The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination

The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination PDF

Author: Leonid Livak

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2010-09-10

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 0804775621

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This book proposes that the idea of the Jews in European cultures has little to do with actual Jews, but rather is derived from the conception of Jews as Christianity's paradigmatic Other, eternally reenacting their morally ambiguous New Testament role as the Christ-bearing and -killing chosen people of God. Through new readings of canonical Russian literary texts by Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, Babel, and others, the author argues that these European writers—Christian, secular, and Jewish—based their representation of Jews on the Christian exegetical tradition of anti-Judaism. Indeed, Livak disputes the classification of some Jewish writers as belonging to "Jewish literature," arguing that such an approach obscures these writers' debt to European literary traditions and their ambivalence about their Jewishness. This work seeks to move the study of Russian literature, and Russian-Jewish literature in particular, down a new path. It will stir up controversy around Christian-Jewish cultural interaction; the representation of otherness in European arts and folklore; modern Jewish experience; and Russian literature and culture.

The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination

The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination PDF

Author: Daniel R. Langton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-03-22

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1139486322

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The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination is a pioneering multidisciplinary examination of Jewish perspectives on Paul of Tarsus. Here, the views of individual Jewish theologians, religious leaders, and biblical scholars of the last 150 years, together with artistic, literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytical approaches, are set alongside popular cultural attitudes. Few Jews, historically speaking, have engaged with the first-century Apostle to the Gentiles. The modern period has witnessed a burgeoning interest in this topic, however, with treatments reflecting profound concerns about the nature of Jewish authenticity and the developing intercourse between Jews and Christians. In exploring these issues, Jewish commentators have presented Paul in a number of apparently contradictory ways. The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination represents an important contribution to Jewish cultural studies and to the study of Jewish-Christian relations.

The Social Scientific Study of Jewry

The Social Scientific Study of Jewry PDF

Author: Uzi Rebhun

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-03-13

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0199380325

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Continuing its distinguished tradition of focusing on central political, sociological, and cultural issues of Jewish life in the last century, this latest volume in the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry series focuses on how Jewry has been studied in the social science disciplines. Its symposium consists of essays that discuss sources, approaches, and debates in the complementary fields of demography, sociology, economics, and geography. The social sciences are central for the understanding of contemporary Jewish life and have engendered much controversy over the past few decades. To a large extent, the multitude of approaches toward Jewish social science research reflects the nature of population studies in general, and that of religions and ethnic groups in particular. Yet the variation in methodology, definitions, and measures of demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural patterns is even more salient in the study of Jews. Different data sets have different definitions for what is "Jewish" or "who is a Jew." In addition, Jews as a group are characterized by high rates of migration, including repeated migration, which makes it difficult to track any given Jewish population. Finally, the question of identification is complicated by the fact that in most places, especially outside of Israel, it is not clear whether "being Jewish" is primarily a religious or an ethnic matter - or both, or neither. This volume also features an essay on American Jewry and North African Jewry; review essays on rebuilding after the Holocaust, Nazi war crimes trials, and Jewish historiography; and reviews of new titles in Jewish studies.

The Jew's Daughter

The Jew's Daughter PDF

Author: Efraim Sicher

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-05-04

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1498527795

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A new approach to thinking about the representation of the Other in Western society, The Jew’s Daughter: A Cultural History of a Conversion Narrative offers an insight into the gendered difference of the Jew. Focusing on a popular narrative of “The Jew’s Daughter,” which has been overlooked in conventional studies of European anti-Semitism, this innovative study looks at canonical and neglected texts which have constructed racialized and sexualized images that persist today in the media and popular culture. The book goes back before Shylock and Jessica in TheMerchant of Venice and Isaac and Rebecca in Ivanhoe to seek the answers to why the Jewish father is always wicked and ugly, while his daughter is invariably desirable and open to conversion. The story unfolds in fascinating transformations, reflecting changing ideological and social discourses about gender, sexuality, religion, and nation that expose shifting perceptions of inclusion and exclusion of the Other. Unlike previous studies of the theme of the Jewess in separate literatures, Sicher provides a comparative perspective on the transnational circulation of texts in the historical context of the perception of both Jews and women as marginal or outcasts in society. The book draws on examples from the arts, history, literature, folklore, and theology to draw a complex picture of the dynamics of Jewish-Christian relations in England, France, Germany, and Eastern Europe from 1100 to 2017. In addition, the responses of Jewish authors illustrate a dialogue that has not always led to mutual understanding. This ground-breaking work will provoke questions about the history and present state of prejudiced attitudes in our society.

Embodied Differences

Embodied Differences PDF

Author: Henrietta Mondry

Publisher: Academic Studies PRess

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1644694875

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This book analyzes the ways in which literary works and cultural discourses employ the construct of the Jew’s body in relation to the material world in order either to establish and reinforce, or to subvert and challenge, dominant cultural norms and stereotypes. It examines the use of physical characteristics, embodied practices, tacit knowledge and senses to define the body taxonomically as normative, different, abject or mimetically desired. Starting from the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky through to contemporary Russian-Jewish women’s writing, broadening the scope to examining the role of objects, museum displays and the politics of heritage food, the book argues that materiality can embody fictional constructions that should be approached on a culture-specific basis.

Making History Jewish

Making History Jewish PDF

Author: Paweł Maciejko

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 9004431977

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This collection explores the different ways that intellectuals, scholars and institutions have sought to make history Jewish by discussing the different methodological, research and narrative strategies involved in transforming past events into part of the larger canon of Jewish history.

Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism

Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism PDF

Author: Armin Lange

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 3110618591

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This volume provides a compendium of the history of and discourse about antisemitism - both as a unique cultural and religious category. Antisemitic stereotypes function as religious symbols that express and transmit a belief system of Jew-hatred, which are stored in the cultural and religious memories of the Western and Muslim worlds, migrating freely between Christian, Muslim and other religious symbolic systems.

Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe

Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe PDF

Author: Aleksandra Koutny-Jones

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-09-17

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 9004305254

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In Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe, Aleksandra Koutny-Jones examines the remarkable cultural preoccupation with death in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795), through a range of Baroque artworks such as coffin portraits, funerary decorations, tomb chapels and religious landscapes.

Earthly Delights

Earthly Delights PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 9004367543

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A group of 17 international experts examines continuities and discontinuities in the culinary cultures of the Ottoman Empire, East-Central Europe and the Balkans from the 17th to the 19th century.

A Reader's Guide to Andrei Bely's "petersburg

A Reader's Guide to Andrei Bely's

Author: Leonid Livak

Publisher:

Published: 2018-12-11

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 029931930X

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An introduction to a complex but hugely influential Russian novel written on the eve of the First World War. Accessible essays explain how Petersburg articulated the sensibility, ideas, phobias, and aspirations of Russian and transnational modernism.