Download or read book Being Jewish in 21st Century Germany written by Olaf Glöckner and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unexpected immigration wave of Jews from the former Soviet Union mostly in the 1990s has stabilized and enlarged Jewish life in Germany. Jewish kindergartens and schools were opened, and Jewish museums, theaters, and festivals are attracting a wide audience. No doubt: Jews will continue to live in Germany. At the same time, Jewish life has undergone an impressing transformation in the second half of the 20th century– from rejection to acceptance, but not without disillusionments and heated debates. And while the ‘new Jews of Germany,’ 90 percent of them of Eastern European background, are already considered an important factor of the contemporary Jewish diaspora, they still grapple with the shadow of the Holocaust, with internal cultural clashes and with difficulties in shaping a new collective identity. What does it mean to live a Jewish life in present-day Germany? How are Jewish thoughts, feelings, and practices reflected in contemporary arts, literature, and movies? What will remain of the former German Jewish cultural heritage? Who are the new Jewish elites, and how successful is the fight against anti-Semitism? This volume offers some answers.
Download or read book To Be Jewish in 21st Century Germany written by Olaf Glöckner and published by De Gruyter Akademie Forschung. This book was released on 2015-07 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unexpected immigration wave from the former Soviet Union has stabilized and enlarged Jewish life in Germany up from the 1990ies. No doubt: Jews will continue to live in Germany. But what does it mean to live a Jewish life in present Germany? How is it reflected in culture? Who are the new Jewish elites, and how successful is the fight against old and new forms of anti-Semitism? 20 authors look for answers on these and on related questions.
Download or read book Being Jewish in the New Germany written by Jeffrey M. Peck and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book was written for an American (Jewish) readership. But some chapters, especially the first two, address the non-specialist, while others, especially the last two, accommodate the expert. The work contains one theme and one thesis. The theme is simple and to be welcomed: Americans, and American Jews in particular, need to understand that Germany has changed and that its Jewish community is made up of more than just a few souls morbidly attached to blood-soaked soil. We are therefore introduced to Jewish writers, politicians and intellectuals; to Jews of Russian origin, German background and Israeli descent; and to the many issues facing today's German-Jewish community of 100,000 plus members. Peck discusses the role of the Holocaust in German and American political life. He relates how Russian Jews have begun to take over community institutions, revitalizing German Jewry especially in Berlin and the provinces. And he compares and contrasts the situation of Turks and Jews today, whom many Germans still perecive as foreign, no matter how acculturated they happen to be. All of this material is interesting, but not new"--Review from H-Net.
Download or read book Being Jewish in 21st Century Central Europe written by Haim Fireberg and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish life in Europe has undergone dramatic changes and transformations within the 20th century and also the last two decades. The phenomenon of the dual position of the Jewish minority in relation to the majority, not entirely unusual for Jewish Diaspora communities, manifested itself most distinctly on the European continent. This unique Jewish experience of the ambiguous position of insider and outsider may provide valuable views on contemporary European reality and identity crisis. The book focuses inter alia on the main common denominators of contemporary Jewish life in Central Europe, such as an intense confrontation with the heritage of the Holocaust and unrelenting antisemitism on the one hand and on the other hand, huge appreciation of traditional Jewish learning and culture by a considerable part of non-Jewish Europeans. The volume includes contributions on Jewish life in central European countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, and Germany.
Download or read book A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945 written by Michael Brenner and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of Jewish life in a country that carries the legacy of being at the epicenter of the Holocaust. Originally published in German in 2012, this comprehensive history of Jewish life in postwar Germany provides a systematic account of Jews and Judaism from the Holocaust to the early 21st Century by leading experts of modern German-Jewish history. Beginning in the immediate postwar period with a large concentration of Eastern European Holocaust survivors stranded in Germany, the book follows Jews during the relative quiet period of the 50s and early 60s during which the foundations of new Jewish life were laid. Brenner’s volume goes on to address the rise of anti-Israel sentiments after the Six Day War as well as the beginnings of a critical confrontation with Germany’s Nazi past in the late 60s and early 70s, noting the relatively small numbers of Jews living in Germany up to the 90s. The contributors argue that these Jews were a powerful symbolic presence in German society and sent a meaningful signal to the rest of the world that Jewish life was possible again in Germany after the Holocaust. “This volume, which illuminates a multi-faceted panorama of Jewish life after 1945, will remain the authoritative reading on the subject for the time to come.” —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung “An eminently readable work of history that addresses an important gap in the scholarship and will appeal to specialists and interested lay readers alike.” —Reading Religion “Comprehensive, meticulously researched, and beautifully translated.” —CHOICE
Download or read book Sojourners written by and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This absorbing book of interviews takes one to the heart of modern German Jewish history. Of the eleven German Jews interviewed, four are from West Berlin, and seven are from East Berlin. The interviews provide an exceptionally varied and intimate portrait of Jewish experience in twentieth-century Germany. There are first-hand accounts of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, the Holocaust, and the divided Germany of the Cold War era. There are also vivid descriptions of the new united Germany, with its alarming resurgence of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Some of the men and women interviewed affirm their dual German and Jewish identities with vigor. There is the West Berliner, for instance, who proclaims, "I am a German Jew. I want to live here". Others describe the impossibility of being both German and Jewish: "I don't have anything in common with the whole German people". Many confess to profound ambivalence, such as the East Berliner who feels that he is neither a native nor a foreigner in Germany: "If someone asks me, 'Who are you?' then I can only say, 'I am a fish out of water.'"
Download or read book How Jews Became Germans written by Deborah Hertz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “very readable” history of Jewish conversions to Christianity over two centuries that “tracks the many fascinating twists and turns to this story” (Library Journal). When the Nazis came to power and created a racial state in the 1930s, they considered it an urgent priority to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s premier Jewish city. Deborah Hertz’s discovery of these records, the Judenkartei, was the first step on a long research journey that led to this compelling book. Hertz begins the book in 1645, when the records begin, and traces generations of German Jewish families for the next two centuries. The book analyzes the statistics and explores letters, diaries, and other materials to understand in a far more nuanced way than ever before why Jews did or did not convert to Protestantism. Focusing on the stories of individual Jews in Berlin, particularly the charismatic salon woman Rahel Levin Varnhagen and her husband, Karl, a writer and diplomat, Hertz brings out the human stories behind the documents, sets them in the context of Berlin’s evolving society, and connects them to the broad sweep of European history.
Download or read book A Jewish Family in Germany Today written by Y. Michal Bodemann and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-03 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immediately after the Holocaust, it seemed inconceivable that a Jewish community would rebuild in Germany. What was once unimaginable has now come to pass: Germany is home to one of Europe’s most vibrant Jewish communities, and it has the fastest growing Jewish immigrant population of any country in the world outside Israel. By sharing the life stories of members of one Jewish family—the Kalmans—Y. Michal Bodemann provides an intimate look at what it is like to live as a Jew in Germany today. Having survived concentration camps in Poland, four Kalman siblings—three brothers and a sister—were left stranded in Germany after the war. They built new lives and a major enterprise; they each married and had children. Over the past fifteen years Bodemann conducted extensive interviews with the Kalmans, mostly with the survivors’ ten children, who were born between 1948 and 1964. In these oral histories, he shares their thoughts on Judaism, work, family, and community. Staying in Germany is not a given; four of the ten cousins live in Israel and the United States. Among the Kalman cousins are an art gallery owner, a body builder, a radio personality, a former chief financial officer of a prominent U.S. bank, and a sculptor. They discuss Zionism, anti-Semitism, what it means to root for the German soccer team, Schindler’s List, money, success, marriage and intermarriage, and family history. They reveal their different levels of engagement with Judaism and involvement with local Jewish communities. Kalman is a pseudonym, and their anonymity allows the family members to talk with passion and candor about their relationships and their lives as Jews.
Download or read book Between Dignity and Despair written by Marion A. Kaplan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between Dignity and Despair draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Kaplan tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor by focusing on the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness. Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.
Download or read book Space and Spatiality in Modern German Jewish History written by Simone Lässig and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a space Jewish? This wide-ranging volume revisits literal as well as metaphorical spaces in modern German history to examine the ways in which Jewishness has been attributed to them both within and outside of Jewish communities, and what the implications have been across different eras and social contexts. Working from an expansive concept of “the spatial,” these contributions look not only at physical sites but at professional, political, institutional, and imaginative realms, as well as historical Jewish experiences of spacelessness. Together, they encompass spaces as varied as early modern print shops and Weimar cinema, always pointing to the complex intertwining of German and Jewish identity.
Download or read book A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945 written by Michael Brenner and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in German in 2012, this comprehensive history of Jewish life in postwar Germany provides a systematic account of Jews and Judaism from the Holocaust to the early 21st century by leading experts of modern German-Jewish history. Beginning in the immediate postwar period with a large concentration of Eastern European Holocaust survivors stranded in Germany, the book follows Jews during the relative quiet period of the fifties and early sixties during which the foundations of new Jewish life were laid. Brenner's volume goes on to address the rise of anti-Israel sentiments after the Six-Day War as well as the beginnings of a critical confrontation with Germany's Nazi past in the late sixties and early seventies, noting the relatively small numbers of Jews living in Germany up to the 1990s. The contributors argue that these Jews were a powerful symbolic presence in German society and sent a meaningful signal to the rest of the world that Jewish life was possible again in Germany after the Holocaust. This landmark history presents a comprehensive account of reconstruction of a multifaceted Jewish life in a country that carries the legacy of being at the epicenter of the Holocaust.
Download or read book Passing Illusions written by Kerry Wallach and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weimar Germany (1919–33) was an era of equal rights for women and minorities, but also of growing antisemitism and hostility toward the Jewish population. This led some Jews to want to pass or be perceived as non-Jews; yet there were still occasions when it was beneficial to be openly Jewish. Being visible as a Jew often involved appearing simultaneously non-Jewish and Jewish. Passing Illusions examines the constructs of German-Jewish visibility during the Weimar Republic and explores the controversial aspects of this identity—and the complex reasons many decided to conceal or reveal themselves as Jewish. Focusing on racial stereotypes, Kerry Wallach outlines the key elements of visibility, invisibility, and the ways Jewishness was detected and presented through a broad selection of historical sources including periodicals, personal memoirs, and archival documents, as well as cultural texts including works of fiction, anecdotes, images, advertisements, performances, and films. Twenty black-and-white illustrations (photographs, works of art, cartoons, advertisements, film stills) complement the book’s analysis of visual culture.
Download or read book The Future of the German Jewish Past written by Gideon Reuveni and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germany’s acceptance of its direct responsibility for the Holocaust has strengthened its relationship with Israel and has led to a deep commitment to combat antisemitism and rebuild Jewish life in Germany. As we draw close to a time when there will be no more firsthand experience of the horrors of the Holocaust, there is great concern about what will happen when German responsibility turns into history. Will the present taboo against open antisemitism be lifted as collective memory fades? There are alarming signs of the rise of the far right, which includes blatantly antisemitic elements, already visible in public discourse. The evidence is unmistakable—overt antisemitism is dramatically increasing once more. The Future of the German-Jewish Past deals with the formidable challenges created by these developments. It is conceptualized to offer a variety of perspectives and views on the question of the future of the German-Jewish past. The volume addresses topics such as antisemitism, Holocaust memory, historiography, and political issues relating to the future relationship between Jews, Israel, and Germany. While the central focus of this volume is Germany, the implications go beyond the German-Jewish experience and relate to some of the broader challenges facing modern societies today.
Download or read book Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth Century Germany written by Nils Roemer and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German Jews were fully assimilated and secularized in the nineteenth century—or so it is commonly assumed. In Jewish Scholarship and Culture in the Nineteenth Century, Nils Roemer challenges this assumption, finding that religious sentiments, concepts, and rhetoric found expression through a newly emerging theological historicism at the center of modern German Jewish culture. Modern German Jewish identity developed during the struggle for emancipation, debates about religious and cultural renewal, and battles against anti-Semitism. A key component of this identity was historical memory, which Jewish scholars had begun to infuse with theological perspectives beginning in the 1850s. After German reunification in the early 1870s, Jewish intellectuals reevaluated their enthusiastic embrace of liberalism and secularism. Without abandoning the ideal of tolerance, they asserted a right to cultural religious difference for themselves--an ideal they held to even more tightly in the face of growing anti-Semitism. This newly re-theologized Jewish history, Roemer argues, helped German Jews fend off anti-Semitic attacks by strengthening their own sense of their culture and tradition.
Download or read book Three Way Street written by Jay Howard Geller and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As German Jews emigrated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and as exiles from Nazi Germany, they carried the traditions, culture, and particular prejudices of their home with them. At the same time, Germany—and Berlin in particular—attracted both secular and religious Jewish scholars from eastern Europe. They engaged in vital intellectual exchange with German Jewry, although their cultural and religious practices differed greatly, and they absorbed many cultural practices that they brought back to Warsaw or took with them to New York and Tel Aviv. After the Holocaust, German Jews and non-German Jews educated in Germany were forced to reevaluate their essential relationship with Germany and Germanness as well as their notions of Jewish life outside of Germany. Among the first volumes to focus on German-Jewish transnationalism, this interdisciplinary collection spans the fields of history, literature, film, theater, architecture, philosophy, and theology as it examines the lives of significant emigrants. The individuals whose stories are reevaluated include German Jews Ernst Lubitsch, David Einhorn, and Gershom Scholem, the architect Fritz Nathan and filmmaker Helmar Lerski; and eastern European Jews David Bergelson, Der Nister, Jacob Katz, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Abraham Joshua Heschel—figures not normally associated with Germany. Three-Way Street addresses the gap in the scholarly literature as it opens up critical ways of approaching Jewish culture not only in Germany, but also in other locations, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
Download or read book Sacred Communities written by Dean Phillip Bell and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2001 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the nature and extent of changes in communal structures and self-definition among Jews and Christians in Germany during the century before the Reformation. It argues that Christian community was restructured along civic and religious lines resulting in the development of a local sacred society that integrated material and spiritual well being into a moral and legal society, stressing the common good and internal peace, while Jewish community, given a variety of factors, came to be defined through regional communal structures and moral and legal discourse that allowed for broader geographical communal identity. Bell draws from a variety of German, Latin, and Hebrew sources and takes into consideration several methods and viewpoints of studying history.
Download or read book Jewish Life in Nazi Germany written by Francis R. Nicosia and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German Jews faced harsh dilemmas in their responses to Nazi persecution, partly a result of Nazi cruelty and brutality but also a result of an understanding of their history and rightful place in Germany. This volume addresses the impact of the anti-Jewish policies of Hitler’s regime on Jewish family life, Jewish women, and the existence of Jewish organizations and institutions and considers some of the Jewish responses to Nazi anti-Semitism and persecution. This volume offers scholars, students, and interested readers a highly accessible but focused introduction to Jewish life under National Socialism, the often painful dilemmas that it produced, and the varied Jewish responses to those dilemmas.
