The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination

The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination PDF Author: Leonid Livak
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804775621
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
This book proposes that the idea of the Jews in European cultures has little to do with actual Jews, but rather is derived from the conception of Jews as Christianity's paradigmatic Other, eternally reenacting their morally ambiguous New Testament role as the Christ-bearing and -killing chosen people of God. Through new readings of canonical Russian literary texts by Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, Babel, and others, the author argues that these European writers—Christian, secular, and Jewish—based their representation of Jews on the Christian exegetical tradition of anti-Judaism. Indeed, Livak disputes the classification of some Jewish writers as belonging to "Jewish literature," arguing that such an approach obscures these writers' debt to European literary traditions and their ambivalence about their Jewishness. This work seeks to move the study of Russian literature, and Russian-Jewish literature in particular, down a new path. It will stir up controversy around Christian-Jewish cultural interaction; the representation of otherness in European arts and folklore; modern Jewish experience; and Russian literature and culture.

The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination

The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination PDF Author: Leonid Livak
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804775621
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book

Book Description
This book proposes that the idea of the Jews in European cultures has little to do with actual Jews, but rather is derived from the conception of Jews as Christianity's paradigmatic Other, eternally reenacting their morally ambiguous New Testament role as the Christ-bearing and -killing chosen people of God. Through new readings of canonical Russian literary texts by Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, Babel, and others, the author argues that these European writers—Christian, secular, and Jewish—based their representation of Jews on the Christian exegetical tradition of anti-Judaism. Indeed, Livak disputes the classification of some Jewish writers as belonging to "Jewish literature," arguing that such an approach obscures these writers' debt to European literary traditions and their ambivalence about their Jewishness. This work seeks to move the study of Russian literature, and Russian-Jewish literature in particular, down a new path. It will stir up controversy around Christian-Jewish cultural interaction; the representation of otherness in European arts and folklore; modern Jewish experience; and Russian literature and culture.

The Social Scientific Study of Jewry

The Social Scientific Study of Jewry PDF Author: Uzi Rebhun
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199380325
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Continuing its distinguished tradition of focusing on central political, sociological, and cultural issues of Jewish life in the last century, this latest volume in the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry series focuses on how Jewry has been studied in the social science disciplines. Its symposium consists of essays that discuss sources, approaches, and debates in the complementary fields of demography, sociology, economics, and geography. The social sciences are central for the understanding of contemporary Jewish life and have engendered much controversy over the past few decades. To a large extent, the multitude of approaches toward Jewish social science research reflects the nature of population studies in general, and that of religions and ethnic groups in particular. Yet the variation in methodology, definitions, and measures of demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural patterns is even more salient in the study of Jews. Different data sets have different definitions for what is "Jewish" or "who is a Jew." In addition, Jews as a group are characterized by high rates of migration, including repeated migration, which makes it difficult to track any given Jewish population. Finally, the question of identification is complicated by the fact that in most places, especially outside of Israel, it is not clear whether "being Jewish" is primarily a religious or an ethnic matter - or both, or neither. This volume also features an essay on American Jewry and North African Jewry; review essays on rebuilding after the Holocaust, Nazi war crimes trials, and Jewish historiography; and reviews of new titles in Jewish studies.

The Jew's Daughter

The Jew's Daughter PDF Author: Efraim Sicher
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498527795
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
An innovative study of the gendering of ethnic difference in Western society, Sicher’s multidisciplinary, comparative analysis shows how racialized images have persisted and helped to form prejudiced views of the Other.

Embodied Differences

Embodied Differences PDF Author: Henrietta Mondry
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644694875
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This book analyzes the ways in which literary works and cultural discourses employ the construct of the Jew’s body in relation to the material world in order either to establish and reinforce, or to subvert and challenge, dominant cultural norms and stereotypes. It examines the use of physical characteristics, embodied practices, tacit knowledge and senses to define the body taxonomically as normative, different, abject or mimetically desired. Starting from the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky through to contemporary Russian-Jewish women’s writing, broadening the scope to examining the role of objects, museum displays and the politics of heritage food, the book argues that materiality can embody fictional constructions that should be approached on a culture-specific basis.

Making History Jewish

Making History Jewish PDF Author: Paweł Maciejko
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004431977
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
This collection explores the different ways that intellectuals, scholars and institutions have sought to make history Jewish by discussing the different methodological, research and narrative strategies involved in transforming past events into part of the larger canon of Jewish history.

Sephardism

Sephardism PDF Author: Yael Halevi-Wise
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804781710
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
In this book, Sephardism is defined not as an expression of Sephardic identity but as a politicized literary metaphor. Since the nineteenth century, this metaphor has occurred with extraordinary frequency in works by authors from a variety of ethnicities, religions, and nationalities in Europe, the Americas, North Africa, Israel, and even India. Sephardism asks why Gentile and Jewish writers and cultural figures have chosen to draw upon the medieval Sephardic experience to express their concerns about dissidents and minorities in modern nations? To what extent does their use of Sephardism overlap with other politicized discourses such as orientalism, hispanism, and medievalism, which also emerged from a clash between authoritarian, progressive, and romantic ideologies? This book brings a new approach to Sephardic Studies by situating it at a crossroads between Jewish Studies and Hispanic Studies in ways that enhance our appreciation of how historical fiction and political history have shaped, and were shaped by, historical attitudes toward Jews and their representation.

Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism

Comprehending and Confronting Antisemitism PDF Author: Armin Lange
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110618591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 618

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Book Description
This volume provides a compendium of the history of and discourse about antisemitism - both as a unique cultural and religious category. Antisemitic stereotypes function as religious symbols that express and transmit a belief system of Jew-hatred, which are stored in the cultural and religious memories of the Western and Muslim worlds, migrating freely between Christian, Muslim and other religious symbolic systems.

Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe

Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe PDF Author: Aleksandra Koutny-Jones
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004305254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
In Visual Cultures of Death in Central Europe, Aleksandra Koutny-Jones examines the remarkable cultural preoccupation with death in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795), through a range of Baroque artworks such as coffin portraits, funerary decorations, tomb chapels and religious landscapes.

Earthly Delights

Earthly Delights PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004367543
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
A group of 17 international experts examines continuities and discontinuities in the culinary cultures of the Ottoman Empire, East-Central Europe and the Balkans from the 17th to the 19th century.

A Reader's Guide to Andrei Bely's "petersburg

A Reader's Guide to Andrei Bely's Author: Leonid Livak
Publisher:
ISBN: 029931930X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
An introduction to a complex but hugely influential Russian novel written on the eve of the First World War. Accessible essays explain how Petersburg articulated the sensibility, ideas, phobias, and aspirations of Russian and transnational modernism.