Against the Grain

Jewish Intellectuals in Hard Times
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-78238-002-3
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 616 g

Highlighting the seminal role of German Jewish intellectuals and ideologues in forming and transforming the modern Jewish world, this volume analyzes the political roads taken by German Jewish thinkers; the impact of the Holocaust on the Central and East European Jewish intelligentsia; and the conundrum of modern Jewish identity. Several of German Jewry’s most outstanding figures such as Scholem, Strauss, and Kohn are discussed. Inspired by Steven E. Aschheim’s work, several contributors focus on the fraught relationship between German and East European Jews (the so-called Ostjuden) and between German Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. More generally, this book examines how Central European Jewish thinkers reacted to the terrible crises of the twentieth century—to war, genocide, and the existential threat to the very existence of the Jewish people. It is essential reading for those interested in the triumphs and tragedies of modern European Jewry.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mendelsohn, Ezra

Hoffman, Stefani

Cohen, Richard I.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien Jüdische Identität & Biographien
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Geschichte des Judentums Antisemitismus, Pogrome, Shoah
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien: Philosophie, Aufklärung, Wissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Geschichte des Judentums Geschichte des Judentums: Moderne & Gegenwart

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Editors’ Note

Chapter 1. Reading Steven Aschheim

Ezra Mendelsohn

Part I. Strauss, Scholem, Arendt, Benjamin

Chapter 2. A Zionist Critique of Jewish Politics: The Early Thought of Leo Strauss

Jerry Z. Muller

Chapter 3. Leo Strauss Reading Karl Marx during the Cold War

Adi Armon

Chapter 4. Gershom Scholem, Einst und Jetzt: Zionist Politics and Kabbalistic Historiography

David Biale

Chapter 5. Death or Birth? Scholem and Secularization

Zohar Maor

Chapter 6. Fragments from a Correspondence(Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem) – A Poem

Zvi Jagendorf

Part II. Political Positioning in Hard Times

Chapter 7. In Heidegger’s Shadow: Ernst Cassirer, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Question of the Political

Jeffrey Andrew Barash

Chapter 8. Walter Rathenau’s Dilemma: Modernity and the Human Soul

Shulamit Volkov

Chapter 9. “Nothing but a Disillusioned Love”?: Hans Kohn’s Break with the Zionist Movement

Adi Gordon

Chapter 10. Historicism and the Event

Martin Jay

Part III. Brothers and Strangers: The Issue of Identity

Chapter 11. Asiatic Brothers, European Strangers: Eugen Hoeflich and Pan-Asian Zionism in Vienna

Hanan Harif

Chapter 12. “Brothers and Strangers”: The American Example

Pierre Birnbaum

Chapter 13. “Mann Kann Verjuden”: Paradoxes of Exemplarity

Vivian Liska

Part IV. In the Shadow of the Holocaust

Chapter 14. A “Usable Past” and the Crisis of European Jews: Popular Jewish Historiography in Germany, France, and Hungary in the 1930s

Guy Miron

Chapter 15. Three Jewish Émigrés at Nuremberg: Jacob Robinson, Hersch Lauterpacht, and Raphael Lemkin

Michael R. Marrus

Chapter 16. The Frankfurt School and the ‘Jewish Question,’ 1940-1970

Anson Rabinbach

Chapter 17. Holocaust History and Survivor Testimony: Challenges, Limitations, and Opportunities

Christopher R. Browning

Select Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Hoffman, Stefani
Stefani Hoffman is the former director of the Mayrock Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Research at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is co-editor of Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry (with Richard I. Cohen and Jonathan Frankel, 2010).

Cohen, Richard I.
Richard I. Cohen holds the Paulette and Claude Kelman Chair in French Jewry Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has recently edited Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History (vol. 26 of Studies in Contemporary Jewry, 2012).

Mendelsohn, Ezra
Ezra Mendelsohn (1940-2015) was Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry and in Russian Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was author of Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art (2002).

Ezra Mendelsohn (1940-2015) was Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry and in Russian Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was author of Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art (2002).