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Death of a Holy Land: Reflections in Contemporary Israeli Fiction, by Rose Levinson, uses the work of four contemporary Israeli authors as a lens into present-day Israel. Discussing the novels of Orly Castel-Bloom, Michal Govrin, Zeruya Shalev, and Yoram Kaniuk, the book argues for a new understanding of today’s Israel. Crucial to renewed awareness is a view of the country that jettisons the notion of Israel as an exceptional, sacred state immune from 21st century discontents. Attention is focused on ways in which many of Israel’s most pressing problems are linked to long-standing issues of Jewish identity. Continual reference to the novels gives weight and substance to Death of a Holy Land’s underlying insistence on the need for a critical view of Israel as a country deeply ill-at-ease with itself.
In 1953, Freud biographer Ernest Jones revealed that the famous hysteric Anna O. was really Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), the prolific author, German-Jewish feminist, pioneering social worker, and activist. Loentz directs attention away from the young woman who arguably invented the talking cure and back to Pappenheim and her post-Anna O. achievements, especially her writings, which reveal one of the most versatile, productive, influential, and controversial Jewish thinkers and leaders of her time.
Fourteen scholars and master teachers explore the challenges of teaching Jewish studies at American schools of higher education.
Offering a radical critique of contemporary Israeli and diaspora fiction by major writers of the generation after Amos Oz and Philip Roth, this book asks searching questions about identity formation in Jewish spaces in the twenty-first century and posits global, transnational identities instead of the bipolar Israel/diaspora model. The chapters put into conversation major authors such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Michael Chabon, and Nathan Englander with their Israeli counterparts Zeruya Shalev, Eshkol Nevo, and Etgar Keret and shows that they share common themes and concerns. Read through a postmodern lens, their preoccupation with failed marriage and failed ideals brings to the fore the crises of home, nation, historical destiny, and collective memory in contemporary secular Jewish culture. At times provocative, at others iconoclastic, this innovative study must be read by anyone concerned with Jewish culture and identity today, whether scholars, students, or the general reader.
The first in a landmark three-volume series offers the collaboration of over fifty women for a comprehensive work on the Jewish lifecycle. This volume covers the spectrum of life's passages, from ceremonies around childbirth to new perspectives on aging. Shares both traditional and innovative approaches.
This volume delves into the rich life themes which are always present--and evolving--throughout our lives. Lifecycles, Vol. 2 explores these themes in biblical texts and in women's lives today. The authors are among today's leading Jewish thinkers.