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Jews and the American Religious Landscape: A Comparative Study
by Uzi RebhunJews and the American Religious Landscape explores major complementary facets of American Judaism and Jewish life through a comprehensive analysis of contemporary demographic and sociological data. Focusing on the most important aspects of social development—geographic location, socioeconomic stratification, family dynamics, group identification, and political orientation—the volume adds empirical value to questions concerning the strengths of Jews as a religious and cultural group in America and the strategies they have developed to integrate successfully into a Christian society.With advanced analyses of data gathered by the Pew Research Center, Jews and the American Religious Landscape shows that Jews, like other religious and ethnic minorities, strongly identify with their religion and culture. Yet their particular religiosity, along with such factors as population dispersion, professional networks, and education, have created different outcomes in various contexts. Living under the influence of a Christian majority and a liberal political system has also cultivated a distinct ethos of solidarity and egalitarianism, enabling Judaism to absorb new patterns in ways that mirror its integration into American life. Rich in information thoughtfully construed, this book presents a remarkable portrait of what it means to be an American Jew today.
Jews and the American Slave Trade
by Saul FriedmanThe Nation of Islam's Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews has been called one of the most serious anti-Semitic manuscripts published in years. This work of so-called scholars received great celebrity from individuals like Louis Farrakhan, Leonard Jeffries, and Khalid Abdul Muhammed who used the document to claim that Jews dominated both transatlantic and antebellum South slave trades. As Saul Friedman definitively documents in Jews and the American Slave Trade, historical evidence suggests that Jews played a minimal role in the transatlantic, South American, Caribbean, and antebellum slave trades.Jews and the American Slave Trade dissects the questionable historical technique employed in Secret Relationship, offers a detailed response to Farrakhan's charges, and analyzes the impetus behind these charges. He begins with in-depth discussion of the attitudes of ancient peoples, Africans, Arabs, and Jews toward slavery and explores the Jewish role hi colonial European economic life from the Age of Discovery tp Napoleon. His state-by-state analyses describe in detail the institution of slavery in North America from colonial New England to Louisiana. Friedman elucidates the role of American Jews toward the great nineteenth-century moral debate, the positions they took, and explains what shattered the alliance between these two vulnerable minority groups in America.Rooted in incontrovertible historical evidence, provocative without being incendiary, Jews and the American Slave Trade demonstrates that the anti-slavery tradition rooted in the Old Testament translated into powerful prohibitions with respect to any involvement in the slave trade. This brilliant exploration will be of interest to scholars of modern Jewish history, African-American studies, American Jewish history, U.S. history, and minority studies.
Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century
by Andrew R. HeinzeWhat do Joyce Brothers and Sigmund Freud, Rabbi Harold Kushner and philosopher Martin Buber have in common? They belong to a group of pivotal and highly influential Jewish thinkers who altered the face of modern America in ways few people recognize. So argues Andrew Heinze, who reveals in rich and unprecedented detail the extent to which Jewish values, often in tense interaction with an established Christian consensus, shaped the country's psychological and spiritual vocabulary. Jews and the American Soul is the first book to recognize the central role Jews and Jewish values have played in shaping American ideas of the inner life. It overturns the widely shared assumption that modern ideas of human nature derived simply from the nation's Protestant heritage. Heinze marshals a rich array of evidence to show how individuals ranging from Erich Fromm to Ann Landers changed the way Americans think about mind and soul. The book shows us the many ways that Jewish thinkers influenced everything from the human potential movement and pop psychology to secular spirituality. It also provides fascinating new interpretations of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Western views of the psyche; the clash among Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish moral sensibilities in America; the origins and evolution of America's psychological and therapeutic culture; the role of Jewish women as American public moralists, and more. A must-read for anyone interested in the contribution of Jews and Jewish culture to modern America.
Jews and the Civil War: A Reader
by Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam MendelsohnA unique collection revealing the experience of Jewish soldiers and civilians during the Civil WarAt least 8,000 Jewish soldiers fought for the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War. A few served together in Jewish companies while most fought alongside Christian comrades. Yet even as they stood “shoulder-to-shoulder” on the front lines, they encountered unique challenges.In Jews and the Civil War, Jonathan D. Sarna and Adam Mendelsohn assemble for the first time the foremost scholarship on Jews and the Civil War, little known even to specialists in the field. These accessible and far-ranging essays from top scholars are grouped into seven thematic sections—Jews and Slavery, Jews and Abolition, Rabbis and the March to War, Jewish Soldiers during the Civil War, The Home Front, Jews as a Class, and Aftermath—each with an introduction by the editors. Together they reappraise the impact of the war on Jews in the North and the South, offering a rich and fascinating portrait of the experience of Jewish soldiers and civilians from the home front to the battle front.
Jews and the Ends of Theory
by Shai Ginsburg, Martin Land, and Jonathan BoyarinTheory, as it’s happened across the humanities, has often been coded as “Jewish.” This collection of essays seeks to move past explanations for this understanding that rely on the self-evident (the historical centrality of Jews to the rise of Critical Theory with the Frankfurt School) or stereotypical (psychoanalysis as the “Jewish Science”) in order to show how certain problematics of modern Jewishness enrich theory.In the range of violence and agency that attend the appellation “Jew,” depending on how, where, and by whom it’s uttered, we can see that Jewishness is a rhetorical as much as a sociological fact, and that its rhetorical and sociological aspects, while linked, are not identical. Attention to this disjuncture helps to elucidate the questions of power, subjectivity, identity, figuration, language, and relation that modern theory has grappled with. These questions in turn implicate geopolitical issues such as the relation of a people to a state and the violence done in the name of simplistic identitarian ideologies.Clarifying a situation where “the Jew” is not readily or unproblematically legible, the editors propose what they call “spectral reading,” a way to understand Jewishness as a fluid and rhetorical presence. While not divorced from sociological facts, this spectral reading works in concert with contemporary theory to mediate pessimistic and utopian impulses, experiences, and realities.Contributors: Svetlana Boym, Andrew Bush, Sergey Dolgopolski, Jay Geller, Sarah Hammerschlag, Hannan Hever, Martin Land, Martin Jay, James I. Porter, Yehouda Shenhav, Elliot R. Wolfson
Jews and the Left
by Philip MendesThe historical involvement of Jews in the political Left is well known, but far less attention has been paid to the political and ideological factors which attracted Jews to the Left. After the Holocaust and the creation of Israel many lost their faith in universalistic solutions, yet lingering links between Jews and the Left continue to exist.
Jews and the Mediterranean (Sephardi And Mizrahi Studies)
by Matthias B. Lehmann Jessica M. MarglinA selection of essays examining the significance of what Jewish history and Mediterranean studies contribute to our knowledge of the other.Jews and the Mediterranean considers the historical potency and uniqueness of what happens when Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi Jews meet in the Mediterranean region. By focusing on the specificity of the Jewish experience, the essays gathered in this volume emphasize human agency and culture over the length of Mediterranean history. This collection draws attention to what made Jewish people distinctive and warns against facile notions of Mediterranean connectivity, diversity, fluidity, and hybridity, presenting a new assessment of the Jewish experience in the Mediterranean.
Jews and the Military: A History
by Derek J. PenslarA historical reevaluation of the relationship between Jews, miltary service, and warJews and the Military is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jews' involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Derek Penslar shows that although Jews have often been described as people who shun the army, in fact they have frequently been willing, even eager, to do military service, and only a minuscule minority have been pacifists. Penslar demonstrates that Israel's military ethos did not emerge from a vacuum and that long before the state's establishment, Jews had a vested interest in military affairs.Spanning Europe, North America, and the Middle East, Penslar discusses the myths and realities of Jewish draft dodging, how Jews reacted to facing their coreligionists in battle, the careers of Jewish officers and their reception in the Jewish community, the effects of World War I on Jewish veterans, and Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Penslar culminates with a study of Israel's War of Independence as a Jewish world war, which drew on the military expertise and financial support of a mobilized, global Jewish community. He considers how military service was a central issue in debates about Jewish emancipation and a primary indicator of the position of Jews in any given society.Deconstructing old stereotypes, Jews and the Military radically transforms our understanding of Jews' historic relationship to war and military power.
Jews and the Renaissance of Synagogue Architecture, 1450–1730 (Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World #14)
by Barry L. StiefelBefore the mid-fifteenth century, the Christian and Islamic governments of Europe had restricted the architecture and design of synagogues and often prevented Jews from becoming architects. Stiefel presents a study of the material culture and religious architecture that this era produced.
Jews in Arab Countries: The Great Uprooting (Studies in Antisemitism)
by Georges BensoussanIn this new history, French author Georges Bensoussan retells the story of what life was like for Jews in the Arab world since 1850. During the early years of this time, it was widely believed that Jewish life in Arab lands was peaceful. Jews were protected by law and suffered much less violence, persecution, and inequality. Bensoussan takes on this myth and looks back over the history of Jewish-Arab relations in Arab countries. He finds that there is little truth to the myth and forwards a nuanced history of interrelationship that is not only diverse, but deals with local differences in cultural, religious, and political practice. Bensoussan divides the work into sections that cover 1850 to the end of WWI, from 1919 to the eve of WWII and then from WWII to the establishment of Israel and the Arab Wars. A new afterword brings the history of Jewish and Arab relations into the present day. Bensoussan has determined that the history of Jews in Arab countries is a history of slowly disintegrating relationships, increasing tension, violence, and persecution.
Jews in Britain
by Michael LeventhalThe Jewish community is the oldest ethnic minority in the country. This book tells the epic story of Jews in Britain over a thousand years. Many came as wealthy traders - others as desperate refugees. Sometimes they were feared and had to lead secret lives. At other times they stood shoulder to shoulder against threats to the British way of life, including the Nazis. The impact of Jewish culture on daily life, including words and food, as well as the contribution of notable Jewish businessmen, politicians and artists, is all highlighted.TOC: Introduction: Oldest Ethnic Minority /I: In the wake of the conqueror /II: Seeking a safe haven /III: Eastern European wave /IV: The East End /V: Some Schmaltz
Jews in China: Cultural Conversations, Changing Perceptions (Dimyonot)
by Irene EberIrene Eber was one of the foremost authorities on Jews in China during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—a field that, in contrast to the study of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the Americas, has been critically neglected. This volume gathers fourteen of Eber’s most salient articles and essays on the exchanges between Jewish and Chinese cultures, making available to students, scholars, and general readers a representative sample of the range and depth of her important work in the field of Jews in China.Jews in China delineates the centuries-long, reciprocal dialogue between Jews, Jewish culture, and China, all under the overarching theme of cultural translation. The first section of the book sets forth a sweeping overview of the history of Jews in China, beginning in the twelfth century and concluding with a detailed assessment of the two crucial years leading up to the Second World War. The second section examines the translation of Chinese classics into Hebrew and the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Chinese. The third and final section turns to modern literature, bringing together eight essays that underscore the cultural reciprocity that takes place through acts of translation.The centuries-long relationship between Judaism and China is often overlooked in the light of the extensive discourse surrounding European and American Judaism. With this volume, Eber reminds us that we have much to learn from the intersections between Jewish identity and Chinese culture.
Jews in China: Cultural Conversations, Changing Perceptions (Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination #7)
by Irene EberIrene Eber was one of the foremost authorities on Jews in China during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—a field that, in contrast to the study of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the Americas, has been critically neglected. This volume gathers fourteen of Eber’s most salient articles and essays on the exchanges between Jewish and Chinese cultures, making available to students, scholars, and general readers a representative sample of the range and depth of her important work in the field of Jews in China.Jews in China delineates the centuries-long, reciprocal dialogue between Jews, Jewish culture, and China, all under the overarching theme of cultural translation. The first section of the book sets forth a sweeping overview of the history of Jews in China, beginning in the twelfth century and concluding with a detailed assessment of the two crucial years leading up to the Second World War. The second section examines the translation of Chinese classics into Hebrew and the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Chinese. The third and final section turns to modern literature, bringing together eight essays that underscore the cultural reciprocity that takes place through acts of translation.The centuries-long relationship between Judaism and China is often overlooked in the light of the extensive discourse surrounding European and American Judaism. With this volume, Eber reminds us that we have much to learn from the intersections between Jewish identity and Chinese culture.
Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment: Raced, Sexed, and Erased
by Carol SiegelWhat are the consequences of how Jews are depicted in movies and television series? Drawing on a host of movies and television series from the 1970s to present day, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment explores how the media sexualize and racialize American Jews. Race and sexuality frequently intersect in the depiction of Jewish characters in such shows as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, UnREAL, The Expanse, and Breaking Bad, and in films such as Hester Street, Once Upon a Time in America, Casino, Radio Days, Inglourious Basterds, and Barton Fink. When they do, American sexual norms are invariably challenged or outright broken by these anti-Semitic representations of Jewishness.Insightful and provocative, Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment disturbingly reveals the far-reaching influence of popular visual media in shaping how American Jews are perceived today.
Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a Changing City, 1920-2010 (City of Promises #2)
by Jeffrey S. GurockJews in Gotham follows the Jewish saga in ever-changing New York City from the end of the First World War into the first decade of the new millennium. This lively portrait details the complex dynamics that caused Jews to persist, abandon, or be left behind in their neighborhoods during critical moments of the past century. It shows convincingly that New York retained its preeminence as the capital of American Jews because of deep roots in local worlds.
Jews in Medieval England
by Tison Pugh Miriamne Ara KrummelThis volume examines the teaching of Jewishness within the context of medieval England. It covers a wide array of academic disciplines and addresses a multitude of primary sources, including medieval English manuscripts, law codes, philosophy, art, and literature, in explicating how the Jew-as-Other was formed. Chapters are devoted to the teaching of the complexities of medieval Jewish experiences in the modern classroom. Jews in Medieval England: Teaching Representations of the Other also grounds medieval conceptions of the Other within the contemporary world where we continue to confront the problematic attitudes directed toward alleged social outcasts.
Jews in Music: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Mid-Twentieth Century
by Artur HoldeThis authoritative history chronicles the work and lives of great Jewish musicians around the world from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth. Since the Age of Enlightenment, Jewish musicians, composers, and musicologists have greatly enriched the artistic legacies of cultures and countries on a global scale. Their contributions have been a major influence on numerous musical forms, both secular and sacred. Jews in Music presents a survey of these accomplishments through the rise of Zionism, the settlement of the Jewish Homeland, and the burgeoning Jewish music developments in America.Jews in Music presents a detailed history ranging from the symphonies of Felix Mendelssohn to the Broadway musicals of Leonard Bernstein, from the great touring violinists of Western Europe to the pioneers of commercial music recording. Plus, a section on sacred music explores in depth the evolution of the musical components of the synagogue, including the chants, compositions, and traditional songs of the chazzanim.
Jews in Nazi Berlin: From Kristallnacht to Liberation
by Beate Meyer Hermann Simon Chana SchutzThough many of the details of Jewish life under Hitler are familiar, historical accounts rarely afford us a real sense of what it was like for Jews and their families to live in the shadow of Nazi Germany's oppressive racial laws and growing violence. With Jews in Nazi Berlin, those individual lives---and the constant struggle they required---come fully into focus, and the result is an unprecedented and deeply moving portrait of a people. Drawing on a remarkably rich archive that includes photographs, objects, official documents, and personal papers, the editors of Jews in Nazi Berlin have assembled a multifaceted picture of Jewish daily life in the Nazi capital during the height of the regime's power. The book's essays and images are divided into thematic sections, each representing a different aspect of the experience of Jews in Berlin, covering such topics as emigration, the yellow star, Zionism, deportation, betrayal, survival, and more. To supplement--and, importantly, to humanize--the comprehensive documentary evidence, the editors draw on an extensive series of interviews with survivors of the Nazi persecution, who present gripping first-person accounts of the innovation, subterfuge, resilience, and luck required to negotiate the increasing brutality of the regime. A stunning reconstruction of a storied community as it faced destruction, Jews in Nazi Berlin renders that loss with a startling immediacy that will make it an essential part of our continuing attempts to understand World War II and the Holocaust.
Jews in Weimar Germany
by Donald L. NiewykThe first comprehensive history of the German Jews on the eve of Hitler's seizure of power, this book examines both their internal debates and their relations with larger German society. It shows that, far from being united, German Jewry was deeply divided along religious, political, and ideological fault lines. Above all, the liberal majority of patriotic and assimilationist Jews was forced to sharpen its self-definition by the onslaught of Zionist zealots who denied the "Germanness" of the Jews. This struggle for the heart and soul of German Jewry was fought at every level, affecting families, synagogues, and community institutions.Although the Jewish role in Germany's economy and culture was exaggerated, they were certainly prominent in many fields, giving rise to charges of privilege and domination. This volume probes the texture of German anti-Semitism, distinguishing between traditional and radical Judeophobia and reaching conclusions that will give no comfort to those who assume that Germans were predisposed to become "willing executioners" under Hitler. It also assesses the quality of Jewish responses to racist attacks. The self-defense campaigns of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith included publishing counter-propaganda, supporting sympathetic political parties, and taking anti-Semitic demagogues to court. Although these measures could only slow the rise of Nazism after 1930, they demonstrate that German Jewry was anything but passive in its responses to the fascist challenge.The German Jews' faith in liberalism is sometimes attributed to self-delusion and wishful thinking. This volume argues that, in fact, German Jewry pursued a clear-sighted perception of Jewish self-interest, apprehended the dangers confronting it, and found allies in socialist and democratic elements that constituted the "other Germany." Sadly, this profound and genuine commitment to liberalism left the German Jews increasingly isolated as the majority of Germans turned to political radicalism in the last years of the Republic. This full-scale history of Weimar Jewry will be of interest to professors, students, and general readers interested in the Holocaust and Jewish History.
Jews in the Americas, 1776-1826 (Routledge Historical Resources)
by Michael Hoberman Laura Leibman Hilit Surowitz-IsraelThe period between 1776-1826 signalled a major change in how Jewish identity was understood both by Jews and non-Jews throughout the Americas. Jews in the Americas, 1776-1826 brings this world of change to life by uniting important out-of-print primary sources on early American Jewish life with rare archival materials that can currently be found only in special collections in Europe, England, the United States, and the Caribbean.
Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination: A Scattered Nation (Transculturalisms, 1400-1700)
by Eva Johanna HolmbergBased on travel writings, religious history and popular literature, Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination explores the encounter between English travellers and the Jews. While literary and religious traditions created an image of Jews as untrustworthy, even sinister, travellers came to know them in their many and diverse communities with rich traditions and intriguing life-styles. The Jew of the imagination encountered the Jew of town and village, in southern Europe, North Africa and the Levant. Coming from an England riven by religious disputes and often by political unrest, travellers brought their own questions about identity, national character, religious belief and the quality of human relations to their encounter with 'the scattered nation'.
Jews in the Garden: A Holocaust Survivor, the Fate of His Family, and the Secret History of Poland in World War II
by Judy RakowskyVillages of Poland hide the lost secrets of World War II1944: Heavy footfalls thud on the road on a rainy May night. A band of gunmen scour a hilltop farm, acting on rumors that it harbors a Jewish family. For 18 months, the Rozeneks have been hiding safely, but their luck is about to run out. Only one from the family of six will live to see the sunrise. Sixteen-year-old Hena Rozenek shelters in the woods until morning… and then she runs.Forty years later: Holocaust survivor Sam Rakowski Ron has lived in the United States for decades, never thinking he could return to the Polish village he fled as a teenager. But now he's ready to talk about what he heard, what he saw, and what he knows about two separate families of cousins who were his neighbors, and presumably were killed during the war. The story Poland presents to the world is that Poles saved more Jews than citizens of any other nation, that any murders in Poland were committed by Nazis and Nazis alone. But Sam, while defending his countrymen, suspects a painful truth. The stories he shares with his younger cousin, Judy, an investigative journalist, send them off on a decades-long journey unlike any other to find out what happened to the Rozenek family and ultimately reveal the secrets the Polish government is still desperate to keep.Jews in the Garden is a globe-trotting detective story that turns investigative eyes and ears toward the hidden events in Poland during the Holocaust. Judy and Sam, the unlikeliest of sleuthing duos, knock on doors, petition court documents, seek clandestine meetings, and ultimately discover what really happened to the "Jews in the garden next door."
Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities
by John R. BartlettArticles examine the city of Jerusalem and other Jewish communities of the Mediterranean diaspora, as reflected in the writings of Luke, Josephus and Philo. Topics covered include social identity, everyday life and religious practice.This will be of interest to students of Roman history, biblical studies, ancient Judaism and Hellenistic history.
Jews in the Netherlands: A Short History
by Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld Bart WalletMost people know little more than fragments of Dutch Jewish history: the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam; Jewish socialism; the devastating years of the Second World War. So where is the storyline? What happened to the Jews in the Netherlands from the moment they first settled there permanently? This book answers that question. It presents the central points of 700 years of Jewish history in the Netherlands briefly and succinctly. One hundred elements of the story have been chosen that taken as a whole create a balanced and representative picture. Each relates to a central event, place, person or object that helps to illuminate one important aspect of the history of the Jews in the Netherlands, and each is linked to a striking, iconic image. They are grouped by century around unifying themes that make them part of an ongoing story.
Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250–1350
by Robert I. Burns S. J.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.