The Modern Jewish Canon

The Modern Jewish Canon PDF Author: Ruth R. Wisse
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743205774
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
What makes a great Jewish book? What makes a book "Jewish" in the first place? Ruth R. Wisse, one of the leading scholars in the field of Jewish literature, sets out to answer these questions in The Modern Jewish Canon. Wisse takes us on an exhilarating journey through language and culture, penetrating the complexities of Jewish life as they are expressed in the greatest Jewish novels of the twentieth century, from Isaac Babel to Isaac Bashevis Singer, from Elie Wiesel to Cynthia Ozick. The modern Jewish canon Wisse proposes comprises those books that convey an experience of Jewish actuality, those in which "the authors or characters know and let the reader know that they are Jews," for better or worse. Wisse is not content merely to evaluate the great books of Jewish literature; she also links the works together to present a new kind of Jewish history, as it has been told through the literature of the past hundred years. She tells the story of a multilingual, multinational people, one that has experienced an often turbulent relationship with Hebrew (the liturgical and scriptural language) and Yiddish (the commonplace vernacular tongue), as well as with the numerous languages spoken by Jews around the world. Wisse insists that language informs the essential meaning of a Jewish work, creating and ratifying political and religious alliances, historical and cultural circumstance, and methods of interpretation. Drawing from a broad sweep of twentieth-century Jewish fiction, Wisse reintroduces us to the deeper side of much-beloved books that remain touchstones of Jewish identity. Through her eyes we reencounter old friends, including: Tevye the Dairyman from Sholem Aleichem's landmark Yiddish stories, the character on whom Fiddler on the Roof is based Joseph K. of Kafka's The Trial, who "without having done anything wrong" was famously "arrested one fine morning" Anne Frank, whose poignant diary has shaped the way we think about the Holocaust Nathan Zuckerman, the enigmatic narrator of numerous Philip Roth novels Destined to be a classic in its own right, one that reshapes the way we think about some of the classic works of the modern age, The Modern Jewish Canon is a book for every Jewish reader and for every reader of great fiction.

The Modern Jewish Canon

The Modern Jewish Canon PDF Author: Ruth R. Wisse
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743205774
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
What makes a great Jewish book? What makes a book "Jewish" in the first place? Ruth R. Wisse, one of the leading scholars in the field of Jewish literature, sets out to answer these questions in The Modern Jewish Canon. Wisse takes us on an exhilarating journey through language and culture, penetrating the complexities of Jewish life as they are expressed in the greatest Jewish novels of the twentieth century, from Isaac Babel to Isaac Bashevis Singer, from Elie Wiesel to Cynthia Ozick. The modern Jewish canon Wisse proposes comprises those books that convey an experience of Jewish actuality, those in which "the authors or characters know and let the reader know that they are Jews," for better or worse. Wisse is not content merely to evaluate the great books of Jewish literature; she also links the works together to present a new kind of Jewish history, as it has been told through the literature of the past hundred years. She tells the story of a multilingual, multinational people, one that has experienced an often turbulent relationship with Hebrew (the liturgical and scriptural language) and Yiddish (the commonplace vernacular tongue), as well as with the numerous languages spoken by Jews around the world. Wisse insists that language informs the essential meaning of a Jewish work, creating and ratifying political and religious alliances, historical and cultural circumstance, and methods of interpretation. Drawing from a broad sweep of twentieth-century Jewish fiction, Wisse reintroduces us to the deeper side of much-beloved books that remain touchstones of Jewish identity. Through her eyes we reencounter old friends, including: Tevye the Dairyman from Sholem Aleichem's landmark Yiddish stories, the character on whom Fiddler on the Roof is based Joseph K. of Kafka's The Trial, who "without having done anything wrong" was famously "arrested one fine morning" Anne Frank, whose poignant diary has shaped the way we think about the Holocaust Nathan Zuckerman, the enigmatic narrator of numerous Philip Roth novels Destined to be a classic in its own right, one that reshapes the way we think about some of the classic works of the modern age, The Modern Jewish Canon is a book for every Jewish reader and for every reader of great fiction.

I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture

I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture PDF Author: Ruth R. Wisse
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295805676
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), the father of modern Yiddish literature, was a master storyteller and social critic who advocated a radical shift from religious observance to secular Jewish culture. Wisse explores Peretz’s writings in relation to his ideology, which sought to create a strong Jewish identity separate from the trappings of religion.

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon PDF Author: Justin Daniel Cammy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 744

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Book Description
Wisse is a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and a fearless public intellectual on issues relating to Jewish society and culture. In this celebratory volume, her colleagues pay tribute with a collection of critical essays whose subjects break new ground in Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature.

The New Jewish Canon

The New Jewish Canon PDF Author: Yehuda Kurtzer
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644694700
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
“Extraordinarily rich, lively and illuminating. ... [The editors] have succeeded magnificently in achieving their goal.” —Jewish Journal The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been a period of mass production and proliferation of Jewish ideas, and have witnessed major changes in Jewish life and stimulated major debates. The New Jewish Canon offers a conceptual roadmap to make sense of such rapid change. With over eighty excerpts from key primary source texts and insightful corresponding essays by leading scholars, on topics of history and memory, Jewish politics and the public square, religion and religiosity, and identities and communities, The New Jewish Canon promises to start conversations from the seminar room to the dinner table. The New Jewish Canon is both text and textbook of the Jewish intellectual and communal zeitgeist for the contemporary period and the recent past, canonizing our most important ideas and debates of the past two generations; and just as importantly, stimulating debate and scholarship about what is yet to come.

Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon

Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon PDF Author: Hannan Hever
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814736449
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
A people's writings can play a dramatic role in nation building, as the development of modern Hebrew literature powerfully illustrates. Since the end of the nineteenth century, Hebrew writers in Europe and Palestine/Israel have produced texts and consolidated moments in the shaping of national identity. Yet, this process has not always been a unified and continuous one. The processes of canon formation and the suppression of heterodox discourses have been played out publicly and vociferously. Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon offers a sweeping view of the entirety of modern Hebrew literature, from Berdichevski and Agnon to Shammas and Habiby, shedding light on the moments of rupture and reversal which have undermined efforts to construct a hegemonic Zionist narrative. It provides a model for understanding the relations between minority and majority voices in postcolonial situations, showing these processes working and changing over time, from the earliest days of the creation of a labor Zionist sensibility for literature to Israeli state culture and the discourses of Arab otherness. By illuminating both the process of canon formation as well as the voices excluded from the canon, Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon offers a powerful alternative reading of twentieth century Hebrew fiction.

The Formation of the Jewish Canon

The Formation of the Jewish Canon PDF Author: Timothy H. Lim
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300164343
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
DIVThe discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provides unprecedented insight into the nature of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament before its fixation. Timothy Lim here presents a complete account of the formation of the canon in Ancient Judaism from the emergence of the Torah in the Persian period to the final acceptance of the list of twenty-two/twenty-four books in the Rabbinic period./divDIV /divDIVUsing the Hebrew Bible, the Scrolls, the Apocrypha, the Letter of Aristeas, the writings of Philo, Josephus, the New Testament, and Rabbinic literature as primary evidence he argues that throughout the post-exilic period up to around 100 CE there was not one official “canon” accepted by all Jews; rather, there existed a plurality of collections of scriptures that were authoritative for different communities. Examining the literary sources and historical circumstances that led to the emergence of authoritative scriptures in ancient Judaism, Lim proposes a theory of the majority canon that posits that the Pharisaic canon became the canon of Rabbinic Judaism in the centuries after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple./div

People of the Book

People of the Book PDF Author: Moshe Halbertal
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674038142
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Halbertal provides a panoramic survey of Jewish attitudes toward Scripture, provocatively organized around problems of normative and formative authority, with an emphasis on the changing status and functions of Mishnah, Talmud, and Kabbalah.

Jews and Power

Jews and Power PDF Author: Ruth R. Wisse
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307533131
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Part of the Jewish Encounter series Taking in everything from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Ruth Wisse offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power. Traditional Jews believed that upholding the covenant with God constituted a treaty with the most powerful force in the universe; this later transformed itself into a belief that, unburdened by a military, Jews could pursue their religious mission on a purely moral plain. Wisse, an eminent professor of comparative literature at Harvard, demonstrates how Jewish political weakness both increased Jewish vulnerability to scapegoating and violence, and unwittingly goaded power-seeking nations to cast Jews as perpetual targets. Although she sees hope in the State of Israel, Wisse questions the way the strategies of the Diaspora continue to drive the Jewish state, echoing Abba Eban's observation that Israel was the only nation to win a war and then sue for peace. And then she draws a persuasive parallel to the United States today, as it struggles to figure out how a liberal democracy can face off against enemies who view Western morality as weakness. This deeply provocative book is sure to stir debate both inside and outside the Jewish world. Wisse's narrative offers a compelling argument that is rich with history and bristling with contemporary urgency.

Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought

Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought PDF Author: Moshe Behar
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1584658851
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The first anthology of modern Middle Eastern Jewish thought

The Censor, the Editor, and the Text

The Censor, the Editor, and the Text PDF Author: Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812240115
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
In The Censor, the Editor, and the Text, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin examines the impact of Catholic censorship on the publication and dissemination of Hebrew literature in the early modern period. Hebrew literature made the transition to print in Italian print houses, most of which were owned by Christians. These became lively meeting places for Christian scholars, rabbis, and the many converts from Judaism who were employed as editors and censors. Raz-Krakotzkin examines the principles and practices of ecclesiastical censorship that were established in the second half of the sixteenth century as a part of this process. The book examines the development of censorship as part of the institutionalization of new measures of control over literature in this period, suggesting that we view surveillance of Hebrew literature not only as a measure directed against the Jews but also as a part of the rise of Hebraist discourse and therefore as a means of integrating Jewish literature into the Christian canon. On another level, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text explores the implications of censorship in relation to other agents that participated in the preparation of texts for publishing—authors, publishers, editors, and readers. The censorship imposed upon the Jews had a definite impact on Hebrew literature, but it hardly denied its reading, in fact confirming the right of the Jews to possess and use most of their literature. By bringing together two apparently unrelated issues—the role of censorship in the creation of print culture and the place of Jewish culture in the context of Christian society—Raz-Krakotzkin advances a new outlook on both, allowing each to be examined through the conceptual framework usually reserved for the other.