Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination

Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination PDF Author: Andrew Furman
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791432518
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Examines eight Jewish-American writers--Meyer Levin, Leon Uris, Saul Bellow, Hugh Nissenson, Chaim Potok, Philip Roth, Anne Roiphe, and Tova Reich--who have "imagined" Israel in their work.

Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination

Israel Through the Jewish-American Imagination PDF Author: Andrew Furman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438403518
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
CHOICE 1997 Outstanding Academic Books Analyzing a wide array of Jewish-American fiction on Israel, Andrew Furman explores the evolving relationship between the Israeli and American Jew. He devotes individual chapters to eight Jewish-American writers who have "imagined" Israel substantially in one or more of their works. In doing so, he gauges the impact of the Jewish state in forging the identity of the American Jewish community and the vision of the Jewish-American writer. Furman devotes individual chapters to Meyer Levin, Leon Uris, Saul Bellow, Hugh Nissenson, Chaim Potok, Philip Roth, Anne Roiphe, and Tova Reich. To chart the evolution of the Jewish-American relationship with Israel from pre-statehood until the present, he considers works from 1928 to 1995, examining them in their historical and political contexts. The writers Furman examines address the central issues which have linked and divided the American and Israeli Jewish communities: the role of Israel as both safe haven and spiritual core for Jews everywhere pitted against its secularism, militarism, and entrenched sexism. While the writers Furman examines depict contrasting images of the Middle East, the very persistence of Israel in occupying that imagination reveals, above all, how prominent a role Israel played and continues to play in shaping the Jewish-American identity.

The Hebrew Orient

The Hebrew Orient PDF Author: Jessica L. Carr
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438480849
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
In the decades before the establishment of the State of Israel, striking images of Palestine circulated widely among Jewish Americans. These images visualized "the Orient" for American viewers, creating the possibility for Jewish Americans to understand themselves through imagining "Oriental" counterparts. In The Hebrew Orient, Jessica L. Carr shows how images of the Holy Land made Jewish Americans feel at home in the United States by imagining "the Orient" as heritage. Carr's analyses of periodicals from Hadassah and the Zionist Organization of America, art calendars from the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, the Jewish Encyclopedia, and the Jewish exhibit at the 1933 World's Fair are richly illustrated. What emerges is a new understanding of the place of Orientalism in American Zionism. Creating a narrative about their origins, Jewish Americans looked east to understand themselves as Westerners.

American Talmud

American Talmud PDF Author: Ezra Cappell
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791479951
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
In American Talmud, Ezra Cappell redefines the genre of Jewish American fiction and places it squarely within the larger context of American literature. Cappell departs from the conventional approach of defining Jewish American authors solely in terms of their ethnic origins and sociological constructs, and instead contextualizes their fiction within the theological heritage of Jewish culture. By deliberately emphasizing historical and ethnographic links to religions, religious texts, and traditions, Cappell demonstrates that twentieth-century and contemporary Jewish American fiction writers have been codifying a new Talmud, an American Talmud, and argues that the literary production of Jews in America might be seen as one more stage of rabbinic commentary on the scriptural inheritance of the Jewish people.

Zion in the Desert

Zion in the Desert PDF Author:
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 0791480062
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description


God's Sacred Tongue

God's Sacred Tongue PDF Author: Shalom Goldman
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
In a comprehensive examination of how Christian scholars in the United States received, interpreted, and understood Hebrew texts and the Jewish experience, Shalom Goldman explores Hebraism's relationship to American society. By linking history, theology, and literature from the colonial period through the twentieth century, Goldman illuminates the religious and cultural roots of American interest in the Middle East. God's Sacred Tongue is structured around a sequence of biographical and intellectual portraits of individuals including Jonathan Edwards, Isaac Nordheimer, Professor George Bush (an ancestor of President George W. Bush), and twentieth-century literary critic Edmund Wilson. Since the colonial period, America has been perceived as a western Promised Land with emotional, spiritual, and physical links to the Promised Land of biblical history. Goldman gives evidence from scholarship, diplomacy, journalism, the history of higher education, and the arts to show that this perception is linked to the role Hebrew and the Bible have played in American cultural history. The book's final section takes up the story of American Christian Zionism, among whose Protestant adherents political Zionism found much of its strongest support. Religious and cultural figures such as William Rainey Harper and Reinhold Niebuhr are among those who exemplify the centuries-old ties between America, the Land of Promise, and Israel, the Promised Land.

Doubting the Devout

Doubting the Devout PDF Author: Nora L Rubel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231512589
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
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.

Eye on Israel

Eye on Israel PDF Author: Michelle Mart
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 0791466876
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Examines the image of Israel in American culture before 1960.

Our Exodus

Our Exodus PDF Author: Matthew Mark Silver
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814334430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Examines the phenomenon of Leon Uris's Exodus and its largely unrecognized influence on post-World War II understandings of Israels beginnings in America and around the world.

Fundamentalism and Literature

Fundamentalism and Literature PDF Author: C. Pesso-Miquel
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230601863
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
This book explores the manifold connections between fundamentalism and literature in English. Carefully selected case studies and surveys document an unexpected richness and variety in this unlikely relationship