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Insiders and Outsiders addresses various aspects of Jewish and Gentile interaction since the development of the German-Jewish literary and cultural identity in the early nineteenth century. Containing the work of prominent scholars, critics, and journalists involved with German-Jewish studies from around the world, this ambitious anthology of literary and cultural criticism suggests a reevaluation of important cultural and literary issues, including the problem of cultural diversity with regard to German-speaking countries and the question as to what constitutes German cultural identity in multicultural central Europe. This volume highlights the centrality of the Jewish presence in the heart...
European, US, and Israeli historians and social scientists try to skirt the political controversies involved in the origin of Israel to offer academic perspectives on Jewish nationalism, of which Zionism comprised a prominent alternative beginning in the late 19th century. They look in particular at aspects that have been undervalued in examining J.
Here is a detailed glimpse into the lives and times of Yiddish writers enthralled with Communism at the turn of the century through the mid-1930s. Centering mainly on the Soviet Jewish literati but with an eye to their American counterparts, the book follows their paths from avant-garde beginnings in Kiev after the 1905 revolution to their peak in the mid-1930s. Notables such as David Bergelson—who helmed the short-lived Yiddish periodical called In Harness—and Der Nister and David Hodshtein come to life as do Leyb Kvitko, Peretz Markish, Itsik Fefer, Moshe Litvakov, Yekhezkel Dobrushin, and Nokhum Oislender. Gennady J. Estraikh charts the course of their artistic and political flowering and decline and considers the effects of geographyprovincial vs. urbanand party politics upon literary development and aesthetics. No other book concentrates on this aspect of the Jewish intellectual scene nor has any book unveiled the scale and intensity of Yiddish Communist literary life in the 1920s and 1930s or the contributions its writers made to Jewish culture.
This book focuses primarily on continuities and discontinuities of fascist politics as manifested in discourses of post-war European countries. Many traumatic pasts in Europe are linked to the experience of fascist and national-socialist regimes in the 20th century and to related colonial and imperialist expansionist politics. And yet we are again confronted with the emergence, rise and success of extreme right wing political movements, across Europe and beyond, which frequently draw on fascist and national-socialist ideologies, themes, idioms, arguments and lexical items. Post-war taboos have forced such parties, politicians and their electorate to frequently code their exclusionary fascist rhetoric. This collection shows that an interdisciplinary critical approach to fascist text and talk—subsuming all instances of meaning-making (oral, visual, written, sounds, etc.) and genres such as policy documents, speeches, school books, media reporting, posters, songs, logos and other symbols—is necessary to deconstruct exclusionary meanings and to confront their inegalitarian political projects.
Czernowitz at 100 represents a collection based on the proceedings of a 2008 international conference convened at York University in Toronto. Each chapter looks back at a portion over a long century, one marked with the mass migration of Ashkenazi Jews across the globe, two world wars, the Holocaust, the birth of Israel, and the rise and fall of the Soviet bloc. They assess the achievements and fate of those who participated in the 1908 Yiddish Language Conference that was held at Czernowitz, now known as Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Featuring contributions from a new generation of scholars re-examining eastern European Jewish life, the successes and failures of the Yiddishist movement are examined. The contributors discuss how Yiddishism_a fascinating example of language-based nationalism_shaped the political and cultural landscape of territorially dispersed Jews across Eastern Europe and the world during the twentieth century.
Currently the borders that delineate both physical and ideological spaces are constantly shifting within and around Europe. Given this, in 2014 the Graduate Centre for Europe (GCfE) decided to dedicate their annual conference to the theme of travel and tourism in Europe. This collection consists of the papers accepted for presentation as part of the 8th annual conference of the GCfE. The yearly colloquium provides an opportunity for postgraduates across a variety of academic backgrounds to en ...
Collects leading scholars' insight on the plays, production, music, audiences, and political and aesthetic concerns of modern Yiddish theater. While Yiddish theater is best known as popular entertainment, it has been shaped by its creators' responses to changing social and political conditions. Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business showcases the diversity of modern Yiddish theater by focusing on the relentless and far-ranging capacity of its performers, producers, critics, and audiences for self-invention. Editors Joel Berkowitz and Barbara Henry have assembled essays from leading scholars that trace the roots of modern Yiddish drama and performa...
A critical look at the later work of the Russian Jewish author in the Soviet Union and its significance to Russian and Jewish history. In Der Nister’s Soviet Years, author Mikhail Krutikov focuses on the second half of the dramatic writing career of Soviet Yiddish writer Der Nister, pen name of Pinhas Kahanovich (1884–1950). Krutikov follows Der Nister’s painful but ultimately successful literary transformation from his symbolist roots to social realism under severe ideological pressure from Soviet critics and authorities. This volume reveals how profoundly Der Nister was affected by the destruction of Jewish life during WWII and his own personal misfortunes. While Der Nister was writi...
Michael Stanislawski's provocative study of Max Nordau, Ephraim Moses Lilien, and Vladimir Jabotinsky reconceives the intersection of the European fin de siècle and early Zionism. Stanislawski takes up the tantalizing question of why Zionism, at a particular stage in its development, became so attractive to certain cosmopolitan intellectuals and artists. With the help of hundreds of previously unavailable documents, published and unpublished, he reconstructs the ideological journeys of writer and critic Nordau, artist Lilien, and political icon Jabotinsky. He argues against the common conception of Nordau and Jabotinsky as nineteenth-century liberals, insisting that they must be understood ...
The year 1929 represents a major turning point in interwar Jewish society, proving to be a year when Jews, regardless of where they lived, saw themselves affected by developments that took place around the world, as the crises endured by other Jews became part of the transnational Jewish consciousness. In the United States, the stock market crash brought lasting economic, social, and ideological changes to the Jewish community and limited its ability to support humanitarian and nationalist projects in other countries. In Palestine, the anti-Jewish riots in Hebron and other towns underscored the vulnerability of the Zionist enterprise and ignited heated discussions among various Jewish politi...