Download or read book The Secret Diary of Arnold Douwes written by Arnold Douwes and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rare diary by the leader of an underground rescue network during the Holocaust that’s “a crucial source for the study of the Dutch resistance” (Ido de Haan, coeditor of Securing Europe After Napoleon). In the Netherlands, the myth that resistance to Nazi occupation was high among all sectors of the population has retained a strong hold, and yet many Dutch Jews fell victim to deportation and annihilation in the camps of Eastern Europe. How could a country that prided itself on its tolerance, adherence to legal norms, and democratic government have been the site of such an enormous tragedy? Even while Nazi arrests of Jews were taking place, Arnold Douwes, a gardener and restless adventurer, headed a clandestine network of resistance and rescue. Douwes had spent time in the United States and France and was arrested several times by the police after his return to the Netherlands in 1940. Keenly aware that he was doing something important, he started a diary in the summer of 1943. He hid some thirty-five small notebooks in jam jars at safe houses in the vicinity of his base in Nieuwlande (Drenthe). After the war, he dug the notebooks up and transcribed them, adding several postwar sections with scrupulous notations. Bob Moore has translated Douwes’s diary into English for the first time, and he and coeditor Johannes Houwink ten Cate have added a historical and contextual introduction, annotations, and a glossary for readers who may not be familiar with Dutch technical terms or places. Organized chronologically, and remaining largely as Douwes originally wrote it, the diary sheds light on the successes—and failures—of this important Dutch rescue network.

Download or read book The Secret Diary of Arnold Douwes written by Arnold Douwes and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-28 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Netherlands, the myth that resistance to Nazi occupation was high among all sectors of the population has retained a strong hold, and yet many Dutch Jews fell victim to deportation and annihilation in the camps of Eastern Europe. How could a country that prided itself on its tolerance, adherence to legal norms, and democratic government have been the site of such an enormous tragedy? Even while Nazi arrests of Jews were taking place, Arnold Douwes, a gardener and restless adventurer, headed a clandestine network of resistance and rescue. Douwes had spent time in the United States and France and was arrested several times by the police after his return to the Netherlands in 1940. Keenly aware that he was doing something important, he started a diary in the summer of 1943. He hid some 35 small notebooks in jam jars at safe houses in the vicinity of his base in Nieuwlande (Drenthe). After the war, he dug the notebooks up and transcribed them, adding several postwar sections with scrupulous notations. Bob Moore has translated Douwes's diary into English for the first time, and he and co-editor Johannes Houwink ten Cate have added a historical and contextual introduction, annotations, and a glossary for readers who may not be familiar with Dutch technical terms or places. Organized chronologically, and remaining largely as Douwes originally wrote it, the diary sheds light on the successes—and failures—of this important Dutch rescue network.

Download or read book Bruno Schulz and Galician Jewish Modernity written by Karen Underhill and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1930s, through the prose of Bruno Schulz (1892–1942), the Polish language became the linguistic raw material for a profound exploration of the modern Jewish experience. Rather than turning away from the language like many of his Galician Jewish colleagues who would choose to write in Yiddish, Schulz used the Polish language to explore his own and his generation's relationship to East European Jewish exegetical tradition, and to deepen his reflection on golus or exile as a condition not only of the individual and of the Jewish community, but of language itself, and of matter. Drawing on new archival discoveries, this study explores Schulz's diasporic Jewish modernism as an example of the creative and also transient poetic forms that emerged on formerly Habsburg territory, at the historical juncture between empire and nation-state.

Download or read book European Muslim Antisemitism written by Günther Jikeli and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-16 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antisemitism from Muslims has become a serious issue in Western Europe, although not often acknowledged as such. Looking for insights into the views and rationales of young Muslims toward Jews, Günther Jikeli and his colleagues interviewed 117 ordinary Muslim men in London (chiefly of South Asian background), Paris (chiefly North African), and Berlin (chiefly Turkish). The researchers sought information about stereotypes of Jews, arguments used to support hostility toward Jews, the role played by the Middle East conflict and Islamist ideology in perceptions of Jews, the possible sources of antisemitic views, and, by contrast, what would motivate Muslims to actively oppose antisemitism. They also learned how the men perceive discrimination and exclusion as well as their own national identification. This study is rich in qualitative data that will mark a significant step along the path toward a better understanding of contemporary antisemitism in Europe.

Download or read book Narratives from the Sephardic Atlantic written by Ronnie Perelis and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-21 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identity, family, and community unite three autobiographical texts by New World crypto-Jews, or descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in 17th-century Iberia and Spanish America. Ronnie Perelis presents the fascinating stories of three men who were caught within the matrix of inquisitorial persecution, expanding global trade, and the network of crypto-Jewish activity. Each text, reflects the unique experiences of the author and illuminates their shared, deeply rooted attachment to Iberian culture, their Atlantic peregrinations, and their hunger for spiritual enlightenment. Through these writings, Perelis focuses on the social history of transatlantic travel, the economies of trade that linked Europe to the Americas, and the physical and spiritual journeys that injected broader religious and cultural concerns into this complex historical moment.

Download or read book Yiddish in Israel written by Rachel Rojanski and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yiddish in Israel: A History challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in Israel from the proclamation of the State until today, Rojanski reveals that although Israeli leadership made promoting Hebrew a high priority, it did not have a definite policy on Yiddish. The language's varying fortune through the years was shaped by social and political developments, and the cultural atmosphere in Israel. Public perception of the language and its culture, the rise of identity politics, and political and financial interests all played a part. Using a wide range of archival sources, newspapers, and Yiddish literature, Rojanski follows the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture. With compassion, she explores the tensions during Israel's early years between Yiddish writers and activists and Israel's leaders, most of whom were themselves Eastern European Jews balancing their love of Yiddish with their desire to promote Hebrew. Finally Rojanski follows Yiddish into the 21st century, telling the story of the revived interest in Yiddish among Israeli-born children of Holocaust survivors as they return to the language of their parents.

Download or read book Moses Hess and Modern Jewish Identity written by Ken Koltun-Fromm and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001-07-31 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Koltun-Fromm's reading of Hess is of crucial import for those who study the construction of self in the modern world as well as for those who are concerned with Hess and his contributions to modern thought.... a reading of Hess that is subtle, judicious, insightful, and well supported." -- David Ellenson Moses Hess, a fascinating 19th-century German Jewish intellectual figure, was at times religious and secular, traditional and modern, practical and theoretical, socialist and nationalist. Ken Koltun-Fromm's radical reinterpretation of his writings shows Hess as a Jew struggling with the meaning of conflicting commitments and impulses. Modern readers will realize that in Hess's life, as in their own, these commitments remain fragmented and torn. As contemporary Jews negotiate multiple, often contradictory allegiances in the modern world, Koltun-Fromm argues that Hess's struggle to unite conflicting traditions and frameworks of meaning offers intellectual and practical resources to re-examine the dilemmas of modern Jewish identity. Adopting Charles Taylor's philosophical theory of the self to uncover Hess's various commitments, Koltun-Fromm demonstrates that Hess offers a rich, textured, though deeply conflicted and torn account of the modern Jew. This groundbreaking study in conceptions of identity in modern Jewish texts is a vital contribution to the diverse fields of Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, Zionism, and religious studies. Jewish Literature and Culture -- Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor Published with the generous support of the Koret Foundation

Download or read book Jewish Difference and the Arts in Vienna written by Caroline A Kita and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the mid-19th century, the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner sparked an impulse toward German cultural renewal and social change that drew on religious myth, metaphysics, and spiritualism. The only problem was that their works were deeply antisemitic and entangled with claims that Jews were incapable of creating compassionate art. By looking at the works of Jewish composers and writers who contributed to a lively and robust biblical theatre in fin de siècle Vienna, Caroline A. Kita shows how they reimagined myths of the Old Testament to offer new aesthetic and ethical views of compassion. These Jewish artists, including Gustav Mahler, Siegfried Lipiner, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Stefan Zweig, and Arnold Schoenberg, reimagined biblical stories through the lens of the modern Jewish subject to plead for justice and compassion toward the Jewish community. By tracing responses to antisemitic discourses of compassion, Kita reflects on the explicitly and increasingly troubled political and social dynamics at the end of the Habsburg Empire.

Download or read book In Search of the Hebrew People written by Ofri Ilany and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-04 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1. Troglodytes, Hottentots, and Hebrews: the Bible and the genesis of German ethnography -- 2. The law and the people: Mosaic Law and the German Enlightenment -- 3. The eighteenth-century polemic on the extermination of the Canaanites -- 4. "Is Judah indeed the Teutonic fatherland?" the Hebrew model and the birth of German national culture -- 5. "Lovers of Hebrew poetry": the battle over the Bible's relevance at the turn of the nineteenth century

Download or read book Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature written by David A. Wacks and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 1492 has long divided the study of Sephardic culture into two distinct periods, before and after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. David A. Wacks examines the works of Sephardic writers from the 13th to the 16th centuries and shows that this literature was shaped by two interwoven experiences of diaspora: first from the Biblical homeland Zion and later from the ancestral hostland, Sefarad. Jewish in Spain and Spanish abroad, these writers negotiated Jewish, Spanish, and diasporic idioms to produce a uniquely Sephardic perspective. Wacks brings Diaspora Studies into dialogue with medieval and early modern Sephardic literature for the first time.

Download or read book French Jews Turkish Jews written by Aron Rodrigue and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1990-09-22 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French-Jewish organization founded in 1860, occupies a crucial place in the history of Sephardi communities in the modern period. In the fifty years after its creation, the Alliance established a vast network of schools in the lands of Islam for the purpose of "civilizing" the local Jewish communities and remaking them in the idealized self-image of French Jewry. This study, drawing on the author's extensive research in the archives of the Alliance in Paris, focuses on the work of the Alliance among Turkish Jewry, one of the communities most strongly affected by the organizations' activities. Although the Alliance played a conclusive role in the Westernization of Turkish Jews, it was also the unwitting catalyst for the emrgence of new political movements such as Zionism, which turned away from the Alliance's ideology and ultimately threatened the survival of its schools. This book illuminates an important episode in the history of Sephardi and French Jewries as they interacted through the Alliance Israélite Universelle and draws important conclusions about the transformation of European as well as Middle Eastern Jewries in the modern era.

Download or read book Theodor Herzl written by Jacques Kornberg and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1993-11-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An original and brilliant thesis, exposing a long misunderstood figure. A great book." -- Bernard Avishai "Excellent... a highly revealing portrait that demolishes Herzl-the-icon." -- Michael Marrus "Other biographers... have illuminated aspects of [Herzl's] life, but none has been able to produce the kind of intellectual biography that we have here. Jacques Kornberg has done an admirable job of plumbing the depths of Herzl's mind to try to come to an understanding of just why he became a Zionist and why he was literally consumed with promoting Zionist goals." -- Cithara "With compassion and critical balance, placing his subject well within his Austrian milieu, Kornberg analyzes Herzl's rhetoric, tergiversations, and profound ambivalence over his politics and identity."Â -- Choice "... a masterful display of the sources... " -- American Historical Review "... stimulating, provocative and agreeably iconoclastic... powerful and compelling." -- German History A novel and provocative explanation of Theodor Herzl's founding of Zionism as a way of resolving his personal crisis over his Jewish identity.

Download or read book The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater written by Alyssa Quint and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alyssa Quint focuses on the early years of the modern Yiddish theater, from roughly 1876 to 1883, through the works of one of its best-known and most colorful figures, Avrom Goldfaden. Goldfaden (né Goldenfaden, 1840-1908) was one of the first playwrights to stage a commercially viable Yiddish-language theater, first in Romania and then in Russia. Goldfaden’s work was rapidly disseminated in print and his plays were performed frequently for Jewish audiences. Sholem Aleichem considered him as a forger of a new language that "breathed the European spirit into our old jargon." Quint uses Goldfaden’s theatrical works as a way to understand the social life of Jewish theater in Imperial Russia. Through a study of his libretti, she looks at the experiences of Russian Jewish actors, male and female, to explore connections between culture as artistic production and culture in the sense of broader social structures. Quint explores how Jewish actors who played Goldfaden’s work on stage absorbed the theater into their everyday lives. Goldfaden’s theater gives a rich view into the conduct, ideology, religion, and politics of Jews during an important moment in the history of late Imperial Russia.

Download or read book The Last Rabbi written by William Kolbrener and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph Soloveitchik (1903–1993) was a major American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist, philosopher, and theologian. In this new work, William Kolbrener takes on Soloveitchik's controversial legacy and shows how he was torn between the traditionalist demands of his European ancestors and the trajectory of his own radical and often pluralist philosophy. A portrait of this self-professed "lonely man of faith" reveals him to be a reluctant modern who responds to the catastrophic trauma of personal and historical loss by underwriting an idiosyncratic, highly conservative conception of law that is distinct from his Talmudic predecessors, and also paves the way for a return to tradition that hinges on the ethical embrace of multiplicity. As Kolbrener melds these contradictions, he presents Soloveitchik as a good deal more complicated and conflicted than others have suggested. The Last Rabbi affords new perspective on the thought of this major Jewish philosopher and his ideas on the nature of religious authority, knowledge, and pluralism.

Download or read book Arabs and Jews in Ottoman Palestine written by Alan Dowty and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When did the Arab-Israeli conflict begin? Some discussions focus on the 1967 war, some go back to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and others look to the beginning of the British Mandate in 1929. Alan Dowty, however, traces the earliest roots of the conflict to the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, arguing that this historical approach highlights constant clashes between religious and ethnic groups in Palestine. He demonstrates that existing Arab residents viewed new Jewish settlers as European and shares evidence of overwhelming hostility to foreigners from European lands. He shows that Jewish settlers had tremendous incentive to minimize all obstacles to settlement, including the inconvenient hostility of the existing population. Dowty's thorough research reveals how events that occurred over 125 years ago shaped the implacable conflict that dominates the Middle East today.

Download or read book Rational Rabbis written by Menachem Fisch and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-11-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " . . . a fascinating and thought-provoking book . . . " —The Jewish Quarterly "The best introduction to the talmudic literature that is available. . . . An extraordinarily important book, brilliant, and lucid." —Daniel Boyarin "Menachem Fisch has written a rich, thoughtful book. One will come away from Rational Rabbis with a deeper understanding of just what the Talmud is." —Hilary Putnam Talmudic culture is often viewed as bound by its traditions. Menachem Fisch maintains that a close reading of talmudic texts frequently reveals their authors as rabbis who, rather than conform uncritically to tradition, knowingly set out to expose and resolve problems inherent in the received traditions.

Download or read book As political soldiers we face Moscow s hordes Dutch volunteers in the Waffen SS written by Evertjan van Roekel and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War, approximately 25,000 Dutchmen served within the ranks of the military branch of the German SS: the Waffen-SS. They volunteered to fight to secure the victory of Nazi Germany. These Dutch volunteers fought mainly on the Eastern Front, and to a lesser extent, within their own national borders. After the war, the Allied victors regarded them as part of a criminal organization and jointly responsible for the atrocious transgressions of the Nazi regime. In the Netherlands, these men were reviled, branded as traitors and became pariahs in their own country. Those who had devoted themselves to the Nazi regime caused so much grief to the Netherlands that they had to be held accountable. Despite their military achievements, their reputation was damaged forever. The Netherlands supplied the largest contingent of SS soldiers from the occupied North-western European territories. Who were these people? What led them to enlist, and what were the consequences of their choice? An important part of this study involves the autobiographical texts of nineteen Dutch volunteers in the Waffen-SS. These ego-documents recount their own immediate experiences and are mainly fragments from diaries, but there are also letters, individual notes, and memoirs. The ego-documents are placed within the larger historical context to provide an answer to the question of whether these men were only ideologically motivated and unconditional Nazi sympathizers, and for this, their criminal records are also researched. Among other topics, the book discusses their choice to enlist, their experiences at the front, and their involvement in genocide, providing a new perspective on the Eastern Front.