Jewish Memory And The Cosmopolitan Order

Natan Sznaider offers a highly original account of Jewish memory and politics before and after the Holocaust. It seeks to recover an aspect of Jewish identity that has been almost completely lost today - namely, that throughout much of their history Jews were both a nation and cosmopolitan, they lived in a constant tension between particularism and universalism. And it is precisely this tension, which Sznaider seeks to capture in his innovative conception of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism', that is increasingly the destiny of all peoples today. The book pays special attention to Jewish intellectuals who played an important role in advancing universal ideas out of their particular identities. The central figure in this respect is Hannah Arendt and her concern to build a better world out of the ashes of the Jewish catastrophe. The book demonstrates how particular Jewish affairs are connected to current concerns about cosmopolitan politics like human rights, genocide, international law and politics. Jewish identity and universalist human rights were born together, developed together and are still fundamentally connected. This book will appeal both to readers interested in Jewish history and memory and to anyone concerned with current debates about citizenship and cosmopolitanism in the modern world.

Jewish cosmopolitanism is key to understanding both modern globalization, and the old and new nationalism. Jewish cultures existing in the Western world during the last two centuries have been and continue to be read as hyphenated phenomena within a specific national context, such as German-Jewish or American-Jewish culture. Yet to what extent do such nationalized constructs of Jewish culture and identity still dominate Jewish self-expressions, and the discourses about them, in the rapidly globalizing world of the twenty-first century? In a world in which Diaspora societies have begun to reshape themselves as part of a super- or nonnational identity, what has happened to a cosmopolitan Jewish identity? In a post-Zionist world, where one of the newest and most substantial Diaspora communities is that of Israelis, in the new globalized culture, is “being Jewish” suddenly something that can reach beyond the older models of Diasporic integration or nationalism? Which new paradigms of Jewish self-location, within the evolving and conflicting global discourses, about the nation, race, Genocides, anti-Semitism, colonialism and postcolonialism, gender and sexual identities does the globalization of Jewish cultures open up? To what extent might transnational notions of Jewishness, such as European-Jewish identity, create new discursive margins and centers? Is there a possibility that a “virtual makom (Jewish space)” might constitute itself? Recent studies on cosmopolitanism cite the Jewish experience as a key to the very notion of the movement of people for good or for ill as well as for the resurgence of modern nationalism. These theories reflect newer models of postcolonialism and transnationalism in regard to global Jewish cultures. The present volume spans the widest reading of Jewish cosmopolitisms to study “Jews on the move.” This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Review of History.

The identity of contemporary Jews is multifaceted, no longer necessarily defined by an observance of the Torah and God’s commandments. Indeed, the Jews of modernity are no longer exclusively Jewish. They are affiliated with a host of complementary and sometimes clashing communities—vocational, professional, political, and cultural—whose interests may not coincide with that of the community of their birth and inherited culture. In Cultural Disjunctions, Paul Mendes-Flohr explores the possibility of a spiritually and intellectually engaged cosmopolitan Jewish identity for our time. Reflecting on the need to participate in the spiritual life of Judaism so that it enables multiple relations beyond its borders and allows one to balance Jewish commitment with a genuine obligation to the universal, Mendes-Flohr lays out what this delicate balance can look like for contemporary Jews, both in Israel and in diasporic communities worldwide. Cultural Disjunctions walks us through the labyrinth of twentieth-century Jewish cultural identities and commitments. Ultimately, Mendes-Flohr calls for Jews to remain “discontent,” not just with themselves but also and especially with the reigning social and political order, and to fight for its betterment.

The first conceptual history of the development and evolution of the image of Jews and Jewish participation in modern German-speaking cosmopolitanist thought

Emigrierte jüdische Juristen, Historiker, Archivare und Aktivisten und ihre individuellen Zugänge zum humanitären Völkerrecht. Emigrierte jüdisch-europäische Juristen waren im 20. Jahrhundert wichtige Träger eines rechtlichen Internationalismus und interkultureller Konzepte im Völkerrechtsdenken, die teilweise in die Nachkriegsdiskurse einflossen, vielfach aber auch vergessen oder an den Rand gedrängt wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Band konzentriert sich auf eine Reihe internationaler Juristen, Historiker, Archivare und Aktivisten und deren individuelle Zugänge zum humanitären Völkerrecht. Mit Hilfe eines biografischen Zugangs werden subjektive Erfahrungen wie akademische Sozialisation, ideologische und religiöse Überzeugungen, soziale Marginalisierung, politische bzw. rassistische Verfolgung und erzwungene Auswanderung in den Blick genommen. Zudem wird danach gefragt, inwiefern sich solche Erfahrungen in Vorstellungen von Universalismus und Partikularismus, Kosmopolitismus und Souveränität, nationaler Selbstbestimmung, Staatsbürgerschaft und Staatenlosigkeit, kollektiven Minderheitenrechten und individuellen Menschenrechten niederschlugen. English: Jewish émigré lawyers, historians, archivists and activists and their individual approaches to International Humanitarian Law. Jewish-European émigré lawyers in the twentieth century were important agents of legal internationalism and served as carriers of intercultural concepts of international legal thought; concepts, which fed into postwar discourses, but were also often forgotten or marginalized. This interdisciplinary volume focusses on a range of international lawyers, historians, archivists and activists and their individual approaches towards International Humanitarian Law. It uses a biographical lens to analyze the impact of subjective experiences like academic socialization, ideological and religious viewpoints (Weltanschauung), social marginalization, political and racial persecution, and forced emigration. Moreover, it investigates the extent to which the emigrants' experiences shaped typical notions of twentieth century politics and law, such as universalism and particularism, cosmopolitanism and sovereignty, national self-determination, citizenship and statelessness, collective minority rights, and individual human rights.

Memory has long been a subject of fascination for poets, artists, philosophers and historians. This timely volume, edited by Siobhan Kattago, examines how past events are remembered, contested, forgotten, learned from and shared with others. Each author in The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies has been asked to reflect on his or her research companions as a scholar, who studies memory. The original studies presented in the volume are written by leading experts, who emphasize both the continuity of heritage and tradition, as well as the memory of hostilities, traumas and painful events. Comprised of four thematic sections, The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies provides a comprehensive overview of the latest research within the discipline. The principal themes include: ¢ Memory, History and Time ¢ Social, Psychological and Cultural Frameworks of Memory ¢ Acts and Places of Memory ¢ Politics of Memory, Forgetting and Democracy Featuring contributions from key thinkers in the field, this comprehensive volume will be a valuable resource for all academics and students working within this area of study.

It is the aim of this volume to investigate how academic practices of Memory Studies are being applied, adapted, and transformed in the countries of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. It affords a new, startlingly different perspective for scholars of both Eastern European history and Memory Studies.

This cross-disciplinary approach to literary reading of any provenance based on an “experimental cosmopolitan” epistemology de- and recontextualizes the texts from the points of view of multiple cultures and historical moments, enriching interpretation and aesthetic experience beyond the backgrounds of the present reader and the origin of a particular literary discourse. Trusting the authority of an author or an “original” text and ignoring the fundamental plurilingualism of the literary experience obstructs the wealth of cosmopolitan reading in a globalized and fragmented world. A thorough critique of both local and overarching theories in clear dissent from the binaries of “decolonial theory” and the overextension of “nomadic theory” supports a precise research and teaching methodology at variance with past trends of Comparative and World Literature. Considering literature as the aestheticized use of language, which is universal, the many analyses provided can be extrapolated to other genres, eras, and cultural areas.