Building a Public Judaism

Building a Public Judaism PDF Author: Saskia Coenen Snyder
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674070577
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Nineteenth-century Europe saw an unprecedented rise in the number of synagogues. Building a Public Judaism considers what their architecture and the circumstances surrounding their construction reveal about the social progress of modern European Jews. Looking at synagogues in four important centers of Jewish life—London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin—Saskia Coenen Snyder argues that the process of claiming a Jewish space in European cities was a marker of acculturation but not of full acceptance. Whether modest or spectacular, these new edifices most often revealed the limits of European Jewish integration. Debates over building initiatives provide Coenen Snyder with a vehicle for gauging how Jews approached questions of self-representation in predominantly Christian societies and how public manifestations of their identity were received. Synagogues fused the fundamentals of religion with the prevailing cultural codes in particular locales and served as aesthetic barometers for European Jewry’s degree of modernization. Coenen Snyder finds that the dialogues surrounding synagogue construction varied significantly according to city. While the larger story is one of increasing self-agency in the public life of European Jews, it also highlights this agency’s limitations, precisely in those places where Jews were thought to be most acculturated, namely in France and Germany. Building a Public Judaism grants the peculiarities of place greater authority than they have been given in shaping the European Jewish experience. At the same time, its place-specific description of tensions over religious tolerance continues to echo in debates about the public presence of religious minorities in contemporary Europe.

Building a Public Judaism

Building a Public Judaism PDF Author: Saskia Coenen Snyder
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674070577
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book

Book Description
Nineteenth-century Europe saw an unprecedented rise in the number of synagogues. Building a Public Judaism considers what their architecture and the circumstances surrounding their construction reveal about the social progress of modern European Jews. Looking at synagogues in four important centers of Jewish life—London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin—Saskia Coenen Snyder argues that the process of claiming a Jewish space in European cities was a marker of acculturation but not of full acceptance. Whether modest or spectacular, these new edifices most often revealed the limits of European Jewish integration. Debates over building initiatives provide Coenen Snyder with a vehicle for gauging how Jews approached questions of self-representation in predominantly Christian societies and how public manifestations of their identity were received. Synagogues fused the fundamentals of religion with the prevailing cultural codes in particular locales and served as aesthetic barometers for European Jewry’s degree of modernization. Coenen Snyder finds that the dialogues surrounding synagogue construction varied significantly according to city. While the larger story is one of increasing self-agency in the public life of European Jews, it also highlights this agency’s limitations, precisely in those places where Jews were thought to be most acculturated, namely in France and Germany. Building a Public Judaism grants the peculiarities of place greater authority than they have been given in shaping the European Jewish experience. At the same time, its place-specific description of tensions over religious tolerance continues to echo in debates about the public presence of religious minorities in contemporary Europe.

Building a Public Judaism

Building a Public Judaism PDF Author: Saskia Coenen Snyder
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067495
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Coenen Snyder considers what the architecture and construction of nineteenth-century European synagogues reveal about the social progress of modern European Jews. The process of claiming a Jewish space was a marker of acculturation but not full acceptance, she argues. The new edifices, even if spectacular, revealed the limits of Jewish integration.

The Invention of the Land of Israel

The Invention of the Land of Israel PDF Author: Shlomo Sand
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844679462
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.

Building After Auschwitz

Building After Auschwitz PDF Author: Gavriel David Rosenfeld
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300169140
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The first major study to examine the rise to prominence of Jewish architects since 1945 and the connection of their work to the legacy of the Holocaust Since the end of World War II, Jewish architects have risen to unprecedented international prominence. Whether as modernists, postmodernists, or deconstructivists, architects such as Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Louis I. Kahn, Daniel Libeskind, Richard Meier, Moshe Safdie, Robert A.M. Stern, and Stanley Tigerman have made pivotal contributions to postwar architecture. They have also decisively shaped Jewish architectural history, as many of their designs are influenced by Jewish themes, ideas, and imagery. Building After Auschwitz is the first major study to examine the origins of this "new Jewish architecture." Historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld describes this cultural development as the result of important shifts in Jewish memory and identity since the Holocaust, and cites the rise of postmodernism, multiculturalism, and Holocaust consciousness as a catalyst. In showing how Jewish architects responded to the Nazi genocide in their work, Rosenfeld's study sheds new light on the evolution of Holocaust memory.

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon PDF Author: Justin Daniel Cammy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 744

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Book Description
Wisse is a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and a fearless public intellectual on issues relating to Jewish society and culture. In this celebratory volume, her colleagues pay tribute with a collection of critical essays whose subjects break new ground in Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature.

Empowered Judaism

Empowered Judaism PDF Author: Rabbi Elie Kaunfer
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1580235697
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The inside story and practical lessons from one of the most exciting developments in contemporary Judaism. Part description and part prescription, Empowered Judaism is a manifesto for transforming the way Jews pray andmore broadlyfor building vibrant Jewish communities. [It] represents the latest chapter in [an] uplifting history of religious creativity. This is a book that every Jewish leader will want to read and every serious Jew will want to contemplate. from the Foreword by Prof. Jonathan D. Sarna Why have thousands of young Jews, otherwise unengaged with formal Jewish life, started more than sixty innovative prayer communities across the United States? What crucial insights can these grassroots communities provide for all of us? Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, one of the leaders of this revolutionary phenomenon, offers refreshingly new analyses of the age-old question of how to build strong Jewish community. He explores the independent minyan movement and the lessons it has to teach about prayer, community organizing and volunteer leadership, and its implications for contemporary struggles in American Judaism. Along with describing the growth of independent minyanim across the country, he examines: The roles of liturgy, space, music and youth in this new approach to prayer Lessons to be learned from the concept of immersive, intensive Jewish learning in an egalitarian context Jewish values in which we must invest to achieve a vibrant, robust American Jewish landscape for the twenty-first century

More Than Just Hummus

More Than Just Hummus PDF Author: Matt Adler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781735154602
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Journey from the comfort of your home to the most misunderstood place in the world: Israel. Unlike most travelogues, however, your guide is a gay Jew who uses his Arabic to shed light on life in the less-seen parts of this magnificent country. Join him as he shares his gay identity with a questioning teenager, hitchhikes on golf carts in a rural Druze village, and celebrates Shabbat -- all in Arabic. You'll find Matt visiting Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities, using his compassion and sense of humor to delve into the intricacies of one of the most diverse places on the planet.

Playlist Judaism

Playlist Judaism PDF Author: Kerry M. Olitzky
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566996031
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
"Every Jewish institution," writes Kerry Olitzky, "is undergoing significant change and is in danger of becoming irrelevant to the majority of North American Jews. All these institutions will have to reimagine themselves if they are to survive and grow. And the most numerous of these institutes is also the most vulnerable: the synagogue." The synagogue as we know it developed in response to a variety of needs, often in an attempt to create new communities for education and assembly as populations moved from urban centers to the suburbs. These needs have changed, and the synagogue is no longer the center of social and professional life. Change is necessary, but what a synagogue that serves the new needs of American Jewish religious life look like? In Playlist Judaism, Kerry Olitzky offers provocative proposals to help synagogues face today s challenges, from turning the synagogue inside out so that it is reaching out to the community around it, to recognizing intermarriage as an opportunity for synagogues, and encouraging synagogues not to forget the Boomers. It is an engaging look at what creative thinking has to offer congregations today. In his foreword, Ron Wolfson says that the book will provide "leadership teams with a plethora of practical proposals to chart an exciting and engaging future for their congregations."

Congregating and Consecrating at Central Synagogue

Congregating and Consecrating at Central Synagogue PDF Author: Elizabeth Blackmar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780971728516
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 79

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Book Description
Two related essays describing the history the development of a religious fellowship and the public ceremonies that contributed to and highlighted many moments of that history in this Reform New York congregation. A significant portion of the research was done in Central Synagogue's Archives. Many historic photographs (B&W) are included.

A Jewish Public Theology

A Jewish Public Theology PDF Author: Abraham Unger
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498535887
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
A Jewish Public Theology draws from Jewish law and political science to address the most searing current policy issues. It goes beyond the current orthodoxies of left, right, and populist ideologies to examine how an ancient tradition speaks to the disruptions of our global epoch.