The Diaspora Dimension

ISBN-13: 9789401024587 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 180 str.

A. Ages

Opis

Few questions have agitated thoughtful Jews as much as the one touching on identity. The problem arose originally from the situation of the Jews as a diaspora community. From the time of Philo and probably before, great energies have been expended by Jews in seeking to understand the meaning of the Jewish dispersion. In recent times the problem has been transformed from a largely academic and relig ious issue into a political one, to wit the furious debates in modern Israel over the citizenship quandary. For more than twenty years now the Jewish State has been rocked by violent and often acrimonious discussion over the who is a Jew controversy. The consequences of these exchanges have had reverberations all over the Jewish world since a final determination of this issue could not but have important bearing on present-day diaspora communities. For reasons that are natural and understandable Israeli historians such as Baer, Dinur and Kauffman have written extensively and brilliantly about the diaspora dimensionin Jewishhistory. Theirfocus, however, has been influenced strongly by the re-birth of Israel as a political entity in this century. This has predisposed them not unex pectedly to view the vast historical sweep of diaspora history aspart of a spectrum which reflects the return to Israel as a dominant shading in the analysis."

Spis treści

I The Theory Of Diaspora.- I. The Diaspora: Origin and Meaning.- Syncretism.- The Christian Optic.- Jewish Views of the Diaspora: The Traditional.- Reform Judaism’s View.- The Zionist Reading of Jewish History.- II. The Consequences Of Diaspora.- The Historical Perspective.- The Nature of the Diaspora: Positive and Negative Aspects.- The Talmudic Heritage.- A Dissident Thesis.- Social Darwinism.- III. The Diaspora and Jewish Character.- The Diaspora and Culture Shock.- Relative Newness of Diaspora Creativity.- II The Emancipation.- IV. The French Experience Pre-Emancipation.- The Politics of Polemics.- The Religious Significance.- The Culture Clash Reflected in France’s Literature.- V. The Emancipation.- The Assimilatory Phase.- La France Juive.- VI. Dreyfus.- Herzl.- The Twentieth Century.- The Psychology of the French Diaspora.- The Six Day War.- France’s Diaspora Dimension.- VII. The Russian Diaspora: The Matrix.- The Religious Sector.- Hassidism.- Haskalah.- The New Apostasy.- Jewish Nationalism: Soviet Style.- Jewish Fate under Communism.- The Student Reaction.- VIII. The Russian Zion Alternative.- The Great Diaspora Debate.- Zionism Versus Communism.- The Impact of the Six Day War.- Russian Diaspora Consciousness.- III The Modern Agony.- IX. The German-Jewish Synthesis.- The Historical Perspective.- The Christian Phase.- The Economic Factor.- The Protestant Reformation - Humanism.- Humanism to Reformation.- The Jewish Reformation.- The Jewish Counter-reformation.- Reform.- German Neo-Orthodoxy: Torah Im Derekh Eretz.- Results of the Religious Feuds.- X. Anti-Semitism, Nationalism, Self-Hate, The Failure Of Symbiosis.- Loyalty and Betrayal.- German Anti-Semitism: The Seeds.- From Luther to the Third Reich.- Jews and the Concept of Volksgeist.- The Role of the Professoriat.- Jewish Reactions to Anti-Semitism.- Epilogue. Is America Different?.