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Just as the moon waxes and wanes, so too civilizations pass through stages of birth, growth, and decline. But only the Jewish nation has continued this cycle from generation to generation, mimicking the eternal cycles of the moon. This fact-filled volume explores the history of the Jewish people in a unique and readable way, taking us from Biblical times to the present. Each of the phases deals with 500 years of history and depicts not only the political, economic and social forces that kept the Jewish people alive and vibrant, but also the leading figures who significantly affected the course of Jewish history. The authors take us from the period of the Patriarchs through Moses, David, and the birth of the Jewish People, then on to the period of the prophets and kings, Ezra and the Great Assembly, the Talmudic period, the Geonim, Rishonim, the Inquisition, Achronim, the two World Wars, and the State of Israel.
In this original and sweeping review of Jewish culture and history, Ivan Marcus examines how and why various rites and customs celebrating stages in the life cycle have evolved through the ages and persisted to this day. For each phase of life--from childhood and adolescence to adulthood and the advanced years—the book traces the origin and development of specific rites associated with the events of birth, circumcision, and schooling; bar and bat mitzvah and confirmation; engagement, betrothal, and marriage; and aging, dying, and remembering. Customs in Jewish tradition, such as the presence of godparents at a circumcision, the use of a four-poled canopy at a wedding, and the placing of small stones on tombstones, are discussed. In each chapter, detailed descriptions walk the reader through such ceremonies as early modern and contemporary circumcision, weddings, and funerals. In a comparative framework, Marcus illustrates how Jewish culture has negotiated with the majority cultures of the ancient Near East, Greco-Roman antiquity, medieval European Christianity, and Mediterranean Islam, as well as with modern secular and religious movements and social trends, to renew itself through ritual innovation. In his extensive research on the Jewish life cycle, Marcus draws from documents on various customs and ritual practices, offering reassessments of original sources and scholarly literature. Marcus’s survey is the first comprehensive study of the rites of the Jewish life cycle since Hayyim Schauss's The Lifetime of the Jew was published in 1950, written for Jewish readers. Marcus’s book addresses a broader audience and is designed to appeal to scholars and interested readers.
How have the Jews survived? For millennia, they have defied odds by overcoming the travails of exile, persecution, and recurring plans for their annihilation. Many have attempted to explain this singular success as a result of divine intervention. In this engaging book, David N. Myers charts the long journey of the Jews through history. At the same time, it points to two unlikely-and decidedly this-worldly--factors to explain the survival of the Jews: antisemitism and assimilation. Usually regarded as grave dangers, these two factors have continually interacted with one other to enable the persistence of the Jews. At every turn in their history, not just in the modern age, Jews have adapted to new environments, cultures, languages, and social norms. These bountiful encounters with host societies have exercised the cultural muscle of the Jews, preventing the atrophy that would have occurred if they had not interacted so extensively with the non-Jewish world. It is through these encounters--indeed, through a process of assimilation--that Jews came to develop distinct local customs, speak many different languages, and cultivate diverse musical, culinary, and intellectual traditions. Left unchecked, the Jews' well-honed ability to absorb from surrounding cultures might have led to their disappearance. And yet, the route toward full and unbridled assimilation was checked by the nearly constant presence of hatred toward the Jew. Anti-Jewish expression and actions have regularly accompanied Jews throughout history. Part of the ironic success of antisemitism is its malleability, its talent in assuming new forms and portraying the Jew in diverse and often contradictory images--for example, at once the arch-capitalist and revolutionary Communist. Antisemitism not only served to blunt further assimilation, but, in a paradoxical twist, affirmed the Jew's sense of difference from the host society. And thus together assimilation and antisemitism (at least up to a certain limit) contribute to the survival of the Jews as a highly adaptable and yet distinct group.
Moshe Rosmans subject is one that is much agitating the Jewish academic world. His thoughts on the subject are fascinating, very engaged, and well argued. It is an innovative, independent-minded book. ~ Todd Endelman Moshe Rosman is one of the few Jewish historians who can deal with the theoretical issues besetting Jewish historiography, particularly in the light of postmodernist thought. This book sets an agenda that will be discussed for many years hence. ~ Shmuel Feiner Cogently written, remarkably combining depth of analysis with clear, straightforward writing...Rosman has confronted the sharpest challenges for Jewish historiography laid down by contemporary modes of thinking. ~ Michael A. Meyer, Jewish Quarterly Review With great vigour and from the vantage point of long experience of writing and teaching, Moshe Rosman treats the key questions that postmodernism raises for the writing of Jewish history. What is the relationship between Jewish culture and history and t
K. E. Fleming's Greece--a Jewish History is the first comprehensive English-language history of Greek Jews, and the only history that includes material on their diaspora in Israel and the United States. The book tells the story of a people who for the most part no longer exist and whose identity is a paradox in that it wasn't fully formed until after most Greek Jews had emigrated or been deported and killed by the Nazis. For centuries, Jews lived in areas that are now part of Greece. But Greek Jews as a nationalized group existed in substantial number only for a few short decades--from the Balkan Wars (1912-13) until the Holocaust, in which more than 80 percent were killed. Greece--a Jewish History describes their diverse histories and the processes that worked to make them emerge as a Greek collective. It also follows Jews as they left Greece--as deportees to Auschwitz or émigrés to Palestine/Israel and New York's Lower East Side. In such foreign settings their Greekness was emphasized as it never was in Greece, where Orthodox Christianity traditionally defines national identity and anti-Semitism remains common.
An updated and revised edition of one of The Complete Idiot's Guidespopular religion and history titles. Additional information about Jews in early American history through the 19th century. Expanded coverage of Jewish history and culture in the places you might least expect - Asia and South America. Jewish history and culture brought up to date to 2004.
Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein show that, contrary to previous explanations, this transformation was driven not by anti-Jewish persecution and legal restrictions, but rather by changes within Judaism itself after 70 CE--most importantly, the rise of a new norm that required every Jewish male to read and study the Torah and to send his sons to school. Over the next six centuries, those Jews who found the norms of Judaism too costly to obey converted to other religions, making world Jewry shrink. Later, when urbanization and commercial expansion in the newly established Muslim Caliphates increased the demand for occupations in which literacy was an advantage, the Jews found themselves literate in a world of almost universal illiteracy. From then forward, almost all Jews entered crafts and trade, and many of them began moving in search of business opportunities, creating a worldwide Diaspora in the process.
This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.
Patterns in Jewish History is Rabbi Berel Wein's masterful, thematic exploration of the history of the Jewish people. Through the prism of timeless themes: education, customs, anti-Semitism, assimilation, the role of women, teachers and rabbis, the land of Israel and more, Rabbi Wein examines the values that have enabled the Jewish people to survive and thrive for three thousand years. Patterns in Jewish History explains how Jewish practice, traditions and responses to historical forces have varied over time and place, but how, more importantly, Judaism's unchanging ideals have united the Jewish people throughout history from its very beginnings at the foot of Mount Sinai through modern times; from Europe to Africa, the Middle East and America. With characteristic depth of research, accessibility of language, and love of Torah, Rabbi Wein presents a remarkable history of a unique people.
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.