The Role Of Religion Tradition And Modernity In Contemporary Jewish American Literature

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The Role of Religion - Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Jewish American Literature

Author : Alina Polyak
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3640384067
Total Pages : 113 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis The Role of Religion - Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Jewish American Literature by : Alina Polyak

Download or read book The Role of Religion - Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Jewish American Literature written by Alina Polyak and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-07-27 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: In der Magisterarbeit handelt es sich um die Rolle der Religion in der modernen jüdisch-amerikanischen Literatur. Die Suche nach den Wurzeln ist ein Trend in der amerikanischen Gesellschaft geworden. Dieser Trend widerspiegelt sich auch in Kunst und Literatur. Die Gesellschaft wandelt sich von einem “Schmelztiegel” in eine multiethnische und multikulturelle Gesellschaft. Viele Autoren wenden sich in ihren Werken an die Kultur ihrer Vorfahren. Die jüdisch-amerikanische Literatur ist auch ein Beispiel hierfür. Es ist fast unmöglich, die Kultur von der Religion zu trennen, denn wenn es sich um jüdische Themen handelt, geht es um die Kultur, die eng mit der jüdischen Religion verbunden ist. Judentum ist eine Religion, die mit Zeit und Geschichte eng verbunden ist. Selbst wenn Autoren sich mit säkularen Themen beschäftigen, gibt es trotzdem eine Anbindung an die religiöse Problematik. Viele moderne Werke sind von Autoren geschrieben, die fundiertes Wissen vom Judentum haben, sie benutzen oft jüdische Sprachen, Figuren aus der Folklore und religiöse Ideen. Es gibt einen großen Unterschied zwischen den frühen Werken von Immigranten und den modernen Werken der amerikanisch-jüdischen Autoren der dritten Generation. Während die Immigrantenautoren sich bemüht haben, sich so schnell wie möglich zu assimilieren und die Welt der Väter hinter sich zu lassen, haben die jüngsten Autoren in ihren Werken die jüdischen Themen neu entdeckt. Für die Autoren der ersten Generation war das Erlernen der englischen Sprache sehr wichtig. Die Autoren von heute haben Englisch als Muttersprache. Sie schreiben zwar auf Englisch, benutzen aber sehr häufig Begriffe oder Ausdrücke, die nicht erklärt oder übersetzt sind aus den jüdischen Sprachen Hebräisch und Jiddisch. Jüdische Literatur war immer multilingual. Hebräisch ist die Sprache der Liturgie und Jiddisch ist die Sprache des Europäischen Judentums. Nach dem Holocaust wurden die meisten Sprecher des Jiddischen ausgerottet. Das ist der Grund, warum Jiddisch heute eine Rolle der “heiligen Sprache” spielt und in dieser Hinsicht an die Stelle des Hebräischen rückt. Das moderne Hebräisch ist die Staatssprache Israels und hat die Position der Alltagssprache genommen.

Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity

Author : Michael A. Meyer
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814338607
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (143 download)

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Book Synopsis Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity by : Michael A. Meyer

Download or read book Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity written by Michael A. Meyer and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the ideas of “tradition” and “modernity” may seem to be directly opposed, David Ellenson, a leading contemporary scholar of modern Jewish thought, understood that these concepts can also enjoy a more fluid relationship. In honor of Ellenson, editors Michael A. Meyer and David N. Myers have gathered contributors for Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity: Rethinking an Old Opposition to examine the permutations and adaptations of these intertwined forms of Jewish expression. Contributions draw from a range of disciplines and scholarly interests and vary in subject from the theological to the liturgical, sociological, and literary. The geographic and historical focus of the volume is on the United States and the State of Israel, both of which have been major sites of inquiry in Ellenson’s work. In twenty-one essays, contributors demonstrate that modernity did not simply replace tradition in Judaism, but rather entered into a variety of relationships with it: adopting or adapting certain elements, repossessing rituals that had once been abandoned, or struggling with its continuing influence. In four parts—Law, Ritual, Thought, and Culture—contributors explore a variety of subjects, including the role of reform in Israeli Orthodoxy, traditions of twentieth-century bar/bat mitzvah, end-of-life ethics, tensions between Zionism and American Jewry, and the rise of a 1960s New York Jewish counterculture. An introductory essay also presents an appreciation of Ellenson's scholarly contribution. Bringing together leading Jewish historians, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and liturgists, Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity offers a collective view of a historically and culturally significant issue that will be of interest to Jewish scholars of many disciplines.

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature

Author : Hana Wirth-Nesher
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521796996
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (969 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature by : Hana Wirth-Nesher

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature written by Hana Wirth-Nesher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than two hundred years, Jews have played important roles in the development of American literature. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature addresses a wide array of themes and approaches to the distinct yet multifaceted body of Jewish American literature. Essays examine writing from the 1700s to major contemporary writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Topics covered include literary history, immigration and acculturation, Yiddish and Hebrew literature, popular culture, women writers, literary theory and poetics, multilingualism, the Holocaust, and contemporary fiction. This collection of specially commissioned essays by leading figures discusses Jewish American literature in relation to ethnicity, religion, politics, race, gender, ideology, history, and ethics, and places it in the contexts of both Jewish and American writing. With its chronology and guides to further reading, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and students alike.

Teaching Jewish American Literature

Author : Roberta Rosenberg
Publisher : Modern Language Association
ISBN 13 : 1603294465
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Teaching Jewish American Literature by : Roberta Rosenberg

Download or read book Teaching Jewish American Literature written by Roberta Rosenberg and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multilingual, transnational literary tradition, Jewish American writing has long explored questions of personal identity and national boundaries. These questions can engage students in literature, writing, or religion; at Jewish, Christian, or secular schools; and in or outside the United States. This volume takes an expansive view of Jewish American literature, beginning with writing from the earliest colonies in the Americas and continuing to contemporary Soviet-born authors in the United States, including works that engage deeply with religious concepts and others that embrace assimilation. It invites readers to rethink the nature of American multiculturalism, suggests pairings of Jewish American texts with other ethnic American literatures, and examines the workings of whiteness and privilege. Contributors offer varied perspectives on classic texts such as Yekl, Bread Givers, and "Goodbye, Columbus," along with approaches to interdisciplinary topics including humor, graphic novels, and musical theater. The volume concludes with an extensive resources section.

Traditions in American Literature

Author : Joseph E. Mersand
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis Traditions in American Literature by : Joseph E. Mersand

Download or read book Traditions in American Literature written by Joseph E. Mersand and published by . This book was released on 1939 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CONTENTS.- pt. 1. Jewish authors.- pt. 2. The Jew as portrayed in American literature.- pt. 3. Bibliographies (p. 201-236).

Ideology and Jewish Identity in Israeli and American Literature

Author : Emily Miller Budick
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791490149
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis Ideology and Jewish Identity in Israeli and American Literature by : Emily Miller Budick

Download or read book Ideology and Jewish Identity in Israeli and American Literature written by Emily Miller Budick and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By creating a dialogue between Israeli and American Jewish authors, scholars, and intellectuals, this book examines how these two literatures, which traditionally do not address one another directly, nevertheless share some commonalities and affinities. The disinclination of Israeli and American Jewish fictional narratives to gravitate toward one another tells us much about the processes of Jewish self-definition as expressed in literary texts over the last fifty years. Through essays by prominent Israeli Americanists, American Hebraists, Israeli critics of Hebrew writing, and American specialists in the field of Jewish writing, the book shows how modern Jewish culture rewrites the Jewish tradition across quite different ideological imperatives, such as Zionist metanarrative, the urge of Jewish immigrants to find Israel in America, and socialism. The contributors also explore how that narrative turn away from religious tradition to secular identity has both enriched and impoverished Jewish modernity.

The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature

Author : Benjamin Schreier
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812252578
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature by : Benjamin Schreier

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature written by Benjamin Schreier and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-10-16 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benjamin Schreier argues that Jewish American literature's dominant cliché of "breakthrough"—that is, the irruption into the heart of the American cultural scene during the 1950s of Jewish American writers like Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Grace Paley—must also be seen as the critically originary moment of Jewish American literary study. According to Schreier, this is the primal scene of the Jewish American literary field, the point that the field cannot avoid repeating and replaying in instantiating itself as the more or less formalized academic study of Jewish American literature. More than sixty years later, the field's legibility, the very condition of its possibility, remains overwhelmingly grounded in a reliance on this single ethnological narrative. In a polemic against what he sees as the unexamined foundations and stagnant state of the field, Schreier interrogates a series of professionally powerful assumptions about Jewish American literary history—how they came into being and how they hardened into cliché. He offers a critical genealogy of breakthrough and other narratives through which Jewish Studies has asserted its compelling self-evidence, not simply under the banner of the historical realities Jewish Studies claims to represent but more fundamentally for the intellectual and institutional structures through which it produces these representations. He shows how a historicist scholarly narrative quickly consolidated and became hegemonic, in part because of its double articulation of a particular American subject and of a transnational historiography that categorically identified that subject as Jewish. The ethnological grounding of the Jewish American literary field is no longer tenable, Schreier asserts, in an argument with broad implications for the reconceptualization of Jewish and other identity-based ethnic studies.

The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature

Author : Hana Wirth-Nesher
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316395340
Total Pages : 1254 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (163 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature by : Hana Wirth-Nesher

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature written by Hana Wirth-Nesher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-09 with total page 1254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This History offers an unparalleled examination of all aspects of Jewish American literature. Jewish writing has played a central role in the formation of the national literature of the United States, from the Hebraic sources of the Puritan imagination to narratives of immigration and acculturation. This body of writing has also enriched global Jewish literature in its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish multilingual culture. Written by a host of leading scholars, The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature offers an array of approaches that contribute to current debates about ethnic writing, minority discourse, transnational literature, gender studies, and multilingualism. This History takes a fresh look at celebrated authors, introduces new voices, locates Jewish American literature on the map of American ethnicity as well as the spaces of exile and diaspora, and stretches the boundaries of American literature beyond the Americas and the West.

The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature

Author : Benjamin Schreier
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812297563
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature by : Benjamin Schreier

Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature written by Benjamin Schreier and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-09-18 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benjamin Schreier argues that Jewish American literature's dominant cliché of "breakthrough"—that is, the irruption into the heart of the American cultural scene during the 1950s of Jewish American writers like Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Grace Paley—must also be seen as the critically originary moment of Jewish American literary study. According to Schreier, this is the primal scene of the Jewish American literary field, the point that the field cannot avoid repeating and replaying in instantiating itself as the more or less formalized academic study of Jewish American literature. More than sixty years later, the field's legibility, the very condition of its possibility, remains overwhelmingly grounded in a reliance on this single ethnological narrative. In a polemic against what he sees as the unexamined foundations and stagnant state of the field, Schreier interrogates a series of professionally powerful assumptions about Jewish American literary history—how they came into being and how they hardened into cliché. He offers a critical genealogy of breakthrough and other narratives through which Jewish Studies has asserted its compelling self-evidence, not simply under the banner of the historical realities Jewish Studies claims to represent but more fundamentally for the intellectual and institutional structures through which it produces these representations. He shows how a historicist scholarly narrative quickly consolidated and became hegemonic, in part because of its double articulation of a particular American subject and of a transnational historiography that categorically identified that subject as Jewish. The ethnological grounding of the Jewish American literary field is no longer tenable, Schreier asserts, in an argument with broad implications for the reconceptualization of Jewish and other identity-based ethnic studies.

American Talmud

Author : Ezra Cappell
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791479951
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis American Talmud by : Ezra Cappell

Download or read book American Talmud written by Ezra Cappell and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-16 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the role of Jewish American fiction in the larger context of American culture.

Jewish Meaning in a World of Choice

Author : David Ellenson
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0827612141
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (276 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish Meaning in a World of Choice by : David Ellenson

Download or read book Jewish Meaning in a World of Choice written by David Ellenson and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Internationally recognized scholar David Ellenson shares twenty-three of his most representative essays, drawing on three decades of scholarship and demonstrating the consistency of the intellectual-religious interests that have animated him throughout his lifetime. These essays center on a description and examination of the complex push and pull between Jewish tradition and Western culture. Ellenson addresses gender equality, women’s rights, conversion, issues relating to who is a Jew, the future of the rabbinate, Jewish day schools, and other emerging trends in American Jewish life. As an outspoken advocate for a strong Israel that is faithful to the democratic and Jewish values that informed its founders, he also writes about religious tolerance and pluralism in the Jewish state. The former president of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, the primary seminary of the Reform movement, Ellenson is widely respected for his vision of advancing Jewish unity and of preparing leadership for a contemporary Judaism that balances tradition with the demands of a changing world. Scholars and students of Jewish religious thought, ethics, and modern Jewish history will welcome this erudite collection by one of today’s great Jewish leaders.

The Turn Around Religion in America

Author : Michael P. Kramer
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317012933
Total Pages : 560 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis The Turn Around Religion in America by : Michael P. Kramer

Download or read book The Turn Around Religion in America written by Michael P. Kramer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Playing on the frequently used metaphors of the 'turn toward' or 'turn back' in scholarship on religion, The Turn Around Religion in America offers a model of religion that moves in a reciprocal relationship between these two poles. In particular, this volume dedicates itself to a reading of religion and of religious meaning that cannot be reduced to history or ideology on the one hand or to truth or spirit on the other, but is rather the product of the constant play between the historical particulars that manifest beliefs and the beliefs that take shape through them. Taking as their point of departure the foundational scholarship of Sacvan Bercovitch, the contributors locate the universal in the ongoing and particularized attempts of American authors from the seventeenth century forward to get it - whatever that 'it' might be - right. Examining authors as diverse as Pietro di Donato, Herman Melville, Miguel Algarin, Edward Taylor, Mark Twain, Robert Keayne, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Paule Marshall, Stephen Crane, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Joseph B. Soloveitchik, among many others-and a host of genres, from novels and poetry to sermons, philosophy, history, journalism, photography, theater, and cinema-the essays call for a discussion of religion's powers that does not seek to explain them as much as put them into conversation with each other. Central to this project is Bercovitch's emphasis on the rhetoric, ritual, typology, and symbology of religion and his recognition that with each aesthetic enactment of religion's power, we learn something new.

Jewish American Literature. A Critical Introduction

Author :
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3346192113
Total Pages : 18 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (461 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish American Literature. A Critical Introduction by :

Download or read book Jewish American Literature. A Critical Introduction written by and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2020-06-29 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Fachbereich Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft), course: Readings in 21st-Century American Literature, language: English, abstract: In this paper with the title “Jewish American Literature – a Critical Introduction” the focus will be on the origins and elements of Jewish American literature as well as on contemporary writings of the 20th and 21st century. The reasearch for this paper is based predominantly on writings of the American-Israeli professor, Hana Wirth-Nesher, who wrote and edited several books on Jewish American literature. She will be introduced in the beginning of this paper. After that the origins and characteristic elements of Jewish American literature will be described. Contemporary Jewish American literature will be discussed afterwards, followed by an introduction of Philip Roth and two of his novels – Goodbye, Columbus and Indignation. These were chosen in order to give concrete examples of literary works which were both – celebrated and criticized by their audience. The last chapter will consist of a personal reflection concerning Jewish American literature.

Doubting the Devout

Author : Nora L Rubel
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231141866
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis Doubting the Devout by : Nora L Rubel

Download or read book Doubting the Devout written by Nora L Rubel and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before 1985, depictions of ultra-Orthodox Jews in popular American culture were rare, and if they did appear, in films such as Fiddler on the Roof or within the novels of Chaim Potok, they evoked a nostalgic vision of Old World tradition. Yet the ordination of women into positions of religious leadership and other controversial issues have sparked an increasingly visible and voluble culture war between America's ultra-Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, one that has found a particularly creative voice in literature, media, and film. Unpacking the work of Allegra Goodman, Tova Mirvis, Pearl Abraham, Erich Segal, Anne Roiphe, and others, as well as television shows and films such as A Price Above Rubies, Nora L. Rubel investigates the choices non-haredi Jews have made as they represent the character and characters of ultra-Orthodox Jews. In these artistic and aesthetic acts, Rubel recasts the war over gender and family and the anxieties over acculturation, Americanization, and continuity. More than just a study of Jewishness and Jewish self-consciousness, Doubting the Devout will speak to any reader who has struggled to balance religion, family, and culture.

Cosmopolitans and Parochials

Author : Samuel C. Heilman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226324968
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (249 download)

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Book Synopsis Cosmopolitans and Parochials by : Samuel C. Heilman

Download or read book Cosmopolitans and Parochials written by Samuel C. Heilman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from simply vanishing in the face of modernity, Orthodox Jews in the United States today are surviving and flourishing. Samuel C. Heilman and Steven M. Cohen, both distinguished scholars of Jewish studies, have joined forces in this pathbreaking book to articulate this vibrancy and to characterize the many faces of Orthodox Jewry in contemporary America. Who are these Orthodox Jews? How have they survived, what do they believe and practice and how do they accommodate the tension between traditional Jewish and modern American values? Drawing on a survey of more than one thousand participants, the authors address these questions and many more. Heilman and Cohen reveal that American Jewish Orthodoxy is not a monolith by distinguishing its three broad varieties: the "traditionalists," the "centrists," and the "nominally" orthodox. To illuminate this full spectrum of orthodoxy the authors focus on the "centrists," taking us through the dimensions of their ritual observances, religious beliefs, community life, and their social, political, and sexual attitudes. Both parochial and cosmopolitan, orthodox and liberal, these Jews are characterized by their dualism, by their successful involvement in both the modern Western world and in traditional Jewish culture. In painting this provocative and fascinating portrait of what Jewish Orthodoxy has become in America today, Heilman and Cohen's study also sheds light on the larger picture of the persistence of religion in the modern world.

Jewish American Literature

Author : Jules Chametzky
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393048094
Total Pages : 1264 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (48 download)

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Book Synopsis Jewish American Literature by : Jules Chametzky

Download or read book Jewish American Literature written by Jules Chametzky and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001 with total page 1264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of Jewish-American literature written by various authors between 1656 and 1990.

After Emancipation

Author : David Ellenson
Publisher : Hebrew Union College Press
ISBN 13 : 0878200959
Total Pages : 535 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (782 download)

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Book Synopsis After Emancipation by : David Ellenson

Download or read book After Emancipation written by David Ellenson and published by Hebrew Union College Press. This book was released on 2004-12-30 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Ellenson prefaces this fascinating collection of twenty-three essays with a remarkably candid account of his intellectual journey from boyhood in Virginia to the scholarly immersions in the history, thought, and literature of the Jewish people that have informed his research interests in a long and distinguished academic career. Ellenson, President of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, has been particularly intrigued by the attempts of religious leaders in all denominations of Judaism, from Liberal to Neo-Orthodox, to redefine and reconceptualize themselves and their traditions in the modern period as both the Jewish community and individual Jews entered radically new realms of possibility and change. The essays are grouped into five sections. In the first, Ellenson reflects upon the expression of Jewish values and Jewish identity in contemporary America, explains his debt to Jacob Katz's socio-religious approach to Jewish history, and shows how the works of non-Jewish social historian Max Weber highlight the tensions between the universalism of western thought and Jewish demands for a particularistic identity. In the second section, "The Challenge of Emanicpation," he indicates how Jewish religious leaders in nineteenth-century Europe labored to demonstrate that the Jewish religion and Jewish culture were worthy of respect by the larger gentile world. In a third section, "Denominational Responses," Ellenson shows how the leaders of Liberal and Orthodox branches of Judaism in Central Europe constructed novel parameters for their communities through prayer books, legal writings, sermons, and journal articles. The fourth section, "Modern Responsa," takes a close look at twentieth-century Jewish legal decisions on new issues such as the status of woemn, fertility treatments, and even the obligations of the Israeli government towards its minority populations. Finally, review essays in the last section analyze a few landmark contemporary works of legal and liturgical creativity: the new Israeli Masorti prayer book, David Hartman's works on covenantal theology, and Marcia Falk's Book of Blessings. As Ellenson demonstrates, "The reality of Jewish cultural and social integration into the larger world after Emancipation did not signal the demise of Judaism. Instead, the modern setting has provided a challenging context where the ongoing creativity and adaptability of Jewish religious leaders of all stripes has been tested and displayed."