A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253029295
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945 by : Michael Brenner

Download or read book A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945 written by Michael Brenner and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of Jewish life in a country that carries the legacy of being at the epicenter of the Holocaust. Originally published in German in 2012, this comprehensive history of Jewish life in postwar Germany provides a systematic account of Jews and Judaism from the Holocaust to the early 21st Century by leading experts of modern German-Jewish history. Beginning in the immediate postwar period with a large concentration of Eastern European Holocaust survivors stranded in Germany, the book follows Jews during the relative quiet period of the 50s and early 60s during which the foundations of new Jewish life were laid. Brenner’s volume goes on to address the rise of anti-Israel sentiments after the Six Day War as well as the beginnings of a critical confrontation with Germany’s Nazi past in the late 60s and early 70s, noting the relatively small numbers of Jews living in Germany up to the 90s. The contributors argue that these Jews were a powerful symbolic presence in German society and sent a meaningful signal to the rest of the world that Jewish life was possible again in Germany after the Holocaust. “This volume, which illuminates a multi-faceted panorama of Jewish life after 1945, will remain the authoritative reading on the subject for the time to come.” —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung “An eminently readable work of history that addresses an important gap in the scholarship and will appeal to specialists and interested lay readers alike.” —Reading Religion “Comprehensive, meticulously researched, and beautifully translated.” —CHOICE

How Jews Became Germans

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300150032
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis How Jews Became Germans by : Deborah Hertz

Download or read book How Jews Became Germans written by Deborah Hertz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “very readable” history of Jewish conversions to Christianity over two centuries that “tracks the many fascinating twists and turns to this story” (Library Journal). When the Nazis came to power and created a racial state in the 1930s, they considered it an urgent priority to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s premier Jewish city. Deborah Hertz’s discovery of these records, the Judenkartei, was the first step on a long research journey that led to this compelling book. Hertz begins the book in 1645, when the records begin, and traces generations of German Jewish families for the next two centuries. The book analyzes the statistics and explores letters, diaries, and other materials to understand in a far more nuanced way than ever before why Jews did or did not convert to Protestantism. Focusing on the stories of individual Jews in Berlin, particularly the charismatic salon woman Rahel Levin Varnhagen and her husband, Karl, a writer and diplomat, Hertz brings out the human stories behind the documents, sets them in the context of Berlin’s evolving society, and connects them to the broad sweep of European history.

Jews and Other Germans

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Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN 13 : 9780299226947
Total Pages : 492 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (269 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews and Other Germans by : Till van Rahden

Download or read book Jews and Other Germans written by Till van Rahden and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the integration of Jews into German society between 1860-1925, taking as an example the city of Breslau (then Germany, now Wrocław, Poland). Questions whether there was a continuous line from the German treatment of Jews before World War I to Nazi antisemitism. During and after World War I, relations between Jews and non-Jews worsened and the high level of Jewish integration eroded between 1916-25. Although the constitution of the Weimar Republic accorded Jews equality, they experienced acts of violence and discrimination. Argues that antisemitism became stronger as the economic situation of the Jews deteriorated, due to inflation and the emigration to Germany of 4,273 impoverished Jews from Poland and Russia between 1919-23. Concludes, nevertheless, that no direct line can be drawn between the antisemitism in Imperial Germany and that of the Nazi period.

A Jewish Family in Germany Today

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822385929
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis A Jewish Family in Germany Today by : Y. Michal Bodemann

Download or read book A Jewish Family in Germany Today written by Y. Michal Bodemann and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-03 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immediately after the Holocaust, it seemed inconceivable that a Jewish community would rebuild in Germany. What was once unimaginable has now come to pass: Germany is home to one of Europe’s most vibrant Jewish communities, and it has the fastest growing Jewish immigrant population of any country in the world outside Israel. By sharing the life stories of members of one Jewish family—the Kalmans—Y. Michal Bodemann provides an intimate look at what it is like to live as a Jew in Germany today. Having survived concentration camps in Poland, four Kalman siblings—three brothers and a sister—were left stranded in Germany after the war. They built new lives and a major enterprise; they each married and had children. Over the past fifteen years Bodemann conducted extensive interviews with the Kalmans, mostly with the survivors’ ten children, who were born between 1948 and 1964. In these oral histories, he shares their thoughts on Judaism, work, family, and community. Staying in Germany is not a given; four of the ten cousins live in Israel and the United States. Among the Kalman cousins are an art gallery owner, a body builder, a radio personality, a former chief financial officer of a prominent U.S. bank, and a sculptor. They discuss Zionism, anti-Semitism, what it means to root for the German soccer team, Schindler’s List, money, success, marriage and intermarriage, and family history. They reveal their different levels of engagement with Judaism and involvement with local Jewish communities. Kalman is a pseudonym, and their anonymity allows the family members to talk with passion and candor about their relationships and their lives as Jews.

Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870

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Author :
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253347343
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (473 download)

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Book Synopsis Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870 by : Benjamin Maria Baader

Download or read book Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800-1870 written by Benjamin Maria Baader and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baader examines changes in practices of prayer and synagogue worship, rabbinic writings that encouraged men to cultivate a Judaism shaped by feminine values, the transformation of exclusively male philanthropic organizations into modern voluntary organizations in which men and women participated, and the new roles assumed by women as educators, activists, and religious writers. By documenting the expansion of women's spaces and women's roles in bourgeoisie Judaism and tracing the feminization of Jewish men's religious practices, Baader provides fresh insights into the gender organization of traditional Jewish culture and modern German middle-class society."--BOOK JACKET.

Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195346794
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (467 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945 by : Marion A. Kaplan

Download or read book Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945 written by Marion A. Kaplan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the seventeenth century until the Holocaust, Germany's Jews lurched between progress and setback, between fortune and terrible misfortune. German society shunned Jews in the eighteenth century and opened unevenly to them in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only to turn murderous in the Nazi era. By examining the everyday lives of ordinary Jews, this book portrays the drama of German-Jewish history -- the gradual ascent of Jews from impoverished outcasts to comfortable bourgeois citizens and then their dramatic descent into genocidal torment during the Nazi years. Building on social, economic, religious, and political history, it focuses on the qualitative aspects of ordinary life -- emotions, subjective impressions, and quotidian perceptions. How did ordinary Jews and their families make sense of their world? How did they construe changes brought about by industrialization? How did they make decisions to enter new professions or stick with the old, juggle traditional mores with contemporary ways? The Jewish adoption of secular, modern European culture and the struggle for legal equality exacted profound costs, both material and psychological. Even in the heady years of progress, a basic insecurity informed German-Jewish life. Jewish successes existed alongside an antisemitism that persisted as a frightful leitmotif throughout German-Jewish history. And yet the history that emerges from these pages belies simplistic interpretations that German antisemitism followed a straight path from Luther to Hitler. Neither Germans nor Jews can be typecast in their roles vis ? vis one another. Non-Jews were not uniformly antisemitic but exhibited a wide range of attitudes towards Jews. Jewish daily life thus provides another vantage point from which to study the social life of Germany. Focusing on both internal Jewish life -- family, religion, culture and Jewish community -- and the external world of German culture and society provides a uniquely well-rounded portrait of a world defined by the shifting sands of inclusion and exclusion.

Between Dignity and Despair

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195313585
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis Between Dignity and Despair by : Marion A. Kaplan

Download or read book Between Dignity and Despair written by Marion A. Kaplan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between Dignity and Despair draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Kaplan tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor by focusing on the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness. Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.

The Jews of Germany

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 472 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Jews of Germany by : Marvin Lowenthal

Download or read book The Jews of Germany written by Marvin Lowenthal and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Jewish Masculinities

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253002133
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Masculinities by : Benjamin Maria Baader

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 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 16th through the late 20th 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.

Judaism in Germany

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Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3638918955
Total Pages : 29 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (389 download)

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Book Synopsis Judaism in Germany by : Hagar Figler

Download or read book Judaism in Germany written by Hagar Figler and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-03 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2006 in the subject English - Applied Geography, grade: 1, IDC (IDC), 10 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Today, more than 100.000 Jews live in Germany. The Jewish world in Germany, with 83 local communities, is the third largest in Western Europe and the fastest growing in the world after Israel itself. After the horrors of the Shoah, this comes close to being a miracle. Jews have lived in Germany for almost 2.000 years, ever since Roman times, and the Jewish history and heritage in Germany are amazingly rich and diverse. However, the German-Jewish relationship will forever be marked by the Shoah. The memories will never disappear, and the Jewish people's relationship with Germany will for a long time, if not forever be strongly influenced by the Shoah.

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521219297
Total Pages : 766 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (192 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age by : William David Davies

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age written by William David Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.

Jewish Emancipation in a German City

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Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804726443
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Emancipation in a German City by : Shulamit S. Magnus

Download or read book Jewish Emancipation in a German City written by Shulamit S. Magnus and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work seeks to understand how, in nineteenth-century Germany, Jews and non-Jews shaped and experienced Jewish emancipation, a process whereby Jews were freed from ancient discriminatory laws and, over the course of decades, became citizens. Unlike most other works on German Jewish emancipation, this book examines how so fundamental and dramatic a transformation in the relation of Jews and non-Jews was experienced by the people who lived it, how economic, social, political, and ideological forces interacted to bring about change, and how accommodation actually occurred. The book focuses on Cologne, the most populous and economically powerful city in the Rhineland. Jews, excluded since 1424, returned under French Revolutionary rule, but Napoleonic legislation in 1808 compromised their equality and gave city elders an opportunity to reassert Cologne's historic control when the territory passed to Prussia in 1814. A long struggle between municipal and state authorities ensued, with the city hostile to Jewish rights but ultimately losing its bid to exercise local sovereignty over the Jews. The 1840’s saw the advent of the railway age, and Cologne's economic and political climate was transformed. The city soon became the center for Rhenish liberal advocacy of Jewish rights, led by regional entrepreneurs in association with Jewish bankers. The author demonstrates, however, that Jewish emancipation was not simply conferred on Jews from above or engineered by financial mavericks in the community. Rather, it occurred as part of a broad societal transformation and as the result of the efforts and behavior of ordinary Jews, whose voices the author records. The book reveals how such Jews responded to the lure of equality and the pressures of continued discrimination in their business and private lives, and shows how their response fostered a new, positive perception of Jews as honorable people deserving of civic inclusion. It also illustrates how Jews, enjoying unprecedented success and acceptance, fought not only for individual rights but for the right of organized Judaism to achieve a secure place in society.

German Jews beyond Judaism

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Publisher : Hebrew Union College Press
ISBN 13 : 0878201432
Total Pages : 116 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (782 download)

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Book Synopsis German Jews beyond Judaism by : George L Mosse

Download or read book German Jews beyond Judaism written by George L Mosse and published by Hebrew Union College Press. This book was released on 1997-05-01 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews were emancipated at a time when high culture was becoming an integral part of German citizenship. German Jews felt a powerful urge to integrate, to find their Jewish substance in German culture and craft an identity as both Germans and Jews. In this reprint edition, based on the 1983 Efroymson Memorial Lectures given at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, George Mosse argues that they did this by adopting the concept of Bildung-the idea of intellectual and moral self-cultivation-and combining it with key Enlightenment ideas such as optimism about human potential, individualism and autonomy, and a connection between knowledge and morality through aesthetics. Personal friendships could be devoted to common pursuit of Bildung and become a means of overcoming differences, becoming a means for integration into German society. Mosse traces how Jewish artists, writers, and thinkers actively sought to participate in German culture and communicate these ideals through popular culture, scholarship, and political activity. From the historical biographies, novels, and short stories of Stefan Zweig and Emil Ludwig; to the psychoanalysis of Freud, which sought to subject irrationality to reason; to the revolutionary thought of Walter Benjamin-Jews sought to influence a mass political culture that was fast drifting into irrationality. As individualism was subsumed into nationalism, and eventually the German political right's racist version of nationalism, German-Jewish dialogue became more difficult. Jews remained idealistic as German society became less rational, their ideas corresponded less and less to the realities of German life, and they drifted out of the mainstream into an intellectual isolation. Yet out of this German-Jewish dialogue, what had once been part of German culture became a central Jewish heritage. The ideal of cultivating a personal identity beyond religion and nationality, the liberal outlook on society and politics, and the desire to transcend history by stressing what united rather than divided individuals and nations infiltrated Jewish life became an inspiration for many men and women searching to humanize their society and their own lives. Mosse's lectures trace the emergence of a form of Jewishness which resisted cultural ghettoization in favor of the pursuit of that which is universally human.

Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany

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Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110350157
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany by : Olaf Glöckner

Download or read book Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany written by Olaf Glöckner and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unexpected immigration wave of Jews from the former Soviet Union mostly in the 1990s has stabilized and enlarged Jewish life in Germany. Jewish kindergartens and schools were opened, and Jewish museums, theaters, and festivals are attracting a wide audience. No doubt: Jews will continue to live in Germany. At the same time, Jewish life has undergone an impressing transformation in the second half of the 20th century– from rejection to acceptance, but not without disillusionments and heated debates. And while the ‘new Jews of Germany,’ 90 percent of them of Eastern European background, are already considered an important factor of the contemporary Jewish diaspora, they still grapple with the shadow of the Holocaust, with internal cultural clashes and with difficulties in shaping a new collective identity. What does it mean to live a Jewish life in present-day Germany? How are Jewish thoughts, feelings, and practices reflected in contemporary arts, literature, and movies? What will remain of the former German Jewish cultural heritage? Who are the new Jewish elites, and how successful is the fight against anti-Semitism? This volume offers some answers.

Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany

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Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472117971
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

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Book Synopsis Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany by : Christian Davis

Download or read book Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany written by Christian Davis and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of anti-Semitic behaviors in the German empire in the pre-WWI period

In Search of Jewish Community

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253000572
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis In Search of Jewish Community by : Michael Brenner

Download or read book In Search of Jewish Community written by Michael Brenner and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-22 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays interrogates the nature of Jewish identity in the time between two world wars. The history of Jews in interwar Germany and Austria is often viewed either as the culmination of tremendous success in the economic and cultural realms and of individual assimilation and acculturation, or as the beginning of the road that led to Auschwitz. By contrast, this volume demonstrates a re-emerging sense of community within the German-speaking Jewish population of these two countries in the two decades after World War I. The fresh research presented here shows that while Jews may have experienced a deepening sense of impending crisis and economic decline, a renewal of Jewish communal life took place during these years, as new groupings sprang up, including organizations for youth, for rural Jews, and for political groups such as Zionists and Bundists. Several chapters consider the impact of economic and political crises on German-Jewish family life. Together, these essays form a complex mosaic of German Jewry on the eve of its demise. “An excellent collection . . . well written and cogently argued.” —David N. Myers

The Jews of Germany

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300060522
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jews of Germany by : Ruth Gay

Download or read book The Jews of Germany written by Ruth Gay and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book provides a panoramic overview of a now extinct culture: the 1500-year history of the Jews in Germany. Through texts, pictures, and contemporary accounts, it follows the German Jews from their first settlements on the Rhine in the fourth century to the destruction of the community in World War II. Using both voices and images of the past, the book reveals how the German Jews looked, how they lived, what they thought about, and what others thought of them. Ruth Gay's text, interwoven with passages from memoirs, letters, newspapers, and many other contemporary sources, shows how the German Jews organized their communities, created a new language (Yiddish), and built their special culture--all this under circumstances sometimes friendly, but often murderously hostile. The book explores the internal debates that agitated the community from medieval to modern times and analyzes how German Jewry emerged into the modern world. The earliest document in the book is a fourth-century decree by the Roman emperor Constantine permitting Jews to hold office in Cologne. Among the last are poignant letters from Betty Scholem in Berlin, writing during the Nazi years to her son Gershom in Palestine. In between are accounts of a ninth-century Jewish merchant appointed by Charlemagne to a diplomatic mission to Baghdad, a thirteenth-century Jewish minnesinger, a seventeenth-century pogrom in Frankfurt in which gentiles helped to save their Jewish neighbors, and the nineteenth-century innovation of department stores, palaces of consumerism. The book tells a story--moving, terrifying, and exhilarating--that must be remembered.