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Author: Joshua Levinson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812297938
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 363
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Book Description
Journeys of dislocation and return, of discovery and conquest hold a prominent place in the imagination of many cultures. Wherever an individual or community may be located, it would seem, there is always the dream of being elsewhere. This has been especially true throughout the ages for Jews, for whom the promises and perils of travel have influenced both their own sense of self and their identity in the eyes of others. How does travel writing, as a genre, produce representations of the world of others, against which one's own self can be invented or explored? And what happens when Jewish authors in particular—whether by force or of their own free will, whether in reality or in the imagination—travel from one place to another? How has travel figured in the formation of Jewish identity, and what cultural and ideological work is performed by texts that document or figure specifically Jewish travel? Featuring essays on topics that range from Abraham as a traveler in biblical narrative to the guest book entries at contemporary Israeli museum and memorial sites; from the marvels medieval travelers claim to have encountered to eighteenth-century Jewish critiques of Orientalism; from the Wandering Jew of legend to one mid-twentieth-century Yiddish writer's accounts of his travels through Peru, Jews and Journeys explores what it is about travel writing that enables it to become one of the central mechanisms for exploring the realities and fictions of individual and collective identity.
Author: Joshua Levinson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812297938
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Get Book Here
Book Description
Journeys of dislocation and return, of discovery and conquest hold a prominent place in the imagination of many cultures. Wherever an individual or community may be located, it would seem, there is always the dream of being elsewhere. This has been especially true throughout the ages for Jews, for whom the promises and perils of travel have influenced both their own sense of self and their identity in the eyes of others. How does travel writing, as a genre, produce representations of the world of others, against which one's own self can be invented or explored? And what happens when Jewish authors in particular—whether by force or of their own free will, whether in reality or in the imagination—travel from one place to another? How has travel figured in the formation of Jewish identity, and what cultural and ideological work is performed by texts that document or figure specifically Jewish travel? Featuring essays on topics that range from Abraham as a traveler in biblical narrative to the guest book entries at contemporary Israeli museum and memorial sites; from the marvels medieval travelers claim to have encountered to eighteenth-century Jewish critiques of Orientalism; from the Wandering Jew of legend to one mid-twentieth-century Yiddish writer's accounts of his travels through Peru, Jews and Journeys explores what it is about travel writing that enables it to become one of the central mechanisms for exploring the realities and fictions of individual and collective identity.
Author: Stephen B. Shepard
Publisher: Bayberry Books
ISBN: 9780989213387
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
Born and raised Jewish, Stephen B. Shepard ceased to be observant by the time he entered college. He simply retreated into his own private diaspora: a Jew in name only, a non-religious member of the tribe, linked only tenuously to the heritage, culture, and social values of Judaism. Yet he was aware that there was a flowering of Jewish writing in post-war America: and that many of the authors he was reading were Jewish. What, he wondered, did it mean to be a Jewish-American writer? Was there such a thing as a Jewish novel? Why did he care so much about these books? In this literary memoir, Shepard explores his encounters with a few writers who influenced his sense of Jewish identity: and his ultimate return to the fold. He describes the anti-Semitism directed at Saul Bellow; details the literary feud between Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud; muses about the "Jewish" John Updike; and contemplates anew the horror of the Holocaust in the work of Cynthia Ozick. Shepard writes as an enthusiastic reader, a fan watching his team play.
Author: Risa Domb
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
This book explores through literature the long and complex evolution of Jewish identity in Israel and the central role that language, ideology, memory, and culture have played in that journey. Language is possibly the most important component of any collective identity. Indeed, any nation can be better understood through its imaginative literature and never more so than in the case of Israeli literature, whose story runs in parallel with that of the State of Israel and with Zionism. The political task of nationalism directed the course of Israeli literature into a distinct national literature and in turn the literature participated in the formation of the nation. Language became inseparable from identity. But whose Hebrew is it? Through key texts by such authors as Y. H. Brenner, S. Y. Agnon, Nathan Shaham, Yoram Kaniuk, Aharon Appelfeld, A. B. Yehoshua, Gabriela Avigur-Rotem and Sami Michael, Risa Domb explores the connections between language, ideology, memory, culture, and identity, and asks whether ideology and identity are on an inescapable collision course.
Author: Adam Kirsch
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039360831X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
An accessible introduction to the classics of Jewish literature, from the Bible to modern times, by "one of America’s finest literary critics" (Wall Street Journal). Jews have long embraced their identity as “the people of the book.” But outside of the Bible, much of the Jewish literary tradition remains little known to nonspecialist readers. The People and the Books shows how central questions and themes of our history and culture are reflected in the Jewish literary canon: the nature of God, the right way to understand the Bible, the relationship of the Jews to their Promised Land, and the challenges of living as a minority in Diaspora. Adam Kirsch explores eighteen classic texts, including the biblical books of Deuteronomy and Esther, the philosophy of Maimonides, the autobiography of the medieval businesswoman Glückel of Hameln, and the Zionist manifestoes of Theodor Herzl. From the Jews of Roman Egypt to the mystical devotees of Hasidism in Eastern Europe, The People and the Books brings the treasures of Jewish literature to life and offers new ways to think about their enduring power and influence.
Author: Natasha E. Diaz
Publisher:
ISBN: 0525578234
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Fifteen-year-old Nevaeh Levitz is torn between two worlds, passing for white while living in Harlem, being called Jewish while attending her mother's Baptist church, and experiencing first love while watching her parents' marriage crumble.
Author: Judith S. Goldstein
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813541239
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Great Neck, New York, is one of America's most fascinating suburbs. Settled by the Dutch in the 1600s, generations have been attracted to this once quiet enclave for its easy access to New York City and its tranquil setting by the Long Island Sound. This illustrious suburb has also been home to a number of film and theatrical luminaries from Groucho Marx and Oscar Hammerstein to comedian Alan King and composer Morton Gould. Famous writers who have lived there include Ring Lardner and of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who used Great Neck as the inspiration for his classic novel The Great Gatsby. Although frequently recognized as the home to well-known personalities, Great Neck is also notable for the conspicuous way it transformed itself from a Gentile community, to a mixed one, and, finally, in the 1960s, to one in which Jews were the majority. In Inventing Great Neck, Judith Goldstein tells this lesser known story. The book spans four decades of rapid change, beginning with the 1920s. Throughout the early half of the century, Great Neck was a leader in the reconfiguration of the American suburb, serving as a playground of rich estates for New York's aristocracy. Throughout the forties, it boasted one of the country's most outstanding school systems, served as the temporary home to the United Nations, and gave significant support to the civil rights movement. During the 1950s, however, the suburb diverged from the national norm when the Gentile population began to lose its dominant position. Inventing Great Neck is about the allure of suburbia, including the institutions that bind it together, and the social, economic, cultural, and religious tensions that may threaten its vibrancy. Anyone who has lived in a suburban town, particularly one in the greater metropolitan area, will be intrigued by this rich narrative, which illustrates not only Jewish identity in America but the struggle of the American dream itself through the heart of the twentieth century.
Author: Micah Goodman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
A celebrated Israeli author explores the roots of the divide between religion and secularism in Israel today, and offers a path to bridging the divide "A thoughtful social, political, and philosophical examination of Judaism. . . . A cogent consideration of the place of religion in the modern world."--Kirkus Reviews Zionism began as a movement full of contradictions, between a pull to the past and a desire to forge a new future. Israel has become a place of fragmentation, between those who sanctify religious tradition and those who wish to escape its grasp. Now, a new middle ground is emerging between religious and secular Jews who want to engage with their heritage--without being restricted by it or losing it completely. In this incisive book, acclaimed author Micah Goodman explores Israeli Judaism and the conflict between religion and secularism, one of the major causes of political polarization throughout the world. Revisiting traditional religious sources and seminal works of secularism, he reveals that each contains an openness to learn from the other's messages. Goodman challenges both orthodoxies, proposing a new approach to bridge the divide between religion and secularism and pave a path toward healing a society torn asunder by extremism.
Author: Michael Weingrad
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815632511
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Over the last one hundred years, the story of Jews in the United States has been, by and large, one of successful and enthusiastic Americanization. Hundreds of thousands of Jews began the twentieth century as new arrivals in a foreign land yet soon became shapers and definers of American culture itself. One of the clearest expressions of this transformation has been the quick linguistic march of immigrant Jews and their children from Yiddish to English. In this book, Michael Weingrad presents a counter history of American Jewish culture, one that tells the story of literature written by a group whose core identity was neither American nor Jewish American. These writers were ardently and nationalistically Jewish and, despite adopting a new country, their linguistic and cultural allegiance was to the Hebrew language. Producing poetry, short fiction, novels, essays, and journals, these writers sought to express a Jewish cultural nationalism through literature. Weingrad explores Hebrew literature in the United States from the emergence of a group of writers connected with the Hebraist movement in the early twentieth century to the present. Radically expanding and challenging our conceptions of American and Jewish identities in literature, the author offers wide-ranging cultural analyses and thoughtful readings of key works. American Hebrew Literature restores a lost piece of the canvas of Hebrew literature and Jewish culture in the twentieth century and invites readers to reimagine Jewish American writers of our own time.
Author: David Ibry
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615926615
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 143
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Book Description
For thousands of years, Jewish identity was inextricably joined with the beliefs and rituals of Judaism. Centuries later, to be a Jew meant, for many, to be a Zionist to fight for the Jewish homeland of Israel. Yet for increasing numbers of Jews today the sense of who they are is not defined by either religion or politics. David Ibry's Exodus to Humanism captures the personal struggles of twenty-four individuals some famous, others courageous citizens who have moved away from traditional forms of Judaism to gain an understanding of themselves as Jews even as they ask if the religion itself has become obsolete. Ibry doesn't shrink from calling for a new humanism among Jewish people. He boldly examines how to define nonreligious Jewishness, and explains how to cope with the obsolete tenets of the faith. Included with the author's own observations and family experiences are statements from others who have rejected the faith in favor of a new era of nonreligious enlightenment. Included are contributions by Isaiah Berlin, Olga Faroqui, Jean-Claude Pecker, Evry Schatzman, and others.
Author: Robert H Mnookin
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610397525
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Who should count as Jewish in America? What should be the relationship of American Jews to Israel? Can the American Jewish community collectively sustain and pass on to the next generation a sufficient sense of Jewish identity? The situation of American Jews today is deeply paradoxical. Jews have achieved unprecedented integration, influence, and esteem in virtually every facet of American life. But this extraordinarily diverse community now also faces four critical and often divisive challenges: rampant intermarriage, weak religious observance, diminished cohesion in the face of waning anti-Semitism, and deeply conflicting views about Israel. Can the American Jewish community collectively sustain and pass on to the next generation a sufficient sense of Jewish identity in light of these challenges? Who should count as Jewish in America? What should be the relationship of American Jews to Israel? In this thoughtful and perceptive book, Robert H. Mnookin argues that the answers of the past no longer serve American Jews today. The book boldly promotes a radically inclusive American-Jewish community -- one where being Jewish can depend on personal choice and public self-identification, not simply birth or formal religious conversion. Instead of preventing intermarriage or ostracizing those critical of Israel, he envisions a community that embraces diversity and debate, and in so doing, preserves and strengthens the Jewish identity into the next generation and beyond.
