James Loeffler – författare

Drawing on a mass of unpublished writings and archival sources from prerevolutionary Russian conservatories, this book offers an insightful account of the Jewish search for a modern identity in Russia through music, rather than politics or religion.

Reconsidering how early modern and modern Jews navigated schisms between Jewish community and European society.This collection brings together original scholarship by seventeen historians drawing on the pioneering research of their teacher and colleague, Michael Stanislawski. These essays explore a mosaic of topics in the history of modern European Jewry from early modern times to the present, including the role of Jewish participants in the European revolutions of 1848, the dynamics of Zionist and non-Zionist views in the early twentieth century, the origins of a magical charm against the evil eye, and more. Collectively, these works reject ideological and doctrinal clichés, demythologize the European Jewish past, and demonstrate that early modern and modern Jews responded creatively to modern forms of culture, religion, and the state from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Contributors to this volume pose new questions about the relationship between the particular and universal, antisemitism and modernization, religious and secular life, and the bonds and competition between cultures and languages, especially Yiddish, Hebrew, and modern European languages. 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.

Reconsidering how early modern and modern Jews navigated schisms between Jewish community and European society.This collection brings together original scholarship by seventeen historians drawing on the pioneering research of their teacher and colleague, Michael Stanislawski. These essays explore a mosaic of topics in the history of modern European Jewry from early modern times to the present, including the role of Jewish participants in the European revolutions of 1848, the dynamics of Zionist and non-Zionist views in the early twentieth century, the origins of a magical charm against the evil eye, and more. Collectively, these works reject ideological and doctrinal clichés, demythologize the European Jewish past, and demonstrate that early modern and modern Jews responded creatively to modern forms of culture, religion, and the state from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Contributors to this volume pose new questions about the relationship between the particular and universal, antisemitism and modernization, religious and secular life, and the bonds and competition between cultures and languages, especially Yiddish, Hebrew, and modern European languages. 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 the Nuremberg Trials to contemporary human rights, Jews have long played prominent roles in the making of international law. But the actual ties between Jewish heritage and legal thought remain a subject of mystery and conjecture even among specialists. This volume of biographical studies takes a unique interdisciplinary approach, pairing historians and legal scholars to explore how the Jewish identities and experiences shaped their legal thought and activism. Using newly-discovered sources and sophisticated interpretative methods, this book offers an alternative history of twentieth-century international legal profession - and a new model to the emerging field of international legal biography.

A leading historian’s revelatory exploration of antisemitism—from 1940s anti-Jewish riots until today—showing that it has long served as the frontline in a war over freedom of speech, the hallmark of American liberalism Few issues are as vexed today as antisemitism and free speech. There is scarcely an arena—college campuses, congressional hearings, immigration courtrooms, social media platforms—where we are not polarized over what counts as antisemitism, what is protected by the First Amendment, and what the law should do about hatred in America. The stakes in this fight are high. Lives are upended. Jobs are lost. Dissent is criminalized. At a time of crisis for American liberalism, antisemitism has become a point of ideological obsession. We’ve been here before. From anti-Jewish riots of the 1940s to Charlottesville’s 2017 Unite the Right rally, historian James Loeffler shows that antisemitism has long served as a key battleground in modern America’s struggle to secure liberal freedoms. In the postwar years, an antisemitic rampage in Chicago sparked two critical Supreme Court cases, opening the door to a constitutional ban on hate speech; in the late 1970s, a moment of reckoning over civil rights, a neo-Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois, tested the limits of the First Amendment; and in our own time, the Charlottesville hate crimes trial—where Loeffler served as an expert witness—revealed how our struggle over positions on Israel/Palestine and free speech stems from deep and unresolved challenges to liberal democracy: How should the law treat discrimination? How do we calculate the harm in hatred? And what of liberalism’s promise to end hatred through law? To answer these questions, Exceptional Hatred restores the missing history of how we arrived at this moment and offers a guide for how we can think differently about the law’s role in protecting all differences without surrendering our principles of equality and freedom.

From the Nuremberg Trials to contemporary human rights, Jews have long played prominent roles in the making of international law. But the actual ties between Jewish heritage and legal thought remain a subject of mystery and conjecture even among specialists. This volume of biographical studies takes a unique interdisciplinary approach, pairing historians and legal scholars to explore how the Jewish identities and experiences shaped their legal thought and activism. Using newly-discovered sources and sophisticated interpretative methods, this book offers an alternative history of twentieth-century international legal profession - and a new model to the emerging field of international legal biography.