{"product_id":"cultures-of-the-jews-volume-3-isbn-9780805212020","title":"Cultures of the Jews, Volume 3","description":"Scattered over much of the world throughout most of their history, are the Jews one people or many? How do they resemble and how do they differ from Jews in other places and times? What have their relationships been to the cultures of their neighbors? To address these and similar questions, some of the finest scholars of our day have contributed their insights to \u003ci\u003eCultures of the Jews\u003c\/i\u003e, a winner of the National Jewish Book Award upon its hardcover publication in 2002. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConstructing their essays around specific cultural artifacts that were created in the period and locale under study, the contributors describe the cultural interactions among different Jews–from rabbis and scholars to non-elite groups, including women–as well as between Jews and the surrounding non-Jewish world. What they conclude is that although Jews have always had their own autonomous traditions, Jewish identity cannot be considered the fixed product of either ancient ethnic or religious origins. Rather, it has shifted and assumed new forms in response to the cultural environment in which the Jews have lived.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eModern Encounters\u003c\/i\u003e, the third volume in \u003ci\u003eCultures of the Jews\u003c\/i\u003e, examines communities, ways of life, and both high and folk culture in the modern era in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe; the Ladino Diaspora; North Africa and the Middle East; Ethiopia; mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel; and the United States.\u003ci\u003eList of Contributors \u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePreface: Toward a Cultural History of the Jews\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby David Biale \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby David Biale \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eONE:  \u003cbr\u003eUrban Visibility and Biblical Visions: Jewish Culture in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Richard I. Cohen \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTWO:\u003cbr\u003eA Journey Between Worlds: East European Jewish Culture from thePartitions of Poland to the Holocaust\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby David Biale \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHREE:\u003cbr\u003eThe Ottoman Diaspora: The Rise and Fall of Ladino Literary Culture\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Aron Rodrigue \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFOUR:\u003cbr\u003eMulticultural Visions: The Cultural Tapestry of the Jews of North Africa\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Lucette Valensi \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eFIVE:   \u003cbr\u003eChallenges to Tradition: Jewish Cultures in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Bukhara\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Yosef Tobi \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSIX:   \u003cbr\u003eReligious Interplay on an African Stage: Ethiopian Jews in\u003cbr\u003eChristian Ethiopia\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Hagar Salamon\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSEVEN:   \u003cbr\u003eLocus and Language: Hebrew Culture in Israel, 1890–1990\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Ariel Hirschfeld \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEIGHT:   \u003cbr\u003eThe “Other” Israel: Folk Cultures in the Modern State of Israel\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Eli Yassif \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNINE:  \u003cbr\u003eDeclarations of Independence: American Jewish Culture in the Twentieth Century\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Stephen J. Whitfield \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConclusion\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby David Biale \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIndex\u003c\/i\u003e“Lay readers already hooked on Jewish history will be endlessly fascinated, and those seeking a solid state-of-the art introduction to the field will find it here, with ample reference to other, more specialized or canonical works. . . One of the most nourishing Jewish books we've encountered in some time. . . . Wonderful.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Jerusalem Report\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The writers revel in the new vistas opened by a cultural approach, lavishly providing us, in generous detail, with descriptions of a Jewish world more various than historians have allowed us to glimpse.” —\u003ci\u003eTikkun\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Biale has gathered a stellar international group of scholars around the grand theme of Jewish cultural history. The tastes of many different intellectual palates will find various satisfactions here.” —\u003ci\u003eJewish Quarterly Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eDavid Biale \u003c\/b\u003eis the Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis.\u003cb\u003e   URBAN VISIBILITY AND BIBLICAL VISIONS:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Jewish Culture in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    richard i. cohen\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Could Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), the Enlightenment Jewish philosopher   and originator of the Bi’ur (a translation of the Bible into German in   Hebrew characters), have seen what a Galician-born Jewish artist used   for the frontispiece of an illustrated Bible at the beginning of the   twentieth century, he would certainly have been shocked and   uncomfortable. But whether Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874–1925) was out to   stun his audience or was just deeply engrossed in the art nouveau style   is at present of little significance. However, by placing the renowned   thinker alongside the less-known, erstwhile Zionist artist, we get a   fuller view of the cultural transformation of West and Central European   Jewry during a century and a half. Jewish sensibilities and concerns   were radically transposed as the engagement with a panoply of cultural   orientations superseded earlier pinnacles of Jewish integration, such   as Muslim Spain. Even the Bible, the Old Testament, the touchstone of   Judaism, would be refracted and refashioned in a multitude of   expressions, showing the shifting boundaries of Jewish life and the   Jews’ profound acceptance of the surrounding environment. The tightrope   Mendelssohn walked between traditional Judaism and European culture was   long forgotten or discarded when Lilien brazenly incorporated into\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    the frontispiece of his Bible (1908,1 1923) two androgynous figures   holding an extended Torah scroll that covers their genitalia. In   Lilien’s day, the tightrope stretched between European culture and a   Jewish nationalist agenda.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Juxtaposing these texts highlights other contrasts in the modern Jewish   experience in Western and Central Europe. Whereas Mendelssohn continued   an internal tradition of commentary and exegesis in written form,   Lilien offered a visual interpretation, much less common or conscious   of tradition. The former claimed the original text through intricate   discourse, the latter playfully experimented with it. The written text   was directed to Jews, to widen their horizons and concerns; the visual   one was an ecumenical effort (which originated among German Lutherans),   to engage both non-Jews and Jews. Whereas Mendels-\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    sohn’s Bible demanded distinctness, Lilien’s celebrated the   nonsectarian, but constantly alluded to the exclusive. Combined, the   texts merge rationalism, visibility, universalism, uniqueness,   traditional scholarship, and modern skepticism, as well as encounters   with the “other,” contemporaneously and historically. They are   contrasting expressions of the ways Jews have tried in the modern   period to integrate their culture into a larger category of   civilization, but both reveal inner tensions within those paths. By   studying the issues emanating from the oeuvres of Mendelssohn and   Lilien, we will chart some of the roads that led from one to the other.   Although today neither Mendelssohn nor Lilien are cited as the pioneers   of new horizons, of modernism, in the way Marx, Freud, or Kafka are   perceived, they and their works frame the confrontation with modernity   that Jews of different religious, cultural, and social backgrounds   faced.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Mendelssohn’s age saw the political and social barriers between Jews and non-Jews challenged by voices within European society and governments,   though not overcome. Joseph II (r. 1780–90), the Habsburg emperor, was   the first to make a serious change in the political status of European   Jews. He promulgated a series of Toleration Acts that promised to   integrate the Jews into the general polity, and in the case of the   recently occupied province of Galicia (1789) came close to extending   equal rights to its more than 200,000 Jews. Joseph’s actions generated   a warm-hearted response from some Enlightenment Jews (maskilim), who   viewed them as an opportunity to encourage an intensification of   secular education and openness to different occupations. More   traditionally minded Jews demurred, fearing the consequences of   increased proximity to Christian society and culture. But it was the   French Revolution (1789) that raised the ante of change, emancipating   the Jews as full citizens of France (1790, 1791) and in other regions   conquered by the revolutionary forces and ideology. Offered equality of   opportunity and faced with nascent nationalist spirit and a strong   centralistic orientation, Jews in France rapidly began to refashion   themselves, experiencing both dramatic demographic change and social   mobility.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Within a generation, from place to language, from traditions to style,   from occupations to status, Jews moved from a more exclusive world to   one permeated with a French disposition. Once begun, the political   emancipation of the Jews continued unabated for several decades throughout Western and   Central Europe, leaving in its wake (or at times even anticipating)   similar internal changes in France. Fashioning a German, Italian,   English, Dutch, or Austrian\/Hungarian identity was an integral part of the modern Jewish experience, the contours of which were different from country to country, affected   by the unique process of emancipation in each and by each particular   system of government and concept of citizenship. Yet there were   similarities in the ways that Jews juggled conflicting loyalties and   feelings of belonging. Nationalism in its variegated forms engrossed   them and shaped their allegiances but also challenged and provoked the   sense of their own nationhood. By the time Lilien appeared on the   scene, the political and cultural situation was a far cry from the days   of Mendelssohn. Emancipation had been secured; Jews were intensely   engaged in their surroundings and diversified in their interests and   networks of associations. They had become involved, and   disproportionately represented, in pursuits that were rarely considered their traditional domain—music,   art, theater—and individual Jews figured prominently, or as leaders, in new   areas of science, culture, and intellectual interests. Their economic   pursuits made Jews forces to contend with in diverse spheres.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Mendelssohn’s friendship with the German playwright Gottfried Ephraim   Lessing, mythologized in the nineteenth century as a symbol of   German-Jewish symbiosis, did not find its sequel in that century. In   the social sphere, the relationship between Jews and non-Jews remained   remote. Jews were still excluded from various societies and   associations, though some individuals had broken these barriers in   almost every country. The animosity that left its imprint on   Mendelssohn and several of his seminal texts became more caustic and   organized from the 1870s on, jeopardizing the success of emancipation   and jolting many Jews out of their sense of accommodation in their   native countries. More or less intense expressions of antisemitism   flourished in the last quarter of the century throughout Western and   Central Europe. Although he was reared in emancipated Galicia, Lilien,   like most Central European Jews, endorsed modernity but was not   oblivious to these troubling developments. At times he lashed out at   them in his illustrations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Notwithstanding the shadows on the horizon, most Jews in these parts of   Europe continued their quest for full integration. They spoke a   European language, grew distant from the traditions of their parents   and grandparents, and quite remarkably acculturated to the surrounding   society. In multinational countries, such as in the Austro-Hungarian   Empire, Jews swung between adopting the\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    German language and showing allegiance to the rising currents of Czech   and Hungarian nationalism by learning Czech or Magyar. In this period   of some 150 years, the boundaries of Jewish belonging were seriously redefined   and remapped. Individually and collectively, the Jews embarked on many   new projects that often placed them in conflict with their traditional   past, though elements of that past were forever gnawing at the core of   these new forms of understanding and consciousness. Myriad different   attachments—religious, social, cultural, and philanthropic—anchored   them to their ancestral moorings (which only vaguely resembled   traditional Judaism), while, politically, the nascent Jewish   nationalist movements (including Zionism) that challenged the   commitment to acculturation engaged only a smattering of adherents.   Thus, if an urban Jew in Western or Central Europe were to purchase a   Bible at the beginning of the twentieth century, chances are that   neither Mendelssohn’s German-language Bi’ur nor Lilien’s Bible with its   Zionist flavor would be the most likely choice. Probably a translation   in a European language, with or without the Hebrew original, would be   preferred, because both Mendelssohn’s and Lilien’s efforts hardly   reflected the mainstream of Jewish life at the time. Contemporary   Jewish reality and culture were being refashioned in the European   languages, accentuated by a growing commitment to the country of   residence and buttressed by a distancing from the ways of the past and   a frenetic movement to the urban hub. Nonetheless, a resilient Jewish voice could be detected in many   areas and countries  constructing public and private space\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The increasing openness of the modern age offered a new temptation for Jews: to be at the center of the cultural, economic, and social arena,   where politics were played out and where one enjoyed freedom of   movement and association. Major European cities in the late-eighteenth   and nineteenth centuries underwent dramatic economic, demographic,   structural, and cultural changes. Physical and economic expansion   encouraged an influx of new elements—  merchants, intelligentsia, petty traders, public officials, and others.   This mobility weakened the stratified or quasi-feudal structures as   agrarian society waned. The populations of Paris, Budapest, Vienna, and   Berlin multiplied many times. National groups—Slovaks, Romanians,   Germans, French, Serbs, Italians, Armenians, and Greeks—were on the   move, and Jews joined this migratory movement with eager anticipation.   They sought with equal passion the haven of cities that were   predominantly Protestant or Catholic, surpassing the attraction to   these cities of other ethnic or national minorities. A city such as   Prague or Amsterdam that had previously had a major Jewish community   became even more attractive; those at the periphery of Jewish activity   because of legislation (such as Vienna and Pest) or small Jewish   populations (such as Paris) turned into magnets, drawing Jews   throughout the nineteenth century in increasing numbers. The statistics   of Jewish urbanization in this period are staggering, and the process   became especially pronounced after 1850. For example, the Jews in Paris   and Vienna numbered between 900 and 1,000 in the latter part of the   eighteenth century, but by 1870 these populations had grown to 30,000   and 40,000, respectively. In a new milieu with untold possibilities and   attractions, a clear departure from more restricted and confined living   spaces, Jews were confronted very clearly with options for constructing   their individual and collective space, a clear hallmark of their   growing freedom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The cities to which Jews gravitated gradually ended residential   segregation. Toleration became the rule of thumb (though privileged   elements in society continued to prevent Jews from living in particular   neighborhoods). The freedom to live where they wished required the Jews   to make decisions of wide cultural and social implications concerning   where they would reside, with whom, and how they would create their   public and private spaces and system of values. Should Jews mask their   identity, for fear of being seen as clannish, or should they accept   their new freedom and congregate openly with both Jews and non-Jews?   How would they use the freedom to build their public and private space?   What would happen to the former center of Jewish life—the   synagogue—when previous restrictions on its construction were almost   completely removed?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    We ourselves may also ask some questions: What meanings can we attach   to the interest at the end of the nineteenth century in creating an   arena for Jewish art—within the synagogue or within a separate   institution, a museum? What transpired in the private sphere, in the   home? How did gender figure into the roles men and women assumed in   these different situations? How did the home now function as a   transmitter of values and as the mediator between acculturation and   preservation of a Jewish cultural identity, and who assumed the   responsibility for this? Did the home create or break down barriers   between Jews and non-Jews? Put differently, was the oft-quoted remark   by the Russian-Jewish maskil Judah Leib Gordon that one should be “a   person outside of the home and a Jew in one’s home” a viable way of   life for Jews in Western and Central Europe? And how were Jews able to   preserve their traditional form of life in this new  context?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Upon their return to England in the seventeenth century, the Jews   encountered a society that by and large enabled them to integrate and   acculturate fully into its fabric. The memories of the medieval past   and the expulsion of 1290 faded into oblivion. Although London was home   to only a small number of Jews prior to 1700, its Jewish community grew   significantly in the eighteenth century. The mere 750 Jews at the   beginning of the century grew through waves of immigration to more than   15,000 (of a population of some 800,000) at its end.  Jews gravitated   to London from Germany, Holland, and Poland and brought with them   diverse living patterns, levels of religious behavior, economic status,   and a predisposition to acculturation with the surrounding society.   Because neither legal restrictions nor Jewish communal organizations   existed at this time, London offered the immigrants the remarkable   freedom to live where they pleased. The city’s “complex and largely   unregulated patterns of urban life allowed persons with ambition and   drive much room for manoeuvre.”  London was not Berlin, where even   Mendelssohn lived under a special dispensation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The newcomers seized the opportunities offered by the “unregulated   patterns of urban life.” Both the poor and the wealthy lived initially   in the eastern end of the city. But class and money quickly became a   factor: the elegant living quarters of the West End enticed Sephardim   and Ashkenazim of means, whereas the more traditionally minded and   lower-class Jews remained in the City. Moving to the West End carried   with it a clear demarcation from association with Jewish organizational   life and synagogue attendance. Moreover, it is remarkable that Jews of   wealth were already in the 1720s, in their emulation of English gentry   style, purchasing lavish country homes and estates, at times with   sprawling acres of land. As Todd Endelman has shown, living like “a   country gentleman . . . meant a physical separation from the mass of   the Jewish community.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Samson Gideon, who was born in London in 1699, is an example of this   cut of Anglo-Jewish society. The son of Rehuel Gideon Abudiente, of   Marrano stock, a trader in Barbados who was the first Jew to become a   freeman in London, Samson inherited a sizable sum on his father’s   death. Brought up traditionally, he used this legacy to purchase (in   the 1720s) a home in a fashionable area, where people of the noble and   gentry classes lived. Following his marriage to a non-Jewish woman in   the 1740s, he acquired several country estates. Although he maintained   a minimal connection with the Bevis Marks synagogue, he did everything   possible to attain the status of an English aristocrat and shunned any   connection with the efforts in 1753 to improve the political status of   the Jews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    by an act of naturalization. Indeed, for the wealthy—as the case of   Gideon shows—physical distance could contribute in time to almost total   estrangement, including conversion, from Jewish life. The choice of   where to build one’s home was at times a determining factor in the   maintenance of connection with Jewish mores, but at times it also   stemmed from a predisposed attitude toward those mores—alternatives   that did not exist for the lower middle class.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By the mid-nineteenth century, some 13,000 of England’s 35,000 Jews   lived in London.","brand":"Schocken","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302537777381,"sku":"NP9780805212020","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780805212020.jpg?v=1767724359","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/cultures-of-the-jews-volume-3-isbn-9780805212020","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}