Jewish Life In Belarus

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Jewish Life in Belarus

Author : Leonid Smilovitsky
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633860261
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Life in Belarus by : Leonid Smilovitsky

Download or read book Jewish Life in Belarus written by Leonid Smilovitsky and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-20 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish life in Belarus in the years after World War II was long an enigma. Officially it was held to be as being non-existent, and in the ideological atmosphere of the time research on the matter was impossible. Jewish community life had been wiped out by the Nazis, and information on its revival was suppressed by the communists. For more than half a century the truth about Jewish life during this period was sealed in inaccessible archives. The Jews of Belarus preferred to keep silent rather than expose themselves to the animosity of the authorities. Although the fate of Belarusian Jews before and during the war has now been amply studied, this book is one of the first attempts to study Jewish life in Belarus during the last decade of Stalin's rule. In addition to archival materials, the present research is based on a questionnaire submitted to former residents of Belarus in Israel, as well as information from periodicals, collections of documents, statistical reports and monographs.

The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa

Author : Albert Kaganovich
Publisher : University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN 13 : 0299289834
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa by : Albert Kaganovich

Download or read book The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa written by Albert Kaganovich and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2013-03-08 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Located on the Dnieper River at the crossroads of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the town of Rechitsa had one of the oldest Jewish communities in Belarus, dating back to medieval times. By the late nineteenth century, Jews constituted more than half of the town’s population. Rich in tradition, Jewish Rechitsa was part of a distinctive Lithuanian-Belorussian culture full of stories, vibrant personalities, achievement, and epic struggle that was gradually lost through migration, pogroms, and the Holocaust. Now, in Albert Kaganovitch’s meticulously researched history, this forgotten Jewish world is brought to life. Based on extensive use of Soviet and Israeli archives, interviews, memoirs, and secondary sources, Kaganovitch’s acclaimed work, originally published in Russian, is presented here in a significantly revised English translation by the author. Details of demographic, social, economic, and cultural changes in Rechitsa’s evolution, presented over the sweep of centuries, reveal a microcosm of daily Jewish life in Rechitsa and similar communities. Kaganovitch looks closely at such critical developments as the spread of Chabad Hasidism, the impact of multiple political transformations and global changes, and the mass murder of Rechitsa’s remaining Jews by the German army in November to December 1941. Kaganovitch also documents the evolving status of Jews in the postwar era, starting with the reconstitution of a Jewish community in Rechitsa not long after liberation in 1943 and continuing with economic, social, and political trends under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, and finally emigration from post-Soviet Belarus. The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa is a major achievement. Winner, Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Scholarship, Koffler Centre of the Arts

Becoming Soviet Jews

Author : Elissa Bemporad
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253008271
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Becoming Soviet Jews by : Elissa Bemporad

Download or read book Becoming Soviet Jews written by Elissa Bemporad and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-29 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “endlessly rewarding” contribution to the study of Jewish life in the Soviet Union: “Fascinating . . . nuanced and respectful of human limitations” (Slavic Review). Minsk, the present capital of Belarus, was a heavily Jewish city in the decades between the world wars. Recasting our understanding of Soviet Jewish history, Becoming Soviet Jews demonstrates that pre-revolutionary forms of Jewish life in Minsk maintained continuity through the often violent social changes enforced by the communist project. Using Minsk as a case study of the Sovietization of Jews in the former Pale of Settlement, Elissa Bemporad reveals the ways in which many Jews acculturated to Soviet society in the 1920s and 1930s while remaining committed to older patterns of Jewish identity, such as Yiddish culture and education, attachment to the traditions of the Jewish workers’ Bund, circumcision, and kosher slaughter. This pioneering study also illuminates the reshaping of gender relations on the Jewish street and explores Jewish everyday life and identity during the years of the Great Terror. “Highly readable and brimming with novel facts and insights . . . [A] rich and engaging portrayal of a previously overlooked period and place.” —H-Judaic

Drohitchin Memorial (Yizkor) Book - 500 Years of Jewish Life (Drohiczyn, Belarus) Translation of Drohitchin - Finf Hundert Yor Yidish Lebn

Author : David Goldman
Publisher : Jewishgen.Incorporated
ISBN 13 : 9781939561169
Total Pages : 738 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (611 download)

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Book Synopsis Drohitchin Memorial (Yizkor) Book - 500 Years of Jewish Life (Drohiczyn, Belarus) Translation of Drohitchin - Finf Hundert Yor Yidish Lebn by : David Goldman

Download or read book Drohitchin Memorial (Yizkor) Book - 500 Years of Jewish Life (Drohiczyn, Belarus) Translation of Drohitchin - Finf Hundert Yor Yidish Lebn written by David Goldman and published by Jewishgen.Incorporated. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the translation of the Memorial (Yizkor) Book of Jewish community of Drohichin, Belarus. This history of Drohitchin/Drahichyn --in Belarus -- covers the nearly 500-year old Jewish community that had almost 5,000 Jewish residents at the start of World War II. This book is both history and memoir, and it includes poetry, tributes, and many photos. Also contained is a necrology of the Shoah victims from Drohitchin and nearby towns murdered in the two Drohitchin massacres ( July 25 and October 15, 1942). Former Drohitchin residents and descendants contributed first-hand accounts to this book so that future generations could learn about the long history of this once vibrant Jewish community. Read and treasure this heart-wrenching account of a Jewish world that no longer exists. Drohitchin is located 40 miles W of Pinsk, 33 miles East of Kobryn, 16 miles East of Antopol. [Not to be confused with the smaller town of Drohiczyn, Poland, 49 miles WNW of Brest]. Alternate names for the town: Drahichyn [Belarussian], Drogichin [Russsian], Drohiczyn [Polish], Drohitchin [Yiddish], Drahitschyn [German], Drogi inas [Lithuanian], Drohichin, Drohiczyn Poleski, Drahi yn, Dorohiczyn. Published by the Yizkor Books in Print Project, part of Yizkor Books Project of JewishGen, Inc. 736 pages, 8.5" by 11," hard cover, including all photos and other images and new lists of residents compiled recently

The Belarusian Shtetl

Author : Irina Kopchenova
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253067324
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis The Belarusian Shtetl by : Irina Kopchenova

Download or read book The Belarusian Shtetl written by Irina Kopchenova and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For centuries Jewish shtetls were an active part of Belarusian life; today, they are gone. The Belarusian Shtetl is a landmark volume which offers, for the first time in English, an illuminating look at the shtetls' histories, the lives lived and lost in them, and the memories, records, and physical traces of these communities that remain today. Since 2012, under the auspices of the Sefer Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, teams of scholars and students from many different disciplines have returned to the sites of former Jewish shtetls in Belarus to reconstruct their past. These researchers have interviewed a wide range of both Jews and non-Jews to find and document traces of Shtetl history, to gain insights into community memories, and to discover surviving markers of identity and ethnic affiliation. In the process, they have also unearthed evidence from old cemeteries and prewar houses and the stories behind memorials erected for Holocaust victims. Drawing on the wealth of information these researchers have gathered, The Belarusian Shtetl creates compelling and richly textured portraits of the histories and everyday lives of each shtetl. Important for scholars and accessible to the public, these portraits set out to return the Jewish shtetls to their rightful places of prominence in the histories and legacies of Belarus"--

The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941

Author : Azriel Shohet
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804785023
Total Pages : 794 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941 by : Azriel Shohet

Download or read book The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941 written by Azriel Shohet and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-09 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jews of Pinsk is the most detailed and comprehensive history of a single Jewish community in any language. This second portion of this study focuses on Pinsk's turbulent final sixty years, showing the reality of life in this important, and in many ways representative, Eastern European Jewish community. From the 1905 Russian revolution through World War One and the long prologue to the Holocaust, the sweep of world history and the fate of this dynamic center of Jewish life were intertwined. Pinsk's role in the bloody aftermath of World War One is still the subject of scholarly debates: the murder of 35 Jewish men from Pinsk, many from its educated elite, provoked the American and British leaders to send emissaries to Pinsk. Shohet argues that the executions were a deliberate ploy by the Polish military and government to intimidate the Jewish population of the new Poland. Despite an increasingly hostile Polish state, Pinsk's Jews managed to maintain their community through the 1920s and 30s—until World War Two brought a grim Soviet interregnum succeeded by the entry of the Nazis on July 4th, 1941. For the first volume of this two-volume collection, see The Jews of Pinsk, 1506-1880 at www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=1442.

Movable Inn

Author : Judith Kalik
Publisher : Sciendo Migration
ISBN 13 : 9783110576016
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (76 download)

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Book Synopsis Movable Inn by : Judith Kalik

Download or read book Movable Inn written by Judith Kalik and published by Sciendo Migration. This book was released on 2018-07-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews are typically viewed as urban dwellers. However there was a considerable Jewish presence in villages from the very beginning of their settlement in Eastern Europe in the 12th century, up until the Holocaust. The presence of a large Jewish population in villages was, in fact, one of the most distinctive features of East European Jewry. The colourful personality of Jewish leaseholders of the production and sale of alcoholic beverages was often depicted in Polish, Russian and Jewish literature of the 19th century, but the real knowledge about the East European rural Jews beyond the stereotypical view is still at large. The book presents the results of a systematic survey, the first of its kind, on the rural Jews in the Minsk Guberniya, from its establishment as a major administrative unit within the Russian Empire in 1793, to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The present study is based mainly on systematic sources, which produced, for the first time, a full picture of Jewish settlement in the countryside in one particular region of the Russian Empire.

The Portrayal of Jews in Modern Biełarusian Literature

Author : Zina J. Gimpelevich
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0773554157
Total Pages : 501 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis The Portrayal of Jews in Modern Biełarusian Literature by : Zina J. Gimpelevich

Download or read book The Portrayal of Jews in Modern Biełarusian Literature written by Zina J. Gimpelevich and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cold Rush Martin Breum travels through and describes the new quest for the Arctic and the tortuous ongoing diplomatic endeavours to maintain peace, while the governments involved all develop still stronger security presences.

The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia

Author : Andrew Sloin
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253024633
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia by : Andrew Sloin

Download or read book The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia written by Andrew Sloin and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-13 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Dorothy Rosenberg Prize–winner: "A remarkable social history that investigates the process of Sovietization among Jews in Belorussia” (Jeffrey Veidlinger, author of In the Shadow of the Shtetl). This insightful history demonstrates how Jewish life in Belorussia fundamentally changed when Jews started joining the Bolshevik movement and populating the front lines of the revolutionary struggle. While Andrew Sloin’s story follows the arc of Bolshevik history, it also shows how the broader movement was enacted in factories and workshops, workers’ clubs and union meetings, and on the Jewish streets of White Russia. In the eyes of the Bolshevik leadership, the project of transforming Jews into integrated Soviet citizens was bound inextricably to labor. The protagonists here are shoemakers, speculators, glassmakers, peddlers, leatherworkers, needleworkers, soldiers, students, and local party operatives who were swept up, willingly or otherwise, under the banner of Marxist socialism. With extensive research and keen insight, Sloin stresses the fundamental relationship between economy and identity formation as party officials grappled with the Jewish Question in the wake of the revolution.

Heroism in the Forest

Author : Zeev Barmatz
Publisher : Kotarim International Publi
ISBN 13 : 9657589010
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (575 download)

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Book Synopsis Heroism in the Forest by : Zeev Barmatz

Download or read book Heroism in the Forest written by Zeev Barmatz and published by Kotarim International Publi. This book was released on 2013 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shatters the widely-held belief that the Jews of Europe in WWII died "like sheep to the slaughter." Through riveting stories, with the help of first-hand accounts, Heroism in the Forest brings to life the world of the large and widespread Jewish resistance movement in Belarus. Barmatz's book is a must for anyone who wants to learn more about the armed resistance against the Nazis in Eastern Europe, as it is for anyone who thinks he already knows.

Living the High Life in Minsk

Author : Margarita M. Balmaceda
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633862221
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis Living the High Life in Minsk by : Margarita M. Balmaceda

Download or read book Living the High Life in Minsk written by Margarita M. Balmaceda and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living the High Life in Minsk looks at the sources of stability and instability in post-Soviet authoritarian states through the case study of President Lukashenka’s firm hold on power in Belarus. In particular, it seeks to understand the role of energy relations, policies, and discourses in the maintenance of this power. The central empirical question Balmaceda seeks to answer is what has been the role of energy policies in the maintenance of Lukashenka’s power in Belarus? In particular, it analyzes the role of energy policies in the management of Lukashenka’s relationship with three constituencies crucial to his hold on power: Russian actors, the Belarusian nomenklatura, and the Belarusian electorate. In terms of foreign relations, the book focuses on the factors explaining Lukashenka’s ability to project Belarus’ power in its relationship with Russia in such a way as to compensate for its objective high level of dependency, assuring high levels of energy subsidies and rents continuing well beyond the initial worsening of the relationship in c. 2004. In terms of domestic relations, Balmaceda examines Lukashenka’s specific use of those energy rents in such a way as to assure the continuing support of both the Belarusian nomenklatura and the Belarusian electorate.

Jewish Life After the USSR

Author : Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253341624
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (416 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Life After the USSR by : Zvi Y. Gitelman

Download or read book Jewish Life After the USSR written by Zvi Y. Gitelman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1980s, one of the world's largest Jewish populations has faced a unique dilemma: at the very time it has gained unprecedented freedoms, Soviet and post-Soviet Jewry has encountered political uncertainty, economic instability, and resurgent antisemitism. A population teetering simultaneously on the edge of decline and revival, Jews in the former Soviet Union have had to decide whether to take advantage of the new opportunity to revive Jewish life and rebuild Jewish communities, live in the newly established states but disappear as Jews, or abandon their former homes and emigrate to Israel or elsewhere. Jewish Life after the USSR is the first book to study post-Soviet Jewry in depth. Its careful analyses of demographic, cultural, political, and ethnic processes affecting an important post-Soviet population also give insights into larger developments in the post-Soviet states. A fine-grained snapshot of one of the world's great Jewish centers, the volume is essential reading for those seeking to understand the past, present, and future of post-Soviet Jewry. Contributors: Robert J. Brym, Valery Chervyakov, Alanna Cooper, Theodore H. Friedgut, Zvi Gitelman, Musya Glants, Marshall I. Goldman, Martin Horwitz, Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Mikhail Krutikov, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Yaacov Ro'i, Vladimir Shapiro, Sarai Brachman Shoup, and Mark Tolts.

Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union

Author : Yaacov Ro'i
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135205108
Total Pages : 447 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union by : Yaacov Ro'i

Download or read book Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union written by Yaacov Ro'i and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main focus of this book is Jewish life under the Soviet regime. The themes of the book include: the attitude of the government to Jews, the fate of the Jewish religion and life in Post-World War II Russia. The volume also contains an assessment of the prospects for future emigration.

People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

Author : Dara Horn
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393531570
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (935 download)

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Book Synopsis People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by : Dara Horn

Download or read book People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present written by Dara Horn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

A Jewish Life on Three Continents

Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804786208
Total Pages : 517 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis A Jewish Life on Three Continents by :

Download or read book A Jewish Life on Three Continents written by and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-08 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable memoir by Menachem Mendel Frieden illuminates Jewish experience in all three of the most significant centers of Jewish life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It chronicles Frieden's early years in Eastern Europe, his subsequent migration to the United States, and, finally, his settlement in Palestine in 1921. The memoir appears here translated from its original Hebrew, edited and annotated by Frieden's grandson, the historian Lee Shai Weissbach. Frieden's story provides a window onto Jewish life in an era that saw the encroachment of modern ideas into a traditional society, great streams of migration, and the project of Jewish nation building in Palestine. The memoir follows Frieden's student life in the yeshivas of Eastern Europe, the practices of peddlers in the American South, and the complexities of British policy in Palestine between the two World Wars. This first-hand account calls attention to some often ignored aspects of the modern Jewish experience and provides invaluable insight into the history of the time.

A Memorial to the Jewish Community of Zhetl (Dzyatlava, Belarus)

Author : Baruch Kaplinski
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781954176294
Total Pages : 690 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (762 download)

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Book Synopsis A Memorial to the Jewish Community of Zhetl (Dzyatlava, Belarus) by : Baruch Kaplinski

Download or read book A Memorial to the Jewish Community of Zhetl (Dzyatlava, Belarus) written by Baruch Kaplinski and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-20 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you're reading this it's because you want to learn about the now extinct Jewish village of Zhetl, known today as Dyatlovo, Belarus. Unfortunately, you can't read it in Yiddish. Sixty-Five years after this Zhetl Yizkor book was originally published, I am honored to make it available to the English-speaking world. Why do you care about Zhetl? If you're like me, it's probably because your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins were born and lived in Zhetl. A few of them survived, all of them tried to, but most of them were savagely murdered during humanity's lowest point in modern history: the Holocaust of World War II. If you're like me, you've heard bits and pieces of your family's Zhetl's stories over the years. Some of them get repeated to the point where you no longer hear them. Then one day you wake up and want to know more. You want to ask the questions which your youthful self didn't have the time, nor interest, to ask. But alas, our Zhetl is gone. Therein lies the wisdom of our dear Zhetl relatives. They knew this day would come. We all owe a debt of gratitude to all the authors who made the time to tell their stories, as painful as it was. To Baruch Kaplinski (z"l) for editing the original 1957 version and to Mordecai (Motl) Dunetz (z"l), for passionately gathering and editing materials from former Zhetl residents and survivors the world over for nearly a decade in order to drive the project through to its completion.

The Jewish Enlightenment

Author : Shmuel Feiner
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812200942
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jewish Enlightenment by : Shmuel Feiner

Download or read book The Jewish Enlightenment written by Shmuel Feiner and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-08-17 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as supplements to traditional Talmudic studies. The full participation of Jews in modern Europe and America would be unthinkable without the intellectual and social revolution that was the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Unparalleled in scale and comprehensiveness, The Jewish Enlightenment reconstructs the intellectual and social revolution of the Haskalah as it gradually gathered momentum throughout the eighteenth century. Relying on a huge range of previously unexplored sources, Shmuel Feiner fully views the Haskalah as the Jewish version of the European Enlightenment and, as such, a movement that cannot be isolated from broader eighteenth-century European traditions. Critically, he views the Haskalah as a truly European phenomenon and not one simply centered in Germany. He also shows how the republic of letters in European Jewry provided an avenue of secularization for Jewish society and culture, sowing the seeds of Jewish liberalism and modern ideology and sparking the Orthodox counterreaction that culminated in a clash of cultures within the Jewish community. The Haskalah's confrontations with its opponents within Jewry constitute one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the dramatic and traumatic encounter between the Jews and modernity. The Haskalah is one of the central topics in modern Jewish historiography. With its scope, erudition, and new analysis, The Jewish Enlightenment now provides the most comprehensive treatment of this major cultural movement.