Cultures of the Jews, Volume 2

Cultures of the Jews, Volume 2 PDF Author: David Biale
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0805212019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Scattered over much of the world throughout most of their history, are the Jews one people or many? How do they resemble and how do they differ from Jews in other places and times? What have their relationships been to the cultures of their neighbors? To address these and similar questions, some of the finest scholars of our day have contributed their insights to Cultures of the Jews, a winner of the National Jewish Book Award upon its hardcover publication in 2002. Constructing their essays around specific cultural artifacts that were created in the period and locale under study, the contributors describe the cultural interactions among different Jews–from rabbis and scholars to non-elite groups, including women–as well as between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish world. What they conclude is that although Jews have always had their own autonomous traditions, Jewish identity cannot be considered the fixed product of either ancient ethnic or religious origins. Rather, it has shifted and assumed new forms in response to the cultural environment in which the Jews have lived. Diversities of Diaspora, the second volume in Cultures of the Jews, illuminates Judeo-Arabic culture in the Golden Age of Islam; Sephardic culture as it bloomed first on the Iberian Peninsula and later in Amsterdam; and the Jewish-Christian symbiosis in Ashkenazic Europe. It also discusses Jewish culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; the culture of the Italian Jews of the Renaissance period; and representations of folklore and material culture through childbirth rituals throughout the Jewish diaspora.

Cultures of the Jews, Volume 2

Cultures of the Jews, Volume 2 PDF Author: David Biale
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0805212019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Get Book Here

Book Description
Scattered over much of the world throughout most of their history, are the Jews one people or many? How do they resemble and how do they differ from Jews in other places and times? What have their relationships been to the cultures of their neighbors? To address these and similar questions, some of the finest scholars of our day have contributed their insights to Cultures of the Jews, a winner of the National Jewish Book Award upon its hardcover publication in 2002. Constructing their essays around specific cultural artifacts that were created in the period and locale under study, the contributors describe the cultural interactions among different Jews–from rabbis and scholars to non-elite groups, including women–as well as between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish world. What they conclude is that although Jews have always had their own autonomous traditions, Jewish identity cannot be considered the fixed product of either ancient ethnic or religious origins. Rather, it has shifted and assumed new forms in response to the cultural environment in which the Jews have lived. Diversities of Diaspora, the second volume in Cultures of the Jews, illuminates Judeo-Arabic culture in the Golden Age of Islam; Sephardic culture as it bloomed first on the Iberian Peninsula and later in Amsterdam; and the Jewish-Christian symbiosis in Ashkenazic Europe. It also discusses Jewish culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; the culture of the Italian Jews of the Renaissance period; and representations of folklore and material culture through childbirth rituals throughout the Jewish diaspora.

The Story of the Jews

The Story of the Jews PDF Author: Simon Schama
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062339443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
In this magnificently illustrated cultural history—the tie-in to the pbs and bbc series The Story of the Jews—simon schama details the story of the jewish people, tracing their experience across three millennia, from their beginnings as an ancient tribal people to the opening of the new world in 1492 It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance in the face of destruction, of creativity in the face of oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life despite the steepest of odds. It spans the millennia and the continents—from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes you to unimagined places: to a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia; a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings; the palm groves of the Jewish dead in the Roman catacombs. And its voices ring loud and clear, from the severities and ecstasies of the Bible writers to the love poems of wine bibbers in a garden in Muslim Spain. In The Story of the Jews, the Talmud burns in the streets of Paris, massed gibbets hang over the streets of medieval London, a Majorcan illuminator redraws the world; candles are lit, chants are sung, mules are packed, ships loaded with gems and spices founder at sea. And a great story unfolds. Not—as often imagined—of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians. Which makes the story of the Jews everyone's story, too.

Cultures of the Jews

Cultures of the Jews PDF Author: David Biale
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307483460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1234

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Book Description
WITH MORE THAN 100 BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT Who are “the Jews”? Scattered over much of the world throughout most of their three-thousand-year-old history, are they one people or many? How do they resemble and how do they differ from Jews in other places and times? What have their relationships been to the cultures of their neighbors? To address these and similar questions, twenty-three of the finest scholars of our day—archaeologists, cultural historians, literary critics, art historians , folklorists, and historians of relation, all affiliated with major academic institutions in the United States, Israel, and France—have contributed their insight to Cultures of the Jews. The premise of their endeavor is that although Jews have always had their own autonomous traditions, Jewish identity cannot be considered immutable, the fixed product of either ancient ethnic or religious origins. Rather, it has shifted and assumed new forms in response to the cultural environment in which the Jews have lived. Building their essays on specific cultural artifacts—a poem, a letter, a traveler’s account, a physical object of everyday or ritual use—that were made in the period and locale they study, the contributors describe the cultural interactions among different Jews—from rabbis and scholars to non-elite groups, including women—as well as between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish world. Part One, “Mediterranean Origins,” describes the concept of the “People” or “Nation” of Israel that emerges in the Hebrew Bible and the culture of the Israelites in relation to that of the Canaanite groups. It goes on to discuss Jewish cultures in the Greco-Roman world, Palestine during the Byzantine period, Babylonia, and Arabia during the formative years of Islam. Part Two, “Diversities of Diaspora,” illuminates Judeo-Arabic culture in the Golden Age of Islam, Sephardic culture as it bloomed first if the Iberian Peninsula and later in Amsterdam, the Jewish-Christian symbiosis in Ashkenazic Europe and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the culture of the Italian Jews of the Renaissance period, and the many strands of folklore, magic, and material culture that run through diaspora Jewish history. Part Three, “Modern Encounters,” examines communities, ways of life, and both high and fold culture in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, the Ladino Diaspora, North Africa and the Middle East, Ethiopia, Zionist Palestine and the State of Israel, and, finally, the United States. Cultures of the Jews is a landmark, representing the fruits of the present generation of scholars in Jewish studies and offering a new foundation upon which all future research into Jewish history will be based. Its unprecedented interdisciplinary approach will resonate widely among general readers and the scholarly community, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and it will change the terms of the never-ending debate over what constitutes Jewish identity.

Space and Place in Jewish Studies

Space and Place in Jewish Studies PDF Author: Barbara E. Mann
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813552125
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Scholars in the humanities have become increasingly interested in questions of how space is produced and perceived—and they have found that this consideration of human geography greatly enriches our understanding of cultural history. This “spatial turn” equally has the potential to revolutionize Jewish Studies, complicating familiar notions of Jews as “people of the Book,” displaced persons with only a common religious tradition and history to unite them. Space and Place in Jewish Studies embraces these exciting critical developments by investigating what “space” has meant within Jewish culture and tradition—and how notions of “Jewish space,” diaspora, and home continue to resonate within contemporary discourse, bringing space to the foreground as a practical and analytical category. Barbara Mann takes us on a journey from medieval Levantine trade routes to the Eastern European shtetl to the streets of contemporary New York, introducing readers to the variety of ways in which Jews have historically formed communities and created a sense of place for themselves. Combining cutting-edge theory with rabbinics, anthropology, and literary analysis, Mann offers a fresh take on the Jewish experience.

The Yemenites

The Yemenites PDF Author: Ester Muchawsky-Schnapper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jewish art and symbolism
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description


Cultures of the Jews, Volume 1

Cultures of the Jews, Volume 1 PDF Author: David Biale
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0805212000
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Scattered over much of the world throughout most of their history, are the Jews one people or many? How do they resemble and how do they differ from Jews in other places and times? What have their relationships been to the cultures of their neighbors? To address these and similar questions, some of the finest scholars of our day have contributed their insights to Cultures of the Jews, a winner of the National Jewish Book Award upon its hardcover publication in 2002. Constructing their essays around specific cultural artifacts that were created in the period and locale under study, the contributors describe the cultural interactions among different Jews–from rabbis and scholars to non-elite groups, including women–as well as between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish world. What they conclude is that although Jews have always had their own autonomous traditions, Jewish identity cannot be considered the fixed product of either ancient ethnic or religious origins. Rather, it has shifted and assumed new forms in response to the cultural environment in which the Jews have lived. Mediterranean Origins, the first volume in Cultures of the Jews, describes the concept of the “People” or “Nation” of Israel that emerges in the Hebrew Bible and the culture of the Israelites in relation to that of neighboring Canaanite groups. It also discusses Jewish cultures in Babylonia, in Palestine during the Greco-Roman and Byzantine periods, and in Arabia during the formative years of Islam.

A Cultural History of Jewish Dress

A Cultural History of Jewish Dress PDF Author: Eric Silverman
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847882862
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
A Cultural History of Jewish Dress is the first comprehensive account of Jewish clothing, both profane and sacred, from its origins through to the present day. Fascinating and accessibly written, it will appeal to anybody with an interest in the central role of clothing in defining Jewish identity.

The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion

The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion PDF Author: Louis Finkelstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civilization
Languages : en
Pages : 970

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Book Description


Jewish Cultural Studies

Jewish Cultural Studies PDF Author: Simon J. Bronner
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814338763
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Defines the distinctive field of Jewish cultural studies and its basis in folkloristic, psychological, and ethnological approaches. Jewish Cultural Studiescharts the contours and boundaries of Jewish cultural studies and the issues of Jewish culture that make it so intriguing—and necessary—not only for Jews but also for students of identity, ethnicity, and diversity generally. In addition to framing the distinguishing features of Jewish culture and the ways it has been studied, and often misrepresented and maligned, Simon J. Bronner presents several case studies using ethnography, folkloristic interpretation, and rhetorical analysis. Bronner, building on many years of global cultural exploration, locates patterns, processes, frames, and themes of events and actions identified as Jewish to discern what makes them appear Jewish and why. Jewish Cultural Studiesis divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the conceptualization of how Jews in complex, heterogenous societies identify themselves as a cultural group to non-Jews and vice versa—such as how the Jewish home is socially and materially constructed. Part 2 delves into ritualization as a strategic Jewish practice for perpetuating peoplehood and the values that it suggests—for example, the rising popularity of naming ceremonies for newborn girls, simhat bat or zeved habat, in the twenty-first century. Part 3 explores narration, including the global transformation of Jewish joking in online settings and the role of Jews in American political culture. Bronner reflects that a reason to separate Jewish cultural studies from the fields of Jewish studies and cultural studies is the distinctiveness of Jewish culture among other ethnic experiences. As a diasporic group with religious ties and varying local customs, Jews present difficulties of categorization. He encourages a multiperspectival approach that considers the Jewish double consciousness as being aware of both insider and outsider perspectives, participation in ancient tradition and recent modernization, and the great variety and stigmatization of Jewish experience and cultural expression. Students and scholars in Jewish studies, cultural studies, ethnic-religious studies, folklore, sociology, psychology, and ethnology are the intended audience for this book.

Folktales of the Jews, Volume 2

Folktales of the Jews, Volume 2 PDF Author: Dan Ben-Amos
Publisher: Jewish Publication Society
ISBN: 0827608306
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 667

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Book Description
Folktales from Eastern Europe presents 71 tales from Ashkenasic culture in the most important collection of Jewish folktales ever published. It is the second volume in Folktales of the Jews, the five-volume series to be released over the next several years, in the tradition of Louis Ginzberg's classic, Legends of the Jews. The tales here and the others in this series have been selected from the Israel Folktale Archives at The University of Haifa, Israel (IFA), a treasure house of Jewish lore that has remained largely unavailable to the entire world until now. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the IFA has collected more than 20,000 tales from newly arrived immigrants, long-lost stories shared by their families from around the world. The tales come from the major ethno-linguistic communities of the Jewish world and are representative of a wide variety of subjects and motifs, especially rich in Jewish content and context. Each of the tales is accompanied by in-depth commentary that explains the tale's cultural, historical, and literary background and its similarity to other tales in the IFA collection, and extensive scholarly notes. There is also an introduction that describes the Ashkenasic culture and its folk narrative tradition, a world map of the areas covered, illustrations, biographies of the collectors and narrators, tale type and motif indexes, a subject index, and a comprehensive bibliography. Until the establishment of the IFA, we had had only limited access to the wide range of Jewish folk narratives. Even in Israel, the gathering place of the most wide-ranging cross-section of world Jewry, these folktales have remained largely unknown. Many of the communities no longer exist as cohesive societies in their representative lands; the Holocaust, migration, and changes in living styles have made the continuation of these tales impossible. This volume and the others to come will be monuments to a rich but vanishing oral tradition