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The Jewish-Christian Encounter in Medieval Preaching (Routledge Research in Medieval Studies)
by Jonathan Adams Jussi HanskaThis book explores the complexity of preaching as a phenomenon in the medieval Jewish-Christian encounter. This was not only an "encounter" as physical meeting or confrontation (such as the forced attendance of Jews at Christian sermons that took place across Europe), but also an "imaginary" or theological encounter in which Jews remained a figure from a distant constructed time and place who served only to underline and verify Christian teachings. Contributors also explore the Jewish response to Christian anti-Jewish preaching in their own preaching and religious instruction.
Jewish/Christian/Queer: Crossroads and Identities
by Frederick RodenAt a time when major branches of Judaism and most Christian denominations are addressing the relationship between religion and homosexuality, Jewish/Christian/Queer offers a unique examination of the similarities between the queer intersections of Judaism and Christianity, and the queer intersections of the homosexual and the religious. This volume investigates three forms of queerness; the rhetorical, theological and the discursive dissonance at the meeting points between Christianity and Judaism; the crossroads of the religious and the homosexual; and the intersections of these two forms of queerness, namely where the religiously queer of Jewish and Christian speech intersects with the sexually queer of religiously identified homosexual discourse. Including essays on literature and literary theory, Christian theology, Biblical, Rabbinic, and Jewish studies, queer theory, architecture, Freud, gay and lesbian studies and history, Jewish/Christian/Queer will have a truly interdisciplinary appeal.
Jewish/Christian/Queer: Crossroads and Identities
by Frederick RodenAt a time when major branches of Judaism and most Christian denominations are addressing the relationship between religion and homosexuality, Jewish/Christian/Queer offers a unique examination of the similarities between the queer intersections of Judaism and Christianity, and the queer intersections of the homosexual and the religious. This volume investigates three forms of queerness; the rhetorical, theological and the discursive dissonance at the meeting points between Christianity and Judaism; the crossroads of the religious and the homosexual; and the intersections of these two forms of queerness, namely where the religiously queer of Jewish and Christian speech intersects with the sexually queer of religiously identified homosexual discourse. Including essays on literature and literary theory, Christian theology, Biblical, Rabbinic, and Jewish studies, queer theory, architecture, Freud, gay and lesbian studies and history, Jewish/Christian/Queer will have a truly interdisciplinary appeal.
Jewish Communities of India: Identity in a Colonial Era
by Joan G. RolandAlthough the Bene Israel community of western India, the Baghdadi Jews of Bombay and Calcutta, and the Cochin Jews of the Malabar Coast form a tiny segment of the Indian population, their long-term residence within a vastly different culture has always made them the subject of much curiosity. India is perhaps the one country in the world where Jews have never been exposed to anti-Semitism, but in the last century they have had to struggle to maintain their identity as they encountered two competing nationalisms: Indian nationalism and Zionism. Focusing primarily on the Bene Israel and Baghdadis in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Joan Roland describes how identities begun under the Indian caste system changed with British colonial rule, and then how the struggle for Indian independence and the establishment of a Jewish homeland raised even further questions. She also discuses the experiences of European Jewish refugees who arrived in India after 1933 and remained there until after World War II.To describe what it meant to be a Jew in India, Roland draws on a wealth of materials such as Indian Jewish periodicals, official and private archives, and extensive interviews. Historians, Judaic studies specialist, India area scholars, postcolonialist, and sociologists will all find this book to be an engaging study. A new final chapter discusses the position of the remaining Jews in India as well as the status of Indian Jews in Israel at the end of the twentieth century.
Jewish Communities of India: Identity in a Colonial Era
by Joan G. RolandAlthough the Bene Israel community of western India, the Baghdadi Jews of Bombay and Calcutta, and the Cochin Jews of the Malabar Coast form a tiny segment of the Indian population, their long-term residence within a vastly different culture has always made them the subject of much curiosity. India is perhaps the one country in the world where Jews have never been exposed to anti-Semitism, but in the last century they have had to struggle to maintain their identity as they encountered two competing nationalisms: Indian nationalism and Zionism. Focusing primarily on the Bene Israel and Baghdadis in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Joan Roland describes how identities begun under the Indian caste system changed with British colonial rule, and then how the struggle for Indian independence and the establishment of a Jewish homeland raised even further questions. She also discuses the experiences of European Jewish refugees who arrived in India after 1933 and remained there until after World War II.To describe what it meant to be a Jew in India, Roland draws on a wealth of materials such as Indian Jewish periodicals, official and private archives, and extensive interviews. Historians, Judaic studies specialist, India area scholars, postcolonialist, and sociologists will all find this book to be an engaging study. A new final chapter discusses the position of the remaining Jews in India as well as the status of Indian Jews in Israel at the end of the twentieth century.
Jewish Communities of the World
by Anthony LermanThis fourth edition attempts to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive guide to Jewish life and institutions in 98 national communities worldwide. Entries include a brief historical outline and sections on legal status, communal organizations, religious life, education and welfare.
The Jewish Condition: Challenges and Responses - 1938-2008
by William B. HelmreichThis brilliant set of essays poses the paradigm question: are Jews in grave danger today or not? Concern is rooted in the storm clouds of 1938, when the same question arose just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The contributors do not presume that the events of seventy years ago are identical with those today, or that they emanate from the same sources. However, the shared feeling is that Jewish communities worldwide are very much, once again at risk.In post 1938 Germany, the Nazi state began its march toward world conquest, with the destruction of European Jewry as its centerpiece. In an act of willful blindness, Western democratic leaders chose to negotiate and appease the Hitler regime. Many Jewish leaders also chose to minimize the risks. Seven years later, over 50 million people, including six million Jews had been liquidated. In 2008 extremist Islamic forces have spawned a global Jihad. State sponsored terrorism, a war against the West as well as against moderate Islamic states, once again holds the destruction of the Jewish people, and in particular the State of Israel, as a critical goal. The Iranian leadership proclaims that "a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible."Against such a diplomatic and historical background a conference was organized resulting in these essays written by Alan Dershowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Michael Walzer, Leonard Fein and David Price-Jones. The results are varied at the policy level, but unified in appreciator of a disturbing revival of inherited hatred and anti-Semitic outbreaks against Jews both within and outside of Europe. This is a compelling effort that merits the attention of social scientists, policy-makers, and those interested in international relations.
The Jewish Condition: Challenges and Responses - 1938-2008
by Mark RosenblumThis brilliant set of essays poses the paradigm question: are Jews in grave danger today or not? Concern is rooted in the storm clouds of 1938, when the same question arose just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The contributors do not presume that the events of seventy years ago are identical with those today, or that they emanate from the same sources. However, the shared feeling is that Jewish communities worldwide are very much, once again at risk.In post 1938 Germany, the Nazi state began its march toward world conquest, with the destruction of European Jewry as its centerpiece. In an act of willful blindness, Western democratic leaders chose to negotiate and appease the Hitler regime. Many Jewish leaders also chose to minimize the risks. Seven years later, over 50 million people, including six million Jews had been liquidated. In 2008 extremist Islamic forces have spawned a global Jihad. State sponsored terrorism, a war against the West as well as against moderate Islamic states, once again holds the destruction of the Jewish people, and in particular the State of Israel, as a critical goal. The Iranian leadership proclaims that "a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible."Against such a diplomatic and historical background a conference was organized resulting in these essays written by Alan Dershowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Michael Walzer, Leonard Fein and David Price-Jones. The results are varied at the policy level, but unified in appreciator of a disturbing revival of inherited hatred and anti-Semitic outbreaks against Jews both within and outside of Europe. This is a compelling effort that merits the attention of social scientists, policy-makers, and those interested in international relations.
Jewish Consumer Cultures in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe and North America (Worlds of Consumption)
by Paul Lerner Uwe Spiekermann Anne SchenderleinThis book investigates the place and meaning of consumption in Jewish lives and the roles Jews played in different consumer cultures in modern Europe and North America. Drawing on innovative, original research into this new and challenging field, the volume brings Jewish studies and the history and theory of consumer culture into dialogue with each other. Its chapters explore Jewish businesspeople's development of niche commercial practices in several transnational contexts; the imagining, marketing, and realization of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine through consumer goods and strategies; associations between Jews, luxury, and gender in multiple contexts; and the political dimensions of consumer choice. Together the essays in this volume show how the study of consumption enriches our understanding of modern Jewish history and how a focus on consumer goods and practices illuminates the study of Jewish religious observance, ethnic identities, gender formations, and immigrant trajectories across the globe.
Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History
by Assaf ShellegJewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History unfolds the cultural itineraries of modern Jewish and Israeli art music. Extending from modern Jewish art music in Europe through its dislocation to British Palestine and Israel, the book captures the tensions between national rhetoric and nationalized theological tropes through the way they have been recorded in art music. Author Assaf Shelleg begins with the prehistory of Israeli art music in central and Western Europe. He introduces the reader to the various aesthetic dilemmas in the history of modern Jewish art music, ranging from auto-exoticism to Jewish self-hatred. Moving on to consider the Hebrew culture, he discusses the institutionalization of art music in British Palestine and the dilution of romanticist nationalism during the interregnum of Israeli statehood. Delving into the proliferation of styles in the 1950s and '60s, Shelleg examines the collapse of traditional Hebrew templates and the concomitant surge of linear compositional devices inspired by Arab Jewish music. By the 1970s, he reveals, Israeli composers saw musical Judaism as a cultural discourse that transcended the nation; they deterritorialized the national discourse at the same time that religious Zionist circles had been translating theology into politics. Shelleg unearths the various cultural constraints and dialectics that played a pivotal role in the dislocation of modern Jewish art music to Israel, and looks at the Jewish undercurrents of Hebrew culture and how Jewish secularized concepts outgrew their national functions. Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History will be essential reading for scholars of Jewish and Israeli music, culture, and history
The Jewish Contribution to Civilization: Reassessing an Idea (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
The biblical idea of a distinct ‘Jewish contribution to civilization’ continues to engage Jews and non-Jews alike. This book seeks neither to document nor to discredit the notion, but rather to investigate the idea itself as it has been understood from the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the role that the concept has played in Jewish self-definition, how it has influenced the political, social, and cultural history of the Jews and of others, and whether discussion of the notion still has relevance in the world today.The book offers a broad spectrum of academic opinion: from tempered advocacy to reasoned disavowal, with many variations on the theme in between. It attempts to illustrate the centrality of the question in modern Jewish culture in general, and its importance for modern Jewish studies in particular. Part I addresses the idea itself and considers its ramifications. Richard I. Cohen focuses on the nexus between notions of ‘Jewish contribution’ and those of ‘Jewish superiority’‚ David N. Myers shifts the focus from ‘contribution’ to ‘civilization’, arguing that the latter term often served the interests of Jewish intellectuals far better, and Moshe Rosman shows how the current emphasis on multiculturalism has given the idea of a ‘Jewish contribution’ new life. Part II turns to the relationship between Judaism and other monotheistic cultures. Elliott Horowitz’s essay on the sabbath serves as an instructive test-case for the dynamic and complexity of the ‘contribution’ debate and a pointer to more general, theoretical issues. David Berger expands on these in his account of how discussion of Christianity’s Jewish legacy developed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Susannah Heschel shows how the Jewish–Christian encounter has influenced the study of other non-Western ‘others’. Daniel Schroeter raises revealing questions about the altogether Eurocentric character of the ‘contribution’ discourse, which also bore heavily on perceptions of Jews and Judaism in the world of Islam. Part III introduces us to various applications and consequences of the debate. Yaacov Shavit probes the delicate balance forged by nineteenth-century German Jewish intellectuals in defining their identity. Mark Gelber moves the focus to the present and considers the post-war renewal of German Jewish culture and the birth of German-Jewish studies in the context of the ‘contribution’ discourse. Bringing the volume to its conclusion, David Biale compares three overviews of Jewish culture and civilization published in America in the twentieth and twenty-first-centuries.
Jewish Cryptotheologies of Late Modernity: Philosophical Marranos (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)
by Agata Bielik-RobsonThis book aims to interpret ‘Jewish Philosophy’ in terms of the Marrano phenomenon: as a conscious clinamen of philosophical forms used in order to convey a ‘secret message’ which cannot find an open articulation. The Marrano phenomenon is employed here, in the domain of modern philosophical thought, where an analogous tendency can be seen: the clash of an open idiom and a secret meaning, which transforms both the medium and the message. Focussing on key figures of late modern, twentieth century Jewish thought; Hermann Cohen, Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Jacob Taubes, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, this book demonstrates how their respective manners of conceptualization swerve from the philosophical mainstream along the Marrano ‘secret curve.’ Analysing their unique contribution to the ‘unfinished project of modernity,’ including issues of the future of the Enlightenment, modern nihilism and post-secular negotiation with religious heritage, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in Jewish Studies and Philosophy.
Jewish Cryptotheologies of Late Modernity: Philosophical Marranos (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)
by Agata Bielik-RobsonThis book aims to interpret ‘Jewish Philosophy’ in terms of the Marrano phenomenon: as a conscious clinamen of philosophical forms used in order to convey a ‘secret message’ which cannot find an open articulation. The Marrano phenomenon is employed here, in the domain of modern philosophical thought, where an analogous tendency can be seen: the clash of an open idiom and a secret meaning, which transforms both the medium and the message. Focussing on key figures of late modern, twentieth century Jewish thought; Hermann Cohen, Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Jacob Taubes, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, this book demonstrates how their respective manners of conceptualization swerve from the philosophical mainstream along the Marrano ‘secret curve.’ Analysing their unique contribution to the ‘unfinished project of modernity,’ including issues of the future of the Enlightenment, modern nihilism and post-secular negotiation with religious heritage, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in Jewish Studies and Philosophy.
Jewish Day Schools, Jewish Communities: A Reconsideration (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
by Alex Pomson Howard DeitcherAbout 350,000 Jewish children are currently enrolled in Jewish day schools, in every continent other than Antarctica. This is the first book-length consideration of life in such schools and of their relationship both to the Jewish community and to society as a whole. It provides a rich sense of how community is constructed within Jewish schools, and of how they contribute to or complicate the construction of community in the wider society. The volume reframes day-school research in three ways. First, it focuses not just on the learner in the day-school classroom but sees schools as agents of and for the community. Second, it brings a truly international perspective to the study of day schools, viewing them in relation to the socio-cultural contexts from which they emerge and where they have impact. Third, it considers day-school education in relation to insights derived from the study and practice of non-parochial education. This cross-cultural and genuinely comparative approach to the study of Jewish schooling draws on research from the United States, the former Soviet Union, South America, and Europe, making it possible to arrive at important and original insights into parochial Jewish schooling. With contributions from outstanding scholars as well as practitioners of public education and of Jewish parochial schooling, the volume reveals conflicting conceptions of the social functions of schooling and also produces original insights into the capacity of schools to build community. The book is timely in that it studies questions about faith-based schooling and the public good that today are as much questions of public policy as they are of academic inquiry. It will appeal first and foremost to those with a particular interest in Jewish schooling but will also attract the attention of academics and professionals concerned with the place of parochial education in contemporary society. Contributors: Ami Bouganim, Erik H. Cohen, Ira Dashefsky, Howard Deitcher, Jay Dewey, Joshua Elkin, Yoel Finkelman, Zvi Gitelman, Scott J. Goldberg, Ellen B. Goldring, Yossi J. Goldstein, Eli Kohn, Jeffrey S.Kress, Binyamin Krohn, Jon A. Levisohn, Ilana Maryles Sztokman, Deborah Meier, Helena Miller, Christine Muller, Michal Muszkat Barkan, Alex Pomson, Joseph Reimer, Randal Schnoor, Susan L. Shevitz, Asher Shkedi, Claire Smrekar, Uriel Ta'ir, Michael Turetsky, Rahel Wasserfall.
The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders
by Paul BogdanorBefore 1967, Israel had the overwhelming support of world opinion. So long as Israel's existence was in harmony with politically correct assumptions, it was supported, or at least accepted, by the majority of "progressive" Jews, especially in the wake of the Holocaust. This is no longer the case. "The Jewish Divide Over Israel" explains the role played by prominent Jews in turning Israel into an isolated pariah nation. After their catastrophic defeat in 1967, Arabs overcame inferiority on the battlefield with superiority in the war of ideas. Their propaganda stopped trumpeting their desire to eradicate Israel. Instead, in a calculated appeal to liberals and radicals, they redefined their war of aggression against the Jews as a struggle for the liberation of Palestinian Arabs. The tenacity of Arabs' rejection of Israel and their relentless campaign - in schools, universities, churches, professional organizations, and, above all, the news media - to destroy Israel's moral image had the desired impact. Many Jewish liberals became desperate to escape from the shadow of Israel's alleged misdeeds and found a way to do so by joining other members of the left in blaming Israeli sins for Arab violence. Today, Jewish liberals rationalize violence against the innocent as resistance to the oppressor, excuse Arab extremism as the frustration of a wronged party, and redefine eliminationist rhetoric and physical assaults on Jews as "criticism of Israeli policy." Israel's Jewish accusers have played a crucial and disproportionate role in the current upsurge of antisemitism precisely because they speak as Jews. The essays in this book seek to understand and throw back the assault on Israel led by such Jewish liberals and radicals as Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky, George Steiner, Daniel Boyarin, Marc Ellis, Israel Shahak, and many others. Its writers demonstrate that the foundation of the state of Israel, far from being the primal sin alleged by its accusers, was one of the few redeeming events in a century of blood and shame.
The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders
by Paul BogdanorBefore 1967, Israel had the overwhelming support of world opinion. So long as Israel's existence was in harmony with politically correct assumptions, it was supported, or at least accepted, by the majority of "progressive" Jews, especially in the wake of the Holocaust. This is no longer the case. "The Jewish Divide Over Israel" explains the role played by prominent Jews in turning Israel into an isolated pariah nation. After their catastrophic defeat in 1967, Arabs overcame inferiority on the battlefield with superiority in the war of ideas. Their propaganda stopped trumpeting their desire to eradicate Israel. Instead, in a calculated appeal to liberals and radicals, they redefined their war of aggression against the Jews as a struggle for the liberation of Palestinian Arabs. The tenacity of Arabs' rejection of Israel and their relentless campaign - in schools, universities, churches, professional organizations, and, above all, the news media - to destroy Israel's moral image had the desired impact. Many Jewish liberals became desperate to escape from the shadow of Israel's alleged misdeeds and found a way to do so by joining other members of the left in blaming Israeli sins for Arab violence. Today, Jewish liberals rationalize violence against the innocent as resistance to the oppressor, excuse Arab extremism as the frustration of a wronged party, and redefine eliminationist rhetoric and physical assaults on Jews as "criticism of Israeli policy." Israel's Jewish accusers have played a crucial and disproportionate role in the current upsurge of antisemitism precisely because they speak as Jews. The essays in this book seek to understand and throw back the assault on Israel led by such Jewish liberals and radicals as Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky, George Steiner, Daniel Boyarin, Marc Ellis, Israel Shahak, and many others. Its writers demonstrate that the foundation of the state of Israel, far from being the primal sin alleged by its accusers, was one of the few redeeming events in a century of blood and shame.
Jewish Drama & Theatre: From Rabbinical Intolerance to Secular Liberalism
by Eli RozikJewish drama and theatre has followed a tortuous path from extreme rabbinical intolerance to eventual secular liberalism, with its openness to the heritages of both Judaism as a culture and prominent foreign cultures, to the extent of multicultural integration. No wonder, therefore, that since biblical times until the seventeenth century there are only examples of tangential theatre practices. This initial intolerance, shared by the Church, was rooted in pagan connotations of theatre rather than in the neutral nature of the theatre medium, capable of formulating and communicating contrasting thoughts. Whereas by the tenth century the Church understood that theatre could be harnessed to its own ends, Jewish theatre was only created seven centuries later through spontaneous and amateurish theatrical practices, such as the Yiddish purim-shpil and the purim-rabbi. Due to their carnivalesque and cathartic nature these practices were tolerated by the rabbinical establishment, albeit only during the Purim holiday. But as a result, Jewish drama and theatre were created and emerged despite rabbinical antagonism. Under the influence of the Jewish Enlightenment, Yiddish-speaking theatres were increasingly established, a trend that became central in the cultural enterprise of the Jews in Israel. This process involved a renewed use of Hebrew as a spoken language, and the transition from a profound religious identity to a secular Jewish one, characterised by a basic liberalism to the extent of openness to cultures traditionally perceived as archetypal enemies of Judaism. This book sets out to analyse play-scripts and performance-texts produced in the Israeli theatre in order to illustrate these trends, and concludes that only a liberal society can bring about the full realisation of theatre's potentialities.
The Jewish East Side: 1881-1924 (The Library of Conservative Thought)
by Milton HindusThis book, originally published as The Old East Side, is a collection of literature and documents ranging from the autobiography of the sculptor Jacob Epstein and the novels of Abraham Cahan to the reporting of William Dean Howells and the fictional reconstruction of a vanished world by Henry Roth. The world is that of the old shtetl transplanted to a new, growing country, where "the ghetto" (in the years 1881-1924) was an unstable mixture of nostalgic elements and the pressures of American economic and social reality.The productivity, both intellectual and material, of the section of New York known as the East Side during those forty years around the turn of the twentieth century has become a legend among many Jews in this country and deserves to become better known to many more of other ethnic origins. The lower East Side was paradoxically a wilderness to be traversed and a portion of that "promised land" which had been glimpsed with so much hope from afar. To wonderfully talented and observant children, like Jacob Epstein, the streets there in the 1880s were as filled with excitement as those of the Arabian Nights. To serious philosophic young men like Morris Raphael Cohen, they were as challenging as the marketplace of Athens had once been to Socrates to achieve intellectual enlightenment and the improvement of the social order.The conditions of abominable crowding and poverty described in the sociological tracts of Jacob Riis, Lillian Wald, and others are better known perhaps to the average reader than the accounts of such pleasures as the dancing schools, the Yiddish theaters, the cafes, the lectures, the literary ferment and activities, described in the pages of Abraham Cahan and Hutchins Hapgood. But all the views presented in The Jewish East Side, both dark and bright, are recognizably parts of the same picture. This book will be of value to sociologists, historians, researchers specializing in Judaic studies, and students of literature.
The Jewish East Side: 1881-1924 (The Library of Conservative Thought)
by Milton HindusThis book, originally published as The Old East Side, is a collection of literature and documents ranging from the autobiography of the sculptor Jacob Epstein and the novels of Abraham Cahan to the reporting of William Dean Howells and the fictional reconstruction of a vanished world by Henry Roth. The world is that of the old shtetl transplanted to a new, growing country, where "the ghetto" (in the years 1881-1924) was an unstable mixture of nostalgic elements and the pressures of American economic and social reality.The productivity, both intellectual and material, of the section of New York known as the East Side during those forty years around the turn of the twentieth century has become a legend among many Jews in this country and deserves to become better known to many more of other ethnic origins. The lower East Side was paradoxically a wilderness to be traversed and a portion of that "promised land" which had been glimpsed with so much hope from afar. To wonderfully talented and observant children, like Jacob Epstein, the streets there in the 1880s were as filled with excitement as those of the Arabian Nights. To serious philosophic young men like Morris Raphael Cohen, they were as challenging as the marketplace of Athens had once been to Socrates to achieve intellectual enlightenment and the improvement of the social order.The conditions of abominable crowding and poverty described in the sociological tracts of Jacob Riis, Lillian Wald, and others are better known perhaps to the average reader than the accounts of such pleasures as the dancing schools, the Yiddish theaters, the cafes, the lectures, the literary ferment and activities, described in the pages of Abraham Cahan and Hutchins Hapgood. But all the views presented in The Jewish East Side, both dark and bright, are recognizably parts of the same picture. This book will be of value to sociologists, historians, researchers specializing in Judaic studies, and students of literature.
Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages
by David C. KraemerThis book explores the history of Jewish eating and Jewish identity, from the Bible to the present. The lessons of this book rest squarely on the much-quoted insight: 'you are what you eat.' But this book goes beyond that simple truism to recognise that you are not only what you eat, but also how, when, where and with whom you eat. This book begins at the beginning – with the Torah – and then follows the history of Jewish eating until the modern age and even into our own day. Along the way, it travels from Jewish homes in the Holy Land and Babylonia (Iraq) to France and Spain and Italy, then to Germany and Poland and finally to the United States of America. It looks at significant developments in Jewish eating in all ages: in the ancient Near East and Persia, in the Classical age, throughout the Middle Ages and into Modernity. It pays careful attention to Jewish eating laws (halakha) in each time and place, but it does not stop there: it also looks for Jews who bend and break the law, who eat like Romans or Christians regardless of the law and who develop their own hybrid customs according to their own 'laws', whatever Jewish tradition might tell them. In this colourful history of Jewish eating, we get more than a taste of how expressive and crucial eating choices have always been.
Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages (Routledge Advances In Sociology Ser.)
by David C. KraemerThis book explores the history of Jewish eating and Jewish identity, from the Bible to the present. The lessons of this book rest squarely on the much-quoted insight: 'you are what you eat.' But this book goes beyond that simple truism to recognise that you are not only what you eat, but also how, when, where and with whom you eat. This book begins at the beginning – with the Torah – and then follows the history of Jewish eating until the modern age and even into our own day. Along the way, it travels from Jewish homes in the Holy Land and Babylonia (Iraq) to France and Spain and Italy, then to Germany and Poland and finally to the United States of America. It looks at significant developments in Jewish eating in all ages: in the ancient Near East and Persia, in the Classical age, throughout the Middle Ages and into Modernity. It pays careful attention to Jewish eating laws (halakha) in each time and place, but it does not stop there: it also looks for Jews who bend and break the law, who eat like Romans or Christians regardless of the law and who develop their own hybrid customs according to their own 'laws', whatever Jewish tradition might tell them. In this colourful history of Jewish eating, we get more than a taste of how expressive and crucial eating choices have always been.
Jewish Economies (Volume 1): Development and Migration in America and Beyond: The Economic Life of American Jewry
by Simon KuznetsNobel Laureate Simon Kuznets, famous as the founder of modern empirical economics, pioneered the quantitative study of the economic history of the Jews. Yet until now his most important work on the subject was unpublished. These volumes bring to the public, for the first time, the most important work written on Jewish economic history since that of Werner Sombart a century ago.In the first volume, Kuznets uses extensive, original data to trace trends in the economic life of American Jews. He measures quantitatively for the first time the legendary economic success of American Jews and discusses the foundations of these achievements. Tracing their distinctive concentration in the professions, he exposes the causes of the extreme inequalities in American Jewish economic life. The immigrant origin of nearly all American Jews offers a unique case study in the process of assimilation that made American Jewry the ultimate American success story. This offers an ideal prelude to the second forthcoming volume, Comparative Perspectives on Jewish Migration.The volume's editors also provide a unique perspective on Kuznets' work. In the introduction, Weyl shows that many of Kuznets' most influential ideas, were inspired by his study of the economic history of the Jews. Through careful analysis of shared themes, and dozens of hours of detailed interviews, Lo and Weyl reveal a new dimension of Kuznets' thought to historical inquiry.
Jewish Economies (Volume 1): Development and Migration in America and Beyond: The Economic Life of American Jewry
by Simon KuznetsNobel Laureate Simon Kuznets, famous as the founder of modern empirical economics, pioneered the quantitative study of the economic history of the Jews. Yet until now his most important work on the subject was unpublished. These volumes bring to the public, for the first time, the most important work written on Jewish economic history since that of Werner Sombart a century ago.In the first volume, Kuznets uses extensive, original data to trace trends in the economic life of American Jews. He measures quantitatively for the first time the legendary economic success of American Jews and discusses the foundations of these achievements. Tracing their distinctive concentration in the professions, he exposes the causes of the extreme inequalities in American Jewish economic life. The immigrant origin of nearly all American Jews offers a unique case study in the process of assimilation that made American Jewry the ultimate American success story. This offers an ideal prelude to the second forthcoming volume, Comparative Perspectives on Jewish Migration.The volume's editors also provide a unique perspective on Kuznets' work. In the introduction, Weyl shows that many of Kuznets' most influential ideas, were inspired by his study of the economic history of the Jews. Through careful analysis of shared themes, and dozens of hours of detailed interviews, Lo and Weyl reveal a new dimension of Kuznets' thought to historical inquiry.
Jewish Economies (Volume 2): Development and Migration in America and Beyond: Comparative Perspectives on Jewish Migration
by Simon KuznetsNobel Laureate Simon Kuznets, famous as the founder of modern empirical economics, pioneered the quantitative study of the economic history of the Jews. Yet, until now, his most important work on the subject was unpublished. This second collection of previously unavailable material issued by Transaction brings to the public, for the first time, the most important economic work written on Jewish migration since that of Werner Sombart a century ago.This volume of Kuznets' work includes three main essays. The first, titled "Immigration and the Foreign Born," was Kuznets' first work on immigration and discusses the impact of the general foreign born on the U.S. Kuznets and his co-author, Ernest Rubin, offer the essay as a quantitative antidote to the misinformation that led many Jews to support the restrictions ending Jewish migration in the 1920s. The second, "Israel's Economic Development," discusses the impact of mass immigration and other factors on Israeli productivity, providing in English for the first time one of the first detailed studies of the economic development of the state of Israel. The final essay, on "Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States," is the most famous of Kuznets' writings and provides a clear view, backed by a seminal paper that launched the contemporary social scientific study of Jewry. It discusses the details of the labor force, skills, and general structure of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the U.S.
Jewish Economies (Volume 2): Development and Migration in America and Beyond: Comparative Perspectives on Jewish Migration
by Simon Kuznets Stephanie Lo E. Glen WeylNobel Laureate Simon Kuznets, famous as the founder of modern empirical economics, pioneered the quantitative study of the economic history of the Jews. Yet, until now, his most important work on the subject was unpublished. This second collection of previously unavailable material issued by Transaction brings to the public, for the first time, the most important economic work written on Jewish migration since that of Werner Sombart a century ago.This volume of Kuznets' work includes three main essays. The first, titled "Immigration and the Foreign Born," was Kuznets' first work on immigration and discusses the impact of the general foreign born on the U.S. Kuznets and his co-author, Ernest Rubin, offer the essay as a quantitative antidote to the misinformation that led many Jews to support the restrictions ending Jewish migration in the 1920s. The second, "Israel's Economic Development," discusses the impact of mass immigration and other factors on Israeli productivity, providing in English for the first time one of the first detailed studies of the economic development of the state of Israel. The final essay, on "Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States," is the most famous of Kuznets' writings and provides a clear view, backed by a seminal paper that launched the contemporary social scientific study of Jewry. It discusses the details of the labor force, skills, and general structure of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the U.S.