The Souls Of Jewish Folk

The Souls of Jewish Folk argues that late nineteenth-century Germany’s struggle with its “Jewish question”—what to do with Germany’s Jews—served as an important and to-date underexamined influence on W.E.B. Du Bois’s considerations of America’s anti-Black racism at the turn of the twentieth century. Du Bois is wellknown for his characterization of the twentieth century’s greatest challenge, “the problem of the color line.” This proposition gained prominence in the conception of Du Bois’sThe Souls of Black Folk (1903), which engages the questions of race, racial domination, and racial exploitation. James M. Thomas contends that this conception of racism is haunted by the specter of the German Jew. In 1892 Du Bois received a fellowship for his graduate studies at the University of Berlin from the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen. While a student in Berlin, Du Bois studied with some of that nation's most prominent social scientists. What The Souls of Jewish Folkasks readers to take seriously, then, is how our ideas, and indeed intellectual work itself, are shaped by and embedded within the nexus of people, places, and prevailing contexts of their time. With this book,Thomas examines how the major social, political, and economic events of Du Bois’s own life—including his time spent living and learning in a latenineteenth-century Germany defined in no small part by its violent anti-Semitism—constitute the soil from which his most serious ideas about race, racism, and the global color line sprang forth.

The Souls of Jewish Folk argues that late nineteenth-century Germany's struggle with its "Jewish question"-what to do with Germany's Jews-served as an important and to-date underexamined influence on W.E.B. Du Bois's considerations of America's anti-Black racism at the turn of the twentieth century. Du Bois is wellknown for his characterization of the twentieth century's greatest challenge, "the problem of the color line." This proposition gained prominence in the conception of Du Bois'sThe Souls of Black Folk (1903), which engages the questions of race, racial domination, and racial exploitation. James M. Thomas contends that this conception of racism is haunted by the specter of the German Jew. In 1892 Du Bois received a fellowship for his graduate studies at the University of Berlin from the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen. While a student in Berlin, Du Bois studied with some of that nation's most prominent social scientists. What The Souls of Jewish Folkasks readers to take seriously, then, is how our ideas, and indeed intellectual work itself, are shaped by and embedded within the nexus of people, places, and prevailing contexts of their time. With this book,Thomas examines how the major social, political, and economic events of Du Bois's own life-including his time spent living and learning in a latenineteenth-century Germany defined in no small part by its violent anti-Semitism-constitute the soil from which his most serious ideas about race, racism, and the global color line sprang forth.

From tales of Adam, Moses, and other biblical figures, to the fall of Lucifer and the quarrel of the sun and moon, an anthology of Jewish myth presents seven hundred key stories and through extensive commentary places them in context with the literature of the world.

Filled with princesses and witches, dybbuks and wonder-working rebbes, the two hundred marvelous tales that make up this delightful compendium were gathered during the 1920s and 1930s by ethnographers in the small towns and villages of Eastern Europe. Collected from people of all walks of life, they include parable and allegories about life, luck, and wisdom; tales of magic and wonder; stories about rebbes and their disciples; and tales whose only purpose is to entertain. Long after the culture that produced them has disappeared, these enchanting Yiddish folktales continue to work their magic today.

"With its broad selection from written and oral sources, Leaves from the garden of Eden is a landmark collection, representing the full range of Jewish folklore from the Talmud to the present"--Jacket.

This multicultural reference work on Jewish folklore, legends, customs, and other elements of folklife is the first of its kind.

Over 150 tales from the Talmud, the Zohar, Jewish folktales, and Hasidic lore.

Alongside the formal development of Judaism from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, a robust Jewish folk religion flourished—ideas and practices that never met with wholehearted approval by religious leaders yet enjoyed such wide popularity that they could not be altogether excluded from the religion. According to Joshua Trachtenberg, it is not possible truly to understand the experience and history of the Jewish people without attempting to recover their folklife and beliefs from centuries past. Jewish Magic and Superstition is a masterful and utterly fascinating exploration of religious forms that have all but disappeared yet persist in the imagination. The volume begins with legends of Jewish sorcery and proceeds to discuss beliefs about the evil eye, spirits of the dead, powers of good, the famous legend of the golem, procedures for casting spells, the use of gems and amulets, how to battle spirits, the ritual of circumcision, herbal folk remedies, fortune telling, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams. First published more than sixty years ago, Trachtenberg's study remains the foundational scholarship on magical practices in the Jewish world and offers an understanding of folk beliefs that expressed most eloquently the everyday religion of the Jewish people.