Writing Jewish Culture

Andreas Kilcher is a professor at ETH Zurich and author of The Linguistic Theory of Kabbalah as an Aesthetical Paradigm and Dictionary of German-Jewish Literature. Gabriella Safran is the Eva Chernov Lokey Professor in Jewish Studies at Stanford University and author of Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk's Creator, S. An-sky.

"Writing Jewish Culture is a significant work in the field of Jewish Studies as well as German-Jewish and Yiddish literature and will be of great interest to scholars in these fields."—Slavic Review"Writing Jewish Culture looks at the ethnographic issues while defining Jewishness in a very fresh, sophisticated way. The contributors in this volume are accomplished and unmatched scholars. It is a very timely and important addition to the literature on Jewish ethnography."—Washington Book Review"This book significantly contributes to our knowledge of Jewish ethnography, history, literature, and culture and should be very interesting for scholars as well as a wider audience."—The Russian Review"With its diverse chorus of academic voices, this anthology of new work on the cultural and literary history of Jewish ethnography is an extraordinarily rich, thoughtful, and engrossing text."—James Loeffler, author of The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire

• Note on Transliteration and NamesIntroduction / Andreas Kilcher and Gabriella SafranPart 1: Reinventing the "Jews" in Ethnographic Writing1. The Voice of a Native Informer: Salomon Maimon Describes Life in Polish Lithuania / Liliane Weissberg 2. Legends of Authenticity: Das Buch von den polnischen Juden (1916) by S. J. Agnon and Ahron Eliasberg / Sylvia Jaworski3. The Cold Order and the Eros of Storytelling: Joseph Roth's "Exotic Jews" / Andreas Kilcher4. Yiddish Ethnographic Poetics and Moyshe Kulbak's "Vilne" / Jordan FinkinPart 2: Seeing, Hearing, and Reading Jews5. Listening in the Dark: The Yiddish Folklorists' Claim of a Russian Genealogy / Gabriella Safran6. Ethnoliterary Modernity: Jewish Ethnography and Literature in the Russian Empire and Poland (1890-1930) / Annette Werberger7. Imagining the Wandering Jew in Modernity: Exegesis and Ethnography in Feuchtwanger's Jud Süss / Galit Hasan-Rokem8. Exclusion and Inclusion: Ethnography of War in Kriegsgefangene (1916) and Das Ostjüdische Antlitz (1920) / Eva Edelmann-Ohler9. Avant-Garde Authenticity: Ethnography and Identity in Moï Ver's Photobook Ein Ghetto im Osten / Samuel SpinnerPart 3: Spaces of Jewish Ethnography between Diaspora and Nation10. Zionism's Ethnographic Knowledge: Leo Motzkin's and Heinrich York-Steiner's Narratives of Palestine (1898-1904) / Alexander Alon11. Eastern Europe in Argentina: Yiddish Travelogues and the Exploration of Jewish Diaspora / Tamar LewinskyPart 4: Politics and the Addressee of Ethnography12. From Custom Book to Folk Culture: Minhag and the Roots of Jewish Ethnography / Nathaniel Deutsch13. In Search of the Exotic: "Jewish Houses" and Synagogues in Russian Travel Notes / Alla Sokolova14. Ballads of Strangers: Constructing "Ethnographic Moments" in Jewish Folklore / Dani SchrireAppendicesNote to ReadersA. What Is Jewish Ethnography? (Handbook for Fieldworkers) / Naftoli Vaynig and Khayim Khayes, Translated by Jordan FinkinB. Research Your Shtetl / H. Aleksandrov, Translated by Jordan FinkinC. "A Strange Experience" / A. Almi, Translated by Gabriella SafranList of ContributorsIndex