Download or read book German Jewish Cultural Identity from 1900 to the Aftermath of the First World War written by Elisabeth Albanis and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By illustrating the quintessentially different self-perceptions of three German writers of Jewish background, all born in or around 1880 in Berlin, this book examines a range of German-Jewish identities in a socio-cultural context in Wilhelmine Germany. Moritz Goldstein (1880-1977), the conflict of his dual identity and the interplay between being a German writer and a cultural Zionist is covered first. Particular attention is given to the genesis of his essay 'Deutsch-jüdischer Parnaß' with its call for Jews to vacate their seats in German literary culture. The range of positions unfolding in the debate, following its publication in 'Der Kunstwart' in 1912, serves to illustrate the spectrum of German-Jewish self-definition at the time. In the second part, the writings of Julius Bab (1880-1955) are examined in so far as they shed light on his advocation of a synthesis of 'Deutschtum' and 'Judentum'. The far side of the spectrum of German-Jewish self-definition is represented by Ernst Lissauer (1882-1937), who propagated complete assimilation, considering the Jewish element as an obstacle which had to be overcome on the road to 'Deutschtum'. This study depicts how external cultural and political influences shaped the transformation of their ideas of what it meant to be Jewish in Germany and how they responded to increasing anti-Semitism. By recognising the way in which the individual's cultural identity was constantly refashioned in the face of external challenges, a fuller understanding of the evolving self-perception of German Jews is reached.

Download or read book The Legacy of Liberal Judaism written by Ned Curthoys and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparing the liberal Jewish ethics of the German-Jewish philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that both espoused a diasporic, worldly conception of Jewish identity that was anchored in a pluralist and politically engaged interpretation of Jewish history and an abiding interest in the complex lived reality of modern Jews. Arendt’s indebtedness to liberal Jewish thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, and Ernst Cassirer has been obscured by her modernist posture and caustic critique of the assimilationism of her German-Jewish forebears. By reorienting our conception of Arendt as a profoundly secular thinker anchored in twentieth century political debates, we are led to rethink the philosophical, political, and ethical legacy of liberal Jewish discourse.

Download or read book Einstein Before Israel written by Ze’ev Rosenkranz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Einstein a Zionist? Albert Einstein was initially skeptical and even disdainful of the Zionist movement, yet he affiliated himself with this controversial political ideology and today is widely seen as an outspoken advocate for a modern Jewish homeland in Palestine. What enticed this renowned scientist and humanitarian, who repeatedly condemned nationalism of all forms, to radically change his views? Was he in fact a Zionist? Einstein Before Israel traces Einstein's involvement with Zionism from his initial contacts with the movement at the end of World War I to his emigration from Germany in 1933 in the wake of Hitler's rise to power. Drawing on a wealth of rare archival evidence—much of it never before published—this book offers the most nuanced picture yet of Einstein's complex and sometimes stormy relationship with Jewish nationalism. Ze'ev Rosenkranz sheds new light on Einstein's encounters with prominent Zionist leaders, and reveals exactly what Einstein did and didn't like about Zionist beliefs, objectives, and methods. He looks at the personal, cultural, and political factors that led Einstein to support certain goals of Jewish nationalism; his role in the birth of the Hebrew University; his impressions of the emerging Jewish settlements in Palestine; and his reaction to mounting violence in the Arab-Jewish conflict. Rosenkranz explores a host of fascinating questions, such as whether Zionists sought to silence Einstein's criticism of their movement, whether Einstein was the real manipulator, and whether this Zionist icon was indeed a committed believer in Zionism or an iconoclast beholden to no one.

Download or read book Colonialism and the Jews in German History written by Stefan Vogt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonialism and the Jews in German History brings together new and path-breaking studies on the historical relationship between colonialism and the Jews in Germany. The book considers the mutual influences on the situation of the Jews in Germany, including attitudes towards Jews and anti-Semitism but also Jewish self-conceptions, and the ideology and politics of German colonialism. The contributors discuss the ways in which colonial ideology and practice have affected the position of the Jews in Germany, and the relationship between anti-Semitism and colonial racism. In doing so, the volume introduces German colonialism as a relevant context for German-Jewish history, and it expands the perspective on German colonial history significantly by considering Jews both as distinct objects and also as agents within the field of German colonialism. The volume includes studies on the pre-colonial era, the phase of active German colonialism since the 1880s, and the time after Germany lost its colonies in the First World War. All these studies testify to the fact that German-Jewish history takes on additional significance if seen as part of a global history of collective relationships.

Download or read book Martin Buber and His Critics Routledge Revivals written by Willard Moonan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1981. Martin Buber has been acclaimed as one of the major philosophical and religious thinkers of the twentieth century with his influence and achievements spanning numerous fields — however in each of these areas his work has also been severely criticised and his influence called into question. This volume brings together in a systematic arrangement all the significant material by and about Martin Buber published in English up to the centenary of his birth in 1978. To make the bibliography as useful as possible, the critical material was annotated and various indexes were constructed, including an extensive subject index to both Buber’s works and the criticism.

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 with total page 270 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.

Download or read book From Things Lost written by Shirli Gilbert and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate history of the Holocaust that casts new light on our understanding of victimhood and survival. In May 1933, a young man named Rudolf Schwab fled Nazi Germany. His departure allegedly came at the insistence of a close friend who later joined the Party. Schwab eventually arrived in South Africa, one of the few countries left where Jews could seek refuge, and years later, resumed a relationship in letters with the Nazi who in many ways saved his life. From Things Lost: Forgotten Letters and the Legacy of the Holocaustis a story of displacement, survival, and an unlikely friendship in the wake of the Holocaust via an extraordinary collection of letters discovered in a forgotten trunk. Only a handful of extended Schwab family members were alive in the war's aftermath. Dispersed across five continents, their lives mirrored those of countless refugees who landed in the most unlikely places. Over years in exile, a web of communication became an alternative world for these refugees, a place where they could remember what they had lost and rebuild their identities anew. Among the cast of characters that historian Shirli Gilbert came to know through the letters, one name that appeared again and again was Karl Kipfer. He was someone with whom Rudolf clearly got on exceedingly well—there was lots of joking, familiarity, and sentimental reminiscing. "That was Grandpa's best friend growing up," Rudolf's grandson explained to Gilbert; "He was a Nazi and was the one who encouraged Rudolf to leave Germany. . . . He also later helped him to recover the family's property." Gilbert takes readers on a journey through a family's personal history wherein we learn about a cynical Karl who attempts to make amends for his "undemocratic past," and a version of Rudolf who spends hours aloof at his Johannesburg writing desk, dressed in his Sunday finest, holding together the fragile threads of his existence. The Schwab family's story brings us closer to grasping the complex choices and motivations that—even in extreme situations, or perhaps because of them—make us human. In a world of devastation, the letters in From Things Lostact as a surrogate for the gravestones that did not exist and funerals that were never held. Readers of personal accounts of the Holocaust will be swept away by this intimate story.

Download or read book Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism written by Paul Egan Nahme and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) is often held to be one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the nineteenth century. Paul E. Nahme, in this new consideration of Cohen, liberalism, and religion, emphasizes the idea of enchantment, or the faith in and commitment to ideas, reason, and critique—the animating spirits that move society forward. Nahme views Cohen through the lenses of the crises of Imperial Germany—the rise of antisemitism, nationalism, and secularization—to come to a greater understanding of liberalism, its Protestant and Jewish roots, and the spirits of modernity and tradition that form its foundation. Nahme's philosophical and historical retelling of the story of Cohen and his spiritual investment in liberal theology present a strong argument for religious pluralism and public reason in a world rife with populism, identity politics, and conspiracy theories.

Download or read book Thinking in Translation written by Orr Scharf and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-08-19 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinking in Translation posits the Hebrew Bible as the fulcrum of the thought of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), underpinning a unique synthesis between systematic thinking and biblical interpretation. Addressing a lacuna in Rosenzweig scholarship, the book offers a critical evaluation of his engagement with the Bible through a comparative study of The Star of Redemption and his Bible translation with Martin Buber. The book opens with Rosenzweig's rejection of German Idealism and fascination with the sources of Judaism. It then analyzes the unique hermeneutic approach he developed to philosophy and scripture as a symbiosis of critique and cross-fertilization, facilitated by translation. An analysis of the Star exposes Rosenzweig's employment of translation in grafting biblical verses unto the philosophical discussion. It is followed by a reading that demonstrates how his Bible translation reflects an attempt to re-valorize the Tanakh as a distinctively Jewish scripture, over and against Christian appropriations. Thinking in Translation recasts Rosenzweig's life's work as a project of melding Judaism and modernity in an attempt to secure their spiritual and intellectual survival.

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 Jewish Masculinities written by Benjamin Maria Baader and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-18 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies exploring the history of the German-Jewish male identity from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, across a myriad of societal occupations. Stereotyped as delicate and feeble intellectuals, Jewish men in German-speaking lands in fact developed a rich and complex spectrum of male norms, models, and behaviors. Jewish Masculinities explores conceptions and experiences of masculinity among Jews in Germany from the sixteenth through the late twentieth century as well as emigrants to North America, Palestine, and Israel. The volume examines the different worlds of students, businessmen, mohels, ritual slaughterers, rabbis, performers, and others, shedding new light on the challenge for Jewish men of balancing German citizenship and cultural affiliation with Jewish communal solidarity, religious practice, and identity. “A valuable addition to the growing field of Jewish gender history.” —Derek Penslar, University of Toronto “[This book] assembles innovative, vivid, and inspiring inquiries into the intersection of Jewish history, German history, and gender history. By focusing on the male side of Jewish gender history . . . [this] book establishes a new field, profiting from a broad range of never (or rarely) before used primary sources, such as memoirs, letters, interviews, and obscure tabloids.” —German Studies Review, May 2014 “[A]n excellent introduction to the Zionist remasculinization of the Jewish male.” —H-Judaic, February 2015 “[I]nsightful, innovative and largely entertaining. . . . [T]his volume makes a very valuable and original contribution to German-Jewish history.” —German History “Historians of central Europe will be enriched by the interrogations of “theory” along with excavations of little-known yet critical avenues of Jewish history in this excellent volume.” —Central European History

Download or read book Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe written by Tobias Grill and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many centuries Jews and Germans were economically and culturally of significant importance in East-Central and Eastern Europe. Since both groups had a very similar background of origin (Central Europe) and spoke languages which are related to each other (German/Yiddish), the question arises to what extent Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe share common historical developments and experiences. This volume aims to explore not only entanglements and interdependences of Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe from the late middle ages to the 20th century, but also comparative aspects of these two communities. Moreover, the perception of Jews as Germans in this region is also discussed in detail.

Download or read book The Ugliness of Moses Mendelssohn written by Leah Hochman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-10 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ugliness of Moses Mendelssohn examines the idea of ugliness through four angles: philosophical aesthetics, early anthropology, physiognomy and portraiture in the eighteenth-century. Highlighting a theory that describes the benefit of encountering ugly objects in art and nature, eighteenth-century German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn recasts ugliness as a positive force for moral education and social progress. According to his theory, ugly objects cause us to think more and thus exercise—and expand—our mental abilities. Known as ugly himself, he was nevertheless portrayed in portraits and in physiognomy as an image of wisdom, gentility, and tolerance. That seeming contradiction—an ugly object (Mendelssohn) made beautiful—illustrates his theory’s possibility: ugliness itself is a positive, even redeeming characteristic of great opportunity. Presenting a novel approach to eighteenth century aesthetics, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Jewish Studies, Philosophy and History.

Download or read book Still Lives written by Ofer Ashkenazi and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2025-01-07 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Jewish Experience of the First World War written by Edward Madigan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the variety of social and political phenomena that combined to the make the First World War a key turning point in the Jewish experience of the twentieth century. Just decades after the experience of intense persecution and struggle for recognition that marked the end of the nineteenth century, Jewish men and women across the globe found themselves drawn into a conflict of unprecedented violence and destruction. The frenzied military, social, and cultural mobilisation of European societies between 1914 and 1918, along with the outbreak of revolution in Russia and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East had a profound impact on Jewish communities worldwide. The First World War thus constitutes a seminal but surprisingly under-researched moment in the evolution of modern Jewish history. The essays gathered together in this ground-breaking volume explore the ways in which Jewish communities across Europe and the wider world experienced, interpreted and remembered the ‘war to end all wars’.

Download or read book Jewish Emancipation written by David Sorkin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern world For all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the fact that they are only part of—and indeed reactions to—the central event of that history: emancipation. In this book, David Sorkin seeks to reorient Jewish history by offering the first comprehensive account in any language of the process by which Jews became citizens with civil and political rights in the modern world. Ranging from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, Jewish Emancipation tells the ongoing story of how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel. Emancipation, Sorkin shows, was not a one-time or linear event that began with the Enlightenment or French Revolution and culminated with Jews' acquisition of rights in Central Europe in 1867–71 or Russia in 1917. Rather, emancipation was and is a complex, multidirectional, and ambiguous process characterized by deflections and reversals, defeats and successes, triumphs and tragedies. For example, American Jews mobilized twice for emancipation: in the nineteenth century for political rights, and in the twentieth for lost civil rights. Similarly, Israel itself has struggled from the start to institute equality among its heterogeneous citizens. By telling the story of this foundational but neglected event, Jewish Emancipation reveals the lost contours of Jewish history over the past half millennium.

Download or read book A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy written by Eliezer Schweid and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The culmination of Eliezer Schweid’s life-work as Jewish intellectual historian, this five-volume work provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the major thinkers and movements in modern Jewish thought, in the context of general philosophy and Jewish social-political historical developments. A major theme of the work is the response of Jewish thought to the rise and crisis of Western humanism from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Volume One, “The Period of the Enlightenment,” includes a methodological introduction to the larger work, as well as thorough presentations of Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Maimon, Ascher, Wessely, Schnaber and Krochmal. Capsule essays on Kant, Hegel, and Schelling highlight the issues they raise that would be of crucial importance for Jewish thought. "Schweid introduces the reader to many writers and thinkers who pioneered a new approach toward Jewish law and lore [...]. This is a work which should be in every university and seminary library." Morton J. Merowitz, Librarian and independent scholar, Buffalo, NY (AJL Reviews, Nov/Dec 2011)