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Modern Jewish philosophy emerged in the seventeenth century, with the impact of the new science and modern philosophy on thinkers who were reflecting upon the nature of Judaism and Jewish life. This collection of essays examines the work of several of the most important of these figures, from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth centuries, and addresses themes central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy: language and revelation, autonomy and authority, the problem of evil, messianism, the influence of Kant, and feminism. Included are essays on Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, Fackenheim, Soloveitchik, Strauss, and Levinas. Other thinkers discussed include Maimon, Benjamin, Derrida, Scholem, and Arendt. The sixteen original essays are written by a world-renowned group of scholars especially for this volume and give a broad and rich picture of the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy over a period of four centuries.
“Illuminating . . . 24 academic essays covering Wiesel’s interpretations of the Bible, retellings of Talmudic stories . . . his post-Holocaust theology, and more.” —Publishers Weekly Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel, best known for his writings on the Holocaust, is also the accomplished author of novels, essays, tales, and plays as well as portraits of seminal figures in Jewish life and experience. In this volume, leading scholars in the fields of Biblical, Rabbinic, Hasidic, Holocaust, and literary studies offer fascinating and innovative analyses of Wiesel’s texts as well as enlightening commentaries on his considerable influence as a teacher and as a moral voice for human...
Offering snapshots of a pivotal era in which the Jews of Europe made the transition from a traditional to a more modern world, the Yiddish plays translated and collected here wrestle with issues that continue to concern us today: changing gender roles, generational conflict, class divisions, and religious persecution. In their introduction to the volume, Joel Berkowitz and Jeremy Dauber place the plays in the context of the development of modern drama and Yiddish drama and examine their treatment of social, political, and religious issues. The many ways in which the plays address these issues make them transcend their own time, exciting a new generation of readers and theatergoers.
Who is the greatest living essayist writing in English? Joseph Epstein would surely be at the top of anybody's list. Epstein is penetrating. He is witty. He has a magic touch with words, that hard to define but immediately recognizable quality called style. Above all, he is impossible to put down. Joseph Epstein's Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits is the fifth such volume from Axios Press and contains 58 essays. Subjects range from domestic life to current social trends to an appraisal of “contemporary nuttiness.” It follows the much-acclaimed Essays in Biography, 2012; A Literary Education and Other Essays, 2014; Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays, 2016; and The Ideal of Culture: Essays, 2018. After reading Epstein, we see life with a fresh eye. We also see ourselves a little more clearly. This is what Plutarch intended: life teaching by example, but with a wry smile and such a sure hand that we hardly notice the instruction. It is just pure pleasure.
Dating from the sixteenth century, there were hundreds of shtetls—Jewish settlements—in Eastern Europe that were home to a large and compact population that differed from their gentile, mostly peasant neighbors in religion, occupation, language, and culture. The shtetls were different in important respects from previous types of Jewish settlements in the Diaspora in that Jews had rarely formed a majority in the towns in which they lived. This was not true of the shtetl, where Jews sometimes comprised 80% or more of the population. While the shtetl began to decline during the course of the nineteenth century, it was the Holocaust which finally destroyed it. During the last thirty years th...
For medieval and early modern Europeans, the Devil and his demonic minions were seen as increasingly active. They tempted monks, tortured the unwary, and conspired against humanity. They were responsible for waves of heresy, plague, famine, and religious division, and they formed unholy alliances foreshadowing the approaching Apocalypse and End Times. Bringing together eighteen internationally recognized specialists, A Companion to the Devil and Demons explores the latest research on premodern European beliefs about the Devil and demons. With chapters ranging from scholastic and necromantic perceptions of demons to the place of demons within witch trials, connections between demons and non-h...
Comics and the U.S. South offers a wide-ranging and long overdue assessment of how life and culture in the United States South is represented in serial comics, graphic novels, newspaper comic strips, and webcomics. Diverting the lens of comics studies from the skyscrapers of Superman's Metropolis or Chris Ware's Chicago to the swamps, backroads, small towns, and cities of the U.S. South, this collection critically examines the pulp genres associated with mainstream comic books alongside independent and alternative comics. Some essays seek to discover what Captain America can reveal about southern regionalism and how slave narratives can help us reread Swamp Thing; others examine how creators...
A National Medal of Arts winner, Mel Brooks has kept us in stitches for 70 years, laughing at the human condition. Brooks is well known for his New York Jewish humor, but as Roger Ebert says, the engines that drive his comedy have rarely been noticed. This work offers new insights into Brooks' creative genius. Fifteen scholars discuss the social satire and genre parody that fuel well-known films like The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and History of the World, Part I, along with deep dives into overlooked films like Twelve Chairs, Silent Movie, and Life Stinks. The essays herein cover how Brooks' comedy developed, his standup roots, Get Smart, and his work as a producer for The Elephant Man and The Fly, and more, together presenting a detailed look at one of comedy's most influential voices.
Part of the Jewish Encounters series The first comprehensive biography of one of the most beloved authors of all time: the creator of Tevye the Dairyman, the collection of stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a pantheon of characters who have been immortalized in books and plays, he provided readers throughout the world with a fascinating window into the world of Eastern European Jews as they began to confront the forces of cultural, political, and religious modernity that tore through the Russian Empire in the final decades of the nineteen...
The flowering of a grassroots Jewish secular culture in the last years of the Russian Empire