Studies In Contemporary Jewry X Reshaping The Past

This brilliant collection of essays examines the dialogue between Jewish history and historiography in terms of changing national and popular myths, folk memory, and historical consciousness of Jews in modern times. From essays dealing with the origins of Jewish historiography in the nineteenth century, to its contemporary perspectives and methodologies, this book provides a great overview and varied insights into the field.

This volume examines music's place in the process of Jewish assimilation into the modern European bourgeoisie and the role assigned to music in forging a new Jewish Israeli national identity, in maintaining a separate Sephardic identity, and in preserving a traditional Jewish life. Contributions include "On the Jewish Presence in Nineteenth Century European Musical Life," by Ezra Mendelsohn, "Musical Life in the Central European Jewish Village," by Philip V. Bohlman, "Jews and Hungarians in Modern Hungarian Musical Culture," by Judit Frigyesi, "New Directions in the Music of the Sephardic Jews," by Edwin Seroussi, "The Eretz Israeli Song and the Jewish National Fund," by Natan Shahar, "Alexander U. Boskovitch and the Quest for an Israeli Musical Style," by Jehoash Hirshberg, and "Music of Holy Argument," by Lionel Wolberger. The volume also contains essays, book reviews, and a list of recent dissertations in the field.

This collection of original articles addresses the often conflicting roles of values, interests, and identity in contemporary Jewish politics. with its focus on Jews and contemporary politics - particularly the interplay of politics and jewish history - this new work makes an outstanding contribution to the scholarly literature.

The postwar decades were not the “golden era” in which American Jews easily partook in the religious revival, liberal consensus, and suburban middle-class comfort. Rather it was a period marked by restlessness and insecurity born of the shock about the Holocaust and of the unprecedented opportunities in American society. American Jews responded to loss and opportunity by obsessively engaging with the East European past. The proliferation of religious texts on traditional spirituality, translations of Yiddish literature, historical essays , photographs and documents of shtetl culture, theatrical and musical events, culminating in the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, illustrate the grip of this past on post-1945 American Jews. This study shows how American Jews reimagined their East European past to make it usable for their American present. By rewriting their East European history, they created a repertoire of images, stories, and ideas that have shaped American Jewry to this day.

This book re-examines one of the most intense controversies of the Holocaust: the role of Rezs Kasztner in facilitating the murder of most of Nazi-occupied Hungary's Jews in 1944. Because he was acting head of the Jewish rescue operation in Hungary, some have hailed him as a saviour. Others have charged that he collaborated with the Nazis in the deportations to Auschwitz. What is indisputable is that Adolf Eichmann agreed to spare a special group of 1,684 Jews, who included some of Kasztner's relatives and friends, while nearly 500,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to their deaths. Why were so many lives lost?After World War II, many Holocaust survivors condemned Kasztner for complicity in the deportation of Hungarian Jews. It was alleged that, as a condition of saving a small number of Jewish leaders and select others, he deceived ordinary Jews into boarding the trains to Auschwitz. The ultimate question is whether Kastztner was a Nazi collaborator, as branded by Ben Hecht in his 1961 book Perfidy, or a hero, as Anna Porter argued in her 2009 book Kasztner's Train. Opinion remains divided.Paul Bogdanor makes an original, compelling case that Kasztner helped the Nazis keep order in Hungary's ghettos before the Jews were sent to Auschwitz, and sent Nazi disinformation to his Jewish contacts in the free world. Drawing on unpublished documents, and making extensive use of the transcripts of the Kasztner and Eichmann trials in Israel, Kasztner's Crime is a chilling account of one man's descent into evil during the genocide of his own people.

The eighth volume of the acclaimed annual publication of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, this volume focuses on the history and development of American Jewish life since World War II. Contributions include "A 'Golden Decade' for American Jews, 1945-1955" by Arthur A. Goren, "American Judaism: Changing Patterns in Denominational Self-Definition" by Arnold Eisen, "Value Added: Jews in Postwar American Culture" by Stephen J. Whitfield, "The Postwar Economy of American Jews" by Barry R. Chiswick, "Jewish Migration in Postwar America: The Case of Miami and Los Angeles" by Deborah Dash Moore, and "All in the Family: American Jewish Attachments to Israel" by Chaim Waxman. The volume also contains essays, book reviews, and a list of recent dissertations in the field.

This series is published yearly by the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is edited by Jonathan Frankel, Peter Medding, and Ezra Mendelsohn, all distinguished professors of history at The Hebrew University. The volumes include symposia, articles, book reviews, and lists of recent dissertations by major scholars of Jewish history from around the world. Among the topics examined in this volume are the transformation of Russian Jewish communal life; Habsburg Jewry and its disappearance; the Bolsheviks and British Jews; and the Palestinian labor movement. This diverse collection is one of the first attempts to examine the over-all impact of the First World War and the Russian revolution on the Jewish people.

This volume of this important series deals with Jewish identity in literature. Particular attention is paid to changing national and popular myths, folk memory, and the historical consciousness of Jews in modern times.