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Explores the role of public memory and images of the past in the Jewish communities of Germany, France, and Hungary as they faced changing political and social conditions. With the rise of Fascism in Europe, and particularly the ascent of Germany’s Nazi Party, Jews in Germany and eastern and western Europe were forced to cope with an eroding civil and social status, increasing daily limitations, and a dark future on the horizon. This reality looked very different from the recent past of emancipation, in which Jewish citizens had enjoyed civic equality and the advance of social integration. In The Waning of Emancipation: Jewish History, Memory, and the Rise of Fascism in Germany, France, an...
European and American scholars of history, Jewish studies, and various social sciences examine the history of French and German Jews from the late-18th to the early-20th centuries, a period commonly referred to as the emancipation era. The two communities are often seen as paradigms respectively of the different paths to emancipation: from revolution and from evolution. The 12 essays are from a May 2001 conference in Tutzing, Germany. Distributed by Coronet Books. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
In Jewish Integration in the German Army in the First World War David J. Fine offers a surprising portrayal of Jewish officers in the German army as integrated and comfortably identified as both Jews and Germans. Fine explores how both Judaism and Christianity were experienced by Jewish soldiers at the front, making an important contribution to the study of the experience of religion in war. Fine shows how the encounter of German Jewish soldiers with the old world of the shtetl on the eastern front tested both their German and Jewish identities. Finally, utilizing published and unpublished sources including letters, diaries, memoirs, military service records, press accounts, photographs, drawings and tomb stone inscriptions, the author argues that antisemitism was not a primary factor in the war experience of Jewish soldiers.
These investigations illuminate the entangled experiences of Jews who sought to balance the pull of communal, religious, and linguistic traditions with the demands and allure of full participation in European life.
From its modest beginnings in 1818 Berlin, Wissenschaft des Judentums has burgeoned into a scholarly discipline pursued by a vast cadre of scholars. Now constituting a global community, these scholars continue to draw their inspiration from the determined pioneers of Wissenschaft des Judentums in nineteenth and twentieth Germany. Beyond setting the highest standards of philological and historiographical research, German Wissenschaft des Judentums had a seminal role in creating modern Jewish discourse in which cultural memory supplemented traditional Jewish learning. The secular character of modern Jewish Studies, initially pursued largely in German and subsequently in other vernacular langua...
This book investigates the place and meaning of consumption in Jewish lives and the roles Jews played in different consumer cultures in modern Europe and North America. Drawing on innovative, original research into this new and challenging field, the volume brings Jewish studies and the history and theory of consumer culture into dialogue with each other. Its chapters explore Jewish businesspeople's development of niche commercial practices in several transnational contexts; the imagining, marketing, and realization of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine through consumer goods and strategies; associations between Jews, luxury, and gender in multiple contexts; and the political dimensions of consumer choice. Together the essays in this volume show how the study of consumption enriches our understanding of modern Jewish history and how a focus on consumer goods and practices illuminates the study of Jewish religious observance, ethnic identities, gender formations, and immigrant trajectories across the globe.
Culture from the Slums explores the history of punk rock in East and West Germany during the 1970s and 1980s, examining how youths mobilized music to build alternative communities and identities during the Cold War, and detailing how punk became the site of historical change on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Winner of the Goldberg Family Foundation Award 2021 What is the meaning of the Jewish rites of initiation known as “bar and bat mitzvah” in the modern age, when the concept of “mitzvah” (religious precept or obligation) means so little to most Jewish adolescents? Hizky Shoham offers a comprehensive anthropological history of the bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies that seeks to understand why not only have these ceremonies been preserved, but are in fact celebrated by more Jewish families and demand greater financial, psychological, and family resources than ever before. The book maps and analyzes the transformation of the rituals in the modern age and endeavors to understand their meanin...
These essays explore the complex articulations and contexts of anti-Semitism in the literature of four cultures - Britain, France, Germany and Italy, in the 19th century.