Authors: Alan Berger
ISBN-13: 9780814712122, ISBN-10: 0814712126
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: New York University Press
Date Published: October 1994
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Alan L. Bergeris the Director of Jewish Studies and teaches in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. The author/editor of four books, including Crisis and Covenant, he is on the editorial board of Studies in American Jewish Literature and has served as a judge for the National Jewish Book Awards.
As anti-semitism finds new followers and Israel makes peace with old enemies, Jews in the modern world face constantly metamorphosizing relationships. From the eighteenth century to the present, unprecedented opportunities have grown up alongside new challenges for the Jewish people. While modern society is permitting Judaism a place, profound questions over Jewish identity are taking shape.
The essays gathered in Judaism in the Modern World address the issue of Jewish persistence amidst changing forms of identity. Exploring a wide range of sources, the essayists examine historical issues, the Holocaust and its repercussions, literature, and theological dimensions while seeking the nature of Judaism in modern times. As they reassess Judaism's past while pursuing a meaningful Jewish future, these essays raise crucial questions about the tradition's central mythic structures, such as covenant and redemption.
The contributors to this volume broach everything from feminism to the creation of the state of Israel. Sander Gilman illustrates how Jewish identity is inextricably linked to the physical, showing how racial identity both reflects and defines Jewishness. Raul Hilberg examines Holocaust remembrance, in the wake of Holocaust denial, as an act of revolt. A wide-ranging and thoughtful collection, Judaism in the Modern World will appeal to readers concerned with the fate of Judaism in the modern era.
Acknowledgments | ||
Introduction | 1 | |
1 | What Is the Use of Jewish History? | 19 |
2 | The Last Century of Jewish Hope: A Historian's Critique | 35 |
3 | Jewish Distinctiveness within the American Tradition: The Eretz Yisrael Dimension as Case Illustration | 53 |
4 | The German Jews: Some Perspectives on Their History | 73 |
5 | The Visibility of the Jew in the Diaspora: Body Imagery and Its Cultural Context | 87 |
6 | History, Holocaust, and Covenant | 125 |
7 | Did American Jewry Do Enough during the Holocaust? | 144 |
8 | The Holocaust Today | 165 |
9 | Sholem Aleichem and the Art of Communication | 177 |
10 | The Americanization of Isaac Bashevis Singer | 195 |
11 | The American Imagination after the War: Notes on the Novel, Jews, and Hope | 205 |
12 | The Unity of the Contraries: Paradox as a Characteristic of Normative Jewish Thought | 229 |
13 | The Ideal Jew | 246 |
14 | The Feminist Confrontation with Judaism | 268 |
Contributors | 281 | |
Index | 285 |