Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture »

David G. Roskies is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

The Holocaust, in its enormity, has been viewed as an apocalyptic event, standing outside history, without analogy or precedent. Challenging this view, David Roskies places the Holocaust, and the literary responses of victims and survivors, in the context of generations of Jewish response to persecutions, pogroms, communal catastrophes.

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Focusing on art as resistance to anti-Semitic violence and as a way to rethink the past, Roskies (Jewish literature, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York City) analyzes the creative responses of "scribes of the ghetto" and other East European Jewish intellectuals in the 19th and 20th centuries. Originally published by Harvard U. Press. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)