Being Jewish in the New Germany

Being Jewish in the New Germany PDF Author: Jeffrey M. Peck
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813537238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
"This book was written for an American (Jewish) readership. But some chapters, especially the first two, address the non-specialist, while others, especially the last two, accommodate the expert. The work contains one theme and one thesis. The theme is simple and to be welcomed: Americans, and American Jews in particular, need to understand that Germany has changed and that its Jewish community is made up of more than just a few souls morbidly attached to blood-soaked soil. We are therefore introduced to Jewish writers, politicians and intellectuals; to Jews of Russian origin, German background and Israeli descent; and to the many issues facing today's German-Jewish community of 100,000 plus members. Peck discusses the role of the Holocaust in German and American political life. He relates how Russian Jews have begun to take over community institutions, revitalizing German Jewry especially in Berlin and the provinces. And he compares and contrasts the situation of Turks and Jews today, whom many Germans still perecive as foreign, no matter how acculturated they happen to be. All of this material is interesting, but not new"--Review from H-Net.

Being Jewish in the New Germany

Being Jewish in the New Germany PDF Author: Jeffrey M. Peck
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813537238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This book was written for an American (Jewish) readership. But some chapters, especially the first two, address the non-specialist, while others, especially the last two, accommodate the expert. The work contains one theme and one thesis. The theme is simple and to be welcomed: Americans, and American Jews in particular, need to understand that Germany has changed and that its Jewish community is made up of more than just a few souls morbidly attached to blood-soaked soil. We are therefore introduced to Jewish writers, politicians and intellectuals; to Jews of Russian origin, German background and Israeli descent; and to the many issues facing today's German-Jewish community of 100,000 plus members. Peck discusses the role of the Holocaust in German and American political life. He relates how Russian Jews have begun to take over community institutions, revitalizing German Jewry especially in Berlin and the provinces. And he compares and contrasts the situation of Turks and Jews today, whom many Germans still perecive as foreign, no matter how acculturated they happen to be. All of this material is interesting, but not new"--Review from H-Net.

How Jews Became Germans

How Jews Became Germans PDF Author: Deborah Sadie Hertz
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300110944
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
When the Nazis came to power and created a racial state in the 1930s, an urgent priority was 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 has 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 humanizes the stories, sets them in the context of Berlin’s evolving society, and connects them to the broad sweep of European history.

Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany

Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany PDF Author: Olaf Glöckner
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110350157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Die Reihe Europäisch-Jüdische Studien repräsentiert die international vernetzte Kompetenz des »Moses Mendelssohn Zentrums für europäisch-jüdische Studien« (MMZ). Der interdisziplinäre Charakter der Reihe, die in Kooperation mit dem Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg herausgegeben wird, zielt insbesondere auf geschichts-, geistes- und kulturwissenschaftliche Ansätze sowie auf intellektuelle, politische, literarische und religiöse Grundfragen, die jüdisches Leben und Denken in der Vergangenheit beeinflusst haben und noch heute inspirieren. Mit ihren Publikationen weiß sich das MMZ der über 250jährigen Tradition der von Moses Mendelssohn begründeten Jüdischen Aufklärung und der Wissenschaft des Judentums verpflichtet. In den BEITRÄGEN werden exzellente Monographien und Sammelbände zum gesamten Themenspektrum Jüdischer Studien veröffentlicht. Die Reihe ist peer-reviewed.

A Jew in the New Germany

A Jew in the New Germany PDF Author: Henryk M. Broder
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252028564
Category : Germany
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Henryk Broder, one of the most controversial and engaging writers in Germany today, has been a thorn in the side of the Establishment for thirty years. The son of two Polish Holocaust survivors, Broder is not only a trenchant political critic and observant social essayist but an invaluable chronicler of the Jewish experience in late twentieth-century Germany. This volume collects eighteen of Broder's essays, translated for the first time into English. The first was written in 1979 and the most recent deals with the post-9/11 realities of the war on terrorism, and its effects on the countries of Europe. Other essays address the debate over the construction of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the German response to the 1991 Gulf War, the politics of German reunification, and the rise of the new German nationalism. Broder charts the recent evolution of German Jewish relations, using his own outsider status to hold up a mirror to the German people and point out that things have not changed for German Jews as much as non-Jews might think.

A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945

A History of Jews in Germany Since 1945 PDF Author: Michael Brenner
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253029295
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
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

Stranger in My Own Country

Stranger in My Own Country PDF Author: Yascha Mounk
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429953780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
A moving and unsettling exploration of a young man's formative years in a country still struggling with its past As a Jew in postwar Germany, Yascha Mounk felt like a foreigner in his own country. When he mentioned that he is Jewish, some made anti-Semitic jokes or talked about the superiority of the Aryan race. Others, sincerely hoping to atone for the country's past, fawned over him with a forced friendliness he found just as alienating. Vivid and fascinating, Stranger in My Own Country traces the contours of Jewish life in a country still struggling with the legacy of the Third Reich and portrays those who, inevitably, continue to live in its shadow. Marshaling an extraordinary range of material into a lively narrative, Mounk surveys his countrymen's responses to "the Jewish question." Examining history, the story of his family, and his own childhood, he shows that anti-Semitism and far-right extremism have long coexisted with self-conscious philo-Semitism in postwar Germany. But of late a new kind of resentment against Jews has come out in the open. Unnoticed by much of the outside world, the desire for a "finish line" that would spell a definitive end to the country's obsession with the past is feeding an emphasis on German victimhood. Mounk shows how, from the government's pursuit of a less "apologetic" foreign policy to the way the country's idea of the Volk makes life difficult for its immigrant communities, a troubled nationalism is shaping Germany's future.

Three-Way Street

Three-Way Street PDF Author: Jay Howard Geller
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472130129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Tracing Germany's significance as an essential crossroads and incubator for modern Jewish culture

Why the Germans? Why the Jews?

Why the Germans? Why the Jews? PDF Author: Götz Aly
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 080509704X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
A provocative and insightful analysis that sheds new light on one of the most puzzling and historically unsettling conundrums Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Countless historians have grappled with these questions, but few have come up with answers as original and insightful as those of maverick German historian Götz Aly. Tracing the prehistory of the Holocaust from the 1800s to the Nazis' assumption of power in 1933, Aly shows that German anti-Semitism was—to a previously overlooked extent—driven in large part by material concerns, not racist ideology or religious animosity. As Germany made its way through the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, the difficulties of the lethargic, economically backward German majority stood in marked contrast to the social and economic success of the agile Jewish minority. This success aroused envy and fear among the Gentile population, creating fertile ground for murderous Nazi politics. Surprisingly, and controversially, Aly shows that the roots of the Holocaust are deeply intertwined with German efforts to create greater social equality. Redistributing wealth from the well-off to the less fortunate was in many respects a laudable goal, particularly at a time when many lived in poverty. But as the notion of material equality took over the public imagination, the skilled, well-educated Jewish population came to be seen as having more than its fair share. Aly's account of this fatal social dynamic opens up a new vantage point on the greatest crime in history and is sure to prompt heated debate for years to come.

The Future of the German-Jewish Past

The Future of the German-Jewish Past PDF Author: Gideon Reuveni
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1557537291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Germany’s acceptance of its direct responsibility for the Holocaust has strengthened its relationship with Israel and has led to a deep commitment to combat antisemitism and rebuild Jewish life in Germany. As we draw close to a time when there will be no more firsthand experience of the horrors of the Holocaust, there is great concern about what will happen when German responsibility turns into history. Will the present taboo against open antisemitism be lifted as collective memory fades? There are alarming signs of the rise of the far right, which includes blatantly antisemitic elements, already visible in public discourse. The evidence is unmistakable—overt antisemitism is dramatically increasing once more. The Future of the German-Jewish Past deals with the formidable challenges created by these developments. It is conceptualized to offer a variety of perspectives and views on the question of the future of the German-Jewish past. The volume addresses topics such as antisemitism, Holocaust memory, historiography, and political issues relating to the future relationship between Jews, Israel, and Germany. While the central focus of this volume is Germany, the implications go beyond the German-Jewish experience and relate to some of the broader challenges facing modern societies today.

Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Jewish Life in Nazi Germany PDF Author: Francis R. Nicosia
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845459792
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
German Jews faced harsh dilemmas in their responses to Nazi persecution, partly a result of Nazi cruelty and brutality but also a result of an understanding of their history and rightful place in Germany. This volume addresses the impact of the anti-Jewish policies of Hitler’s regime on Jewish family life, Jewish women, and the existence of Jewish organizations and institutions and considers some of the Jewish responses to Nazi anti-Semitism and persecution. This volume offers scholars, students, and interested readers a highly accessible but focused introduction to Jewish life under National Socialism, the often painful dilemmas that it produced, and the varied Jewish responses to those dilemmas.