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In Modernizing Jewish Education in Nineteenth Century Eastern Europe Mordechai Zalkin offers a new path through which the Eastern European traditional Jewish society underwent a rapid and significant process of modernization - the Maskilic system of education. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century a few local Jews, affected by the values and the principles of the European Enlightenment, established new private modern schools all around The Pale of Settlement, in which thousands Jewish boys and girls were exposed to different disciplines such as sciences and humanities, a process which changed the entire cultural structure of contemporary Jewish society.
The heroes of Beyond the Glory are not the famous rabbis, the heads of the yeshivas, or Hasidic righteous, but rather the "second circle" rabbis - the community rabbis in 19th century Eastern Europe, the backbone of the rabbinical world of the time,those who knew the world of their community members closely and were required to answer a wide range of questions, both daily and existential. Who were these rabbis? What were their training processes? How did they win their positions? Did they win "tenure," or was the threat of dismissal constantly hovering above their heads? How were their working conditions and their financial situation? Were they considered as spiritual shepherds and social leaders of the community? What was their relationship with the local rabbinic scholars and the economic elite? How did they navigate between their duties as halachic rulers and their desire to engage in studying and teaching? This book attempts to answer these questions, and many others, based on examining the world of over a thousand community rabbis.
In the nineteenth century, the largest Jewish community the modern world had known lived in hundreds of towns and shtetls in the territory between the Prussian border of Poland and the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. The period had started with the partition of Poland and the absorption of its territories into the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires; it would end with the first large-scale outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence and the imposition in Russia of strong anti-Semitic legislation. In the years between, a traditional society accustomed to an autonomous way of life would be transformed into one much more open to its surrounding cultures, yet much more confident of its own nationalist identity. In The Jews of Eastern Europe, Israel Bartal traces this transformation and finds in it the roots of Jewish modernity.
"The story of the first Jewish public library in Europe"--
Over one hundred private schools for Jewish girls thrived in the areas of Jewish settlement in the Russian empire between 1831 and 1881. Through archival research, the author examines the schools' curriculum, teachers, financing, students, and educational innovation and demonstrates how each of these aspects evolved over time. The first section of this volume follows the emergence and development of the new private schools for Jewish girls in the mid-1800s, beginning with the historical circumstances that enabled their creation. In the second section, the author looks at the interactions between these new educational institutions and their communities, including how the schools responded to changes taking place around them and how they in turn influenced their environment.
A collection of essays exploring the history of an antisemitic accusation that haunted Jewish people in Europe and Russia, and how it spread. This innovative reassessment of ritual murder accusations brings together scholars working in history, folklore, ethnography, and literature. Favoring dynamic explanations of the mechanisms, evolution, popular appeal, and responses to the blood libel, the essays rigorously engage with the larger social and cultural worlds that made these phenomena possible. In doing so, the book helps to explain why blood libel accusations continued to spread in Europe even after modernization seemingly made them obsolete. Drawing on untapped and unconventional histori...
Everyday Zionism examines Zionist activism in East-Central Europe during the years of war, occupation, revolution, the collapse of empires, and the formation of nation states in the years 1914 to 1920. Against the backdrop of the Great War--its brutal aftermath and consequent violence--the day-to-day encounters between Zionist activists and the Jewish communities in the region gave the movement credibility, allowed it to win support and to establish itself as a leading force in Jewish political and social life for decades to come. Through activists' efforts, Zionism came to mean something new: Rather than being concerned with debates over Jewish nationhood and pioneering efforts in Palestine...
The German language holds an ambivalent and controversial place in the modern history of European Jews, representing different—often conflicting—historical currents. It was the language of the German classics, of German Jewish writers and scientists, of Central European Jewish culture, and of Herzl and the Zionist movement. But it was also the language of Hitler, Goebbels, and the German guards in Nazi concentration camps. The crucial role of German in the formation of Jewish national culture and politics in the late nineteenth century has been largely overshadowed by the catastrophic events that befell Jews under Nazi rule. German as a Jewish Problem tells the Jewish history of the Germ...
Avraham Yitzhaq Ha-Cohen Kook (1865-1935) stands as a colossal figure of modern Jewish history and thought. Jurist, mystic, poet, theologian, communal leader, founder of the modern Chief Rabbinate and still the defining thinker of Religious Zionism, he is indispensable for understanding modern Jewish thought, the contemporary State of Israel, and the most fundamental interactions of religion, nationalism, ethics and spirituality. Despite countless studies of him, almost no full-fledged intellectual biography of him exists in any language. This study of the years before his momentous move to Jaffa in 1904, drawing on little-known works, including recently published manuscripts, begins to fill that gap. It traces his life and times in the remarkably intense Rabbinic intellectual milieu of late nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and his path from a profound, regularly rationalist traditionalism, towards a dynamic theology and spiritual practice weaving together Kabbalah, philosophy, universal ethics, and romantic mysticism.
This collection of articles offers a broad ranging view of why Judaism has recently garnered so much attention, intellectual interest, and controversy.