Moses Hess and Modern Jewish Identity

Moses Hess and Modern Jewish Identity PDF Author: Ken Koltun-Fromm
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025310856X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
"Koltun-Fromm's reading of Hess is of crucial import for those who study the construction of self in the modern world as well as for those who are concerned with Hess and his contributions to modern thought.... a reading of Hess that is subtle, judicious, insightful, and well supported." -- David Ellenson Moses Hess, a fascinating 19th-century German Jewish intellectual figure, was at times religious and secular, traditional and modern, practical and theoretical, socialist and nationalist. Ken Koltun-Fromm's radical reinterpretation of his writings shows Hess as a Jew struggling with the meaning of conflicting commitments and impulses. Modern readers will realize that in Hess's life, as in their own, these commitments remain fragmented and torn. As contemporary Jews negotiate multiple, often contradictory allegiances in the modern world, Koltun-Fromm argues that Hess's struggle to unite conflicting traditions and frameworks of meaning offers intellectual and practical resources to re-examine the dilemmas of modern Jewish identity. Adopting Charles Taylor's philosophical theory of the self to uncover Hess's various commitments, Koltun-Fromm demonstrates that Hess offers a rich, textured, though deeply conflicted and torn account of the modern Jew. This groundbreaking study in conceptions of identity in modern Jewish texts is a vital contribution to the diverse fields of Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, Zionism, and religious studies. Jewish Literature and Culture -- Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor Published with the generous support of the Koret Foundation

Moses Hess and Modern Jewish Identity

Moses Hess and Modern Jewish Identity PDF Author: Ken Koltun-Fromm
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025310856X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Koltun-Fromm's reading of Hess is of crucial import for those who study the construction of self in the modern world as well as for those who are concerned with Hess and his contributions to modern thought.... a reading of Hess that is subtle, judicious, insightful, and well supported." -- David Ellenson Moses Hess, a fascinating 19th-century German Jewish intellectual figure, was at times religious and secular, traditional and modern, practical and theoretical, socialist and nationalist. Ken Koltun-Fromm's radical reinterpretation of his writings shows Hess as a Jew struggling with the meaning of conflicting commitments and impulses. Modern readers will realize that in Hess's life, as in their own, these commitments remain fragmented and torn. As contemporary Jews negotiate multiple, often contradictory allegiances in the modern world, Koltun-Fromm argues that Hess's struggle to unite conflicting traditions and frameworks of meaning offers intellectual and practical resources to re-examine the dilemmas of modern Jewish identity. Adopting Charles Taylor's philosophical theory of the self to uncover Hess's various commitments, Koltun-Fromm demonstrates that Hess offers a rich, textured, though deeply conflicted and torn account of the modern Jew. This groundbreaking study in conceptions of identity in modern Jewish texts is a vital contribution to the diverse fields of Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, Zionism, and religious studies. Jewish Literature and Culture -- Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor Published with the generous support of the Koret Foundation

Rome and Jerusalem

Rome and Jerusalem PDF Author: Moses Hess
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jewish nationalism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description


The First Modern Jew

The First Modern Jew PDF Author: Daniel B. Schwartz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069116214X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.

The Revival of Israel

The Revival of Israel PDF Author: Moses Hess
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803272750
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Its author, Moses Hess (1812-1875), was a German socialist who brought his revolutionary zeal to the preaching of Jewish nationalism. The Revival of Israel combines a fervent sense of national destiny with ethical socialism and religious conservatism. Hess believed that Papal Rome represented the source of anti-Semitism and that universal ideals of justice and equality were inherent in the history and aspirations of the Jewish people, who could fulfill their historical promise only in their ancient Holy Land under their own rule. Without spiritual regeneration, Judaism was in danger of becoming nothing more than a creed or cult; too many German Jews had already assimilated. He looked above all to France, home of revolution, to protect the Jews, considering it the "sacred duty of Christians to help" them regain their promised land. Unnoticed at first, The Revival of Israel was later discovered and adopted by the Zionists.

The Jew in the Modern World

The Jew in the Modern World PDF Author: Paul R. Mendes-Flohr
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195074536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 772

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Book Description
The last two centuries have witnessed a radical transformation of Jewish life. Marked by such profound events as the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel, Judaism's long journey through the modern age has been a complex and tumultuous one, leading many Jews to ask themselves not only where they have been and where they are going, but what it means to be a Jew in today's world. Tracing the Jewish experience in the modern period and illustrating the transformation of Jewish religion, culture, and identity from the 17th century to 1948, the updated edition of this critically acclaimed volume of primary materials remains the most complete sourcebook on modern Jewish history. Now expanded to supplement the most vital documents of the first edition, The Jew in the Modern World features hitherto unpublished and inaccessible sources concerning the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, women in Jewish history, American Jewish life, the Holocaust, and Zionism and the nascent Jewish community in Palestine on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel. The documents are arranged chronologically in each of eleven chapters and are meticulously and extensively annotated and cross-referenced in order to provide the student with ready access to a wide variety of issues, key historical figures, and events. Complete with some twenty useful tables detailing Jewish demographic trends, this is a unique resource for any course in Jewish history, Zionism and Israel, the Holocaust, or European and American history.

A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy

A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy PDF Author: Eliezer Schweid
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004380604
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
The culmination of Eliezer Schweid’s life-work as a Jewish intellectual historian, this five-volume work provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the major thinkers and movements in modern Jewish thought, in the context of general philosophy and Jewish social-political historical developments, with extensive primary source excerpts. Volume Three, The Crisis of Humanism, commences with an important essay on the challenge to the humanist tradition posed in the late 19th century by historical materialism, existentialism and positivism. This is background for the constructive philosophies which sought at the same time to address the general crisis of moral value and provide a positive basis for Jewish existence. Among the thinkers presented in this volume are Moses Hess, Moritz Lazarus, Hermann Cohen (in impressive depth, with a thorough exposition of the Ethics and Religion of Reason), Ahad Ha-Am, I. J. Reines, Simon Dubnow, M. Y. Berdiczewski, the theorists of the Bund, Chaim Zhitlovsky, Nachman Syrkin, and Ber Borochov.

Towards the Mystical Experience of Modernity

Towards the Mystical Experience of Modernity PDF Author: Yehudah Mirsky
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644695308
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
Avraham Yitzhaq Ha-Cohen Kook (1865-1935) stands as a colossal figure of modern Jewish history and thought. Jurist, mystic, poet, theologian, communal leader, founder of the modern Chief Rabbinate and still the defining thinker of Religious Zionism, he is indispensable for understanding modern Jewish thought, the contemporary State of Israel, and the most fundamental interactions of religion, nationalism, ethics and spirituality. Despite countless studies of him, almost no full-fledged intellectual biography of him exists in any language. This study of the years before his momentous move to Jaffa in 1904, drawing on little-known works, including recently published manuscripts, begins to fill that gap. It traces his life and times in the remarkably intense Rabbinic intellectual milieu of late nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and his path from a profound, regularly rationalist traditionalism, towards a dynamic theology and spiritual practice weaving together Kabbalah, philosophy, universal ethics, and romantic mysticism.

Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe

Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe PDF Author: Michael Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317696794
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Since ancient times, Jews have had a long and tangled relationship to cosmopolitanism. Torn between a longstanding commitment to other Jews and the pressure to integrate into various host societies, many Jews have sought a third, seemingly neutral option, that of becoming citizens of the world: cosmopolitans. Few regions witnessed such intense debates on these questions as the lands of East Central Europe as they entered the modern era. From Berlin to Moscow and from Vilna to Bucharest, the Jews of East Central Europe were repeatedly torn between people, nation and the world. While many Jews and individuals of Jewish descent embraced cosmopolitan ideologies and movements across the span of the nineteenth century, such appeals to transcend the nation became increasingly suspect with the rise of integral nationalism. In Germany, Poland, Russia and other lands, Jews and other supporters of cosmopolitan movements were marginalized during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although such sentiments reached their peak during the Second World War, anti-cosmopolitan propaganda continued throughout the Cold War when it often became an integral part of anti-Jewish campaigns in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania. Even after the end of the Cold War, the connection between Jews and cosmopolitanism continues to befuddle ideologues, cultural leaders and politicians in Europe, North America and Israel. The fourteen chapters amassed in this volume address these and other questions including: What lies at the roots of the longstanding connection between Jews and cosmopolitanism? How has this relationship changed over time? What can different cultural, economic and political developments teach us about the ongoing attraction and tension between Jews and cosmopolitanism? And, what can these test cases tell us about the future of Jews and cosmopolitanism in the twenty-first century? This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Review of History.

Nationalism before the Nation State

Nationalism before the Nation State PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004426108
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Long before it took political shape in the proclamation of the German Empire of 1871, a German nation-state had taken shape in the cultural imagination. Covering the period from the Seven Years’ War to the Reichsgründung of 1871, Nationalism before the Nation State: Literary Constructions of Inclusion, Exclusion, and Self-Definition (1756–1871) explores how the nation was imagined by different groups, at different times, and in connection with other ideologies. Between them the eight chapters in this volume explore the connections between religion, nationalism and patriotism, and individual chapters show how marginalised voices such as women and Jews contributed to discourses on national identity. Finally, the chapters also consider the role of memory in constructing ideas of nationhood. Contributors are: Johannes Birgfeld, Anita Bunyan, Dirk Göttsche, Caroline Mannweiler, Alex Marshall, Dagmar Paulus, Ellen Pilsworth, and Ernest Schonfield.

Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848 PDF Author: Sven-Erik Rose
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 161168580X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 620

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Book Description
In this book Rose illuminates the extraordinary creativity of Jewish intellectuals as they reevaluated Judaism with the tools of a German philosophical tradition fast emerging as central to modern intellectual life. While previous work emphasizes the "subversive" dimensions of German-Jewish thought or the "inner antisemitism" of the German philosophical tradition, Rose shows convincingly the tremendous resources German philosophy offered contemporary Jews for thinking about the place of Jews in the wider polity. Offering a fundamental reevaluation of seminal figures and key texts, Rose emphasizes the productive encounter between Jewish intellectuals and German philosophy. He brings to light both the complexity and the ambivalence of reflecting on Jewish identity and politics from within a German tradition that invested tremendous faith in the political efficacy of philosophical thought itself.