Search Results

This chapter develops an analogy between post-Protestant and post-Jewish cultural situations. It does so in the context of identifying and clarifying a vital issue in the study of American Jewish history: to what extent is that field properly focused on communal Jewry and to what extent might its focuses be expanded to take full account of what persons of Jewish origin have done in the world, regardless of the degree of Jewish identity they, themselves, proclaim? The chapter pulls together arguments that the author has offered over the course of thirty-five years of writing about the Jewish experience in twentieth-century America. Thus, it connects After Cloven Tongues of Fire with an earlier collection, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture. A theme of several essays in each of these two volumes is the disruptive effect Jews have had on the cultural hegemony of Protestants in American life.

This epilogue draws the reader into the ethnographic present: the performance of Jewish music in a postmodern world. Starting with a concert performance of the New Budapest Orpheum Society, for which the author is the Artistic Director, the chapter asks questions about the possibility of revival after the end of Jewish music history. Jewish music, in popular and art genres, may thrive in revival in the twenty-first century, but as phenomena such as the popularity of klezmer in the nations that perpetrated the Holocaust signal a return to history or a release from history. The processes of cultural negotiation and historicism provide contexts for Jewish music in a postmodern world no less than in modernity.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–9, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Emil Fackenheim, a Jewish theologian and philosopher, who has radically changed his thinking since 1967. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

The cultural and historical tensions between East and West are among the most complex forces in Jewish history. Jewish music has historically embodied this tension, and it is one of the ways in which modernity emerges as a quality of Jewish music. In the synagogue, prayer and song are directed toward the altar at the eastern end of the sanctuary. Several styles and repertories of modern popular music in Israel are designated as musica mizrahit, literally “eastern music.” In modern Europe East and West also formed along a cultural fault line between Jews speaking Yiddish as a vernacular language in Eastern Europe and Jews speaking other vernaculars in Central Europe, especially German. As Jewish musicians increasingly entered the domains of popular and entertainment music in the late nineteenth century, East and West came to represent two different, even contested, identities in the Diaspora.

This chapter explains the book's central foci—the ways in which Zionism's vision of a new Hebrew nation was translated into the concrete institutions, practices, and rituals that generated a national entity in Palestine. This is placed within the context of the existing literature on the history of Zionism and the Jewish community of Palestine and is framed in terms of the implications of this study for understanding nationalism, secularization, and Jewish modernity. In this context, the chapter sets out the three principal areas in which the book seeks to shed new light. These include chronology (an earlier dating of the formative years to the prewar decade); the relationship between the new Hebrew culture of Palestine and traditional Jewish cultures; and a thicker description of what that culture entailed, based in a methodology that incorporates discourse and imagery with praxis and ritual.

This concluding chapter highlights some puzzles that punctuate Jewish history, from the mass expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492–97 to today. A growing number of scholars have been studying the long-term impact of institutions by illustrating that some contemporary economic patterns have been influenced by institutions that emerged centuries ago. This book contributes to this literature by showing that the transition of the Jews from farming into high-skill occupations has also been the outcome of the availability of contract-enforcement institutions shaped by the unique features of the Jewish religion. Meanwhile, social scientists have always been fascinated by the study of religion and by the influence religious values and norms may have on human behavior. Ultimately, the cultural values and social norms that Judaism fostered two millennia ago shaped the demographic and economic history of the Jewish people through today.

This chapter examines the history of scholarship on the ancient Jewish death penalty, focusing in particular on the last century of scholarship in the United States and Israel. It includes within its survey a variety of approaches and disciplines: jurisprudence, responsa, New Testament historiography, religious denominational writing, Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, Zionist reformism. It give this scholarship “thick description,” contextualizing it within the social forces that shaped it. It also offers some concluding reflections on what aspects of the scholarship might be most productive for further study.

In this chapter, and in the next four, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Richard Rubinstein, a prominent Jewish theologian, but not institutionally tied to one of the denominations of American Judaism; he was a Hillel rabbi and then an academic. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to a honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

An examination is made of some of the responses to the work of the five main Jewish thinkers/theologians, which was addressed in Chs. 6–10, and to the work of other post‐Holocaust Jewish thinkers. This is done by looking at the popular response (that of ordinary Jews), the response of young Jewish radicals, and that of Orthodox Jewish thinkers. The dissenting thoughts of various thinkers as to the centrality and use of the Holocaust in Jewish America are discussed.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6, and 8–10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Eliezer Berkovits, an orthodox Jewish theologian and philosopher. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–7, and 9–10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Irving Greenberg, an orthodox rabbi and deeply traditional figure, but also a bold and radical Jewish thinker. Citations of each thinkers work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–8, and 10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Arthur Cohen, a prominent Jewish theologian, but not institutionally tied to one of the denominations of American Judaism; he was an editor and a novelist. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

This chapter emphasizes the continuity of central ideas over many centuries. Despite tremendous innovation and change within the literature, it persuasively connects folkloric motifs from a medieval Hebrew folktale with classical images from Jewish tradition. It addresses the question of the authority of narrative texts as historical documents as well as the question of narrative hermeneutics — in all its force and seriousness.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Jews' transition into urban and skilled occupations. This transition was the outcome of a profound transformation of the Jewish religion after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, which shifted the religious leadership within the Jewish community and transformed Judaism from a cult based on ritual sacrifices in the temple to a religion whose main norm required every Jewish man to read and to study the Torah in Hebrew and to send his sons from the age of six or seven to primary school or synagogue to learn to do so. The implementation of this new religious norm during the Talmud era determined three major patterns in Jewish history: the growth and spread of literacy among the predominantly rural Jewish population, a comparative advantage in urban skilled occupations, and the voluntary diaspora of the Jews in search of worldwide opportunities in crafts, trade, commerce, moneylending, banking, finance, and medicine.

This brief introduction discusses the importance of understanding what the American Jewish response – and more importantly, the American Jewish theologians’ response – to the Holocaust has been, and what it has taught Jews about their approach to the past and the future. The author has approached this by an examination of the writings of five thinkers (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim), each of whom in the 1960s and 1970s began to treat the Holocaust as a central and determining feature in his Jewish thinking. Each conceived of his theological task as understanding Judaism in terms of an act of coming to grips with Auschwitz, yet each has been influential in different ways, and for different constituencies. A brief summary is given of the writings of each of the five, and of some of the thoughts and conclusions raised. The introduction ends with an outline of the book.

This introductory chapter considers why the hallmark of modern Jewish identity is its resistance to—and, at the same time, obsession with—definition. Like battles over national identity in the modern state, clashes over the nature and limits of Jewishness have frequently taken the shape of controversies over the status—and stature—of marginal Jews past and present. The Jewish rehabilitation of historical heretics and apostates with a vexed relationship to Judaism has become so much a part of contemporary discourse that it is difficult to imagine secular Jewish culture without it. Yet this tendency has a beginning as well as a template in modern Jewish history, which the chapter introduces in the figure of Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677)—“the first great culture-hero of modern secular Jews,” and still the most oft-mentioned candidate for the title of first modern secular Jew.

The Introduction leads into the transnational phenomenon of early Jewish Holocaust research by discussing a 1947 conference of Jewish historical commissions and documentation centers in Paris. Most of the book’s protagonists were present at this meeting and discussed the major issues relating to the documentation work, all of which will reappear in the book’s subsequent chapters: the purpose and usage of Holocaust documentation, the value of victim and perpetrator sources, research methods and audience, and the question of whether, given their traumatic experience, survivors were capable of historical “objectivity.” Surveying the existing scholarly literature on the topic, the introduction then situates the book within the larger fields of post-1945 European and Jewish histories and Holocaust studies which in recent years began to focus on the aftermath of the Second World War. It elaborates on this study’s innovative take and lays out its method of comparative history, its sources, and research questions.