I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture
Title | I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture PDF eBook |
Author | Ruth R. Wisse |
Publisher | University of Washington Press |
Pages | 147 |
Release | 2015-07-01 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0295805676 |
I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), the father of modern Yiddish literature, was a master storyteller and social critic who advocated a radical shift from religious observance to secular Jewish culture. Wisse explores Peretz’s writings in relation to his ideology, which sought to create a strong Jewish identity separate from the trappings of religion.
Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon
Title | Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon PDF eBook |
Author | Justin Daniel Cammy |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 744 |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | Family & Relationships |
ISBN |
Wisse is a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and a fearless public intellectual on issues relating to Jewish society and culture. In this celebratory volume, her colleagues pay tribute with a collection of critical essays whose subjects break new ground in Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature.
Strangers in Berlin
Title | Strangers in Berlin PDF eBook |
Author | Rachel Seelig |
Publisher | University of Michigan Press |
Pages | 241 |
Release | 2016-09-19 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0472130099 |
Insightful look at the interactions between German and migrant Jewish writers and the creative spectrum of Jewish identity
A Permanent Beginning
Title | A Permanent Beginning PDF eBook |
Author | Yitzhak Lewis |
Publisher | State University of New York Press |
Pages | 242 |
Release | 2020-03-01 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1438477686 |
The Hasidic leader R. Nachman of Braslav (1772–1810) has held a place in the Jewish popular imagination for more than two centuries. Some see him as the (self-proclaimed) Messiah, others as the forerunner of modern Jewish literature. Existing studies struggle between these dueling readings, largely ignoring questions of aesthetics and politics in his work. A Permanent Beginning lays out a new paradigm for understanding R. Nachman's thought and writing, and, with them, the beginnings of Jewish literary modernity. Yitzhak Lewis examines the connections between imperial modernization processes in Eastern Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century and the emergence of "modern literature" in the storytelling of R. Nachman. Reading his tales and teachings alongside the social, legal, and intellectual history of the time, the book's guiding question is literary: How does R. Nachman represent this changing environment in his writing? Lewis paints a nuanced and fascinating portrait of a literary thinker and creative genius at the very moment his world was evolving unrecognizably. He argues compellingly that R. Nachman's narrative response to his changing world was a major point of departure for Jewish literary modernity.
From Continuity to Contiguity
Title | From Continuity to Contiguity PDF eBook |
Author | Dan Miron |
Publisher | Stanford University Press |
Pages | 559 |
Release | 2010-07-19 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0804775028 |
Dan Miron—widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on modern Jewish literatures—begins this study by surveying and critiquing previous attempts to define a common denominator unifying the various modern Jewish literatures. He argues that these prior efforts have all been trapped by the need to see these literatures as a continuum. Miron seeks to break through this impasse by acknowledging discontinuity as the staple characteristic of modern Jewish writing. These literatures instead form a complex of independent, yet touching, components related through contiguity. From Continuity to Contiguity offers original insights into modern Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish literatures, including a new interpretation of Franz Kafka's place within them and discussions of Sholem Aleichem, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Akhad ha'am, M. Y. Berditshevsky, Kh. N. Bialik, and Y. L. Peretz.
A Rich Brew
Title | A Rich Brew PDF eBook |
Author | Shachar Pinsker |
Publisher | NYU Press |
Pages | 382 |
Release | 2018-05-15 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1479827894 |
Finalist, 2018 National Jewish Book Award for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, presented by the Jewish Book Council Winner, 2019 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, in the Jewish Literature and Linguistics Category, given by the Association for Jewish Studies A fascinating glimpse into the world of the coffeehouse and its role in shaping modern Jewish culture Unlike the synagogue, the house of study, the community center, or the Jewish deli, the café is rarely considered a Jewish space. Yet, coffeehouses profoundly influenced the creation of modern Jewish culture from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. With roots stemming from the Ottoman Empire, the coffeehouse and its drinks gained increasing popularity in Europe. The “otherness,” and the mix of the national and transnational characteristics of the coffeehouse perhaps explains why many of these cafés were owned by Jews, why Jews became their most devoted habitués, and how cafés acquired associations with Jewishness. Examining the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity, Shachar M. Pinsker argues that cafés anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafés that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin to New York City and Tel Aviv. A Rich Brew explores the Jewish culture created in these social spaces, drawing on a vivid collection of newspaper articles, memoirs, archival documents, photographs, caricatures, and artwork, as well as stories, novels, and poems in many languages set in cafés. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the café, nourished, and sent out into the world by way of print, politics, literature, art, and theater. What was experienced and created in the space of the coffeehouse touched thousands who read, saw, and imbibed a modern culture that redefined what it meant to be a Jew in the world.
The Modern Jewish Canon
Title | The Modern Jewish Canon PDF eBook |
Author | Ruth R. Wisse |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 420 |
Release | 2003-04-15 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9780226903187 |
What makes a great Jewish book? In fact, what makes a book "Jewish" in the first place? Ruth R. Wisse eloquently fields these questions in The Modern Jewish Canon, her compassionate, insightful guide to the finest Jewish literature of the twentieth century. From Isaac Babel to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elie Wiesel to Cynthia Ozick, Wisse's The Modern Jewish Canon is a book that every student of Jewish literature, and every reader of great fiction, will enjoy.