Arieh Bruce Saposnik
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195331219
- eISBN:
- 9780199868100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331219.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
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 ...
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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.Less
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.
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.
Alan Mittleman
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195134681
- eISBN:
- 9780199848652
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195134681.003.0019
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
A review of the book, The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939 by Gershon C. Bacon is presented. Students of interwar Polish Jewry, modern Jewish politics and Orthodoxy will ...
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A review of the book, The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939 by Gershon C. Bacon is presented. Students of interwar Polish Jewry, modern Jewish politics and Orthodoxy will welcome Gershon Bacon's expansion of his authoritative dissertation on Agudat Israel. The present study is a comprehensive investigation of the origins and diverse fields of activity of Agudat Israel in Poland. In addition, the author has provided an epilogue that chronicles Aguda activity during the Holocaust, as well as its activities in the state of Israel.Less
A review of the book, The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939 by Gershon C. Bacon is presented. Students of interwar Polish Jewry, modern Jewish politics and Orthodoxy will welcome Gershon Bacon's expansion of his authoritative dissertation on Agudat Israel. The present study is a comprehensive investigation of the origins and diverse fields of activity of Agudat Israel in Poland. In addition, the author has provided an epilogue that chronicles Aguda activity during the Holocaust, as well as its activities in the state of Israel.
Arieh B. Saposnik
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195331219
- eISBN:
- 9780199868100
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331219.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Becoming Hebrew is a study of the ways in which a Zionist national culture was generated in the Jewish Yishuv (prestate community) of Palestine between 1900 and 1914. The book addresses ...
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Becoming Hebrew is a study of the ways in which a Zionist national culture was generated in the Jewish Yishuv (prestate community) of Palestine between 1900 and 1914. The book addresses three principal lacunae in the study of Zionist culture to date. The first of these is chronological. Much of the literature to date has assumed that a distinctive Zionist national culture began to appear in Palestine during the interwar period, whereas Becoming Hebrew argues that its formative period in fact predates the war. Out of this chronological claim emerge the two additional, more conceptually and theoretically substantive, correctives. In the first instance, the book shows that the relationship between the Zionist cultural undertaking and traditional Jewish culture is far more complicated and nuanced than has often been recognized. Joining a new and important historiographical trend, the book suggests further that the Zionist case sheds important light on nationalism generally, which itself emerges in a more complex and dialectical relationship with the religious cultures and traditional societies out of which it grows than has often been acknowledged in much of the now classical literature. Finally, in its conceptualization of “culture” as created in Zionist Palestine, the book synthesizes a literary‐like study of imageries and discourses and a more anthropological examination of observable cultural practices and tangible, public social processes to produce a history of culture as a broad interweaving of many aspects of human life.Less
Becoming Hebrew is a study of the ways in which a Zionist national culture was generated in the Jewish Yishuv (prestate community) of Palestine between 1900 and 1914. The book addresses three principal lacunae in the study of Zionist culture to date. The first of these is chronological. Much of the literature to date has assumed that a distinctive Zionist national culture began to appear in Palestine during the interwar period, whereas Becoming Hebrew argues that its formative period in fact predates the war. Out of this chronological claim emerge the two additional, more conceptually and theoretically substantive, correctives. In the first instance, the book shows that the relationship between the Zionist cultural undertaking and traditional Jewish culture is far more complicated and nuanced than has often been recognized. Joining a new and important historiographical trend, the book suggests further that the Zionist case sheds important light on nationalism generally, which itself emerges in a more complex and dialectical relationship with the religious cultures and traditional societies out of which it grows than has often been acknowledged in much of the now classical literature. Finally, in its conceptualization of “culture” as created in Zionist Palestine, the book synthesizes a literary‐like study of imageries and discourses and a more anthropological examination of observable cultural practices and tangible, public social processes to produce a history of culture as a broad interweaving of many aspects of human life.
James Loeffler
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300137132
- eISBN:
- 9780300162943
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300137132.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Psychology of Music
This chapter examines how Russian Jewish culture began to unravel from within as early as the first years of World War I, beginning with a now classic ideological debate over the very Jewishness of ...
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This chapter examines how Russian Jewish culture began to unravel from within as early as the first years of World War I, beginning with a now classic ideological debate over the very Jewishness of Jewish music. It analyzes how the complicated fate of Russian Jewish culture reflected the multiple legacies and divergent experiences of Jews in interwar Soviet Russia, Mandatory Palestine, and the United States. The chapter also suggests that the resurgence of Jewish politics coupled with the broader aesthetic challenge of European modernism that led to the decisive breakdown of the Jewish cultural movement.Less
This chapter examines how Russian Jewish culture began to unravel from within as early as the first years of World War I, beginning with a now classic ideological debate over the very Jewishness of Jewish music. It analyzes how the complicated fate of Russian Jewish culture reflected the multiple legacies and divergent experiences of Jews in interwar Soviet Russia, Mandatory Palestine, and the United States. The chapter also suggests that the resurgence of Jewish politics coupled with the broader aesthetic challenge of European modernism that led to the decisive breakdown of the Jewish cultural movement.
Simon Rabinovitch
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804792493
- eISBN:
- 9780804793032
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804792493.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book examines the movement for nonterritorial autonomy that swept through Jewish politics in late imperial and revolutionary Russia. Jewish autonomism began around the turn of the twentieth ...
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This book examines the movement for nonterritorial autonomy that swept through Jewish politics in late imperial and revolutionary Russia. Jewish autonomism began around the turn of the twentieth century with the political theories of historian and journalist Simon Dubnov, who argued that Jews should demand national rights from the Russian government in addition to civil equality. Dubnov and other Jewish autonomists created a set of national demands that would allow Russia’s Jews to have autonomy locally and nationally rather than over a given territory. The book traces how Jews from across the political spectrum, especially those in the Jewish intelligentsia, came to agree with Dubnov’s idea that Jews, no less than Russia’s other nationalities seeking autonomy, could have the right to use their own language (or languages) in public life, to control their own schools, to create national cultural institutions, and to govern their internal life in these and other areas. The book also follows the cultural and institutional projects that Jewish activists created to lay the groundwork for autonomy. A main argument is that Jewish nationalism developed in a changing legal environment in which the idea that nations had rights was beginning to take hold. As Jewish politics took shape in Russia—during a period of repeated revolutionary hope and disappointment, the growth of national movements across Eastern Europe, and a war that would dismantle the region’s empires—Jewish autonomism became not merely an ideology but a principle around which Jewish political and social life could be organized.Less
This book examines the movement for nonterritorial autonomy that swept through Jewish politics in late imperial and revolutionary Russia. Jewish autonomism began around the turn of the twentieth century with the political theories of historian and journalist Simon Dubnov, who argued that Jews should demand national rights from the Russian government in addition to civil equality. Dubnov and other Jewish autonomists created a set of national demands that would allow Russia’s Jews to have autonomy locally and nationally rather than over a given territory. The book traces how Jews from across the political spectrum, especially those in the Jewish intelligentsia, came to agree with Dubnov’s idea that Jews, no less than Russia’s other nationalities seeking autonomy, could have the right to use their own language (or languages) in public life, to control their own schools, to create national cultural institutions, and to govern their internal life in these and other areas. The book also follows the cultural and institutional projects that Jewish activists created to lay the groundwork for autonomy. A main argument is that Jewish nationalism developed in a changing legal environment in which the idea that nations had rights was beginning to take hold. As Jewish politics took shape in Russia—during a period of repeated revolutionary hope and disappointment, the growth of national movements across Eastern Europe, and a war that would dismantle the region’s empires—Jewish autonomism became not merely an ideology but a principle around which Jewish political and social life could be organized.
Kálra Móricz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520250888
- eISBN:
- 9780520933682
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520250888.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Though he left it incomplete, Schoenberg never gave up Jakobsleiter, the Balzacian/Swedenborgian rise to heaven and Strindbergian struggle for faith of which stayed central to the composer's ...
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Though he left it incomplete, Schoenberg never gave up Jakobsleiter, the Balzacian/Swedenborgian rise to heaven and Strindbergian struggle for faith of which stayed central to the composer's religious visions. Like his involvement in Jewish politics, his ideas about religion had no practical implications. Schoenberg's rare attempts to put his art in the service of any religious ritual more specific than the worship of an abstract, unimaginable God resulted in awkward interactions between him and religious authorities. The best summary of his religious beliefs are the texts of Modern Psalms, which recycle many ideas from The Biblical Way, Moses und Aron, and his political writings. Instead of seeing these works as the final manifestations of a journey toward Jewish identity, one should recognize in them the same idiosyncratic combination of spiritual, political, and artistic concerns that characterized some of Schoenberg's earlier compositions.Less
Though he left it incomplete, Schoenberg never gave up Jakobsleiter, the Balzacian/Swedenborgian rise to heaven and Strindbergian struggle for faith of which stayed central to the composer's religious visions. Like his involvement in Jewish politics, his ideas about religion had no practical implications. Schoenberg's rare attempts to put his art in the service of any religious ritual more specific than the worship of an abstract, unimaginable God resulted in awkward interactions between him and religious authorities. The best summary of his religious beliefs are the texts of Modern Psalms, which recycle many ideas from The Biblical Way, Moses und Aron, and his political writings. Instead of seeing these works as the final manifestations of a journey toward Jewish identity, one should recognize in them the same idiosyncratic combination of spiritual, political, and artistic concerns that characterized some of Schoenberg's earlier compositions.
Seyla Benhabib
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823230754
- eISBN:
- 9780823235858
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823230754.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter examines three episodes in Arendt's political life and considers her own political engagements as they illuminate her conception of political agency. It ...
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This chapter examines three episodes in Arendt's political life and considers her own political engagements as they illuminate her conception of political agency. It covers, first, her Jewish politics in the interwar years, from 1926 to 1941; second is the phase from 1941 to 1948, referred to as the “heartbreak over the Jewish state”; and third is her engagement with the American republic from the early 1960s onward, which may be named “citizenship in a new republic”.Less
This chapter examines three episodes in Arendt's political life and considers her own political engagements as they illuminate her conception of political agency. It covers, first, her Jewish politics in the interwar years, from 1926 to 1941; second is the phase from 1941 to 1948, referred to as the “heartbreak over the Jewish state”; and third is her engagement with the American republic from the early 1960s onward, which may be named “citizenship in a new republic”.
Alex Lubin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781469612881
- eISBN:
- 9781469615318
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469612881.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter discusses the formation of an African American diasporic imagination that was deeply influenced by Jewish diasporic politics and European Jewish Zionism. Beginning in the 1860s, African ...
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This chapter discusses the formation of an African American diasporic imagination that was deeply influenced by Jewish diasporic politics and European Jewish Zionism. Beginning in the 1860s, African Americans traveled to Ottoman Palestine as slaves traveling with masters or as free black ministers in search of holy lands. The chapter examines the politics of diaspora and early pan-Africanism by identifying the comparisons black intellectuals drew between the European “Jewish question” and the condition of blacks within the United States. Both groups developed political imaginaries that responded to racial modernity. In the late nineteenth century, European Jews confronted the Dreyfus affair at the same time that black Americans witnessed how their nation failed to realize Reconstruction and allowed the ascendency of Jim Crow legislation.Less
This chapter discusses the formation of an African American diasporic imagination that was deeply influenced by Jewish diasporic politics and European Jewish Zionism. Beginning in the 1860s, African Americans traveled to Ottoman Palestine as slaves traveling with masters or as free black ministers in search of holy lands. The chapter examines the politics of diaspora and early pan-Africanism by identifying the comparisons black intellectuals drew between the European “Jewish question” and the condition of blacks within the United States. Both groups developed political imaginaries that responded to racial modernity. In the late nineteenth century, European Jews confronted the Dreyfus affair at the same time that black Americans witnessed how their nation failed to realize Reconstruction and allowed the ascendency of Jim Crow legislation.
Ewa Morawska
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199793495
- eISBN:
- 9780190254667
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199793495.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter presents a number of reviews of books in the fields of history and social science. Topics covered in the first few books reviewed include the emigration of Jews from the Russian Empire; ...
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This chapter presents a number of reviews of books in the fields of history and social science. Topics covered in the first few books reviewed include the emigration of Jews from the Russian Empire; the history, identity, and experiences of different Jewish groups in Africa; and the postwar experiences of Holocaust survivors and their postwar immigration and integration into American society. The next selection of books reviewed consider Jewish power in America, modern Jewish politics, the experiences of American and British Jews during the Great Migration, and the history of the emergence of an influential Jewish group in France during the early 20th century. Finally, the last few books analyzed here examine Jewish historiography, the political views of German art historian Aby Warburg, Jewish organizations, and Soviet Jews.Less
This chapter presents a number of reviews of books in the fields of history and social science. Topics covered in the first few books reviewed include the emigration of Jews from the Russian Empire; the history, identity, and experiences of different Jewish groups in Africa; and the postwar experiences of Holocaust survivors and their postwar immigration and integration into American society. The next selection of books reviewed consider Jewish power in America, modern Jewish politics, the experiences of American and British Jews during the Great Migration, and the history of the emergence of an influential Jewish group in France during the early 20th century. Finally, the last few books analyzed here examine Jewish historiography, the political views of German art historian Aby Warburg, Jewish organizations, and Soviet Jews.
Joshua Teplitsky
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780300234909
- eISBN:
- 9780300241136
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300234909.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This introductory chapter provides a background of David Oppenheim and his Jewish library. At the core of Oppenheim's identity and activity as a rabbi, intellectual, and communal leader stood his ...
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This introductory chapter provides a background of David Oppenheim and his Jewish library. At the core of Oppenheim's identity and activity as a rabbi, intellectual, and communal leader stood his library. His library gained renown among Jewish colleagues and Christian contemporaries. It thus informed the decisions of local courts and distant decisors. He possessed highbrow scholarly material alongside popular pamphlets and broadsides, and he preserved diplomatic exchanges and communal ordinances in manuscript—an archive of contemporary Jewish life. Oppenheim's intellectual authority made him a much-sought-after source for endorsements for newly written books. This book then tells the story of premodern Jewish life, politics, and intellectual culture through an exploration of a book collection, the man who assembled it, and the circles of individuals who brought it into being and made use of it.Less
This introductory chapter provides a background of David Oppenheim and his Jewish library. At the core of Oppenheim's identity and activity as a rabbi, intellectual, and communal leader stood his library. His library gained renown among Jewish colleagues and Christian contemporaries. It thus informed the decisions of local courts and distant decisors. He possessed highbrow scholarly material alongside popular pamphlets and broadsides, and he preserved diplomatic exchanges and communal ordinances in manuscript—an archive of contemporary Jewish life. Oppenheim's intellectual authority made him a much-sought-after source for endorsements for newly written books. This book then tells the story of premodern Jewish life, politics, and intellectual culture through an exploration of a book collection, the man who assembled it, and the circles of individuals who brought it into being and made use of it.
Joshua Teplitsky
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780300234909
- eISBN:
- 9780300241136
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300234909.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
David Oppenheim (1664–1736), chief rabbi of Prague in the early eighteenth century, built an unparalleled collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, all of which have survived and are housed in the ...
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David Oppenheim (1664–1736), chief rabbi of Prague in the early eighteenth century, built an unparalleled collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, all of which have survived and are housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. His remarkable collection testifies to the myriad connections Jews maintained with each other across political borders, and the contacts between Christians and Jews that books facilitated. From contact with the great courts of European nobility to the poor of Jerusalem, Oppenheim's family ties brought him into networks of power, prestige, and opportunity that extended across Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Containing works of law and literature alongside prayer and poetry, his library served rabbinic scholars and communal leaders, introduced old books to new readers, and functioned as a unique source of personal authority that gained him fame throughout Jewish society and beyond. Based on the careful reconstruction of an archive that is still visited by scholars today, the book offers a window into the social life of Jewish books in early modern Europe.Less
David Oppenheim (1664–1736), chief rabbi of Prague in the early eighteenth century, built an unparalleled collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, all of which have survived and are housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. His remarkable collection testifies to the myriad connections Jews maintained with each other across political borders, and the contacts between Christians and Jews that books facilitated. From contact with the great courts of European nobility to the poor of Jerusalem, Oppenheim's family ties brought him into networks of power, prestige, and opportunity that extended across Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Containing works of law and literature alongside prayer and poetry, his library served rabbinic scholars and communal leaders, introduced old books to new readers, and functioned as a unique source of personal authority that gained him fame throughout Jewish society and beyond. Based on the careful reconstruction of an archive that is still visited by scholars today, the book offers a window into the social life of Jewish books in early modern Europe.
