German-Jewish Thought and its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy. By Vivian Liska. Jewish Literature and Culture, 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. Pp. xii + 201; Cloth, $80.00; paper, $30.00.

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-287
Author(s):  
Matthew Creighton
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
German Jewish

Vivian Liska, German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017. 203 pp.

2020 ◽  
pp. 271-274
Keyword(s):  
European Society ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
German Jewish

Through the good offices of the European Enlightenment and its ideals of tolerance and personal freedom, the walls of the ghetto, which had restricted the Jews not only to residential enclosures but also to cultural and spiritual seclusion, were torn down. As the denizens of the ghetto rushed to embrace the opportunities afforded them by their liberation from the degradation of enforced isolation, they adopted European secular culture. Despite the extraordinary exuberance they often displayed for their new culture, they did not enter modern European society, as had their Christian sponsors, “in a long process of ‘endogenous’ gestation and growth, but they rather plunged into it as the ghetto walls were being breached, with a bang, though not without prolonged whimpers.”...

Holiness in Jewish Thought

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Life

Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. “Holiness” seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature. It offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the history of the development of the Jewish tradition. They think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.

A Judaism of Ethics in a Post-Holocaust World: The Interplay of Literature and Theology in Cynthia Ozick's Messiah of Stockholm

AJS Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Claire E. Sufrin
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Harold Bloom ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Literature And Theology ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Bruno Schulz ◽  
The Relationship

This article suggests that bringing Jewish literature and Jewish thought into conversation can deepen our understanding of each. As an illustration of this interdisciplinary methodology, I offer a reading of Cynthia Ozick's 1987 Messiah of Stockholm. I claim that Ozick has embedded an argument about the relationship of post-Holocaust Jewry to the past into the literary features of her novel. Her argument draws in particular upon Leo Baeck's account of Judaism as focused on the present and future in contrast to the worshipful approach to the past characteristic of other religions. At the same time, I offer a more nuanced take on the fear of idolatry so often noted in analyses of Ozick's work and situate that fear in relationship to the literary theories of her predecessor Bruno Schulz, who plays a key role in the novel, and her contemporary Harold Bloom.

German-Jewish Literature and Culture and the Field of German-Jewish Studies

2007 ◽  
pp. 165-184
Author(s):  
Mark H. Gelber
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
German Society ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Host Culture ◽  
European Culture ◽  
German Jewish

This chapter delineates the parameters of developments and relationships to the 'Jewish contribution discourse'. It notes the marginality of Jewish culture in present-day Germany that has enabled the emergence of the quintessential post-modern field of cultural studies in Germany and the basis for diverse criticism. It also mentions Moritz Goldstein, who boldly claimed in his 'Deutsch-jüdischer Parnass' that the Jews in Germany had become the custodians and arbiters of the spiritual treasures of German society. The chapter explores the understanding of European culture as largely Jewish, which militates against the idea of a possible Jewish contribution to that culture since the term 'contribution' appears to make little sense if the Jewish element is the dominant one. It explains the concept of a contribution that rests on the notion of a dominant host culture to which guests might contribute.

Rosenzweig Redux: The Reception of German-Jewish Thought

2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Eli Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Thought ◽  
German Jewish
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