond theËœresentments caused by past conflicts and to concentrate instead on what has linked Poles and Jews in their long history. 'Rich and diverse . . . a must for anyone taking up serious studies of Jewish issues not only in the United States, but also in Poland.' Przemyslaw Rozanski, Zeitschrift fÃ¼r Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung.

Polish-Jewish Relations in North America (Polin Vol. 19)

Europe

How Jewish is Jewish History? (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)

With great vigour and from the vantage point of long experience of writing and teaching Jewish history, Moshe Rosman treats the key questions that postmodernism raises for the writing of Jewish history.What is the relationship between Jewish culture and history and those of the non-Jews among whom Jews live? Can we-in the light of postmodernist thought-speak of a continuous, coherent Jewish People, with a distinct culture and history? What in fact is Jewish cultural history, and how can it be written? How does gender transform the Jewish historical narrative? How does Jewish history fit into the multicultural paradigm? Has Jewish history entered a postmodern phase? How can Jewish history utilize the methodologies of other disciplines to accomplish its task? All these are questions that Jewish historians need to think about if their work is to be taken seriously by mainstream historians and intellectuals, or indeed by educated Jews interested in understanding their own cultural and historical past. While engaging with the questions raised by postmodernists, the author adopts a critical stance towards their work. His basic claim is that it is possible to incorporate, judiciously, postmodern innovations into historical scholarship that is still based on documentary research and critical analysis. The resulting endeavor might be termed 'a reformed positivism'. Rosman presents a concentrated, coherent, cogent argument as to what considerations must be brought to bear on the writing of Jewish history today. By highlighting in one book the issues raised by postmodernism, How Jewish is Jewish History? provides those in the field with a foundation from which to discuss how it should be practiced in light of this generation's challenges. It is a valuable resource for students of Jewish history and historiography and a handy tool for scholars who must confront the issues aired here in their own more narrowly focused scholarly works.

How Jewish Is Jewish History? (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)

Moshe Rosman

Historical Study & Educational Resources

This study of Jewish cultural innovation in early twentieth-century France highlights the complexity and ambivalence of Jewish identity and self-definition in the modern world. Following the Dreyfus affair, French Jews increasingly began to question how Jewishness should be defined in a society where Jews enjoyed full political equality. Writers who had previously not given voice to their Jewish origins began to explore biblical themes, traditional Jewish folklore, and issues of identity and assimilation. A plethora of new journals focusing on Jewish religion, history, and culture came into being, as did a multitude of associations-literary societies, youth groups, religious organizations-that emphasized Jewish distinctiveness Nadia Malinovich explores this blossoming of Jewish cultural life in France, often described by contemporaries as a Jewish 'renaissance' or 'awakening'. Describing and analysing the emergence of new forms of Jewish associational life, she shows that the interface between the various groups was as important as the differences between them: it was the process of debate and dialogue that infused new energy into French Jewish identity and culture.She similarly analyses the Jewish press and literature to develop a typology of themes, providing a panoramic view of how Jewish identity and culture were discussed and debated among Jews and non-Jews of varying ideological, cultural, and political orientations. Her analysis also provides a vantage point from which to explore the complex ways in which French national identity was re-negotiated in the early twentieth century. During this period, French Jews in effect reshaped the category of Frenchness itself, and in so doing created new possibilities for being both French and Jewish. This is a stimulating and original book that makes a major contribution to our understanding of modern Jewish history as well as to the history of the Jews in France and to the larger discourse about Jewish identities in the modern world.

French and Jewish: Culture and the Politics of Identity in Early-Twentieth Century France

Nadia Malinovich

Jews encounter the prayer-book - the Siddur - more often in their daily lives than any other text, yet it is mysteriously absent from their otherwise comprehensive curriculum of study. The present work, the first to examine this paradox, explains this as a reluctance to engage with the intellectual and emotional questions that the liturgy generates. Submitted to close examination, Jewish prayer is shown to be less a deferential dialogue with an attentive deity than a liturgy of protest in the face of the chaotic unpredictability of the human condition, a protest qualified only by joyous recognition of God's role in ensuring life itself. This ground-breaking work studies the opening sections of the morning liturgyËœusing methods traditionally applied to talmudic and midrashic texts. Close analysis of each textual layer, and not merely the surface meaning, demonstrates that because the liturgy is composed of citations drawn from other texts, the echoes of the original context reverberate in the new composition and form a countertext to the words on the page. It further shows how the emotions generated by these texts are tempered by the individual's location - home and later the synagogue - as well the fact that they are recited when facing the dangers of the day ahead. The resulting chorus of ideas, linking everyday life to the sacred narrative from creation to exile, demonstrates the philosophical sophistication of rabbinic spirituality in offering poetic insight into an ultimately tragic vision of reality. *** "With Undercurrents of Jewish Prayer, Jeremy Schonfield asserts his undeniable right to be accepted into the first rank of Jewish liturgical scholars . . . no-one who completes this superb book will be able to look at a prayer book in the same way again. Schonfield sets the tone for his approach in the first three chapters, preparing his reader for an analysis that will be minute, lateral, creative, and highly convincing, as well as informed throughout by the author's broad scholarship . . . a collection of jewels." Ëœ~ Charles Middleburgh, Jewish Chronicle

Undercurrents of Jewish Prayer (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)

Schonfield, Jeremy

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