Jewish Encounters With Buddhism In German Culture

In Germany at the turn of the century, Buddhism transformed from an obscure topic, of interest to only a few misfit scholars, into a cultural phenomenon. Many of the foremost authors of the period were profoundly influenced by this rapid rise of Buddhism-among them, some of the best-known names in the German-Jewish canon. Sebastian Musch excavates this neglected dimension of German-Jewish identity, drawing on philosophical treatises, novels, essays, diaries, and letters to trace the history of Jewish-Buddhist encounters up to the start of the Second World War. Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Leo Baeck, Theodor Lessing, Jakob Wassermann, Walter Hasenclever, and Lion Feuchtwanger are featured alongside other, lesser known figures like Paul Cohen-Portheim and Walter Tausk. As Musch shows, when these thinkers wrote about Buddhism, they were also negotiating their own Jewishness.

In Germany at the turn of the century, Buddhism transformed from an obscure topic, of interest to only a few misfit scholars, into a cultural phenomenon. Many of the foremost authors of the period were profoundly influenced by this rapid rise of Buddhism—among them, some of the best-known names in the German-Jewish canon. Sebastian Musch excavates this neglected dimension of German-Jewish identity, drawing on philosophical treatises, novels, essays, diaries, and letters to trace the history of Jewish-Buddhist encounters up to the start of the Second World War. Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Leo Baeck, Theodor Lessing, Jakob Wassermann, Walter Hasenclever, and Lion Feuchtwanger are featured alongside other, lesser known figures like Paul Cohen-Portheim and Walter Tausk. As Musch shows, when these thinkers wrote about Buddhism, they were also negotiating their own Jewishness.

This book provides a unique perspective on contemporary German and Chinese cultural encounters. Moving away from highlighting exchanges between the two countries in terms of colonial connections, religious influences and philosophical impacts, the book instead focuses on the vast array of modern cultural dialogues that have influenced both countries, especially in literature, theatre and film. The book discusses issues of translation, adaptation, and reception to reveal a unique cultural relationship. The editors and contributors examine the existing programs and strategies for cultural interchange, and analyse how these shape or have shaped intercultural dialogue, and what kind of intercultural exchange is encouraged. This book is of interest to students and researchers of film and media studies, Sinophone studies, transnational studies, cultural studies and social and cultural anthropology.

The Oxford Handbook of American Buddhism offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date scholarship available on Buddhism in America. It charts the history and diversity of Buddhist communities, including traditions and communities that have been previously neglected, and looks at the ways in which Buddhist practices such as mindfulness meditation have been adopted in non-Buddhist settings.

Leo Baeck (1873–1956) was a famous Jewish thinker and the leader of German Jewry during the Holocaust. This book offers the first interpretation of his religious thought as political, showing how Baeck, along with German-Jewish thought more broadly, cannot be properly understood without the imperial context.

One century after Gustav Landauer’s death, in a time marked by a deep doubt concerning modern politics, the volume proposes a fascinating overview of the articulation between skepsis and antipolitics in his multifaceted unconventional anarchism.

It seems hard to imagine a concept more significant to modern thought than critique. Critique involved distancing oneself from religious explanations and theological argumentation and came to represent the essence of secular consciousness's potential to deliver modernity's promise of human progress through rational inquiry and scientific development. Critiques of Theology debunks this common understanding. Based on a novel reading of previously less-discussed writings by Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Hannah Arendt, the book shows how the practice of critique emerged out of religious traditions and can, in many ways, be traced back to them. This study points to a persistent misreading of critique and demonstrates that it does not come from outside of religion to build a new world of ideas; on the contrary, it redeploys those already present within its theological constellations.

Scientific Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Jewish Studies, grade: Not graded, , course: Treten Sie ein! Treten Sie aus! Warum Menschen ihre Religion wechseln, language: English, abstract: The aim of this article is to shed some light, as far as it is possible at the present time, on the part played by Jews in the spread of Buddhism since its arrival in the west as a religious practice. We shall also take a look at the “special case” of Jewish Buddhists (JuBu) among Jewish converts and suggest a tentative definition. It is more than 120 years now since Buddhism began to get a foothold in western countries and began, slowly and steadily, to become at home here. The first historically-attested convert on the soil of the USA was Charles T. Strauss who, at the 1893 “World Parliament of Religions” in Chicago, declared his conversion to Buddhism and took his Buddhist vow in a small, solemn ceremony in the present of an Asian master. Strauss came from New York and was the son of Jewish parents. After this key event, Buddha-Dharma, the “doctrine of the Enlightened One” seems to have exercised a remarkable power of attraction for many Jews. Thus Buddhism owes its transformation and growth in the west to many intermediaries with a Jewish background: Philipp Kapleau, Bernard Glassman, Nyanaponika Mahathera, Ayya Khema, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Sylvia Boorstein, Rabbi Alan Lew, Nathan Katz, Lama Surya Das, Thubten Chödron, to name but a few. A glance at the Buddhist centres of the great east and west coast cities of the USA shows that up to 30% of their members are of Jewish descent. The renowned Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa, from Tibet, once joked that there were so many Jews among his disciples that he would be able to found a special Buddhist school for them, the “Oy Vey School of Buddhism”. In these centres, some of the members assert that they are “passionate Buddhists” and “faithful Jews” at one and the same time. This phenomenon of “Jewish Buddhists” has become so widespread and striking since the boom of eastern wisdom teachings in the 1960s and 1970s that a specific term has established itself in the USA (not without resistance), namely, “JuBus” or “JewBus” as an abbreviation for “Jewish Buddhists”.