- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804761222
- eISBN:
- 9780804774239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804761222.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This introductory chapter discusses the emergence of “Jewish literature” in the nineteenth century. In this period when Jews were rapidly ascending into the ranks of the middle classes, undertaking ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the emergence of “Jewish literature” in the nineteenth century. In this period when Jews were rapidly ascending into the ranks of the middle classes, undertaking projects of religious modernization, and engaging with the secular world in ways their medieval ancestors could not have fathomed, they also launched their own form of secular culture: fiction written by Jews for Jews that sought to navigate between tradition and modernity, between Jewish history and the German present, and between the fading walls of the ghetto and the promise of a new cultural identity as members of a German bourgeoisie. It is this literature that is the subject of this book. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the emergence of “Jewish literature” in the nineteenth century. In this period when Jews were rapidly ascending into the ranks of the middle classes, undertaking projects of religious modernization, and engaging with the secular world in ways their medieval ancestors could not have fathomed, they also launched their own form of secular culture: fiction written by Jews for Jews that sought to navigate between tradition and modernity, between Jewish history and the German present, and between the fading walls of the ghetto and the promise of a new cultural identity as members of a German bourgeoisie. It is this literature that is the subject of this book. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226745053
- eISBN:
- 9780226745077
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226745077.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter examines German–Jewish culture through the lens of translation, beginning with Moses Mendelssohn's Bible translation and ending with the translation theory of Walter Benjamin. While ...
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This chapter examines German–Jewish culture through the lens of translation, beginning with Moses Mendelssohn's Bible translation and ending with the translation theory of Walter Benjamin. While previous scholarship has tended to conceptualize German–Jewish translation in the light of cultural integration or symbiosis, it is argued that the formulation of translation as a variety of cultural encounter conceals a number of tensions and asymmetries in the German–Jewish translation project. Benjamin's model of an interlinear Bible translation, along with Buber and Rosenzweig's attempt at creating a German Bible in which the Hebrew original would somehow be visible, can be traced to philosophical and political circumstances comparable to those that shaped Aquila's work. The “translator cultures” of Hellenism and German–Jewish modernism divested the sacred tongue of what had been its correlate: untranslatability. In this cultural context, translating the sacred necessarily produces a difficult or incomprehensible text as guarantee that translation has not succumbed to the chimera of linguistic transparency or the demands of cultural assimilation.Less
This chapter examines German–Jewish culture through the lens of translation, beginning with Moses Mendelssohn's Bible translation and ending with the translation theory of Walter Benjamin. While previous scholarship has tended to conceptualize German–Jewish translation in the light of cultural integration or symbiosis, it is argued that the formulation of translation as a variety of cultural encounter conceals a number of tensions and asymmetries in the German–Jewish translation project. Benjamin's model of an interlinear Bible translation, along with Buber and Rosenzweig's attempt at creating a German Bible in which the Hebrew original would somehow be visible, can be traced to philosophical and political circumstances comparable to those that shaped Aquila's work. The “translator cultures” of Hellenism and German–Jewish modernism divested the sacred tongue of what had been its correlate: untranslatability. In this cultural context, translating the sacred necessarily produces a difficult or incomprehensible text as guarantee that translation has not succumbed to the chimera of linguistic transparency or the demands of cultural assimilation.
Marianne Hirsch
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520257726
- eISBN:
- 9780520944909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257726.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter introduces the “idea of Czernowitz,” which featured the adherence to German as its central ingredient. It examines the ideologues of Romanianization, which used the educational system as ...
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This chapter introduces the “idea of Czernowitz,” which featured the adherence to German as its central ingredient. It examines the ideologues of Romanianization, which used the educational system as the primary institutional medium to change the predominantly multiethnic Northern Bukowina into a province populated mostly by Romanians. The chapter then discusses the Jewish resistance to Romanianization and Romanian anti-Semitism. It also studies the story of “Die Buche,” which symbolized the unexpected changes of Bukowina's German-Jewish culture during the interwar period.Less
This chapter introduces the “idea of Czernowitz,” which featured the adherence to German as its central ingredient. It examines the ideologues of Romanianization, which used the educational system as the primary institutional medium to change the predominantly multiethnic Northern Bukowina into a province populated mostly by Romanians. The chapter then discusses the Jewish resistance to Romanianization and Romanian anti-Semitism. It also studies the story of “Die Buche,” which symbolized the unexpected changes of Bukowina's German-Jewish culture during the interwar period.
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804770644
- eISBN:
- 9780804777247
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804770644.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This chapter explores the emergence of modernist Hebrew literature in Berlin. Between 1920 and 1925, Berlin was a major center of Hebrew literary activity. A very distinguished group of East European ...
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This chapter explores the emergence of modernist Hebrew literature in Berlin. Between 1920 and 1925, Berlin was a major center of Hebrew literary activity. A very distinguished group of East European Hebrew and Yiddish writers immigrated to Berlin, where they lived, wrote, and published their works. The chapter considers the role of the city in a number of different contexts: Berlin as historical center of Hebrew literature; Berlin as a locus for Hebrew and Yiddish publishing enterprise; and Berlin as a center for a distinctive German-Jewish culture.Less
This chapter explores the emergence of modernist Hebrew literature in Berlin. Between 1920 and 1925, Berlin was a major center of Hebrew literary activity. A very distinguished group of East European Hebrew and Yiddish writers immigrated to Berlin, where they lived, wrote, and published their works. The chapter considers the role of the city in a number of different contexts: Berlin as historical center of Hebrew literature; Berlin as a locus for Hebrew and Yiddish publishing enterprise; and Berlin as a center for a distinctive German-Jewish culture.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226709703
- eISBN:
- 9780226709727
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226709727.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter examines the revealing affinities between the works of Karl Kraus and Franz Kafka. It suggests that the affinities between Kraus and Kafka will help us to situate Kraus' anti-journalism, ...
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This chapter examines the revealing affinities between the works of Karl Kraus and Franz Kafka. It suggests that the affinities between Kraus and Kafka will help us to situate Kraus' anti-journalism, or rather to re-situate it, within the world of German-Jewish modernism. This chapter analyzes how Kraus framed his style in critical relation to certain tendencies in German-Jewish culture and considers how key formal features of Die Fackel connect with Kraus' radical authorial self-fashioning.Less
This chapter examines the revealing affinities between the works of Karl Kraus and Franz Kafka. It suggests that the affinities between Kraus and Kafka will help us to situate Kraus' anti-journalism, or rather to re-situate it, within the world of German-Jewish modernism. This chapter analyzes how Kraus framed his style in critical relation to certain tendencies in German-Jewish culture and considers how key formal features of Die Fackel connect with Kraus' radical authorial self-fashioning.
Katja Garloff
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501704963
- eISBN:
- 9781501706011
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501704963.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Since the late eighteenth century, writers and thinkers have used the idea of love—often unrequited or impossible love—to comment on the changing cultural, social, and political position of Jews in ...
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Since the late eighteenth century, writers and thinkers have used the idea of love—often unrequited or impossible love—to comment on the changing cultural, social, and political position of Jews in the German-speaking countries. This book asks what it means for literature (and philosophy) to use love between individuals as a metaphor for group relations. This question is of renewed interest today, when theorists of multiculturalism turn toward love in their search for new models of particularity and universality. The book is structured around two transformative moments in German Jewish culture and history that produced particularly rich clusters of interfaith love stories. Around 1800, literature promoted the rise of the Romantic love ideal and the shift from prearranged to love-based marriages. In the German-speaking countries, this change in the theory and practice of love coincided with the beginnings of Jewish emancipation, and both its supporters and opponents linked their arguments to tropes of love. The book explores the generative powers of such tropes in Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing, Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Veit, and Achim von Arnim. Around 1900, the rise of racial antisemitism had called into question the promises of emancipation and led to a crisis of German Jewish identity. At the same time, Jewish-Christian intermarriage prompted public debates that were tied up with racial discourses and concerns about procreation, heredity, and the mutability and immutability of the Jewish body. The text shows how modern German Jewish writers such as Arthur Schnitzler, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Franz Rosenzweig wrestle with this idea of love away from biologist thought and reinstate it as a model of sociopolitical relations. It concludes by tracing the relevance of this model in post-Holocaust works by Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and Barbara Honigmann.Less
Since the late eighteenth century, writers and thinkers have used the idea of love—often unrequited or impossible love—to comment on the changing cultural, social, and political position of Jews in the German-speaking countries. This book asks what it means for literature (and philosophy) to use love between individuals as a metaphor for group relations. This question is of renewed interest today, when theorists of multiculturalism turn toward love in their search for new models of particularity and universality. The book is structured around two transformative moments in German Jewish culture and history that produced particularly rich clusters of interfaith love stories. Around 1800, literature promoted the rise of the Romantic love ideal and the shift from prearranged to love-based marriages. In the German-speaking countries, this change in the theory and practice of love coincided with the beginnings of Jewish emancipation, and both its supporters and opponents linked their arguments to tropes of love. The book explores the generative powers of such tropes in Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing, Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Veit, and Achim von Arnim. Around 1900, the rise of racial antisemitism had called into question the promises of emancipation and led to a crisis of German Jewish identity. At the same time, Jewish-Christian intermarriage prompted public debates that were tied up with racial discourses and concerns about procreation, heredity, and the mutability and immutability of the Jewish body. The text shows how modern German Jewish writers such as Arthur Schnitzler, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Franz Rosenzweig wrestle with this idea of love away from biologist thought and reinstate it as a model of sociopolitical relations. It concludes by tracing the relevance of this model in post-Holocaust works by Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and Barbara Honigmann.
Hermann Levin Goldschmidt
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228263
- eISBN:
- 9780823237142
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823228263.003.0029
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter discusses “My 1933”, the last work written by Hermann Levin Goldschmidt about the German Jewry. The central text of this collection represents a different kind of self-assertion achieved ...
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This chapter discusses “My 1933”, the last work written by Hermann Levin Goldschmidt about the German Jewry. The central text of this collection represents a different kind of self-assertion achieved through a searing act of self-examination. Written in the form of an inner dialogue, Goldschmidt addresses to himself the challenging questions faced by his generation of survivors. Instead of combining accident and destiny that would leave German Jewish culture behind as a historical relic, Goldschmidt took the implicit and explicit voices of critique directed at German Jews in post-war, making it part of an inner debate.Less
This chapter discusses “My 1933”, the last work written by Hermann Levin Goldschmidt about the German Jewry. The central text of this collection represents a different kind of self-assertion achieved through a searing act of self-examination. Written in the form of an inner dialogue, Goldschmidt addresses to himself the challenging questions faced by his generation of survivors. Instead of combining accident and destiny that would leave German Jewish culture behind as a historical relic, Goldschmidt took the implicit and explicit voices of critique directed at German Jews in post-war, making it part of an inner debate.
Gabriel Motzkin
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520220560
- eISBN:
- 9780520923669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520220560.003.0018
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
There is a story that has been told about German–Jewish culture, which is that German Jews were uniquely interested in Bildung. They adopted the ideal of self-cultivation, of being educated people, ...
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There is a story that has been told about German–Jewish culture, which is that German Jews were uniquely interested in Bildung. They adopted the ideal of self-cultivation, of being educated people, as a symbol of the status which they had achieved. According to this story, they used Bildung to compensate for the lack of social definition, for their being what Hannah Arendt so trenchantly called pariahs. Bildung gave them an entrée into a universal social class, one not defined by birth. Yet this universal class was not defined by achievement, for the way Bildung was to be acquired is qualitative, and not quantitative. Bildung was supposed to reflect one's inner worth. This story became popular in post-World War II German–Jewish historiography. Its narrative was perhaps inevitably tinged with an ambivalent nostalgia, a retrospective yearning for a finer past that was constrained by an awareness of that past's tragic culmination. Not all German–Jewish intellectuals of the postwar era shared this nostalgia. Many postwar intellectual trajectories can be evaluated in terms of a deep skepticism toward the ideal of Bildung, a skepticism that also permeated Hannah Arendt's prewar portrayal of Rahel Varnhagen's emotional biography.Less
There is a story that has been told about German–Jewish culture, which is that German Jews were uniquely interested in Bildung. They adopted the ideal of self-cultivation, of being educated people, as a symbol of the status which they had achieved. According to this story, they used Bildung to compensate for the lack of social definition, for their being what Hannah Arendt so trenchantly called pariahs. Bildung gave them an entrée into a universal social class, one not defined by birth. Yet this universal class was not defined by achievement, for the way Bildung was to be acquired is qualitative, and not quantitative. Bildung was supposed to reflect one's inner worth. This story became popular in post-World War II German–Jewish historiography. Its narrative was perhaps inevitably tinged with an ambivalent nostalgia, a retrospective yearning for a finer past that was constrained by an awareness of that past's tragic culmination. Not all German–Jewish intellectuals of the postwar era shared this nostalgia. Many postwar intellectual trajectories can be evaluated in terms of a deep skepticism toward the ideal of Bildung, a skepticism that also permeated Hannah Arendt's prewar portrayal of Rahel Varnhagen's emotional biography.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226709703
- eISBN:
- 9780226709727
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226709727.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study of Karl Kraus' anti-journalism. It suggests that while Kraus' anti-journalism alienates contemporary readers, tracing its formation prompts us to ...
More
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study of Karl Kraus' anti-journalism. It suggests that while Kraus' anti-journalism alienates contemporary readers, tracing its formation prompts us to rethink issues that have immediate actuality in ongoing discussions of German-Jewish culture. Though Kraus made use of anti-Semitic language, he was moved by and excelled at chronicling moments in which large mechanisms of injustice bore down on individuals whom he saw as defenseless. An example of this is Die Fackel, which abounds with passionate and colorful interventions on behalf of people who were suffering as a result of bigotry or chauvinism or the systemic hypocrisy in fin-de-siècle Austrian society.Less
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study of Karl Kraus' anti-journalism. It suggests that while Kraus' anti-journalism alienates contemporary readers, tracing its formation prompts us to rethink issues that have immediate actuality in ongoing discussions of German-Jewish culture. Though Kraus made use of anti-Semitic language, he was moved by and excelled at chronicling moments in which large mechanisms of injustice bore down on individuals whom he saw as defenseless. An example of this is Die Fackel, which abounds with passionate and colorful interventions on behalf of people who were suffering as a result of bigotry or chauvinism or the systemic hypocrisy in fin-de-siècle Austrian society.
Amir Engel
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226428635
- eISBN:
- 9780226428772
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226428772.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This chapter explains the novelty of the book’s approach over and against the existing literature in the field. It does so by posing the fundamental question regarding Scholem, namely, why is Scholem ...
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This chapter explains the novelty of the book’s approach over and against the existing literature in the field. It does so by posing the fundamental question regarding Scholem, namely, why is Scholem so well known, even as he was mostly a scholar of a decidedly narrow field of knowledge? And why is he still read today? This chapter suggests that in different ways, the scholarly literature on Scholem focused on the philosophical underpinnings of his work. Scholem, it is often argued, is important because his views on Jewish revival, Zionism, language or historiography. This chapter seeks to expose the fallacies and problems of this approach. And it discusses the justifications, the advantages and disadvantages, in reading Scholem, not philosophically, but rather as a story-teller. Scholem it is argued did not merely expose truth that lay hidden in the old manuscripts of Jewish esoteric tradition, but recreated this tradition for his audience and in response to many of the existential questions of his generation.Less
This chapter explains the novelty of the book’s approach over and against the existing literature in the field. It does so by posing the fundamental question regarding Scholem, namely, why is Scholem so well known, even as he was mostly a scholar of a decidedly narrow field of knowledge? And why is he still read today? This chapter suggests that in different ways, the scholarly literature on Scholem focused on the philosophical underpinnings of his work. Scholem, it is often argued, is important because his views on Jewish revival, Zionism, language or historiography. This chapter seeks to expose the fallacies and problems of this approach. And it discusses the justifications, the advantages and disadvantages, in reading Scholem, not philosophically, but rather as a story-teller. Scholem it is argued did not merely expose truth that lay hidden in the old manuscripts of Jewish esoteric tradition, but recreated this tradition for his audience and in response to many of the existential questions of his generation.
Amir Engel
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226428635
- eISBN:
- 9780226428772
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226428772.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book discusses the life and work of the best-known Israeli scholar, the Kabbalah historian of German Jewish descent, Gershom Scholem (1897 – 1982). It offers a new perspective on this seminal ...
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This book discusses the life and work of the best-known Israeli scholar, the Kabbalah historian of German Jewish descent, Gershom Scholem (1897 – 1982). It offers a new perspective on this seminal figure and on major historical events and ideological struggles that took place during the first part of the 20th century in Europe and the Middle East. The book also makes a certain claim about how new knowledge is created. Scholem, it is here argued, is known beyond the narrow confines of his academic because, beyond being a capable philologist, he was a story-teller of unique talent. The two stories that make up Scholem’s fame are the story he told of himself and the story of Jewish history, told through the lens of his historiography of the Kabbalah. The objective of this book is therefore to critically retell these two stories thus that each story would shed light on the other. Pitting Scholem’s biography over and against his historiography, the book is able to approach questions about nationalism, spiritual revival, and colonialism in the 20th century. The discussion thus reflects the geo-political transformations that took place in Germany and in Palestine during this period. It gives a new perspective on Scholem’s life and his historiographical undertaking. And finally it shows that new knowledge is often the result, not of discovery but of re-reading and invention. Scholem, it is here argued, recreated Jewish mysticism in light of the political, social and spiritual questions of his time.Less
This book discusses the life and work of the best-known Israeli scholar, the Kabbalah historian of German Jewish descent, Gershom Scholem (1897 – 1982). It offers a new perspective on this seminal figure and on major historical events and ideological struggles that took place during the first part of the 20th century in Europe and the Middle East. The book also makes a certain claim about how new knowledge is created. Scholem, it is here argued, is known beyond the narrow confines of his academic because, beyond being a capable philologist, he was a story-teller of unique talent. The two stories that make up Scholem’s fame are the story he told of himself and the story of Jewish history, told through the lens of his historiography of the Kabbalah. The objective of this book is therefore to critically retell these two stories thus that each story would shed light on the other. Pitting Scholem’s biography over and against his historiography, the book is able to approach questions about nationalism, spiritual revival, and colonialism in the 20th century. The discussion thus reflects the geo-political transformations that took place in Germany and in Palestine during this period. It gives a new perspective on Scholem’s life and his historiographical undertaking. And finally it shows that new knowledge is often the result, not of discovery but of re-reading and invention. Scholem, it is here argued, recreated Jewish mysticism in light of the political, social and spiritual questions of his time.
