Franz Kafka, the Jewish writer from Prague, who wrote in German, grew up after the Emancipation at a time when most Jews in Central and Western Europe suffered from an identity crisis. The most prominent characteristic of the experience of this generation of young people was "hybridism," a kind of partial assimilation that brought them to a dead-end. In Franz Kafka: A Question of Jewish Identity, Sara Loeb examines this complex dialectic, focusing on the question of if, how, and to what extent Kafka's works reflect the identity crisis he suffered. She offers a new perspective of his life...
Franz Kafka, the Jewish writer from Prague, who wrote in German, grew up after the Emancipation at a time when most Jews in Central and Western Europe...
The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881 Israel Bartal. Translated by Chaya Naor "The book represents a remarkable achievement. Bartal presents the broad contours of nineteenth-century East European Jewish history even as he reworks them into a nontraditional narrative. He offers readers basic information about the staple features of the East European Jewish story--including the Hasidic and haskalah movements, the struggle for emancipation in two empires, the shtetl, population growth, urbanization, emigration, the crystallization of orthodox Judaism, and the rise of Jewish nationalism--while at...
The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881 Israel Bartal. Translated by Chaya Naor "The book represents a remarkable achievement. Bartal presents the broad...
This fascinating case study describes the work of the people responsible for creating festive lore and its system of ceremonies and festivities-an inseparable part of every culture. In the case of the new modern Hebrew culture of Eretz Israel (modern Jewish Palestine)-a society of immigrants that left behind most of their traditional folkways-the creation of festival lore was a conscious and organized process guided by a national ideology and aesthetic values. This creative effort in a secular national society served as an alternative to the traditional religious system, adapted the...
This fascinating case study describes the work of the people responsible for creating festive lore and its system of ceremonies and festivities-an ...
This work, the first of its kind, describes all the aspects of the Bible revolution in Jewish history in the last two hundred years, as well as the emergence of the new biblical culture. It describes the circumstances and processes that turned Holy Scripture into the Book of Books and into the history of the biblical period and of the people - the Jewish people. It deals with the encounter of the Jews with modern biblical criticism and the archaeological research of the Ancient Near East and with contemporary archaeology. The middle section discusses the extensive involvement of educated Jews...
This work, the first of its kind, describes all the aspects of the Bible revolution in Jewish history in the last two hundred years, as well as the em...
Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. As aspirations for liberation clashed with adherence to tradition, as national, ethnic, cultural, and other alternatives emerged and a long, circuitous search for identity began, it was no longer evident that the definition of Jewishness would be based on the beliefs and practices surrounding the study of the Torah.
In "The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe" Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by...
Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new w...
At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as supplements to traditional Talmudic studies. The full participation of Jews in modern Europe and...
At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding domi...
