Richard I. Cohen - Böcker

Notions of place have always permeated Jewish life and consciousness. The Babylonian Talmud was pitted against the Jerusalem Talmud; the worlds of Sepharad and Ashkenaz were viewed as two pillars of the Jewish experience; the diaspora was conceived as a wholly different experience from that of Eretz Israel; and Jews from Eastern Europe and "German Jews" were often seen as mirror opposites, whereas Jews under Islam were often characterized pejoratively, especially because of their allegedly uncultured surroundings. Place, or makom, is a strategic opportunity to explore the tensions that characterize Jewish culture in modernity, between the sacred and the secular, the local and the global, the historical and the virtual, Jewish culture and others. The plasticity of the term includes particular geographic places and their cultural landscapes, theological allusions, and an array of other symbolic relations between locus, location, and the production of culture. The 30th volume of Studies in Contemporary Jewry includes twelve essays that deal with various aspects of particular places, making each location a focal point for understanding Jewish life and culture. Scholars from the United States, Europe, and Israel have used their disciplinary skills to shed light on the vicissitudes of the 20th century in relation to place and Jewish culture. Their essays continue the ongoing discussion in this realm and provide further insights into the historiographical turn in Jewish studies.

The symposium that kicks off the latest volume of Studies in Contemporary Jewry focuses on the city that is at the very center of contemporary Jewish life, both geographically and culturally. Jerusalem is an extremely engaging and beautiful city as well as a source of continual controversy and contestation. The authors in the symposium discuss a wide range of topics, with a focus on politics and culture, offering readers provocative views on the city over the last 120 years. Essays by historians and cultural scholars in the volume engage with such issues as visions of the city among Jews and non-Jews and musical and literary imaginings of the city, while other scholars bring original interpretations of the city's political evolution in the past century that will both surprise and intrigue readers. The extensive book review section illustrates the consistent interest in modern Jewish history and culture.

Continuing its distinguished tradition of focusing on central political, sociological, and cultural issues of Jewish life in the last century, Volume XXVI of the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry examines the visual revolution that has overtaken Jewish cultural life in the twentieth century onwards, with special attention given to the evolution of Jewish museums. Bringing together leading curators and scholars, Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History treats various forms of Jewish representation in museums in Europe and the United States before the Second World War and inquires into the nature and proliferation of Jewish museums following the Holocaust and the fall of Communism in Western and Eastern Europe. In addition, a pair of essays dedicated to six exhibitions that took place in Israel in 2008 to mark six decades of Israeli art raises significant issues on the relationship between art and gender, and art and politics. An introductory essay highlights the dramatic transformation in the appreciation of the visual in Jewish culture. The scope of the symposium offers one of the first scholarly attempts to treat this theme in several countries. Also featured in this volume are a provocative essay on the nature of antisemitism in twentieth-century English society; review essays on Jewish fundamentalism and recent works on the subject of the Holocaust in occupied Soviet territories; and reviews of new titles in Jewish Studies..

With the help of over one hundred illustrations spanning three centuries, Richard Cohen investigates the role of visual images in European Jewish history. The interaction of Jews with the visual arts takes place, as Cohen says, in a vast gallery of prints, portraits, books, synagogue architecture, ceremonial art, modern Jewish painting and sculpture, political broadsides, monuments, medals, and memorabilia. Pointing to recent scholarship that overturns the stereotype of Jews as people of the text, unconcerned with the visual, Cohen shows how the coming of the modern period expanded the relationship of Jews to the visual realm far beyond the religious context. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the study and collecting of Jewish art became a legitimate and even passionate pursuit, and signaled the entry of Jews into the art world as painters, collectors, and dealers.

A collection of essays that bring new insight into Jewish culture as it is intertwined in Jewish, European, Ottoman, and American history.

Highlighting the seminal role of German Jewish intellectuals and ideologues in forming and transforming the modern Jewish world, this volume analyzes the political roads taken by German Jewish thinkers; the impact of the Holocaust on the Central and East European Jewish intelligentsia; and the conundrum of modern Jewish identity. Several of German Jewry’s most outstanding figures such as Scholem, Strauss, and Kohn are discussed. Inspired by Steven E. Aschheim’s work, several contributors focus on the fraught relationship between German and East European Jews (the so-called Ostjuden) and between German Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. More generally, this book examines how Central European Jewish thinkers reacted to the terrible crises of the twentieth century—to war, genocide, and the existential threat to the very existence of the Jewish people. It is essential reading for those interested in the triumphs and tragedies of modern European Jewry.

Samuel Hirszenberg is an artist who deserves to be more widely known: his work intertwined modernism and Jewish themes, and he influenced later artists of Jewish origin.Born into a traditional Jewish family in Łódź in 1865, Hirszenberg gradually became attached to Polish culture and language as he pursued his artistic calling. Like Maurycy Gottlieb before him, he studied at the School of Art in Kraków, which was then headed by the master of Polish painting, Jan Matejko. His early interests were to persist with varying degrees of intensity throughout his life: his Polish surroundings, traditional east European Jews, historical themes, the Orient, and the nature of relationships between men and women. He also had a lifelong commitment to landscape painting and portraiture.Hirszenberg’s personal circumstances, economic considerations, and historical upheavals took him to different countries, strongly influencing his artistic output. He moved to Jerusalem in 1907 and there, as a secular and acculturated Jew who had adopted the world of humanism and universalism, he strove also to express more personal aspirations and concerns. This fully illustrated study presents an intimate and detailed picture of the artist’s development.

Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry examines problems ofJewish cultural and political orientations, associations, andself-identification within a broad framework. The contributors approach thepredicament of east European Jews in various settings: some focus primarily onthe Jews' inner development and outlook, while others discuss how elements ofthe majority society viewed their presence. Scholars of history, art history,and literature display originality and insight in illuminating the nuances andintricacies of the Jewish ‘outsider’.Following an overview by the distinguished intellectual historianof German Jewry Steven Aschheim, who offers some comprehensive thoughts on theinsider/outsider dilemma in modern times and its relevance to eastern Europe,the discussion evolves around three major themes: the cultural conundrum; modesof acculturation, assimilation, and identity; and the minority’s inclusion inor exclusion from the political agendas of certain east European societies. Itconcludes with a focus on two remarkable cities―Czernowitz and Vilnius―wherethe Jewish minority has often been conceived as being no less ‘inside’ thanother groups.Contributors to the ‘cultural conundrum’ section deal with artistsand writers from Romania and Poland who have gained wide public and criticalattention over the years, including Reuven Rubin, Itzik Manger, Avot Yeshurun,and Mihail Sebastian. Other essays discuss the work of a group of writers fromPoland, including Henryk Grynberg, Wilhelm Dichter, Joanna Olczak-Ronikier,Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz, and Michal Glowinski, who reflected intensively ontheir experiences as Jews in the Second World War and tried to integrate theseexperiences into their often fractured identities. The complex personalevolution of these figures shows the multi-layered influences on theircreativity and imagination, while underscoring the dilemmas they faced to findpoints of meeting between their Jewish background and their national identity.The section on modes of acculturation, assimilation, and identityoffers detailed analyses of the ways in which multi-ethnic and multi-nationalsituations demand that the ‘outsider’, consciously or unconsciously, developinner strategies to fashion a specific identity. Surveying such vibrant areasas Czechoslovakia and Poland between the two world wars and the city of Lwów inthe late nineteenth century, three essays present some of the choices Jews madein order to deal with the changing political and cultural context. Theirmeditations on belonging and not-belonging―onthe constitution of identity and its fluidity, and on the formation, breakdown,and reconfiguration of physical, mental, social, and geographicalborders―acquire a special relevance and urgency in these settings.How did Jews as ‘outsiders’ configure their political allegiance ineastern Europe? How prominent were they in the radical elements of thecommunist movement in Russia? What tactics did they employ to safeguard theirfuture in such societies and what means did they employ to galvanize the‘Jewish street’? These are some of the questions raised in the section onsociety and politics, which delves into such problematic terrain as ‘Jewishinformers’, the ‘non-Jewish Jew’, and ‘Jewish politics’.The concluding essays examine thetensions, paradoxes, and ironies of the phenomenon of the Jewish outsider inCzernowitz and Vilnius, two cities where, indeed, Jews were often construed tobe the true ‘insiders’.CONTRIBUTORS: Steven E. Aschheim, Karen Auerbach, RichardI. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel, Stefani Hoffman, Zvi Jagendorf, Hillel J. Kieval,Rachel Manekin, Amitai Mendelsohn, Joanna B. Michlic, Antony Polonsky, DavidRechter, Scott Ury, Leon Volovici, Ruth R. Wisse, Mordechai Zalkin

The biblicalidea of a distinct ‘Jewish contribution to civilization’ continues to engageJews and non-Jews alike. This book seeks neither to document nor to discreditthe notion, but rather to investigate the idea itself as it has been understoodfrom the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the role that theconcept has played in Jewish self-definition, how it has influenced thepolitical, social, and cultural history of the Jews and of others, and whetherdiscussion of the notion still has relevance in the world today.The bookoffers a broad spectrum of academic opinion: from tempered advocacy to reasoneddisavowal, with many variations on the theme in between. It attempts toillustrate the centrality of the question in modern Jewish culture in general,and its importance for modern Jewish studies in particular.Part Iaddresses the idea itself and considers its ramifications. Richard I. Cohenfocuses on the nexus between notions of ‘Jewish contribution’ and those of‘Jewish superiority’‚ David N. Myers shifts the focus from ‘contribution’ to‘civilization’, arguing that the latter term often served the interests ofJewish intellectuals far better, and Moshe Rosman shows how the currentemphasis on multiculturalism has given the idea of a ‘Jewish contribution’ newlife. Part II turns to the relationship between Judaism and other monotheisticcultures. Elliott Horowitz’s essay on the sabbath serves as an instructivetest-case for the dynamic and complexity of the ‘contribution’ debate and apointer to more general, theoretical issues. David Berger expands on these inhis account of how discussion of Christianity’s Jewish legacy developed in thelate nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Susannah Heschel shows how theJewish–Christian encounter has influenced the study of other non-Western‘others’. Daniel Schroeter raises revealing questions about the altogetherEurocentric character of the ‘contribution’ discourse, which also bore heavilyon perceptions of Jews and Judaism in the world of Islam. Part III introducesus to various applications and consequences of the debate. Yaacov Shavit probesthe delicate balance forged by nineteenth-century German Jewish intellectualsin defining their identity. Mark Gelber moves the focus to the present andconsiders the post-war renewal of German Jewish culture and the birth ofGerman-Jewish studies in the context of the ‘contribution’ discourse. Bringingthe volume to its conclusion, David Biale compares three overviews of Jewishculture and civilization published in America in the twentieth andtwenty-first-centuries.

Homeland, Exile, Imagined Homelands are features of the modern experience and relate to the cultural and historical dilemmas of loss, nostalgia, utopia, travel, longing, and are central for Jews and others. This book is an exploration into a world of boundary crossings and of desired places and alternate identities, into a world of adopted kin and invented allegiances.