Judaic Studies Series – serie

This biography of a pioneering Zionist and leader of American Reform Judaism adds significantly to our understanding of American and southern Jewish history. Max Heller was a man of both passionate conviction and inner contradiction. He sought to be at the center of current affairs, not as a spokesperson of centrist opinion, but as an agitator or mediator, constantly struggling to find an acceptable path as he confronted the major issues of the day-racism and Jewish emancipation in eastern Europe, nationalism and nativism, immigration and assimilation. Heller's life experience provides a distinct vantage point from which to view the complexity of race relations in New Orleans and the South and the confluence of cultures that molded his development as a leader. A Bohemian immigrant and one of the first U.S.-trained rabbis, Max Heller served for 40 years as spiritual leader of a Reform Jewish congregation in New Orleans-at that time the largest city in the South. Far more than a congregational rabbi, Heller assumed an activist role in local affairs, Reform Judaism, and the Zionist movement, maintaining positions often unpopular with his neighbors, congregants, and colleagues. His deep concern for social justice led him to question two basic assumptions that characterized his larger social milieu-segregation and Jewish assimilation.  Heller, a consummate Progressive with clear vision and ideas substantially ahead of their time, led his congregation, his community, Reform Jewish colleagues, and Zionist sympathizers in a difficult era.

Jewish Continuity in America presents an overview of a life's work by a preeminent scholar and brings new insight to the challenge of American Jewish continuity.Jews have historically lived within a paradox of faith and fear: faith that they are an eternal people and fear that their generation may be the last. In the United States, the Jewish community has faced to a heightened degree the enduring question of identity and assimilation: How does the Jewish community in this free, open, pluralistic society discover or create factors-both ideological and existential-that make group survival beneficial to the larger society and rewarding to the individual Jew?Abraham J. Karp's Jewish Continuity in America focuses on the three major sources of American Judaism's continuing vitality: the synagogue, the rabbinate, and Jewish religious pluralism. Particularly illuminating is Karp's examination of the coexistence and unity-in-diversity of American religious Jewry's three divisions-Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative-and of how this Jewish religious pluralism fits into the larger picture of American religious pluralism.Informing the larger enterprise through sharp and full delineation of discrete endeavors, the essays collected in Jewish Continuity in America-some already acknowledged as classics, some appearing here for the first time-describe creative individual and communal responses to the challenge of Jewish survival. As the title suggests, this book argues that continuity in a free and open society demands a high order of creativity, a creativity that, to be viable, must be anchored in institutions wholly pledged to continuity.

Nationalizing a Borderland enriches understanding of ethnic conflict by examining the factors in the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia between 1914 and 1920 that led to the rise of xenophobic nationalism and to the ethnocide of World War II. From Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Austrian archival sources, Prusin argues that while the violence inflicted upon Jews during that period may at first seem irrational and indiscriminate, a closer examination reveals that it was generated by traditional negative views of Jews and by the security concerns of the Russian and Polish militaries in the front zone. This violence, Prusin contends, served as a means of reshaping the socio-economic and political space of the province by diminishing Jewish cultural and economic influence.

An illuminating look at an understudied, but critical, period in Buber's early career. Martin Buber (1878–1965) has had a tremendous impact on the development of Jewish thought as a highly influential figure in 20th-century philosophy and theology. However, most of his key publications appeared during the last forty years of his life and little is known of the formative period in which he was searching for, and finding, the answers to crucial dilemmas affecting Jews and Germans alike. Now available in paperback, Martin Buber's Formative Years illuminates this critical period in which the seeds were planted for all of his subsequent work. During the period from 1897 to 1909, Buber's keen sense of the crisis of humanity, his intimate knowledge of German culture and Jewish sources, and his fearlessness in the face of possible ridicule challenged him to behave in a manner so outrageous and so contrary to German-Jewish tradition that he actually achieved a transformation of himself and those close to him. Calling on spiritual giants of great historical periods in German, Christian, and Jewish history–such as Nicolas of Cusa, Jakob Boehme, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Brazlav, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Nietzsche–Buber proceeded to subvert the existing order by turning his upside-down world of slave morality right side up once more. By examining the multitude of disparate sources that Buber turned to for inspiration, Gilya Gerda Schmidt elucidates Buber's creative genius and his contribution to turn-of-the-century Jewish renewal. This comprehensive study concludes that Buber was successful in creating the German-Jewish symbiosis that emancipation was to have created for the two peoples but that this synthesis was tragic because it came too late for practical application by Jews in Germany.

A firsthand account of the American Jewish experience on the frontlines.During the height of the Korean conflict, 1950-51, Orthodox Jewish chaplain Milton J. Rosen wrote 19 feature-length articles for Der Morgen Zhornal, a Yiddish daily in New York, documenting his wartime experiences as well as those of the servicemen under his care.As chaplain, Rosen was able to offer a unique account of the American Jewish experience on the frontlines and in the United States military while also describing the impact of the American presence on Korean citizens and their culture. His interest in Korean attitudes toward Jews is also a significant theme within these articles.Stanley R. Rosen has translated his father's articles into English and provides background on Milton Rosen's military service before and after the Korean conflict. He presents an introductory overview of the war which includes helpful maps and photographs. The sum is a readable account of war and its turmoil from an astute and compassionate observer.

The emigration of Jewish teenagers to Palestine to escape Hitler's Germany.As Hitler and his followers consolidated power in Germany, a number of efforts were set in motion, both within and without German cities, to facilitate the departure of Jews. Among them was the organization, Youth Aliyah-aliyah is the term for the Zionist goal of a homecoming for Jews in historic Israel. Although the youths saved by Youth Aliyah were but a small percentage of the Jewish population, the program is widely celebrated by those who seek examples of Jewish agency and of attempts to resist the coming horror.To this day, Youth Aliyah is considered by Israelis as a major contributor to the foundation of a Jewish presence leading to the modern state of Israel. Brian Amkraut details the story of the organization from its origins through its alliances and antagonisms with other Jewish organizations, and the challenges that vexed its efforts from every side, perhaps the greatest being sheer human naiveté ("surely things will get better").

A work of both childhood memory and adult reflection undergirded with scholarly researchRuth Herskovits Gutmann’s powerful memoir recounts her life not only as a concentration camp inmate and survivor, but also as a sister and daughter. Born in 1928, Gutmann and her twin sister, Eva, escaped the growing Nazi threat in Germany on a Kindertransport to Holland in 1939.Gutmann’s compelling story captures many facets of the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany. She describes her early life in Hannover as the daughter of a prominent and patriotic member of the Jewish community. Her flight on the Kindertransport offers a vivid, firsthand account of that effort to save the children of Jewish families. Her memories of the camps include coming to the attention of Josef Mengele, who often used twins in human experiments. Gutmann writes with moving clarity and nuance about the complex feelings of survivorship.A Final Reckoning provides not only insights into Gutmann’s own experience as a child in the midst of the atrocities of the Holocaust, but also a window into the lives of those, like her father, who were forced to carry on and comply with the regime that would ultimately bring about their demise.