Steven B. Bowman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804755849
- eISBN:
- 9780804772495
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804755849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book tells the story of modern Greek Jewry as it came under the control of the Kingdom of Greece during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it deals with the vicissitudes of ...
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This book tells the story of modern Greek Jewry as it came under the control of the Kingdom of Greece during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it deals with the vicissitudes of those Jews who held Greek citizenship during the interwar and wartime periods. Individual chapters address the participation of Greek and Palestinian Jews in the 1941 fighting with Italy and Germany, the roles of Jews in the Greek Resistance, aid, and rescue attempts, and the problems faced by Jews who returned from the camps and the mountains in the aftermath of the German retreat. The book focuses on the fate of one minority group of Greek citizens during the war and explores various aspects of its relations with the conquerors, the conquered, and concerned bystanders. It contains archival material and interviews with survivors.Less
This book tells the story of modern Greek Jewry as it came under the control of the Kingdom of Greece during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it deals with the vicissitudes of those Jews who held Greek citizenship during the interwar and wartime periods. Individual chapters address the participation of Greek and Palestinian Jews in the 1941 fighting with Italy and Germany, the roles of Jews in the Greek Resistance, aid, and rescue attempts, and the problems faced by Jews who returned from the camps and the mountains in the aftermath of the German retreat. The book focuses on the fate of one minority group of Greek citizens during the war and explores various aspects of its relations with the conquerors, the conquered, and concerned bystanders. It contains archival material and interviews with survivors.
Scott Ury
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804763837
- eISBN:
- 9780804781046
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804763837.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book examines the intersection of urban society and modern politics among Jews in turn-of-the-century Warsaw, Europe's largest Jewish center at the time. By focusing on the tumultuous events ...
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This book examines the intersection of urban society and modern politics among Jews in turn-of-the-century Warsaw, Europe's largest Jewish center at the time. By focusing on the tumultuous events surrounding the Revolution of 1905, this book argues that the metropolitization of Jewish life led to a need for new forms of community and belonging, and that the ensuing search for collective and individual order gave birth to the new institutions, organizations, and practices that would define modern Jewish society and politics for the remainder of the twentieth century.Less
This book examines the intersection of urban society and modern politics among Jews in turn-of-the-century Warsaw, Europe's largest Jewish center at the time. By focusing on the tumultuous events surrounding the Revolution of 1905, this book argues that the metropolitization of Jewish life led to a need for new forms of community and belonging, and that the ensuing search for collective and individual order gave birth to the new institutions, organizations, and practices that would define modern Jewish society and politics for the remainder of the twentieth century.
Daniel Tsadik
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804754583
- eISBN:
- 9780804779487
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804754583.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
Based on archival and primary sources in Persian, Hebrew, Judeo-Persian, Arabic, and European languages, this book examines the Jews' religious, social, and political status in nineteenth-century ...
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Based on archival and primary sources in Persian, Hebrew, Judeo-Persian, Arabic, and European languages, this book examines the Jews' religious, social, and political status in nineteenth-century Iran. Focusing on Nasir al-Din Shah's reign (1848–1896), it is a comprehensive scholarly attempt to weave all these threads into a single tapestry. This case study of the Jewish minority illuminates broader processes pertaining to other religious minorities and Iranian society in general, and the interaction among intervening foreigners, the Shi'i majority, and local Jews helps us understand Iranian dilemmas that have persisted well beyond the second half of the nineteenth century.Less
Based on archival and primary sources in Persian, Hebrew, Judeo-Persian, Arabic, and European languages, this book examines the Jews' religious, social, and political status in nineteenth-century Iran. Focusing on Nasir al-Din Shah's reign (1848–1896), it is a comprehensive scholarly attempt to weave all these threads into a single tapestry. This case study of the Jewish minority illuminates broader processes pertaining to other religious minorities and Iranian society in general, and the interaction among intervening foreigners, the Shi'i majority, and local Jews helps us understand Iranian dilemmas that have persisted well beyond the second half of the nineteenth century.
Debra Kaplan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804774420
- eISBN:
- 9780804779050
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804774420.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book is a history of Jewish–Christian interactions in early modern Strasbourg, a city from which the Jews had been expelled and banned from residence in the late fourteenth century. It shows ...
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This book is a history of Jewish–Christian interactions in early modern Strasbourg, a city from which the Jews had been expelled and banned from residence in the late fourteenth century. It shows that the Jews who remained in the Alsatian countryside continued to maintain relationships with the city and its residents in the ensuing period. During most of the sixteenth century, Jews entered Strasbourg on a daily basis, where they participated in the city's markets, litigated in its courts, and shared their knowledge of Hebrew and Judaica with Protestant Reformers. By the end of the sixteenth century, Strasbourg became an increasingly orthodox Lutheran city, and city magistrates and religious leaders sought to curtail contact between Jews and Christians. The book unearths the active Jewish participation in early modern society, traces the impact of the Reformation on local Jews, discusses the meaning of tolerance, and describes the shifting boundaries that divided Jewish and Christian communities.Less
This book is a history of Jewish–Christian interactions in early modern Strasbourg, a city from which the Jews had been expelled and banned from residence in the late fourteenth century. It shows that the Jews who remained in the Alsatian countryside continued to maintain relationships with the city and its residents in the ensuing period. During most of the sixteenth century, Jews entered Strasbourg on a daily basis, where they participated in the city's markets, litigated in its courts, and shared their knowledge of Hebrew and Judaica with Protestant Reformers. By the end of the sixteenth century, Strasbourg became an increasingly orthodox Lutheran city, and city magistrates and religious leaders sought to curtail contact between Jews and Christians. The book unearths the active Jewish participation in early modern society, traces the impact of the Reformation on local Jews, discusses the meaning of tolerance, and describes the shifting boundaries that divided Jewish and Christian communities.
Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780804785471
- eISBN:
- 9780804787161
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804785471.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book explores Jewish commercial partnerships in medieval Egypt, and reveals Jewish merchants to have used economic cooperation as a vehicle for cultural identity formation and maintenance. ...
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This book explores Jewish commercial partnerships in medieval Egypt, and reveals Jewish merchants to have used economic cooperation as a vehicle for cultural identity formation and maintenance. Through a detailed analysis of the legal documents of the Cairo Geniza, the book shows an affinity between Jewish law and the daily life of Jewish merchants filtered through the courts, which educated merchants about the norms of Jewish commercial law without necessarily demanding that the merchants transact their business according to those norms. However, a close reading of the actual documentary evidence shows that they have done so, and even shows how merchants’ choice to do so affirmed their Jewish identity in ways that cut across a number of different cultural domains. The idea that Jewish merchants might have had distinctive business practices reflecting their Jewish identity challenges the regnant wisdom of the “Princeton School” of Geniza scholars, who have used letters from Jewish merchants as a tool for describing the practice of the broad medieval Islamic marketplace. This book examines the historical practice of the Princeton School and questions the “identity” that scholars have understood to exist between the mercantile behavior of Jews and Muslims. The book proposes an alternative to this “identity” which accounts for the evidence from the legal documents of the Geniza and proposes a more complex relationship between Jewish and Muslim commercial behavior in the medieval Islamic world.Less
This book explores Jewish commercial partnerships in medieval Egypt, and reveals Jewish merchants to have used economic cooperation as a vehicle for cultural identity formation and maintenance. Through a detailed analysis of the legal documents of the Cairo Geniza, the book shows an affinity between Jewish law and the daily life of Jewish merchants filtered through the courts, which educated merchants about the norms of Jewish commercial law without necessarily demanding that the merchants transact their business according to those norms. However, a close reading of the actual documentary evidence shows that they have done so, and even shows how merchants’ choice to do so affirmed their Jewish identity in ways that cut across a number of different cultural domains. The idea that Jewish merchants might have had distinctive business practices reflecting their Jewish identity challenges the regnant wisdom of the “Princeton School” of Geniza scholars, who have used letters from Jewish merchants as a tool for describing the practice of the broad medieval Islamic marketplace. This book examines the historical practice of the Princeton School and questions the “identity” that scholars have understood to exist between the mercantile behavior of Jews and Muslims. The book proposes an alternative to this “identity” which accounts for the evidence from the legal documents of the Geniza and proposes a more complex relationship between Jewish and Muslim commercial behavior in the medieval Islamic world.
Ellie R. Schainker
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804798280
- eISBN:
- 9781503600249
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804798280.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
Confessions of the Shtetl explores Jewish conversions to a variety of Christian confessions in nineteenth-century imperial Russia. The book analyzes the surprisingly restrained policy of the Russian ...
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Confessions of the Shtetl explores Jewish conversions to a variety of Christian confessions in nineteenth-century imperial Russia. The book analyzes the surprisingly restrained policy of the Russian state and Orthodox Church toward conversion of Jews which highlights the meaning and management of toleration and religious diversity in imperial Russia more broadly. The book also offers a micro-level sociocultural history of converts, focusing on their motivations and post-baptism trajectories, and on relationships with Christians forged prior to baptism that facilitated religious transfers. It explores the responses of local Jewish and Christian families, communities, and authorities to this extreme form of boundary crossing, highlighting the various measures at the Jewish community’s disposal to contest apostasy. Finally, the book offers a cultural history of Jewish and Russian/Christian public discourses surrounding conversion and the questions it raised, ranging from the grounds of religious toleration to the nature of Jews themselves. Overall, the argument is that the Jewish encounter with imperial Russia was a genuinely religious drama with a diverse, attractive, and aggressive Christianity. The book unsettles the vision of Jews in the Pale of Settlement as a ghettoized community and analyzes the spatial, social, and cultural ties between Jews and Christians. Drawing on previously untapped archival files, the mass circulation press, novels, and memoirs, the book argues that baptism did not constitute a total break with Jewishness or the Jewish community and that conversion marked the start of a complicated experiment with new forms of identity and belonging.Less
Confessions of the Shtetl explores Jewish conversions to a variety of Christian confessions in nineteenth-century imperial Russia. The book analyzes the surprisingly restrained policy of the Russian state and Orthodox Church toward conversion of Jews which highlights the meaning and management of toleration and religious diversity in imperial Russia more broadly. The book also offers a micro-level sociocultural history of converts, focusing on their motivations and post-baptism trajectories, and on relationships with Christians forged prior to baptism that facilitated religious transfers. It explores the responses of local Jewish and Christian families, communities, and authorities to this extreme form of boundary crossing, highlighting the various measures at the Jewish community’s disposal to contest apostasy. Finally, the book offers a cultural history of Jewish and Russian/Christian public discourses surrounding conversion and the questions it raised, ranging from the grounds of religious toleration to the nature of Jews themselves. Overall, the argument is that the Jewish encounter with imperial Russia was a genuinely religious drama with a diverse, attractive, and aggressive Christianity. The book unsettles the vision of Jews in the Pale of Settlement as a ghettoized community and analyzes the spatial, social, and cultural ties between Jews and Christians. Drawing on previously untapped archival files, the mass circulation press, novels, and memoirs, the book argues that baptism did not constitute a total break with Jewishness or the Jewish community and that conversion marked the start of a complicated experiment with new forms of identity and belonging.
Susanne Zepp
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804787451
- eISBN:
- 9780804793148
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804787451.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book discusses five Early Modern literary texts that emerged in Europe between 1499 and 1627. The 5 texts are: La Celestina, the Dialoghi d’amore by Leone Ebreo, the first picaresque novel, ...
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This book discusses five Early Modern literary texts that emerged in Europe between 1499 and 1627. The 5 texts are: La Celestina, the Dialoghi d’amore by Leone Ebreo, the first picaresque novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, Michel de Montaigne’s Essais, and João Pinto Delgado’s poeticizing treatments of biblical texts. The book understands these text as essential for the epoch, the interpretation of which has hitherto focused mainly on the – alleged or actual – Jewish, “New Christian”, or Marranic affiliation of their authors. The book replaces an origin-focused discussion of Early Modern Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French literature with another perspective which neither levels the particular character of these texts nor overlooks their encapsulation in a universal historical experience due to a too narrow focus on the authors’ biographies. The individually varying engagement of the five texts with questions of origin and ancestry described in this study reveals components of a Marranic historical experience beyond the authors’ affiliations. These components seem like layers of memory which, although buried, build the foundation for the overlying layers and show through them. The analysis of these texts serves to initiate a fresh discussion of the complicated link between author and text as well as of the relevance of an author’s origin for an insight into aesthetic characteristics. The texts provide an understanding of Jewish History in Early Modern Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian Literatures in the emergence of modernity.Less
This book discusses five Early Modern literary texts that emerged in Europe between 1499 and 1627. The 5 texts are: La Celestina, the Dialoghi d’amore by Leone Ebreo, the first picaresque novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, Michel de Montaigne’s Essais, and João Pinto Delgado’s poeticizing treatments of biblical texts. The book understands these text as essential for the epoch, the interpretation of which has hitherto focused mainly on the – alleged or actual – Jewish, “New Christian”, or Marranic affiliation of their authors. The book replaces an origin-focused discussion of Early Modern Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French literature with another perspective which neither levels the particular character of these texts nor overlooks their encapsulation in a universal historical experience due to a too narrow focus on the authors’ biographies. The individually varying engagement of the five texts with questions of origin and ancestry described in this study reveals components of a Marranic historical experience beyond the authors’ affiliations. These components seem like layers of memory which, although buried, build the foundation for the overlying layers and show through them. The analysis of these texts serves to initiate a fresh discussion of the complicated link between author and text as well as of the relevance of an author’s origin for an insight into aesthetic characteristics. The texts provide an understanding of Jewish History in Early Modern Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian Literatures in the emergence of modernity.
Matthias B. Lehmann
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804789653
- eISBN:
- 9780804792462
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804789653.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
Emissaries from the Holy Land tells the story of a philanthropic network that was overseen by the Jewish community leadership in the Ottoman capital city of Istanbul between the 1720s and the 1820s ...
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Emissaries from the Holy Land tells the story of a philanthropic network that was overseen by the Jewish community leadership in the Ottoman capital city of Istanbul between the 1720s and the 1820s in support of the impoverished Jews of Palestine. Putting the notion of Jewish solidarity, Jewish unity, and the enduring centrality of the Holy Land for the Jewish world to the test, the community leadership in Palestine and their allies in Istanbul dispatched rabbinic emissaries on fundraising missions everywhere from the shores of the Mediterranean to the port cities of the Atlantic seaboard, from the Caribbean to India. This book explores how this eighteenth-century philanthropic network was organized and how relations of trust and solidarity were built across vast geographic differences. It looks at how the emissaries and their supporters understood the relationship between the Jewish diaspora and the Land of Israel, and it shows how cross-cultural encounters and competing claims for financial support involving Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and North African emissaries and communities contributed to the transformation of Jewish identity in the eighteenth century.Less
Emissaries from the Holy Land tells the story of a philanthropic network that was overseen by the Jewish community leadership in the Ottoman capital city of Istanbul between the 1720s and the 1820s in support of the impoverished Jews of Palestine. Putting the notion of Jewish solidarity, Jewish unity, and the enduring centrality of the Holy Land for the Jewish world to the test, the community leadership in Palestine and their allies in Istanbul dispatched rabbinic emissaries on fundraising missions everywhere from the shores of the Mediterranean to the port cities of the Atlantic seaboard, from the Caribbean to India. This book explores how this eighteenth-century philanthropic network was organized and how relations of trust and solidarity were built across vast geographic differences. It looks at how the emissaries and their supporters understood the relationship between the Jewish diaspora and the Land of Israel, and it shows how cross-cultural encounters and competing claims for financial support involving Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and North African emissaries and communities contributed to the transformation of Jewish identity in the eighteenth century.
Dina Porat
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804762489
- eISBN:
- 9780804772525
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804762489.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book is the only full biography in English of the partisan, poet, and patriot Abba Kovner (1918–1987), an unsung and largely unknown hero of the Second World War and Israel's War of ...
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This book is the only full biography in English of the partisan, poet, and patriot Abba Kovner (1918–1987), an unsung and largely unknown hero of the Second World War and Israel's War of Independence, born in Vilna, “the Jerusalem of Lithuania.” Long before the rest of the world suspected, he was the first person to state that Hitler was planning to kill the Jews of Europe, and who, along with other defenders of the Vilna ghetto, escaped, only hours before its destruction, to the forest, to join the partisans fighting the Nazis. Returning after the Liberation to find Vilna empty of Jews, Kovner emigrated to Israel, where he devised a fruitless plot to take revenge on the Germans. He then joined the Israeli army and served as the Givati Brigade's Information Officer, writing “Battle Notes,” newsletters that inspired the troops defending Tel Aviv. After the war, Kovner settled on a kibbutz and dedicated his life to working the land, writing poetry, and raising a family. He was also the moving force behind such projects as the Diaspora Museum and the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. The book is based on interviews with people who knew Kovner, and on letters and archival material that have never been translated before.Less
This book is the only full biography in English of the partisan, poet, and patriot Abba Kovner (1918–1987), an unsung and largely unknown hero of the Second World War and Israel's War of Independence, born in Vilna, “the Jerusalem of Lithuania.” Long before the rest of the world suspected, he was the first person to state that Hitler was planning to kill the Jews of Europe, and who, along with other defenders of the Vilna ghetto, escaped, only hours before its destruction, to the forest, to join the partisans fighting the Nazis. Returning after the Liberation to find Vilna empty of Jews, Kovner emigrated to Israel, where he devised a fruitless plot to take revenge on the Germans. He then joined the Israeli army and served as the Givati Brigade's Information Officer, writing “Battle Notes,” newsletters that inspired the troops defending Tel Aviv. After the war, Kovner settled on a kibbutz and dedicated his life to working the land, writing poetry, and raising a family. He was also the moving force behind such projects as the Diaspora Museum and the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature. The book is based on interviews with people who knew Kovner, and on letters and archival material that have never been translated before.
Mikhail Krutikov
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804770071
- eISBN:
- 9780804777254
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804770071.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893–1941), an Austrian-Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewish mysticism who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926 and reinvented himself ...
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This book is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893–1941), an Austrian-Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewish mysticism who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926 and reinvented himself as a Marxist scholar and Yiddish writer. Wiener's life story offers a glimpse into the complexities and controversies of Jewish intellectual and cultural history of pre-war Europe. Wiener made a remarkable career as a Yiddish scholar and writer in the Stalinist Soviet Union, and left an unfinished novel about Jewish intellectual bohemia of Weimar Berlin. He was a brilliant intellectual, a controversial thinker, a committed communist, and a great Yiddish scholar—who personally knew Lenin and Rabbi Kook, corresponded with Martin Buber and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and argued with Gershom Scholem and Georg Lukács. Wiener's intellectual biography brings Yiddish to the forefront of the intellectual discourse of interwar Europe.Less
This book is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893–1941), an Austrian-Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewish mysticism who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926 and reinvented himself as a Marxist scholar and Yiddish writer. Wiener's life story offers a glimpse into the complexities and controversies of Jewish intellectual and cultural history of pre-war Europe. Wiener made a remarkable career as a Yiddish scholar and writer in the Stalinist Soviet Union, and left an unfinished novel about Jewish intellectual bohemia of Weimar Berlin. He was a brilliant intellectual, a controversial thinker, a committed communist, and a great Yiddish scholar—who personally knew Lenin and Rabbi Kook, corresponded with Martin Buber and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and argued with Gershom Scholem and Georg Lukács. Wiener's intellectual biography brings Yiddish to the forefront of the intellectual discourse of interwar Europe.